Was Alice sleeping in Alice in Wonderland?

Answer 1

Alice is never naked in the book or Disney's 1951 animated film, Alice in Wonderland.

There is a story that in the 1951 Disney animation, there is a frame or two where Alice appears naked, but as far as VHS and DVD releases are concerned, this is completely untrue, and there is no evidence that it ever occurred in the prints of the film used when it was on general release either.

But she is naked in Tim Burton's 2010 movie, Alice in Wonderland. You can't see her however, because she is behind a bush.

+++

This reveals how some parts of the film industry are so devoid of imagination they struggle to find original material so mangle existing stories! Nevertheless, the accusation of a nude child in a Disney film, even back in 1951, must have been someone's unhealthy fantasy.

There was no nudity in the genuine novels, and it is extremely unlikely Lewis Carroll would even have dreamt of including it in a story about a child for children. The Victorians were probably not as prudish as often alleged, but were a lot more discreet than we are now, and the original illustrations for another children's novel, Charles Kingsley's The Water Babies, depicted its rock-pool residents discreetly nude. I found these drawings reproduced in a 1930s-published children's- story anthology my mother had kept, when it came to disposing of the book after her death, and it rather worried us!

There is though, an aspect to Carroll's hobby of Photography we would regard as wrong nowadays, especially under modern British law. It is no secret that he photographed the young Alice Liddell whom he had befriended and who inspired the two stories, both nude and dressed as a beggar, for reasons we will never know. A film version of the character, aged about 7 in the novel, being naked even if out of sight (?), is utterly absurd and pointless, and may or may not be typical 21C Hollywood - but I wonder if was a comment on Carroll's photography.

Answer 2

In the original book, Alice was sleeping and her adventures in Wonderland were all a dream. But in Tim Burton's 2010 movie, Underland is supposed to be real and Alice is awake and really there.