'Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There' is Published

Fortunately, Carroll's Through the Looking-Glass has also been recognized for its surprising radicalism despite being very much a literary product of its time.

Although it is by no means considered a feminist work in the way that other Victorian novels have been re-appraised by contemporary critics, Through the Looking-Glass is nevertheless recognized for its keen understanding of Alice's predicament, most notably in her discovery that "being a Queen...offers neither the security of attachment nor the sovereignty of freedom to which she refers in her opening words to the White Knight: `I don't want to be anybody's prisoner. I want to be a Queen'" (Rackin 28).

Lewis Carroll has been telling another modern fairy tale to those three fortunate young ladies who have him for their fabulist, and now the result lies before us in a charming Christmas book, Through the Looking-glass and What Alice Found There, where those thousands of children of a larger or smaller growth who have laughed over the adventures of Alice, that most delightful of little girls, may follow their heroine through a new Wonderland.

The realm of marvels which she visits on this occasion is "Looking-glass House", part of which she has often seen in the drawing-room: but her curiosity is strongly excited about the rest. "You can just see a little peep of the passage in 'Looking-glass House' if you leave the door of the drawing room wide open; and it's very like our passage as far as you see, only you know it might be quite different on beyond."