I remember very distinctly writing my college resume in my high school english class. We'd been given and example that was basically this lovely, looooooooong list of awesome things some random student had done. The teacher was prattling on about how this fantastical student had gone on to some ridiculously expensive and elite school and was currently researching some obscure and painfully difficult subject, but I wasn't listening. Instead, I was rifling through the pages of the essay in panic because there was NO WAY I had as many things to put on my resume as this student had.
Suddenly, my heart stopped. There, in the middle of the essay, was a section labeled “Leadership Titles”. Oh, my goodness, that section went on for PAGES. You know in Aladdin when Jafar brings out the royal rule book to prove to the king he is required under law to marry Jasmine if she doesn't find a husband before she comes of age? I swear, this kids resume section on leadership was longer then that royal handbook, and if you remember anything about that part in the movie, you'll know that the royal handbook, when unrolled, flows across the room and gently smacks the sultan in the face. It's scary long, I'm telling you.
And the leadership list wasn't just humorously long: it was long and INTIMIDATING, mostly because I had no idea what the heck I was going to put on my list. In the end, I think I just sort of scribbled down a few positions I'd held in various activities. But it made me mad, you know? A leadership title isn't leadership.
I feel like Carroll, using Alice, affirms this idea that the title doesn't make the leader. He describes Alice as “loving as a dog... gentle as a fawn... courteous to all willing to accept the wildest impossibilities with all that utter trust that dreamers know... and... curious” (Carroll, 12). Alice shows these attributes throughout both the books. However, more importantly, these central characteristics help make her an effective and ethical leader. Her official title of queen isn't achieved until the end of Looking Glass, and yet Alice acts as a leader from the beginning of the first story, and only hones these characteristics throughout both books, making her a leader by example. In contrast, the various kings and queens we meet in these stories are in many ways decisively NOT leaders, despite their titles.
Carroll proves in the Alice books that as far as leadership is concerned, this crown means nothing.
http://etc.usf.edu/clipart/2100/2114/crown_1_lg.gif
Alice is insanely proactive. This stems not just from a desire to elevate herself but also from an ethical desire to be “courteous to all” (Carroll, 12). I think the first place that this meshing of ethics and proactivity hit me was in Alice's interactions with the Mouse and other animals in the caucus race. When the Mouse exclaims that he wants Alice to never “let [him] hear the name [cat] again,” (Carroll, 27) Alice doesn't just stop talking about cats: she also changes the subject in an effort to make the mouse feel more comfortable, starting off the next segment of their conversation with the question “are you- are you fond- of- of dogs?” (Carroll, 27). Alice's supreme efforts to make the Mouse feel comfortable lead the to the forming of the Caucus party, where the Mouse tells his 'long and sad tale” (Carroll 33) to all the guests. This tale helps to bond the guests, another aspect of a true leader that Alice possesses: the ability to bring people together. Of course, the Mouse is soon offended by Alice's perceived lack of attentiveness , but even after he leaves, the bond forged between the members of the party is evident in the Lory's statement that it was “a pity [the Mouse] wouldn't stay” (Carroll, 35). However, Alice is only able to accomplish this bringing together of different types of animals through her provocativeness that comes from an ethnical concern for all members of society.
The mouse tells his tale (or tail?).
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In addition, Alice leads by example through her inclusion of everyone in her decisions, which makes those that encounter her feel that they are working together towards a common cause.
One of the central problems with the queen in Wonderland is her tendency to make decisions such as demanding the execution of her subjects, without consulting anyone. Though this elicits fear and obedience from her underlings, it does not lead to all of them working together towards a common goal. Carroll, I think, tried to symbolize this with the insane croquet game, where the disorganized nature of the game was caused partially by the queens constant exclamation of “off with their heads,” (Carroll, 83), her “one way of settling all difficulties, great or small”(Carroll, 87), which kept the players from working together towards
the common goal of finishing the game. This contrasts greatly to Alice, who in Looking Glass shows how effective her inclusion of others in her decisions can be. Alice does not go about her quest to become a queen by herself: first she asks the Red Queen for advice, which allows her to become a white pawn, one step closer to being a queen. Then she walks out of the forest where things have no name not by herself but with the fawn, and gains the valuable information that she is “a human child” (Carroll, 178). Later, she works together with the knight to cross the last brook and become a queen, allowing him to “see [her] safe to the end of the wood”. Alice goes through Looking Glass with a specific goal in mind, but she allows others to participate in the manifestation of this goal, and it is her willingness to give every creature she meets a role in her road to queendom that finally gets her across the last brook.
Alice and the knight she allows to help her.
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The last chapter of Looking Glass was for me the most obvious places where Alice's superiority to Carroll's titled leaders is shown. In “Queen Alice”, the White and Red Queens are testing Alice's preparedness for her title. However, the questions they ask her have nothing to do with leadership. They are in fact nonsense questions, ranging from “divide a loaf by a knife?” (Carroll, 253) to “where do you pick a flower?” (Carroll, 254). Alice is frustrated by these questions, showing the reader that she has higher concerns then the nonsense these titled leaders seem to be focusing on. Later, when Alice is being introduced to various foods, she is more concerned with feeding the people in the room then with the idle task of meeting these pointless foods, making the mistake of cutting the pudding. Alice's concern for the hunger of the others at the table shows her noble commitment to her subjects as opposed to being focused on the politics of her title, which are symbolized by the foods the Red Queen is so committed to introducing to Alice. The contrasts depicted in this chapter between Alice and the other Queens was for me the clearest indicator of both Alice's supreme ethical leadership skills, as well as the most obvious depiction of how a title does not necessarily indicate a good leader.
Alice being interrogated by the queens.
http://www.ebbemunk.dk/alice/86queens.jpg
Remember those random leadership titles I scribbled on my resume? When it finally came time to write a college essay on leadership, I didn't write about any of those. Instead, I wrote about helping one of the girls I babysit learn to share. It was a little bit cheesy, I know. But to me, teaching that girl a life skill was a bigger leadership position then all of my titles put together. Leadership is not an obscure title buried in a resume. Leadership is the bringing together of people towards a greater purpose.
I personally am not big on titles. I've never been that super-involved kid who is president of every club and its brother. I've never been president of anything, actually. But that doesn't mean that, in my own way, I'm not a leader. Yeah, I'm not queen or anything, But sometimes I catch glimpses of myself acting as a leader in my every day life, and I know that my lack of title doesn't make these acts of leadership any less important. When people think of Alice, they don't remember her as a queen: they remember her for her actions, all of which pointed to her decisive role as a leader.
Queen playing croquet source: http://i919.photobucket.com/albums/ad40/ Fini89/croquet-2.jpg
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