In Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass, Lewis Carroll tells the story of a woman's journey young girl through a world of fantasy, imagination and inner transformation. Alice begins as a seven-year-old girl who falls down a rabbit hole and finds herself in a place called Wonderland. However. while Alice is meant to be a child, the reader can easily follow her fluid development into adolescence from the upward trajectory of her thoughts, actions, and reactions from other characters. Ultimately, as Alice oscillates between child and adolescent in her quest for identity, the reader witnesses the inner journey of a child who intuitively knows that there is more to life than what others can expect her to understand, and her curiosity takes her on a journey through mind, heart and soul that leads her to a place of poignant understanding and sublime wonder. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get the original essay Alice's quest for identity and understanding manifests itself through the characters she engages with and the different phases of life they represent. While the scientific functionality of developmental theory may at first seem incongruous with the examination of a fictional character, Carroll demonstrates his "professional familiarity with his child protagonist through the logic and consistency of his portrayal of Alice" (Karlsson 1). Alice's transition from child to adolescent helps readers understand the process that occurs when a child is searching for identity and enters adolescence sometimes earlier than expected due to the nature of their questions and interactions to which she is exposed. As she searches for her identity in her quest for purpose and meaning, we see the multifaceted nature of Alice's personality, "as her childish qualities of curiosity and scholasticism contrast with the cognitive abilities of the adolescent" ( Karlsson 13). For example, she does not think highly of adults, considering how "the adult characters she encounters are unreliable, unfair, and judgmental" (Karlsson 2). His childish nature appears here with force. As Alice progresses in her quest for identity, we see that she faces not only the obstacle of age, but also of gender. Her experiences show how frustrated children can be as they "assert their agency in a world in which girls are forced and destined to enter a circumscribed domestic domain" (Flynn 84). The process from childhood to maturity is largely psychological and often spiritual, "to the point where the main character recognizes his place and role in the world" (Karlsson 1). The word little carries a diminutive meaning, which emphasizes its childish nature. For example, as Alice sleeps on her older sister's lap, she wonders how "little Alice" will one day grow up and have children of her own (Carroll 109). Another example is when the Queen of Hearts wants to punish Alice for speaking to her so “strongly and resolutely” (Carroll 68). However, Alice survives because the king says to the queen, “Think, my dear: she is only a child” (Carroll 69). If Alice was not a child, she would have suffered a very different fate and would have been immediately subject to capital punishment. We see here that Alice's child is still frustrated by how she has to be subject to the rules of the adults around her, which highlights her childish nature. The book is a powerful tool,.