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Characters / Alice's Adventures in Wonderland

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Characters who appeared in Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and its sequel, Through the Looking Glass.


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Characters from adaptations:

Characters from the books:

    Alice 

Alice

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/drink_me_from_alices_adventures_in_wonderland_illustration_by_sir_john_tenniel_o.png

  • Butt-Monkey: Almost all the creatures in Wonderland and Looking-Glass Land belittle her, constantly interrupt her when she tries to speak and/or irritate her by ordering her around. It's implied that she doesn't fit in very well in the real world, either.
  • Casual Danger Dialogue: She spends her fall Down the Rabbit Hole making strange comments to herself and shows little concern for the fact that she's potentially falling to her death.
  • Catchphrase: "Let's pretend!" is referred to as her "favorite phrase" in Through the Looking-Glass. In popular culture, the phrase typically associated with her is "Curiouser and curiouser!", which she actually only ever uses once (and with the narration Lampshading the poor grammar, no less).
  • Cloudcuckoolander: Alice spends a lot of time talking to herself in both books, including giving herself advice, has an extended monologue to a cat, pretends to be many people at once, and once frightened her nurse by saying Do let's pretend that I'm a hungry hyena and you're a bone! She's probably considered a bit odd in the 'real world', but once she gets to Wonderland she becomes the Only Sane Man.
  • Constantly Curious: She is always investigating and exploring the weird places she ends up in, and asking questions of their residents.
  • Curiosity Killed the Cast: She has a knack for investigating things that don't seem safe at all, such as large rabbit holes, bottles of ambiguous liquids that say Drink Me, and a queen that is known to order people executed for petty things.
  • Damsel in Distress: Very briefly in Through the Looking-Glass, when the Red Knight "captures" her and the White Knight has to rescue. Although, given how incompetent they both were, Alice was probably in no real danger.
  • Down the Rabbit Hole: How Alice gets to Wonderland the first time.
  • Genre Savvy: After finding the "DRINK ME" bottle, Alice decides not to just immediately drink from it and instead checks to see if it's also labeled "poison".
    ...for she had read several nice little stories about children who had got burnt, and eaten up by wild beasts, and other unpleasant things, all because they would not remember the simple rules their friends had taught them.
  • I Fell for Hours: Alice falls for long enough that she can carry on a conversation with herself of where in the Earth she might be, and if she might fall through it to the other side and wondering where she'd end up.
  • Innocently Insensitive: She can be a bit tactless. At one point, she talks fondly about how good her cat Dinah is at hunting mice and birds... in front of an audience of anthropomorphic mice and birds. Later, she complains to the Caterpillar about how three inches is "a wretched height to be", not realizing the Caterpillar himself is exactly three inches tall.
  • Kid Heroine: She's a little girl and the heroine of the story. She gets into the Wonderland.
  • Kindhearted Cat Lover: She adores her cat Dinah (and in the second book extends the same adoration to Dinah's two kittens), and gets along famously with the Cheshire Cat, whom she calls "Cheshire-Puss".
  • Know-Nothing Know-It-All: She repeatedly tries to show off by reciting bits of scientific trivia, but she almost always gets them wrong somehow.
  • Literal-Minded: A few times; for example, when the Mouse says that he has a "long, sad tale", Alice assumes he means his tail and comments "it is very long, but why do you call it sad?" The ensuing tale is actually shaped like a tail.
  • Little Miss Snarker: Despite being a sweet little girl, she will often have a snarky comment or response to whoever she meets, especially when she disagrees with what they're saying or thinks it's silly.
  • Lonely Rich Kid: Implied, moreso in Looking-Glass. Her family is apparently well-off enough to have servants and a governess at their household, she plays by herself and talks to her cats, and her parents (assuming they're present) are never mentioned.
  • Ms. Imagination: She did dream all that wackiness up after all (in most adaptations where it is All Just a Dream).
  • Nice Girl: Sweet, loves cats, and still tries to be polite and friendly with the mad residents of Wonderland.
  • Nightmare Fuel Station Attendant: Alice has her moments, such as when she frightens her nurse by shouting, "Nurse! Do let's pretend that I'm a hungry hyena and you're a bone!"
  • "Not So Different" Remark: She's just as prone to eccentric and quirky behavior as the creatures she meets, which others will sometimes point out to her. Sometimes they even seem more sensible than her.
  • Only One Name: She's only referred to by "Alice" in the book. (However, most adaptations give her the last name Liddell (or a variation), after the real Alice Liddell she was inspired by.)
  • Only Sane Woman: By default. She's a bit of an odd child, but since everyone else in these books is inscrutably weird, she spends a lot of time trying to make sense of other people's insanity.
  • Shrinking Violet: Many times she's described as saying or doing something "shyly", "timidly" or "cautiously".
  • Sizeshifter: Mostly thanks to the "Eat Me" and "Drink Me" items, she changes sizes frequently throughout the first book.
  • Talking to Themself: Alice talks to herself a lot in the books, often pretending to be two people.

    Alice's Family and Friends 

Dinah, Snowdrop and Kitty

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/dinah_and_kittens.jpg

  • Adapted Out: Snowdrop (the white kitten) and Kitty (the black kitten), who are Dinah's kittens, appear only in the book of Looking Glass. They never appear in any adaptations, where Dinah is the only real-world cat to appear (and is often portrayed as a kitten herself).
    • Inverted in the 2022 comic series Alice Ever After, which features Snowdrop and Kitty but not Dinah.
  • And You Were There: Played with in Looking Glass. As Alice wakes up, the Red Queen "turns" into a kitten in her hands, and she discovers that she's holding an actual, purring kitten (the kitten she fell asleep cuddling). Alice takes this as a sign that all three cats were with her in her dream. She identifies the black kitten as the Red Queen and the white kitten as the White Queen, and after a bit of thought decides that Dinah must have been Humpty Dumpty (though she's not completely sure about that last part).
  • Cute Kitten: The are cute cat and kittens, adored by little Alice.
  • A Dog Named "Dog": A Kitten Named Kitty. While Dinah and Snowdrop have proper names, the black kitten is never called by any name other than Kitty and is usually referred to as "the kitten" by the narrative.
  • The Unseen: Dinah in the first book. Though Alice often talks about her (especially in earlier chapters), she never actually appears. She does appear in the second book, with her two kittens.

Alice's Sister

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/alices_sister.jpg

  • Aloof Big Sister: A mild example: at the beginning she sits reading a book and does nothing to help entertain her bored little sister. After Alice wakes up, though, she happily listens to Alice's dream and reflects lovingly on it afterwards, and though she doesn't appear in person in the sequel, she is mentioned as sometimes playing with Alice.
  • Aw, Look! They Really Do Love Each Other: At the beginning, Alice complains about her sister's activities not being exciting enough, but at the end she's all too happy to share the details of Wonderland with her, and afterwards her sister sits thinking fondly of her and imagining Wonderland herself.
  • No Name Given: Though she was based off of Alice's real life older sister, Lorina, so some adaptations give her that name. Some other adaptations call her Edith, though that was actually the name of Alice's younger sister.
  • Only Sane Woman: Although she never goes to Wonderland (except perhaps at the end), she could be seen as this with Alice, at least. For example, in a memory described in the second book, when Alice wants to pretend they're "kings and queens," her sister says that they can't because there are only two of them. She is the Only Sane Character overall, though.
  • Practically Different Generations: Most adaptations and illustrations portray her as a young woman, considerably older than her little sister, although in real life Lorina Liddell was only three years older than Alice.
  • Sequel Non-Entity: She's mentioned in Through the Looking-Glass, but doesn't appear on-page.
  • Write Who You Know: It's believed that she was based off of the real Alice's older sister, Lorina.

Alice's Brother

  • Flat Character: He knows at least some Latin... and that's all we know about him.
  • The Ghost: Didn't know Alice had a brother? He's incredibly easy to miss, only mentioned off-hand in a single sentence in Chapter 2, when Alice recalls looking at her brother's Latin book, so most probably don't even know he exists. He never appears in any adaptations either.
  • No Name Given: Much like Alice's sister. He most likely represents Alice Liddell's older brother Edward Henry "Harry" Liddell, though.


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