Summary of "All Sorts of Pitfalls and Surprises"

The main idea in Jennifer Geer ‘s critical essay -“ All Sorts of Pitfalls and Surprises: competing views of idealized girlhood in Lewis Carroll’s Alice books”  about the author use different sources to analyze the difference between the adult and the juvenile perspectives of an idealized fairy tale in Lewis Carroll’s two classic children’s novels. One called “Alice Adventure in Wonderland”, another is the sequel of the first called “Through the Looking-Glass”. In author’s opinion, Carroll in this two novels suggests that both adult and children want power as well as comfort in their domestic world, but it seems never gonna happen in the real world. So the fairy tale is the important point to attract the reader to keep reading this book. Although this two novels are about Alice’s story, the tale and the frame in this two stories are different. we can make a simple conclusion by compared this two novels. The tale of Alice Adventure in wonderland allow all ages readers to recall their childhood and make them believe the story of “Alice Adventure in wonderland” can fulfill. But the Looking-Glass frames tend to tell the reader : there has another influential contemporary model of development can be show in the story. This development shows the childhood as an innocent state different from the chaos adult world. But the girls still one day will become a women. If they want to be happy in their life, they have to separated from their past and retain their childlike heart. Also Looking-Glass takes a view of innocent child and the adult fear the children’s growth. Because they know when the children grow up and they will lose the innocence. At the end, both this two novel’s narrative satisfies adults’ longing for an idealized childhood paradise while also the child readers.