REDISCOVERING SELF THROUGH LANGUAGE IN WONDERLAND: ALICE’S DEFENSE MECHANISMS

Guided by a psychological-literary perspective, this study examines Alice in Wonderland as a primary text to uncover how the protagonist navigates her inner conflicts through defense mechanisms. The film portrays Alice’s imaginative immersion in Wonderland as both a linguistic and symbolic escape from the rigid confines of her reality, with the fantastical realm serving as an externalization of her psychological unrest. Originating in dreams that have accompanied her since childhood and intensifying on the brink of her arranged engagement to Hamish, Alice’s fantasy world embodies a cumulative manifestation of unconscious impulses. At the heart of her journey lies a profound tension between individual desire and the constrictive social codes that govern her existence a tension that gives rise to the deployment of various defense mechanisms. Drawing on Freud’s theoretical framework, the analysis reveals her reliance on fantasy, displacement, projection, and aggression, with fantasy functioning as the most generative form of self-preservation. Crucially, the Wonderland experience mediated through the language, symbols, and interactions within this dreamscape enables Alice to reconstruct her sense of self. Returning to the real world, she emerges with renewed agency, rejecting the imposed marriage and embracing her own vision for the future by pursuing her family’s business ventures.