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The Older Sister

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A few days ago, I was talking to one of my professors about how we couldn’t figure out the ending of the novel Jane Eyre, and how it is just as difficult to write endings as it is to interpret and be at peace with them. In that vein then, I found the way Lewis Carroll chose to end Alice in Wonderland quite surprising, to say the least. Why did he not simply end the story with Alice’s return from Wonderland? With her just running off and thinking that all of her adventures had happened in a dream? Why was it necessary for her sister to think of “little Alice and her adventures” or to dream of them? What was the point in her picturing Alice as a “grown woman” with a “loving heart of her childhood”? I mean, yes, I see the conservative message of the conclusion but I’m more interested in the relationship dynamics between the two of them. From what was portrayed in Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland, it seems like the scriptwriters and directors were curious about that too.

The sisters
from Alice-in-Wonderland.net

Alice and her sister in the movie appeared to portray the ideal, loving sisterhood, with both women being in the lookout for each other’s happiness. A few potentially problematic things happened, of course, with Alice’s older sister trying to coerce Alice into marrying Haymitch against her will and with Alice not revealing her brother-in-law’s true nature to her sister, but we could argue that neither of them held any ill intent. The other sister duo, though, of the Red Queen and the White Queen, is definitely dysfunctional. The older sister, the Red Queen (Helena Bonham Carter) is insanely jealous of her more-loved sister, the White Queen (Anne Hathaway) and extends the animosity to such an an extent that she starts a war and spreads tyranny all over the land. And then there’s their weird obsession with each other’s looks- the Red Queen thinks the White Queen has a disagreeably tiny head, the White Queen finds her older sister hideous. In the end, the White Queen is victorious and the Red Queen is sent to jail. Are they foils of Alice and her sister…or not?

The Battle between the Sisters
from borgdotcom


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