Making Sense in Isolation: From Wonderland to Gormenghast

Abstract

This article suggests a comparison between Lewis Carroll’s “Alice Books” and Mervyn Peake’s Titus Groan and Gormenghast, on the grounds that both diptychs portray the irruption of a child protagonist into a fantasy world characterized by stasis, repetition, and the lack of interpersonal relations. What is more, both worlds feature oneiric elements with a distinctly nonsensical strand, which sets them apart from the reader’s “real world”; they are also enclaved in a larger, Other world (the “real” world above ground for Wonderland, the unknown lands beyond the Mud Dwellings for Gormenghast). Over the course of the narrative, both children grow up to master the rules underpinning their universes, and this understanding allows them to rebel against arbitrary constraints. While Alice decides to return to the rational world of adults, Titus chooses to venture further into the unknown; however, in both cases, the act of escaping the enclave triggers the end of the narrative, because the fantasy world of fiction is also a metaphor of the story itself.