One hundred and fifty years of Alice's adventures in Wonderland, and she's still going strong having never been out of print, and still more film adaptions on the way. This iconic and bizarre story has inspired countless people and pursuits. Tell me, has Wonderland ever inspired you? and how?
About the poor ending. It's not a perfect book. I don't say that it's the [tied for 1st place] best book that I've ever read: I've probably read better. (Although Carroll is the unsurpassed genius when it came to nonsense verse. Edward Lear comes nowhere near) I say that it's my [tied for 1st place] favourite book. It's possible to love a book with faults. And it's possible to be bored by a book that's nearly perfect.
To us today, that ending: "It was only a dream, after all!" (which Carroll used in BOTH Alice books) has become a hackneyed, pitiful cop-out. I don't know much history of literature, but I would guess that in 1865, this ploy wasn't as worn-out as now.
As for the sister's thoughts: "Lastly, she pictured to herself how this same little sister of hers would, in the after-time, be herself a grown woman; and how she would keep, through all her riper years, the simple and loving heart of her childhood: and how she would gather about her other little children, and make their eyes bright and eager with many a strange tale, perhaps even with the dream of Wonderland of long ago: and how she would feel with all their simple sorrows, and find a pleasure in all their simple joys, remembering her own child-life, and the happy summer days."
Considering that that elder sister (in real life) was only 3 years older, she must have been a prissy little miss.
So I agree with you about the end.
I've heard this before, about the nightmarish quality. I don't see it, really. It might depend on each child's basic psychological makeup, it might also have something to do with age. I can't remember reading Alice before I was 12, and I've loved it ever since, discovering different layers at different stages of my life. Maybe you found it nightmarish because you read it (or it was read to you) at too young an age, and that impression has stuck?
Having said that, I read Alice (both books) to my eldest step-daughter when she was 4 years old. We'd recently moved to a tiny, isolated village in Ireland after living in a large communal house with 8 adults, her, and her younger sister, in London. After I'd read her the chapter containing the above bits with the Cheshire Cat, she used to go around saying: "We're all mad. You have to be mad to live here."
Please don't hate me guys, but I am not a fan of Alice in Wonderland. As a child I found this book nightmarish. I still gives me the creeps and the poor ending just annoys me.