How we cite our quotes: Citations follow this format: (Book.Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #1
She generally gave herself very good advice (though she very seldom followed it), and sometimes she scolded herself so severely as to bring tears to her eyes; and once she remembered trying to box her own ears for having cheated herself in a game of croquet she was playing against herself, for this curious child was very fond of pretending to be two people. (Wonderland 1.21)
Early in the Alice books, we learn that Alice seems to have several personalities swirling around inside her. It's easy for her to pretend to be more than one person, to see both sides of an argument, and to get lost in the roles she's playing.
Quote #2
"I wonder if I've been changed in the night? Let me think: was I the same when I got up this morning? I almost think I can remember feeling a little different. But if I'm not the same, the next question is 'Who in the world am I?' Ah, that's the great puzzle!" (Wonderland 2.7)
The joke, of course, is that Alice wasn't the same when she got up this morning. Everyone is a little different every morning than they were the day before, and for a growing child the change is even more obvious. This creates a crisis for Alice – if she's not the same person she used to be, does that mean she's losing her identity?
Quote #3
"No, I've made up my mind about it: if I'm Mabel, I'll stay down here! It'll be no use their putting their heads down and saying 'Come up again, dear!' I shall only look up and say, 'Who am I, then? Tell me that first, and then, if I like being that person, I'll come up: if not, I'll stay down here till I'm somebody else.'" (Wonderland 2.9)
Wonderland is a place of fluctuation and change. Alice determines to let her identity keep shifting until she's happy with it, and only then to return to the "real world" where identity is static.
Quote #4
"Who are you?" said the Caterpillar.
This was not an encouraging opening for a conversation. Alice replied, rather shyly, "I – I hardly know, Sir, just at present – at least I know who I was when I got up this morning, but I think I must have been changed several times since then." (Wonderland 5.2-3)
Alice doesn't know who she is because she doesn't know where she is – and because she can't remember what she's been taught, in school or beyond.
Quote #5
She had had quite a long argument with her sister only the day before – all because Alice had begun with "Let's pretend we're kings and queens;" and her sister, who liked being very exact, had argued that they couldn't, because there were only two of them, and Alice had been reduced at last to say "Well, you can be one of them, then, and I'll be all the rest." (Looking-Glass 1.9)
Alice's slightly older sister seems to have moved beyond the ability to imagine (or perceive) the crowd of personalities inside her. Alice, however, can still play more than one role with ease.
Quote #6
The Gnat amused itself meanwhile by humming round and round her head: at last it settled again and remarked "I suppose you don't want to lose your name?"
"No, indeed," Alice said, a little anxiously.
"And yet I don't know," the Gnat went on in a careless tone: "only think how convenient it would be if you could manage to go home without it! For instance, if the governess wanted to call you to your lessons, she would call out "Come here – ," and there she would have to leave off, because there wouldn't be any name for her to call, and of course you wouldn't have to go, you know." (Looking-Glass 3.54-56)
The Gnat imagines that, without a name, Alice also won't have a social role.
Quote #7
"This must be the wood," she said thoughtfully to herself, "where things have no names. I wonder what'll become of my name when I go in? I shouldn't like to lose it at all – because they'd have to give me another, and it would be almost certain to be an ugly one. But the fun would be, trying to find the creature that had got my old name! That's just like the advertisements, you know, when people lose dogs – 'answers to the name of "Dash": had on a brass collar' – just fancy calling everything you met 'Alice,' till one of them answered! Only they wouldn't answer at all, if they were wise." (Looking-Glass 3.64)
Alice imagines that her name and her person are separate but stable things; if they became separated, the name and the identity that went with it would still exist somewhere in the world.
Quote #8
So they walked on together through the wood, Alice with her arms clasped lovingly round the soft neck of the Fawn, till they came out into another open field, and here the Fawn gave a sudden bound into the air, and shook itself free from Alice's arm. "I'm a Fawn!" it cried out in a voice of delight. "And, dear me! you're a human child!" A sudden look of alarm came into its beautiful brown eyes, and in another moment it had darted away at full speed.
Alice stood looking after it, almost ready to cry with vexation at having lost her dear little fellow-traveler so suddenly. "However, I know my name now," she said: "that's some comfort. Alice – Alice – I won't forget it again." (Looking-Glass 3.73-74)
As long as they're ignorant of their names, Alice and the Fawn are able to live together in peace; but when the Fawn remembers their names and identities, it also remembers that there is strife between them. The book suggests that, in some sense, all conflict comes from our insistence on putting ourselves and others into prescribed social roles.
Quote #9
"He's dreaming now," said Tweedledee: "and what do you think he's dreaming about?"
Alice said "Nobody can guess that."
"Why, about you!" Tweedledee exclaimed, clapping his hands triumphantly. "And if he left off dreaming about you, where do you suppose you'd be?"
"Where I am now, of course," said Alice.
"Not you!" Tweedledee retorted contemptuously. "You'd be nowhere. Why, you're only a sort of thing in his dream!"
"If that there King was to wake," added Tweedledum, "you'd go out – bang! – just like a candle!" (Looking-Glass 4.37-42)
Alice has been assuming that the entire Looking-Glass World is something she owns, a fantasy that she came up with. Now she's faced with the possibility that she is only a character in someone else's fantasy, and she doesn't really like the idea.
Quote #10
"I shouldn't know you again if we did meet," Humpty Dumpty replied in a discontented tone, giving her one of his fingers to shake: "you're so exactly like other people."
"The face is what one goes by, generally," Alice remarked in a thoughtful tone.
"That's just what I complain of," said Humpty Dumpty. "Your face is the same as everybody has – the two eyes, so – " (marking their places in the air with his thumb) "nose in the middle, mouth under. It's always the same. Now if you had the two eyes on the same side of the nose, for instance – or the mouth at the top – that would be some help." (Looking-Glass 6.111-113)
To us as readers, Alice seems individual, but to Humpty Dumpy she's "exactly like other people." Our uniqueness depends on how detailed our definitions of identity are. Alice may have two eyes on top, a nose in the middle, and a mouth underneath, but surely the specific color of her eyes or shape of her nostrils is distinctive.