The binary that I identified as the most appealing in the first chapter of Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland is mentally strong/weak. Alice is consistently found talking herself as if she had dual personalities.

Although she is not given a distinct age in the text, Alice seems to have the naivety and innocence of a young child while still having a slight sense of reason and maturity. Many times throughout the story, she is found in tears because of a situation she could not immediately get out of. It seems that in those moments, she did not think of how to fix the problems but only quickly resorted to crying. Following her very child-like behaviour, Alice tries to remedy her own sadness by scolding herself as if to snap herself out of being so immature.

Come, there’s no use in crying like that!’ said Alice to herself, rather sharply; I advise you to leave off this minute!’ She generally gave herself very good advice, (though she very seldom followed it), and sometimes she scolded herself so severely as to bring tears into her eyes; and once she remembered trying to box her own ears for having cheated herself in a game of croquet she was playing against herself, for this curious child was very fond of pretending to be two people. But it’s no use now,’ thought poor Alice, to pretend to be two people! Why, there’s hardly enough of me left to make one respectable person!’ (Carroll, Ch. 1)

I believe that Carroll wanted to analyze the severe differences of being mentally strong or weak. He associates irrational distress as weakness and strict reasoning as strength. Although these aspects don’t necessarily apply directly to reality, they still reveal a sort of confusion between how one feels and how one should feel.

Carroll, Lewis. The Annotated Alice: Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland & Through the Looking Glass. New York: C.N. Potter, 1960. Guttenberg.org. 19 May 2009. Web.