What do you think it would have been like if Alice's older sister or Dinah had accompanied Alice into Wonderland? Do you think the former would have created additional instances of comedy considering how logical the older sister is?
I believe if Dinah had accompanied Alice into Wonderland, she would have tried to help or prevent Alice from getting into as much trouble as Alice did during her adventure. I say this because animals’ senses work very differently than those of people, and they can use them differently, too. It’s like they have a sixth sense about new or unfamiliar people or things, by which I mean they have a unique ability to instantly know when anything or anyone is potentially harmful or dangerous, especially if and when the initial appearances deceive.
Taking this into mind, I think if Dinah had stayed with Alice, she would have been able to immediately sense that Wonderland wasn’t a normal place, that it wasn’t anything like the real world. She would have sensed the characters’ strange personalities and maybe try to discourage Alice from talking to them. I also think Dinah would have even sensed that the food and drink sources weren’t normal, either, and try to discourage Alice from consuming them.
But unfortunately, even the most loyal and friendliest pets can be gravely misunderstood by their friends and owners. This is because animals can’t talk, so they try to communicate with their owners in other ways, even with rough actions like biting and scratching, when they sense something wrong just to get their owners’ attention and divert them away from the problem. And when they show what appears to be misbehavior, their owners often ignore them, brush them off, and misunderstand them that the animals end up getting scolded or pushed away.
So taking these thoughts in mind, I truly believe that if Dinah had gone to Wonderland with Alice, she would have tried her best to help Alice and look out for her to keep her out of trouble. But if she did, I get the feeling that Alice might brush Dinah off and go ahead with doing everything she did in the film, and not realize the repercussions until it was too late.
Thinking back to the actual film, whenever she encounters something new in Wonderland, Alice always does exactly what she wants to do, or is instructed to do, and doesn’t think about the consequences, showing that her curiosity and naïveté frequently gets the best of her. Of course, it’s not entirely her fault simultaneously, either, because Alice travels through Wonderland all on her own without any prior knowledge or experience of this place. I said in this analysis that Alice meets a lot of different characters in Wonderland, but the Cheshire Cat and the doorknob are the only beings who are both kind to her and offer her some helpful advice. (The caterpillar does tell her that two sides of the mushroom will change her height, but he wasn’t a very friendly character.) Other than them, no one else gives her much guidance or explains to her how things work in Wonderland. So Alice ends up having to teach herself things and learn from her experiences, such as when she consciously understands that food and drinks change her height based on the quantity she consumes.
Now as for Alice’s sister, she seems to be, in essence, the complete antithesis of Alice: strict, no-nonsense, realistic, firm, serious, and proper. I get the impression that since she is like this, and is more educated, experienced with logic, and less imaginative than Alice, she probably wouldn’t believe any of the nonsensical things she would be seeing in Wonderland. It would be a classic scenario of “I see it, but I don’t believe it.” She would probably dismiss it as merely a dream (which it was, of course), and try to wake up from it at any given chance whenever something silly would occur.
And yes, I think if she was with Alice and encountered many of the same mishaps, she would have created comical moments because her nature is such a sharp contrast to that of Alice, and the effects that a place like Wonderland would do to an older, more educated person like her could indeed be very humorous.
But at the same time, like what I said about Dinah, if she had accompanied Alice to Wonderland, Alice’s sister would probably try to act as the voice of reason to Alice. She would constantly try to discourage her from trying something new or going further into this world since it’s entirely new and unfamiliar to them, and that the consequences could be disastrous. If that were the case, Alice probably would still go ahead and do what she wanted to do, further proving my point on just how much her curiosity gets the best of her.