Environmental Consciousness in Lewis Carroll’s Fictions

Abstract

For scientific experimentations on animals, humanity has allowed very ethics on the belief that humans alone deserve certain principles. In other words, man has the right to use ‘inferior’ beings in his quest for knowledge and power. The Victorian fictionist Lewis Carroll known for his fantasy wonderlands has touched upon a serious subject concerning science and human attitude toward animals in the nineteen century England. Needless to explain that the Victorian awareness of non-human beings has been shaped by the dominant Christian faith which normally puts animals lower in the scale of socio-religious hierarchy.

Carroll’s creative consciousness could enforce subtle insight into the connect between the human ego, quest for knowledge, for power and dominance over the nonhuman other for wealth accumulation at any cost. However, he has explored the line between human/animal realms as slippery, the interspecies relationship as more charming and challenging. And his perception of the scientific test upon animals evokes man’s inhuman and unethical treatment. Whether it is the Snark, or Caterpillar or Cat, etc, Alice’s encounters with them tell it all exposing man’s instrumental reason to dominate the powerless realms including children and animals. Carroll’s creative challenge to the discriminatory human-animal hierarchies may be a precursor of the critical philosophical concern of the twentieth century that speaks now a language of compassion and ethics.