What makes Alice in Wonderland uncanny?
I first read Alice in Wonderland as a child, I then re-read it years later. The book I knew as a child and the one I was reading as an adult were vastly different in feeling and meaning. It created two versions of the book in my mind that jostled with one another. This was the first thing I found uncanny about Alice. Second was the first chapter: The Pool of Tears.
After falling down the rabbit hole Alice finds herself in a long hallway. The hall has every appearance of normalcy, however in this seemingly mundane hall, strange things start to occur. It is precisely the ordinariness of the hall which makes the events to follow peculiar. A table materialises with a key on top of it which doesn’t fit any of the door locks. It is exactly this conglomeration of familiar and unfamiliar things which leaves Alice, and so the reader, unnerved and curious as to what to expect next. Alice’s uncertainty of her situation and disorientation due to the dislocation in time and space, causes her to weep a pool of tears.

The complete effacement of a spatial and temporal anchor is distressing. The focus on tears in this chapter points to use of the word as more than one meaning. Namely, to tear something or to tear, e.g move at speed.
Alice’s journey down the rabbit hole creates a tear in time. The space she is located in is in-between reality and fantasy, a world in which the two collide. The physical world of wonderland is apt to morph, objects or creatures which appear to be substantial can in a moment disintegrate; such as the Cheshire cat. Comparably she chases logical avenues of thought but they result in nonsensical answers. It can be uncanny when the demarcation between reality and fantasy slides, and each spills over into the next.
The dislodgment of a time reference is noticeable in the cycle or a temporal glitch Alice seems to be stuck in. Firstly her thoughts circumnavigate from questioning her identity to reciting her lessons. The uncertainty of her surroundings causes her to doubt the solidity of her identity. This circular cognitive pattern is reflected in her speech. She repeats certain words; ‘curiouser and curiouser’ or ‘dear dear.’ This repetition is Alice’s way of consoling herself, as she attempts to hold onto a sense of reality. However through the reiteration of a word or thought its meaning unravels; becoming, especially if said or read aloud, just a sequence of nonsensical noises. What she believes will anchor her, in fact, further destabilises her world. The sense of time in wonderland is endless, circular or static. There is no beginning or end; such as in the caucus race everyone ’left off when they liked’ and so it was ‘not easy to tell when the race was over.’ Or it is stuck in a loop, it’s always teatime for the mad hatter.
Time does move in wonderland, as the tea party moves around the table but the direction isn’t necessarily linear. The introduction to wonderland creates an uncanny effect through the interplay of words, images and ideas that repeat, reflect and negate each other. The reader and Alice are unsettled in every sense and at every turn. When we feel we have finally made sense of wonderland; Carroll shakes and flips the ground and we find ourselves back at the beginning of the adventure, or quite possibly at the end.
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