Gender Roles In Louis Carroll's Through The Looking Glass

In the Victorian era, women and men were assigned different gender roles. The notion of gender roles entailed that man may go outside the home and subject himself to mistakes, while women must tend to the household and stand as an example of exceptional morality. According to John Ruskin, a man is “the doer, the creator, the discoverer, the defender. His intellect is for…war, and for conquest.” However a woman’s “intellect is not for invention or creation but for sweet ordering, arrangement, and decision. She sees the qualities of things, their claims, and their places” (Ruskin). A man is free to adventure and subject himself to mistakes and questionable morals, while a woman must stay at home and provide a peaceful and morally sound shelter. Ruskin claims that despite expecting women must remain enclosed in the household, that they possess a different kind of power than men. A woman is “incorruptibly good” and “infallibly wise.” She is free to judge the man’s morality as she is never at fault. Ruskin asserts this assumption by saying that as a woman “rules, all must be right, or nothing is.” He claims that women are
The story begins with Alice inside of her home, while a group of boys outside gather wood for a bonfire. Then, when she is in the Looking-Glass world, she judges the morality of “The Walrus and the Carpenter.” After becoming a Queen, Alice learns that despite the title, she does not have the power to speak freely and the Red Queen must teach her proper royal etiquette—she must conform to an expectation. Through the Looking Glass supports Ruskin’s notions that a woman must remain inside of the home, yet she possesses the power to judge morality. However, the story complicates Ruskin’s concept of a woman’s possession of power simply because she is morally sound. It highlights the contradiction in his exaltation of