'I'll be judge, I'll be jury': 'tail'-telling, imperialism and the other in Alice in Wonderland

This essay examines how Carroll’s Alice is represented as a child immersed in Victorian cultural perceptions of race and in contemporary English attitudes to the Other, locating this portrayal in relation to debates about the child reader. I demonstrate how, in Alice’s conversations with the creatures in and following the ‘pool of tears’ episode, she repeatedly attempts to engage them with her own values and in so doing consistently ignores the reality of their situations. The imperialist nature of her vision is highlighted by the Mouse’s ‘dry’ account of the origins of the English nation. I examine the implications of Carroll’s visual representation of the Mouse’s tale as a tail, and demonstrate how Alice in Wonderland reflects English cultural imperialism and its manifestation in the individual