Wonderland (fictional country)
| Wonderland | |
|---|---|
 The royal garden in Wonderland | |
 Coat of Arms of Wonderland | |
| Alice's Adventures in Wonderland location | |
| Other name(s) | Underland |
| Created by | Lewis Carroll |
| Genre | Children's book |
| Type | Monarchy |
| Ruler | Queen of Hearts |
| Notable locations | Rabbit hole, March Hare's house, Queen's Croquet Ground |
| Notable characters | White Rabbit, Duchess, Cheshire Cat, the Hatter, March Hare, Mock Turtle, Queen of Hearts |
Wonderland is the setting for Lewis Carroll's 1865 children's novel Alice's Adventures in Wonderland.
Geography
In the story, Wonderland is accessed by an underground passage, and Alice reaches it by travelling down a rabbit hole.[1] While the location is apparently somewhere beneath Oxfordshire, Carroll does not specify how far down it is, and he has Alice speculate whether it is near the centre of the earth or even at the Antipodes.[2] The land is heavily wooded and grows mushrooms. There are well-kept gardens and substantial houses, such as those of the Duchess and the White Rabbit. Wonderland has a seacoast, where the Mock Turtle lives.
Government
The land is nominally ruled by the Queen of Hearts, whose whimsical decrees of capital punishment are routinely nullified by the King of Hearts. There is at least one Duchess.
Inhabitants
The main population consists of animated playing cards: the royal family (hearts), courtiers (diamonds), soldiers (clubs), and servants (spades). In addition, there are many talking animals. Among the characters Alice meets are:
In other media
Wonderland is featured in many of its adaptions:
- Wonderland is featured in Walt Disney's 1951 animated film Alice in Wonderland.
- Wonderland is featured in Tim Burton's 2010 film Alice in Wonderland. Here, it is actually named Underland; Alice misheard the name as a child, believing it to be "Wonderland". Alice returns to Wonderland when the White Queen is challenging her tyrannical sister, the Red Queen, for the crown of Underland.
- Wonderland is featured in Once Upon a Time and its spin-off Once Upon a Time in Wonderland. In this series, there are two iterations of Wonderland. In the first iteration, the realm is ruled by the Queen of Hearts, the Red King and Queen, the White King and Queen, and the Caterpillar. Not much is known on the second iteration, New Wonderland, in the series' seventh season, except it is the home of the Jabberwocky and has an Infinite Maze.
See also
References
- ↑ Manguel, Alberto; Gianni Guadalupi (2000). The Dictionary of Imaginary Places (Newly updated and expanded ed.). San Diego: Harcourt. p. 712. ISBN 0-15-600872-6.
- ↑ Reichertz, Ronald (2000). "The World Turned Upside Down". The Making of the Alice Books: Lewis Carroll's Uses of Earlier Children's Literature (paperback ed.). McGill-Queen's University Press. pp. 33–51. ISBN 0-7735-2081-3.
