6. Alice's Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll

(1) Eat Me Cake

Everyone knows Alice in Wonderland. The Victorian story has become a huge success in reprints, theatre, and film. The story of a girl who finds herself in a bizarre fantasy world. My focus is immediately after this: the Eat Me, Drink Me scene. Though these don't constitute fatal poisons, they represent unwanted manipulation of the body - both substances cause Alice's body to change in size. If these are interpreted as 'poisons', it lends an intriguing flavour to the text (no pun intended).

(2) Book cover

"It was all very well to say 'Drink me', but the wise little Alice was not going to do that in a hurry. 'No, I'll look first,' she said, 'and see whether it's marked 'poison' or not'; for she had read several nice 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: […] she had never forgotten that, if you drink much from a bottle marked 'poison', it is almost certain to disagree with you later." (9)

Alice's deliberations over whether to drink from the bottle are quite entertaining. The innocence of the child and the systematic way in which she is instructed contrasts the possibility of poison itself. The innocence is further highlighted by the text's coy refusal to acknowledge the fatality of poison, simply admitting that it "disagree[s] with you" (9). 

Her sensible distrust of the bottle is contrasted with her recklessness with the cake, easily convincing herself to eat it:

"Soon her eye fell on a little glass box that was lying under the table: she opened it, and found in it a very small cake on which the words 'EAT ME' were beautifully marked in currants. 'Well, I'll eat it,' said Alice,' and if it makes me grow larger, she can reach the key; and if it makes me grow smaller, I can creep under the door: so either way I'll get into the garden, and I don't care which happens!'" (12)

This impulsive choice presents her naivety in a more realistic view of a child. It also illustrates cultural difference in perception between food and drink. Children are more often instructed to fear poison in strange liquids than food.

Film

In the 2010 film version shows the White Queen making a reversal potion so Alice can turn back into her original size. However, the choice of ingredients - worm fat, buttered fingers, and three coins from a dead man's pocket - all suggest a form of fatality with unpleasant effects from drinking it.

Works Cited
(1) Annie's Hidden World. Eat Me Cake. 2011, n/a. Blogger. http://hiddenworld-annie.blogspot.co.uk/2011/02/who-knows-how-to-bake-upelkuchen.html. Accessed March 2017.
(2) PanMacmillan. Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. 2017, UK. Pan Macmillan Publishing. https://www.panmacmillan.com/authors/lewis-carroll/alice-s-adventures-in-wonderland. Accessed March 2017.
Caroll, Lewis. Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. London, Macmillan. 2015. Print.