Thanh Huynh

Professor Fernando

English A101 Critical Thinking

11 August 2022

Reading Analysis 3

When a child is between 6 months old and over 1 year old, he or she goes through a

period of personal development that Lacan calls the mirror stage. Roughly, when a child

begins to form consciousness, the first time he sees himself in the mirror is a momentous

moment. Inherently perceiving his existence to the mother, the infant is unaware of his or her

separation from his mother (or the primary caregiver who is with him the most). However,

when looking at himself in the mirror, the child will understand that he is an independent

individual, separate from his mother. This awareness is of course extremely important, but the

special thing is that when the child recognizes himself, he also has a misrecognition of

himself. Because, when looking into the mirror, the child will believe that the complete and

unified image in that mirror is himself. It doesn't understand that it's just a reflection of itself

in that moment, and that itself will always change, will contradict itself. In Lacan's language,

It does not necessarily mean a literal mirror. It could be another child of the same age, or a

photograph of itself, or its reflection anywhere. This reflection forms the child's illusion of

himself.

Deconstruction is a non-traditional, critical analysis method that contrasts all types of

texts, by examining variable projections of text's meaning and messages in relation to

intended readers, audiences, and implicit assumptions in the forms expressed. The task of

deconstruction is to find and overthrow such oppositions within a text. However, its ultimate

goal is not to overcome all opposites, because those opposites are structurally necessary to

create meaning. Although not refusing, deconstruction still involves something of equal value
to a critical Western philosophy. Deconstruction can express a concept through the work of

analyzing specific texts. It seeks to unmask, and then overturn, the many different sets of

dualities that still underpin our unique modes of advice.

Elaine Showalter examines British female novelists from the time of the Bronte sisters

with a view of women's experiences. She makes the point that, while there is no fixed or

innate female sexuality or female imagination, there is a profound difference between

women's writing and men's. Feminist criticism can be divided into two distinct categories.

The first concerns women as readers—with women as consumers of woman-created

literature, and with the way in which the assumption of the female reader transforms our

understanding of a given text, awakening us to the meaning of its gender codes. We should

call this type of analysis feminist criticism, and like other types of criticism, it is historical

research with systemic ideological assumptions. of literary phenomena.

Alice In Wonderland and Alice through the Looking Glass are the immortal classics of

children's literature, filled with endless magical imaginations, spreading out into a fantasy

world full of dreams and color with the White Rabbit in a vest with a mandarin watch, the

smiling Cheshire cat, the brothers Tweedledum and Tweedledee fighting over the drum, the

fat, egg-like Humpty Dumpty that always sits on top of the wall, and the Horseman White

can't ride a horse... Surely each of us has once wished to have magical dreams like little

young Alice. Under Lacan's ingenious lens through “The mirror stage”, Lewis Carroll makes

Alice's innocent image much more plausible in the face of strange things in the new world,

especially the world in the mirror. The young Alice entered a reverse parallel world where

she encountered the strange things she had seen in Wonderland, but with a certain maturity

and composure. Carrying the soul of a child less than eight years old, the creations and

mysteries that Alice had created in her own imagination further express Jacques Lacan's

observations through The Mirror Stage, that the Children tend to follow what they see.
However, Alice in the mirror world has a greater understanding as it seems that she is no

longer struggling with identifying herself but she is focusing on asserting her own values and

solving the strange things of what Alice considered a "world" then. She once said : “ It’s a

great huge game of chess that’s being played—all over the world—if this is the world at all,

you know” (Lewis Carroll, chapter 2). Basically, the subtlety in the author's mix of reality and

fantasy has made Alice's innocence bring a pleasant feeling to the reader even though the

content of this work is always rated quite cumbersome, confusing and difficult to understand.

Alice went from being a child afraid of these mysteries to a girl who loved to explore, was

responsible and gave the mirror world the intimate name "her own world". Children, under

Lacan's lens, see their world in a very simple way but once they see the world's grandeur and

innovation as part of life, the children seem to be growing up. Alice through the

Looking-Glass doesn't clearly follow the path that Lewis Carroll drew for Alice in

Wonderland, but it still carries special lessons and values.