Lacan’s Adventures in the Imaginary and Through the Looking-Glass

Dannielle Douglas
December 17, 2008

Lacan’s Adventures in the Imaginary and Through the Looking-Glass

Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass present a fantastical world, distinct from reality but not unrecognizable. Each of these novels is a bildungsroman, recounting the tales of Alice as she moves through Wonderland and the Looking-Glass world, meeting fantastical characters and trying to learn the linguistic and social rules of a world unlike her own. Like Alice, readers of the Wonderland series enter into the tale lacking the knowledge necessary to fully comprehend Carroll’s fictional world. The confusion that both Alice and readers feel is part of the charm of the novels, however, the disorientation of the novels create an effect other than simple amusement. As Carroll’s works preceded the theories of Jacques Lacan, it is unlikely that the similarities between Carroll’s Alice Series and Lacan’s psychoanalytical theories of identity development were intentional. However, Alice’s interaction with Wonderland and the Looking-Glass world provides an interesting model for Lacan’s Imaginary.

Jacques Lacan’s psychoanalytical theory builds upon the theories of Sigmund Freud, but one way in which Lacan is unique is his conceptualization of what he called the Mirror Stage. In the Mirror Stage, an infant first recognizes himself as a unified entity, separated from other individuals around him, rather than a fragmented self interspersed with other abstract fragments. Up until this point, the infant’s sense of identity has been a “primordial form” that Lacan refers to as the “Ideal-I” (Lacan 1286). This Ideal-I “situates the agency of the ego, before its social determination, in a fictional direction, which will always remain irreducible for the individual alone” (Lacan 1286). In other words, the infant’s sensation of being a disjointed, fragmented being and the unified image it sees in the mirror are not necessarily the same being. This is a precursor to the child’s realization that all of his internal thoughts and sensations are not necessarily viewed in the same way from the outer world. The Real and the external world see are not the same.

The mirror plays an important role in the unification of the self in that it offers the child the first opportunity to see itself as others see it—as a separate, unified entity. During this he develops what Lacan calls the imago. The imago is the image of the self that others perceive, and it is during the Mirror Stage that the child becomes aware of this image and adopts it as his identity—“to conceive of himself as others see him and organize himself and his cognition” (McConnell and Gillett 71). This imago is the beginning of the Imaginary, “the realm of phenomenal experience for any individual and contains among other things the subject’s first image of himself” (McConnell and Gillett 66). This world is one made up entirely of perceptions and appearances that are outside the realm of the Real.

However, it is important to note that this adoption of the imago is not a complete usurpation of the Real. Lacan writes that “once the image has been mastered and found empty [. . .] a series of gestures in which he experiences in play the relation between the movements assumed in the image and the reflected environment, and between this virtual complex and the reality it reduplicates” occurs (Lacan 1285). Through this mirror play, the infant recognizes that the image in the mirror is just that—an image—and not reality as he knows it, however well this image duplicates and resembles the Real world. This produces a sensation of alienation from the world around him.

In Carroll’s Through the Looking-Glass the journey through the mirror directs readers to consider what lies beyond the mirror frame. With Lacan as a guide, the Looking-Glass world is the Imaginary. By this I mean that the Looking Glass world is an exaggeration of Lacan’s imago. By going through the Looking-Glass, Alice enters into a world that is essentially other than her own reality even though some aspects are recognizable, for example the chess set, or the flowers. This is a preverbal state, an Imaginary state where the world must function in images and appearances because Alice does not know the rules of this world either socially or linguistically. Thus, she finds herself constantly blundering and confused as to her role within it. Though Alice is an adolescent girl, like an infant in Lacan’s Mirror Stage she must recreate an identity in order to function successfully within the Looking-Glass world.

On several occasions, Alice is reminded that her identity is linked to her external appearance or, in Lacanian terms, her imago. The first individuals that see Alice in the Looking-Glass world are the flowers of the garden. The flowers make the assumption that Alice, too, is a flower based on her appearance (“if only her petals curled up a little more”), however, Alice never corrects them (Carroll 143). When she finds herself the focus of the flowers’ contempt, she threatens to pick them as she “misrecognizes her position in relation to them even as they mistake her for a flower; she has entered into the process of self-alienation that comes from knowing oneself through an external image” (Coats 86). Alice reacts violently towards them for she feels herself in a position of power over them, however, in doing so she is acknowledging that imago, placing emotional emphasis on an interaction that depreciates her sense of self as she knew it in the Real world. She might not agree with the flowers’ perception of her, but she continues the interaction, playing their game until she can get from them the information that she wants.

This difficulty of appearance reappears at the tale end of her meeting with Humpty Dumpty. He dismisses her quite abruptly noting that:
’I shouldn’t know you again if we did meet [. . .] You’re so exactly like other people [. . .] Your face is the same as everybody has—the two eyes, so (marking their places in the air with his thumb), ‘nose in the middle, mouth under. It’s always the same. Now, if you had the two eyes on the same side of the nose, for instance—or the mouth at the top—that would be some help.’ (Carroll 202-203)

Two ideas can be taken from Humpty Dumpty’s statement. The first is that identity is essentially linked to appearance, here, specifically, the physical structure of the face. Humpty Dumpty reminds Alice that in the Looking-Glass, in the Mirror-Stage, she limited only to her appearance, her imago. Secondly, Humpty Dumpty sees Alice as “’exactly like other people,’” as indistinct from the others. This differs from Alice’s conception of herself as a unique individual. Here in the Looking-Glass world she is essentially unique for her conception of herself is based on what she knew of herself before her interaction with the Looking-Glass. Alice’s identity is linked to the rules of the Real world. However, Humpty Dumpty’s assertion that she is nothing but a face “the same as everybody has” and his disregard for Alice as a unique individual reduces Alice’s identity as a subject, forcing upon her the role of object and putting her at the mercy of the outside world through its perceptions of her.

One of the most surreal interactions in the novel is that between Alice and the unicorn. Here, Alice comes into contact with a creature that does not exist in her reality on the other side of the Looking-Glass. However, their interaction is reflexive; her experience in meeting this mythological beast is mirrored by the Unicorn himself. When he first sees Alice he remarks that “’I always thought they [children] were fabulous monsters!’” (Carroll 211). Alice replies similarly saying “’I always thought Unicorns were fabulous monsters, too! I never saw one alive before!’” (Carroll 211). The distinct difference between Alice’s statement and that of the Unicorn is her assertion that she had never seen a Unicorn “alive;” she has only seen the image of a unicorn. Again, the reader is confronted by the rift between what is seen, the imago, and what is Real. Less subtle than this discursive deviation is the Unicorn’s statement, “’Well, now that we have seen each other,’ said the Unicorn, ‘if you’ll believe in me, I’ll believe in you. Is that a bargain?’” (Carroll 211). Not only acknowledgment, but existence is connected to the state of being perceived. It is not until they have seen each other as a living image and interacted with each other that Alice and the Unicorn can be assured that the other is real.

This emphasis on the Other is the key to Lacan’s Mirror-Stage, the imago, and the development of the Imaginary—that realm in which reality is based purely upon images. The idea that one’s existence is limited solely to an Other is certainly disconcerting, particularly when one remembers the Ideal-I and the disconnect between it and the imago. The emphasis on the Imaginary over the Real creates a sense of the loss of agency and that one is entirely at the whim of the outside world. Alice experiences this feeling of victimization and helplessness when she is told that she is nothing more than a figment of the Red King’s dreams: “’you’re only one of the things in his dream. You know very well you’re not real’” (Carroll 173). She is so overwrought with emotion she bursts into tears, asserting that “’I am real’” (Carroll 173). The scene is brief, Alice quickly calming herself and reasserting her Ideal-I—her identity in the Real world.

Alice’s quest in Through the Looking-Glass is to reach the eighth square and become a queen. With Lacan as a guide, readers can view this journey to become queen as Alice’s journey to merge the imago and the Ideal-I into a single entity. Alice’s meeting with the Red Queen quickly establishes for readers a Looking-Glass world representation for Alice’s Ideal-I. She introduces Alice to the workings of the Looking-Glass world and presents to her an ideal image: “’I don’t know what you mean by your way,’ said the Queen; ‘all the ways about here belong to me— [. . .] Alice wondered a little at this, but she was too much in awe of the Queen to disbelieve it” (Carroll 146-147) The Red Queen symbolizes that which is desirable in Alice’s Real world—confidence, knowledge and power. It is the Red Queen who makes the rules, rules which Alice does not yet know. She informs Alice to “curtsy while you’re thinking what to say. It saves time’” demonstrating a knowledge of the workings of time that Alice does not possess (Carroll 147). Alice’s journey through the Looking-Glass world is in fact an attempt for Alice to merge her imago, the awareness of which was instilled upon her by the flowers, and her Ideal-I, which is symbolically presented to readers as the Red Queen. In her interaction with the Red Queen, Alice comes to realize that “’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. Oh, what fun it is! How I wish I was one of them! I wouldn’t mind being a Pawn, if only I might join—though, of course, I should like to be Queen best’” (Carroll 148). Alice recognizes that if she plays by the rules of the game (becomes a Pawn), she can make it to the eighth square and become a Queen. By adopting the outer world, she might better achieve the desires of her inner world. Lacan, however, warns us that this Queen is unobtainable: “the Ideal-I will only rejoin the coming-into-being [. . .] of the subject asymptotically, whatever the success of the dialectical syntheses by which he must resolve as his discordance with his own reality” (Lacan 1286). Alice is doomed from the outset, but her attempt to become a queen is what will drive and motivate her throughout her journey.

However, this tension is not so quickly relinquished. Alice longs for agency over her own identity, thus she must find some way to resolve the imago and the Ideal-I. Having come through the Looking-Glass and encountered a world she can only touch and take at its image, she cannot diminish the power of the imago. Instead, she longs to reassert her own Real identity in it. Alice says, “’unless—unless we’re all part of the same dream. Only I do hope it’s my dream, and not the Red King’s! I don’t like belonging to another person’s dream [. . .] I’ve a great mind to go and wake him, and see what happens!’” (Carroll 215-216). For Alice, to exist completely without agency, to be unimportant in her own existence, is such a frustration that it is almost worth it to cease to exist in order to resolve the tension.

Lacan informs us that there is another way to resolve the tension between the imago and the Ideal-I; by entering into a Symbolic world. Alice learns some of the rules of Looking-Glass world, and much of this tutoring comes in the form of language. Lacan, like Sausseure, saw words as a representation of something real. Signified (the real) and signifier (the word assigned to it) are by nature only related to one another. Words allow a means for the child who has entered into the Imaginary world to “read significance into and transform the tuche into thinkable experience” (McConnell and Gillett 65). As unified but separate entities, what one thinks or experiences is necessarily separate from what another thinks or experiences. As such, in order to relate to one other, both must enter into a mutual territory of communication, using words to express what is internal and thus make it external and part of a common experience. Were the signified to exist there would be no need for the signifier, and as such, the very existence of language demonstrates a lack of what is Real. By entering into a linguistic world of word symbols, the speaker must accept the fact that that it is entering into a flawed system in which words can only suggest or hint at the true nature of the signified, but never become the signified. While communication is, essentially, miscommunication, language works because:
The congruence between your signified content and mine (in a given social context) as the basis of communication is usually explained by the fact that we are both engaged in a shared human environment obeying rules that govern the meanings of our words and relate us to that environment and the conditions pertaining there. (McConnell and Gillett 66-67)

Language only functions because it follows certain rules that allow individuals who possess the same rules to achieve some semblance of understanding.
During her journey through the Looking-Glass world, Alice learns many of the rules of this Imaginary, external world, and this does not exclude the rules of language. In this Symbolic world, names are significant as they are the Symbolic representation of identity. While signified and signifier maybe be disjointed, and communication is flawed by the very nature of language, it is nevertheless necessary to enter into the Symbolic world. This might best be summarized in the words of the gnat for he points out that while names, like other words, are imperfect “’it’s useful to the people that name them, I suppose. If not, why do things have names at all?’” (Carroll 158). Names are not the real identity of the signified, but through the naming of things and actions—by the assignment of a signifier to a signified—individuals are capable of entering into a shared experience. Like the imago, names can, by identifying something, objectify it. One rarely has control over their naming or the opportunity to assign signifier to signified. To learn language is to enter into a pre-existing system and as such be acted upon by that system. When the fawn learns what Alice is—when she is identified as a “human child”—Alice is objectified by the system of language and the fawn. However, language also offers one the opportunity to regain agency. This is clear in Alice’s reaction to the fawn’s abrupt flight: “Alice stood looking after it, almost ready to cry with vexation at having lost her dear little fellow traveler so suddenly. ‘However, I know my name now,’ she said ‘that’s some comfort. Alice—Alice—I won’t forget it again” (Carroll 163). While her imago, identified in this case through the signifier of “human child,” has caused the fawn to flee, Alice is able to regain her own sense of identity in her name, “Alice.”
A further example of how language works in both the Looking-Glass world and Lacanian theory can be seen in the poem “The Jabberwocky:”

Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe [. . .] (Carroll 139)

Readers not familiar with Carroll, and perhaps many who are, are alienated from the poem “The Jabberwocky” by its unique lexicon. Words such as “brillig” and “borogoves” are rarely found in standard English discourse (unless, of course one is an avid Carroll fan or knows one). Readers, like Alice, are not part of the linguistic system needed to enter into the Symbolic realm of the Looking-Glass world. Instantly, the alienation Alice feels as she enters into the Imaginary realm of the Looking-Glass world is imposed upon readers through the poem. Alice herself gives voice to one response that may be felt when first encountering the poem:
’It seems very pretty,’ she said when she had finished it; ‘but it’s rather hard to understand!’ (You see, she didn’t like to confess, even to herself, that she couldn’t make it out at all.) ‘Somehow it seems to fill my head with ideas—only I don’t exactly know what they are! However, somebody killed something; that’s clear, at any rate—.‘ (Carroll 140)

As speakers of English, readers may be able to form some conception of the action within the poem due to its adherence to standard grammatical constructions and recognizable syntax, but even with such useful tools, the lexicon of the poem can only signify in a very abstract way what its signified is. Language is not limited to the words within the system;
signifiers function not only on the basis of their associated semantic content, but also grammatically and even acoustically [. . .] His ‘vorpel blade went snicker snack’ has an obvious resonance through something like onomatopoeia and neologistic signifiers generally evoke meanings that are quirky or amusing through far less immediately recognizable associations. (McConnell and Gillett 68)

While grammar and syntax are useful part of the language system, one would think that words would help with meaning. However, the lexicon with which Alice and readers are provided demonstrate that language is more than a simple dictionary. Alice asks Humpty Dumpty to define the Jabberwocky lexicon, but his answers are also bewildering: “’Well, then, ‘mimsy’ is flimsy and miserable (there’s another portmanteau for you). And a ‘borogove’ is a thin, shabby-looking bird with its feathers sticking out all round—something like a live mop’” (Carroll 199). As alien to Looking-Glass land, Alice (and readers) lacks the knowledge of the creature to which the name “borogove” has been assigned. What use is assigning a signifier if there is no signified? The interaction between the Symbolic, the Imaginary and the Real is crucial. As seen in the Symbolic realm of Looking-Glass world, when these Lacanian realms are at such odds, when the Symbolic is alienated from the Real and far removed from the Imaginary, words like “borogove” and “Jabberwocky” appear as little more than insanity.

Lewis Carroll wrote Through the Looking-Glass long before Lacan had reached his own Mirror-Stage, yet the similarities between the topsy-turvy realm in which Alice journeys and the psychological experiences that Lacan identified enlighten one another. Like Lacan’s Mirror-Stage, Alice’s journey through the Looking-Glass is a journey into identity in which she comes to recognize both the way that the outer world perceives her and by contrast the way in which she perceives herself. She attempts to marry the Imaginary with the Real, but since she lacks the rules that would enable her to function within the Symbolic realm that mediates between the Imaginary and the Real, she cannot fully realize her Ideal-I and become an active, powerful Queen. Instead, the dream of the Looking-Glass crumbles and Alice is thrust back into the Real world. Alice’s rush through the Looking-Glass world does not afford her enough time to develop the Symbolic tools necessary to stay there. Alice was doomed from the outset for she believes “’if I don’t make haste I shall have to go back through the Looking Glass before I’ve seen what the rest of the house is like!’” (Carroll 140). Instead of rushing towards the eighth square, had Alice instead lingered in the Imaginary and allowed herself the time to slowly learn the Symbolic rules of the world, she may have been able to achieve her goal and become queen.










Works Cited
Carroll, Lewis. Alice's Adventures in Wonderland & Through the Looking Glass. New York: Golden Books, 1986.
Coats, Karen. “Looking Glasses and Neverlands: Beyond the Symbolic.” Looking Glasses and Neverlands: Lacan, Desire, and Subjectivity in Children’s Literature. Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 2004.
Lacan, Jacques. “The Mirror Stage as Formative of the Functin of the I as Revealed in Psychoanalytic Experience.”
McConnell, Douglas, and Grant Gillett. “Lacan for the Philosophical Psychiatrist.” PPP 12 (2005): 63-75.