Bispo, Jéssica2026-05-262026-05-2620252374-202XPURE: 162745251PURE UUID: 6ab4bf8d-c826-45f2-86b5-75cc07a2bbc4http://hdl.handle.net/10362/203406UID/04097/2025 https://doi.org/10.54499/UID/04097/2025The asylum, like the workhouse, the prison, the hospital, or the boarding school, was an institution of crucial importance in Victorian England. Initially conceived to support people afflicted by mental illness—promoting outdoor activities, work-based therapies, and physical exercise—these spaces soon became overcrowded, and the therapeutic optimism brought by the Enlightenment failed to yield results. Historical records also came to reveal widespread neglect, abuse, and mistreatment. Considering the historical reality of these institutions, this article explores Alice: Madness Returns—a video game inspired by Lewis Carroll’s famous novels Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Alice Through the Looking Glass—as a neo-Victorian reimagining that critically exposes the culture of violence embedded in Victorian asylums. It also investigates how enduring stereotypes from popular culture shape this neo-Victorian depiction, reinforcing certain tropes even as the narrative seeks to subvert them. Through this lens, the game foregrounds the asylum’s most oppressive realities—neglect, coercion, physical and psychological violence, and gendered medical practices—while offering a space for re-writing history by amplifying marginalised voices and envisioning forms of resistance and subversion.16123551engVictorian EraAsylumLunacyAliceMadness ReturnsNeo-VictorianismSDG 3 - Good Health and Well-beingSDG 16 - Peace, Justice and Strong Institutionsjournal articlehttps://gamescriticism.org/2025/11/05/bispo-6-1/