The Foundations and Borders of Physical Form:  A Study of Transformational Theory in Pinocchio and Alice in Wonderland

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Physical transformation plays a great part in the development of both title characters in Pinocchio and Alice in Wonderland; the reason that both Carlo Collodi and Lewis Carroll include instances of transformation into their works is clearly to make the behavior of the readers of the story more acceptable to society--but the types of physical changes undergone by Pinocchio and Alice imply their authors’ very different ways of allegorizing “good behavior.” Most of Pinocchio’s physical changes come as a direct result of his thoughts and internal motiviations; they imply an independent sense of responsibility as the goal for the reader. However, Alice’s changes in size are the results of her social interaction with the inhabitants of Wonderland, and stand for what happens to boys and girls who follow or break outwardly mandated rules of ettiquette.  In a close reading of both texts, I have found that although these two books are didactic allegorical models of proper behavior for children, the tenets of good behavior held in highest esteem by Collodi and Carroll can be seen in the kinds of transformations undergone by the title characters.

Pinocchio
The transformations in Pinocchio make the connection between inner moral rectitude and right living.  Collodi impresses upon his readers that the things which Pinocchio does have direct results which hinge upon his own mores.  Ruth Hill Viguers hints at this in “Extensions of Reality,” when she says that Collodi “gave to Pinocchio individuality, an irrepressable, heedless, boastful, slightly wicked, and yet loveable individuality” (Crit. Hist. of Children’s Lit. 345).
For instance, when Pinocchio goes away to the land of Cocagne, his disobedience to the Blue Fairy costs him a dinner in his honor and real boyhood (Collodi 189).  Pinocchio soon realizes the consequences of his bad behavior when he finds “his head embellished with a magnificent pair of donkey’s ears” (209). 
Good behavior--even good intent--have their rewards, as well. Pinocchio sees that the inhabitants of the island of the Industrious Bees are happy and well-fed. When he begs charity of these people, he is asked each time to do a bit of work for his food (148). When Pinocchio finally accepts the charge of carrying some water (149), he finds his benefactor “to have been transformed into that Blue Fairy who had been so kind to him before” (150). The Blue Fairy then grants Pinocchio a hearty supper for his work. 
The ultimate transformation from puppet to real boy comes as a reward for Pinocchio’s eventual acceptance of inner responsibility. After saving Gepetto from the Dog-fish, Pinocchio, “by his industry, ingenuity, and his anxiety to work and to overcome difficulties. . . succeeded in maintaining his father, who continued infirm, in comfort” (254). The Blue Fairy, who also falls ill and comes under Pinocchio’s care, promises Pinocchio that “to reward you for your good heart I will forgive you for all that is past. Boys who minister tenderly to their parents, and assist them in their infirmities, are deserving of great praise and affection” (256, italics mine).
Pinocchio is then given his just desserts: “Imagine Pinocchio’s astonishment when upon awakening he discovered that he was no longer a wooden puppet, but that he had become instead a boy, like all other boys” (256). In this manner, Pinocchio’s careless deeds are punished with one sort of physical transformation, and his final understanding of personal responsibility is rewarded with another sort.
In Pinocchio, then, the transformations are ones which change the identity of the character in question. The character is not merely distorted, but truly another thing entirely. Pinocchio’s first transformation is from an inanimate piece of wood to a thinking, moving marionette. The end of the second chapter says “Gepetto carried off his fine piece of wood” (Collodi 19), while the third chapter opens with the wood having both a name, Pinocchio, and a created form, that of a puppet (23). This changes Pinocchio’s corporeal identity. I have already alluded to Pinocchio’s transformation from puppet to donkey (209). which leads the author and reader to call the character a different name: as in “Pinocchio found himself a perfect little donkey” (213). The character is not recognizable by his outer characteristics after the transformation has taken place, but by his essence.  The allegory is clear.  John Cech writes of Pinocchio that 
the former trickster must come to see his own instinctual and irrational self, unanchored, undirected, helpless, purposeless, knowing niether love nor pity. . . . [Pinocchio] recognizes in the Fox and the Cat the life that simply follows appetites and instincts and so leads inevitably to crime and the making of irrational demands. (174-175)
These types of transformations, as I have indicated, allegorically represent the internalization of mores--ideals which function independently of social codes, as Cech has pointed to as the failing of the Cat and Fox. Therefore, Collodi is well able to show his readers the results of aimlessness, and hold it up to ridicule and shame, while at the same time allowing his readers a glimpse of the rewards of obeying one’s conscience.

Alice in Wonderland
In Alice in Wonderland, the purpose is much the same, but the focus is different. The way in which Alice behaves is noted as either socially good or bad, making the work a sort of etiquette primer, unlike Pinocchio.  M. L. Rosenthal says that “the Reverend Dodgson’s understanding of. . . school girls aged about seven or eight” (486) consists primarily in that “they can be charmingly saucy, but they do know their manners and worry about giving offense” (486).  Alice’s transformations affect her knowledge of the social structure and “logic” of Wonderland. For instance, the Cheshire cat gives Alice a lesson in Wonderland etiquette. Alice sees the cat as “ha[ving] very long claws and a great many teeth, so she felt that it ought to be treated with respect” (Carroll 87). The transformations of the cat allow Carroll to illustrate a social lesson about the demands of polite speech. The Cheshire cat fades out, breaking off the conversation three times, but each time the cat fades back in to ask another question about the baby/pig in Alice’s care (90). These transformations test Alice’s ability to be civil. Although she gets clearly annoyed with the cat (88), she remains polite in her speech. When Alice finally does chastise the cat for re-appearing so suddenly, she phrases it in a very socially acceptable manner: “I wish you wouldn’t keep appearing and vanishing so suddenly; you make one quite giddy” (90). 
Alice’s responses to and behavior toward the characters she meets determine the kind of reception and help she gets from these characters. When Alice meets the caterpillar after her shrinking experience, she insults the caterpillar by saying “three inches is such a wretched height to be” (72). The caterpillar leaves her in anger, giving Alice only part of the secret of the mushroom’s powers. He informs her that “one side will make you grow taller, and the other side will make you grow shorter” (72), but in his indignation at her barb, he never tells her which side is which.  Elsie Leach argues that this episode shows that manners and etiquette are not really as important as “the usual adult preachy officiousness” (10) says them to be, because the Caterpillar orders Alice to keep her temper, all the while growing more incensed himself (10).  However, I argue that it is precisely Alice’s manners (or lack of them, as this next example will illustrate) that allow her to (or inhibit her from) progress toward the end of her journey down the rabbit hole.
When Alice finds herself swimming in her own tears, she lays hold of a mouse who is also swimming near her. Alice promptly raises a taboo subject--cats. Alice adds insult to injury because she misses the mouse’s cues to drop the subject.  Alice talks at great length about her own cat: “And yet I wish I could show you our cat Dinah: I think you’d take a fancy to her if you could only see her... and she’s such a capital one for catching mice” (40). The mouse takes high offense to her remarks, and “was swimming away from her as hard as it could go, and making quite a commotion in the pool as it went” (42).  Certainly it is because of Alice’s disregard for the feelings of the mouse that she is left to find her own way out of her dilemma. Nina Auerbach posits Alice as a “nursery avatar of a great Pre-Raphaelite icon: the fallen woman, scandalous and blessed” (47), whose “polite rapacity” (47) and “verbal decorum” (49) place her at a social advantage over others, while her “perpetual tension between intimacy and estrangement” (59)--the hallmark of good breeding--gives her the appearance of respectability, a thing more important in social situations that actual respectability.  The allegory is not one of right being, but of right acting.
In Alice in Wonderland, therefore, the physical changes are not so much ones of internal identity but of outward size, location, and perspective. Alice may grow tall or short, but she is still recognizable as Alice. Even though her surroundings often change, the identities of the characters in Wonderland remain constant. The fading Cheshire cat is only one example of the locality shift which is seemingly always going on in Alice.  Juliet Dusinberre claims that “Carroll laughs at the hierarchies of the adult world in which God and the author dance a lobster quadrille” (73), but I see an exemplary order behind the illogic of Wonderland. Things may pretend to be other things, like when the hedgehogs represent the balls in the croquet game, but their “true” identities as hedgehogs are never questioned by Alice. When the cards are painting the white roses red in the Queen’s garden, Alice maintains that the roses are “really” white underneath the red paint (104). Alice’s various shrinking (30, 38, 61, 71, 77) and growing episodes (33,  54, 72, 144) only serve to distort her size. She is still Alice after the changes take place; we may still recognize her from her physical characteristics. Alice’s final physical change is from the dreaming to the waking state (159); only her “location” changes, if we believe the allegorical interpretation of the events and places of Alice’s dream given by her sister. If the “rattling teacups would change to tinkling sheep bells, and the Queen’s shrill cries to the voice of the shepherd boy” (160), then the switch from dream to waking life is only a nominal one. Nonetheless, it illustrates the way in which the changes in Alice in Wonderland deal allegorically with outwardly imposed social mores and codes of behavior--people remain essentially who they are, but their reactions vary depending on the civility with which they are treated.

Works Consulted
Auerbach, Nina.  “Falling Alice, Fallen Women, and Victorian Dream Children.”  Soaring with the Dodo: Essays on Lewis Carroll’s Life and Art.  Eds. Edward Guiliano and James R. Kincaid.   Carroll Studies Vol. 6.  Alexandria:  UP of Virginia, 1982:  46-64.
Carroll, Lewis [Charles Lutwidge Dodgson].  Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.  London, 1865.  Rpt. in Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass.  New York: Puffin Books, 1964.
---.  Through the Looking Glass, and What Alice Found There.  London, 1871.  Rpt. in Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass.  New York: Puffin Books, 1964.
Cech, John.  “The Triumphant Transformations of Pinocchio.”  Triumphs of the Spirit in Children’s Literature.  Eds. Francelina Butler and Richard Rotert.  New York:  Library Professionals Publications, 1986:  171-177.
Collodi, Carlo [Carlo Lorenzini].  The Adventures of Pinocchio.  Milan, 1880. Rpt. as Pinocchio.  Trans.  M. A. Murray.  New York: International Readers League, 1944.
Dusinberre, Juliet.  Alice to the Lighthouse:  Children’s Books and Radical Experiments in Art.  New York: St. Martin’s, 1987.
Eaton, Anne Thaxter, with Cornelia Meigs, Elizabeth Nesbitt, and Ruth Hill Viguers.  A Criticial History of Children’s Literature.  Ed. Cornelia Meigs.  Rev. ed. London: Macmillan, 1955.
Egoff, Sheila E.  Thursday’s Child:  Trends and Patterns in Contemporary Children’s Literature.  Chicago: American Library Association, 1981.
Leach, Elsie.  “Alice in Wonderland in Perspective.”  Victorian Newsletter 25 (1964): 9-11.
Rosenthal, M. L. “Alice, Huck, Pinocchio, and the Blue Fairy:  Bodies Real and Imagined.”  The Southern Review 29.3 (Summer 1993): 486-490.
Wullschläger, Jackie.  Inventing Wonderland:  The Lives and Fantasies of Lewis Carroll, Edward Lear, J. M. Barrie, and A. A. Milne.  New York:  Free P, 1995.