Wonderland, famously, is full of bizarre characters: the grinning Cheshire Cat, the Mad Hatter, the White Rabbit, the tyrannical Queen of Hearts, Little Bill the lizard, the mysterious and philosophical Caterpillar, the dancing and singing Mock Turtle. Most characters are at once ordinary and extraordinary, like the White Rabbit, while some are more fantastical, like the ruthless, croquet-obsessed queen of hearts, whose frame is that of a playing card. Notable in Alice’s Wonderland is the co-existence of humans like the Mad Hatter and semi-humans (the deck of playing cards) with anthropomorphized animals. Also notable is the seeming existence or implication of deeper relationships between the characters and of the existence of a social order within the Queen’s domain, itself a refracted mirroring or caricature of a tyrannical reign from British history. Alice experiences little problem relating to each category and each character – and her expectations are fulfilled and frustrated in equal measure no matter with whom she is interacting.

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