문화질서의 상대성과 다위니즘: 「이상한 나라의 앨리스」 연구

Abstract

This essay tries to explain how Alice in Wonderland represents the logic of cultural order seemingly permanent and absolute as relative and arbitrary. The plot of the book is framed by a form of culture contact between the culture of a Victorian girl and that of Wonderland. Alice continues her adventure underground to get over the above-ground assumptions and disclose the relative and arbitrary nature of above-ground cultural order. Alice’s adventure is characterized by the sudden changes of her size symbolizing profound instability and changes in identity. Realism dominant in 18th and 19th centuries is not prone to admit of the possible existence of partial or multiple aspects of identity, which is a Victorian middle class ideological concept. Alice in Wonderland explores the subversion of the ideology and the concept of unified and stable identity, which also shows the above-ground cultural order as relative and arbitrary. The book presents Darwinian natural order as an alternative to the arbitrary cultural order. Darwininan order fundamentally undermines the ideology of natural hierarchies frequently invoked in Victorian cultural order. The story argues that all living things including human beings are deeply connected with each other and humanities are also governed by the wider order, namely Nature.