The Complete Alice in Wonderland (20 page)

Chapter IX

“How Glad I Am to See You”:
The Duchess at this point has just been freed from prison, and perhaps a sentence of execution as well. Observing that Alice has gained some degree of favor with the Queen of Hearts, the mercenary duchess (despite her previous cruelties) instantly allies with Alice to further her own survival.

“And the Moral of That Is…”:
The Duchess’s incessant and inappropriate moralizing reminds us of Carroll’s own mockery of other Victorian children’s stories. Many of these stories made a point of “teaching” the child reader, as opposed to simply telling a delightful story.
Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland
, on the other hand, is mischievous and subversive (which may well be the secret of its appeal!). Carroll’s early poem entitled “My Fairy” (with its moral: “You mustn’t”) explored this theme as well.

Animal, Vegetable, or Mineral?:
This is one of the first questions routinely asked in the parlor game which is known to us now as “Twenty Questions.”

A Brief History of Mock Turtle Soup:
In Victorian times, turtle soup was an expensive delicacy. The middle class—following the “noble” recipe in all other particulars—substituted veal for the meat of the green sea turtle. The resulting dish was called mock turtle soup. Seeing an absurdity he could not resist making fun of, Carroll decided that such meat came from Mock Turtles, complete with calves’ heads!
 
(Of course, this makes the Mock Turtle a symbol of the upward middle class and its students, just as his friend the Gryphon represents the upper class students of Oxford.)

The Gryphon and the Mock Turtle:
These two characters are affectionate parodies of students who never made anything of themselves after leaving college. The Gryphon sleeps all day and has poor grammar. The Mock Turtle, in a far worse state, feels exceedingly sorry for himself and laments not only the things he did, but also the things he never got around to doing. They are an interesting pair because they are both hybrid creatures, made up of mixtures of animal parts that are purely fantastical in nature. Perhaps they have no future because they can only exist in the impossibility of Wonderland.

The Gryphon of the Underwater School:
The coat of arms for Trinity College, Oxford, features a gryphon prominently. As such, the Gryphon of Wonderland could be seen as the heraldic symbol of the Underwater School. It may be that Carroll was poking fun at students who pride themselves on representing the school and its history, yet care little for their own studies.

The Origin of the Mock Turtle?:
There is an entry in Carroll’s diary for May 9, 1861 which may have served as a partial inspiration for the overly earnest Mock Turtle: “… The former gave an amusing account of having seen Oliver Wendell Holmes in a fishmonger’s, lecturing extempore on the head of a freshly killed turtle, whose eyes and jaws still showed muscular action: the lecture of course being all ‘cram,’ but accepted as sober earnest by the mob outside.”

Reeling, Writhing…:
The courses taught in the Underwater School are idle puns on the lessons taught in every school (“Reeling” instead of “reading,” “Writhing” instead of “writing” and so forth). To children such as Alice, of course, such lessons could easily be regarding as nonsense!

The Nature of the Conger Eel:
From the description of the artistic courses provided (“Drawling” instead of “drawing,” “Stretching” instead of “sketching,” and “Fainting in Coils” instead of “painting in oils”), we know that the Conger Eel is probably a caricature of the Liddells’ tutor of the arts, John Ruskin. Ruskin was quite the famous (and eccentric!) artist of the age. When Carroll first met Ruskin, however, he was not impressed. He wrote on October 27, 1857, “At Common Room breakfast met, for the first time, John Ruskin. I had a little conversation with him, but not enough to bring out anything characteristic or striking in him. His appearance was rather disappointing—a general feebleness of expression, with no commanding air, or any external signs of deep thought, as one would have expected to see in such a man.”
 
It is interesting to think that this bland impression may have immortalized Ruskin as an eel with a fixed expression!

The Old Crab:
As hinted earlier, the particular crabby classics master in question is none other than Henry Liddell, Dean of Christ Church and Alice’s father. He is probably related by marriage to the old female Crab which Alice met at the Pool of Tears!

Chapter X

The Challenge of the Quadrille:
The quadrille is an exacting formal dance, in which pairs move in such a way that figures are formed by the relative positions of other couples. (The closest American equivalent would be square dancing.)
 
A variant called the Lancer’s Quadrille was all the rage in Carroll’s time, and so the Lobster Quadrille is a mockery of that intricate dance’s grave importance to high society.

The Lobsters at the Dance:
English soldiers in the 1700s and 1800s were known as redcoats, due to their scarlet uniforms. In Victorian times, English officers (of the Lancers particularly) were known as excellent dancers. Most likely, this is due to the stately and measured forms of court dance, and the similarity of such dances to parade maneuvers. The Lobsters of Wonderland would be an obvious representation (to Victorian readers) of British ballroom officers parading about in preening self-obsession.

The Ridiculousness of Dancing:
This episode may be a parody of Alice’s dancing skill, and Carroll’s lack of same. Carroll once wrote in a letter, “I never dance, unless I am allowed to do it in my own peculiar way. There is no use trying to describe it: it has to be seen to be believed. The last house I tried it in, the floor fell through ... Did you ever see a rhinoceros and hippopotamus ... trying to dance a minuet together?”

“The Further Off from England …”:
These lines of the song refer to the English Channel. Since Wonderland exists underground in the subterranean reaches of Oxfordshire, we can speculate that the seas of Wonderland are quite similar to those of England. (As we shall see in the later “Alice” stories, however, it is likely that the Isle of the Jabberwock lies to the
west
of Looking-Glass Land and Wonderland, not to the east!)

Blacking and Whiting:
Carroll here is making a mild pair of jokes. A whiting is a common food fish in England, often served in fish and chips. Blacking is the sooty substance that is used to cover scuffs on black boots. Under the sea, where everything is done differently, whiting “does the boots and shoes” instead of blacking. Since whiting is also a fish, it “logically” follows that the whiting (fish) are servants who work as boot shiners for the Underwater School. Confusing?
 
But of course!

Chapter XI

A Caricature of Justice:
After Carroll had completed the writing of
Alice’s Adventures Under Ground
, he added more intricate scenes for publication, including the now-famous trial for the tarts. On March 5, 1863 (after
Under Ground
had been completed), Carroll published a parody entitled “The Majesty of Justice.”
 
This poem includes the lines: “They say that justice is a Queen / A Queen of awful Majesty.”
 
It is likely that this line of thought led to the elaboration of the trial scene as it appears in
Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland
.

The Nervous Hatter:
The Hatter is nervous because he does not want the Queen of Hearts to recognize him. In March, he had sung poorly at the Queen’s royal concert, and thus received a sentence of execution. He is relying on the Queen’s lack of reason and memory to ensure his own survival, but with every passing minute the danger of her recognition grows more dire!

Fourteenth, Fifteenth, Sixteenth:
A casual reading seems to indicate that the March Hare and Dormouse are simply wrong, and are trying to cast doubt on the Hatter to save their own skins. Actually, however, it is quite possible that they are all correct from their own points of view, since they were trapped in the Mad Tea-Party by Father Time and Hatter’s watch had broken. Any of these dates would then be correct, because their actions were continuously repeating.

Alice Growing on Her Own:
Quite literally, Alice is growing up on her own as she sits in the court. As her conviction that the cards’ entreaties are nonsense grows stronger, she gains confidence, courage and control over her dreams. She no longer needs food or drink (elements of the illusion) to change her size; in defying the adult characters of the stories, she is growing up regardless!

The Art of Suppression:
Carroll here is having a bit of fun with the Latin roots of the English language. “Suppress” comes from the Latin “
suppressus
,” which means literally “to press down upon.”

Chapter XII

Alice’s Evidence:
Carroll’s nonsense poem, “She’s All My Fancy Painted Him,” is a breezy parody of idle gossip about others’ affairs. Its appearance here as evidence highlights the absurd nature of hearsay, opinion and irrelevant discourse in a court of law. All of which, of course, serve to enhance the madness and unquestionable power of the King and Queen of Hearts!

Being Made Entirely of Cardboard:
Carroll here is telling us that the Knave of Hearts is, indeed, an overgrown playing card. Of course this is completely at odds with Tenniel’s illustrations, where the “face” cards are shown as purely anthropomorphic figures wearing the regalia of card symbols.
 
This confusion stems from Carroll’s
own
original illustrations of the royal card figures, which are found in
Alice’s Adventures Under Ground
.

Aftermath in Wonderland:
There is one very curious question which is never resolved by Carroll’s narrative: What happens to Wonderland after Alice’s departure, as she vanishes into thin air, leaving chaos in her wake?
 
We can never know for certain, but it is unlikely that the Queen of Hearts would have retained her power after being so blatantly thwarted by a mere child. There are the four royal lineages in Wonderland (Hearts, Diamonds, Clubs and Spades), and Alice’s disruption “shuffles the deck,” so that any of the other families might reign supreme thereafter.

The Sighted and the Eyeless:
Lorina’s thoughts of Wonderland, and her assurance that it would all fade away when she opened her eyes, is one of the key perceptive moments in Carroll’s “Alice” stories. Alice is the dream-child, fully capable of running away with her imagination and falling into the worlds of make believe. Lorina, on the other hand, is far more pragmatic. She is able to appreciate the nature of Wonderland’s whimsy, but she can only envision it when she closes her eyes. An interesting parallel can be drawn to an 1856 painting created by Carroll’s acquaintance, Sir John Everett Millais, entitled “The Blind Girl.”
 
Millais’s painting portrays two sisters sitting beneath a double rainbow. The younger girl, with the gift of sight, is describing the beauty of the rainbows to her sister, who is blind.

Speculative Chronology of
Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland

By Kent David Kelly

THROUGH GATHERING and considering
all
of the references to time in
Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland
, it is possible to create a rough timeline of Alice’s adventures. The following is of course hypothetical, but it is interesting!

1859:
This may possibly be the year of Alice’s exploration of Wonderland, since (in the story) she is exactly seven years old.

March 1, 1859:
The March Hare goes mad. Right on schedule!

March 13, 1859:
The Hatter sings (poorly!) at the Queen’s royal concert. Father Time is insulted, and the Queen threatens the Hatter with death. The Hatter and March Hare (and possibly the Dormouse) flee to March Hare’s house.

March 14, 1859 (6:00 PM):
The Mad Tea-Party begins, as the Hatter, March Hare and Dormouse are caught in the “time trap” of Father Time.

April, 1859:
The Pigeon, avoiding the serpents of Wonderland once again, lays her new clutch of eggs in the highest tree of the forest.

May 2, 1859:
The March Hare, using bread-and-butter, tries to fix Hatter’s watch and accidentally breaks it instead.

May 3, 1859:
The Seven of Spades accidentally brings tulip-roots to the Duchess’s Cook instead of onions. The Queen of Hearts threatens to have him beheaded.