Empson entitles his essay "The Child as Swain" because he is eager to stress the overwhelmingly romantic view of childhood in the Alice books, and links it to the child-like sexlessness of Carroll's worldview. But there is arguably more fear operating in Alice than in Mary Lennox: Empson instead stresses the "cool courage" of Alice as a protagonist in the two books (Bloom 4), in the face of such menace as the Queen's constant calls for beheading
Yet I hope to conclude by demonstrating that the two books share a similarity of purpose in approaching young readers. Burnett's The Secret Garden may have a child protagonist, but it begins with a coolly unflattering portrait of little Mary Lennox, whom "everybody said…was the most disagreeable-looking child ever seen," with a "sour expression" and a "yellow…face" after years of illness (Burnett 2)
As previously mentioned, Alice has to find her way through the world of the looking glass by figuratively feeling out each situation and interaction. In this way, she is gaining the required experiential knowledge necessary to some to her own conclusions relative to good and evil, just as Socrates posits is important for each person to do in life (Guthrie, 188)
She is able to help to define her own reality and choose an existence, at least in her alternate reality that is sandwiched between the two extremes that she encounters. Another way that Plato's philosophy surfaces within the story line is the fact that Plato believed that people, like Alice, start out as unshaped, unlearned beings (Hare, 74)
Within the story, as Alice makes her way through the dreamscape, it is interesting to note that her experiences are indicative of a person who has been able to create their dream world from the bits and pieces of her conscious world, no matter how thinly veiled her dream experiences are. According to philosopher David Hume, it is impossible for someone to experience something new and unique within his or her own mind (Penelhum, 166)
Thomas Aquinas also becomes apparent. Aquinas believed in a set of causal arguments for the existence of God and the interaction of humans relative to this existence (Stump, 68)
. To which the Mock Turtle angrily replies, "We called him Tortoise because he taught us" (Carroll 127)