Alice in a Land of Censorship: The Children’s World as a Place Where People Talk to Animals Cover Image

Alica u zemlji cenzure: dječji svijet kao mjesto razgovora sa životinjama
Alice in a Land of Censorship: The Children’s World as a Place Where People Talk to Animals

Author(s): Lidija Bernardić
Subject(s): Gender Studies, Other Language Literature, Cultural Anthropology / Ethnology
Published by: Hrvatska udruga istraživača dječje književnosti
Keywords: animals; children’s world; censorship; communist ideology; feminist anthropology; speech;

Summary/Abstract: This paper offers a possible explanation of the political ban on distributing and reading Alice in Wonderland, which in China’s Hunan province came into force in 1931. The relations between people (especially rulers and other functionaries) and other animals and the element of communist ideology and its view of nature provide a key to understanding the proclaimed ideological and political unsuitability of this literary work. After interpreting the reasons why “giving language to animals” might be viewed as a subversive act at the time of the empowerment of communist rule in China, I interpose Alice within a feminist anthropological concept of “proximity to nature” to explain why girls (Alice), in their own children’s worlds, can understand other animals.

  • Issue Year: 4/2015
  • Issue No: 02
  • Page Range: 357-379
  • Page Count: 23
  • Language: Croatian