Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and the Fragility of the Ego: A Lacanian Reading

Abstract

This article examines Lewis Carroll’s “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland” (1865) through the lens of Lacanian psychoanalysis, focusing on the development and disintegration of the ego. Although Carroll’s text is often read as a whimsical children’s tale, it contains profound symbolic structures that dramatize the instability of selfhood when confronted with the unconscious. By engaging with Lacan’s concepts of the Real, the Imaginary, and the Symbolic, the analysis demonstrates how Alice’s descent into Wonderland destabilizes her identity, exposing the fragile foundations of her ego. Her failed attempts to impose logic, morality, and language—learned within the Symbolic order—highlight the arbitrary nature of meaning and the relativity of order. Furthermore, Alice’s uncontrollable bodily transformations and dialogues with herself illustrate Lacan’s notion of the fragmented body and the alienated ego. Ultimately, Wonderland functions as a satirical mirror of the Symbolic order, revealing the precariousness of identity and the subject’s inevitable subjection to the Other.