Alice in Wonderland, Revisited

Next up for my Ladies' Book Club are Lewis Carroll's  Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass. Alice is experiencing a revival these days (she's BIG again) with a new Tim Burton film, featuring Johnny Depp, coming out later this year. I have friends working on an Alice play, too, that sounds quite fascinating: details to follow. In the meantime, settle back for a few minutes to be charmed by this silent film from 1903. It's wonderful, corrosion and all. I will probably like this version better than any other Alice on film.

Rereading the books, I realize that they were far from my favorites as a child – I think they made me anxious. So much rudeness! (Something I still despise.) Random this and random that! That crazy Red Queen! My Alice was suffering a crisis of ontological insecurity that obscured some of the pleasures of the text. I see those (the word play, the wild scenic juxtapositions, Alice's psychic bravado) more clearly now. Whatever else, she is an enduring cultural artifact, adaptable to many times and places. That's as it should be for a girl given to jumping down a rabbit hole, passing bravely through a looking glass.

What are your memories and thoughts about Alice?