Maya Genis

When I was reading about the pastoral, I thought immediately of Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland. The tale seems to put in the forefront several key elements of the pastoral: the country as a vivid location, the human connection with the environment, and most strikingly, the interaction between humans and animals. Also, because this story exemplifies the feeling of dizziness encountered by Alice as she attempts to traverse Wonderland (a markedly rural landscape), I thought this work would fascinatingly show the inevitable feeling of displacement just before one becomes comfortable with nature. The human influence on nature is quite easy to spot in Carroll's work as almost every part of the environment is anthropomorphised. This may be a way to hasten the pastoral bond, especially for children. As the hare is made into the likes of a British craftsman, Alice's encounter with him at the Mad Tea Party resembles her usual interactions with merchants, thereby making the environment not such an alien place.
The images I selected both portray the aforementioned Mad Tea Party, which I think is the pinnacle of childlike pastoralism since the tea party is itself, a human (and perhaps gentrified) routine, not to mention that those partaking in the party are animals dressed in gentrified clothing. Transposing this "civilized" event onto a natural landscape seems to be a rather inhibited display of reconnection with nature. I would say that this is a transitionary step into the pastoral, as many of the devices and instruments of human life (teapots, saucers, tablecloths) are touted as a sort of safety blanket to familiarize Alice with the country, and to add a warmer, more inviting, ultimately humanized glaze to what children might see as a dark, hollow, and terrifying landscape.
The top image is by Arthur Rackham, a notable English book illustrater from the late 19th and early 20th century. Here the Mad Tea Party is portrayed as very genteel, from the floral prints on the porcelain, to the graceful oval-shaped leaves adorning the tree above Alice's cushioned armchair. The Hare and the Hatter are almost indistinguishable as two different species, in clothing and in posture, which again points to the attempt to familiarize humans with the animal-dominated country landscape. The party, though in the forefront, blends almost seamlessly with the golden reeds and the distant country hills. Nature is a framework in this image, and it is a stage for human activity. The tone, however, remains placid and composed, retaining that quench for what Greg Garrard dubs, "an idealization of rural life that obscures the realities of labour and hardship" (33).
The botton image jarrs us into a drastically different Mad Tea Party. This portrait is part of a series of collaborations with Lewis Carroll and Spanish surrealist painter, Salvador Dali, in which Dali provided illustrations for both of Carroll's landmark works, Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass. Dali unearths an underlying fear and unpredictability of the environment, which is poignantly evinced in this illustration, since we see anything but a tranquil gathering of friendly forest creatures and fresh English crumpets. What we get is a smear on this pristine gathering. The Hare is no longer an upright Brit, but a hare we are more familiar with-- hunched over, wide-eyed and about to cause havoc. His expression is fearful in this image, a stark contrast to his collected grin in Rackham's portrait. Dali illustrates the party almost from the animal's point of view, where we see the upheaval which would realistically follow an attempt to stick an animal in a three piece suit. Furthermore, other animals, like deer and unicorns appear in Dali's portrait, suggesting that nature is interfering with this organized event and Carroll's story as a whole. The environment is no longer a subtle framework but a huge inkblot on the page. The myriad of animals act as animals and not gentrified humans, gazing ravenously at the large tart, and not waiting patiently to be served a piece.
The two illustrations show an attempt at the pastoral from two wildly different angles, the idealized and the actual. Together they accurately portray what I believe is a struggle towards unity with the environment, whether it be successful cohesion among humans and animals, or it be bedlam, both stemmming from the human's attempt to accept nature by upbraiding it and implanting familiar routines. Rackham and Dali's visions give varying insights to Carroll's mythical tale, while projecting their own perspectives on whether the pastoral is even possible, if not plausible.