One summer afternoon, seven-year-old Alice lay down on the grass of a riverbank and felt herself beginning to fall asleep. When a white rabbit ran past, it did not surprise her that it was wearing a waistcoat, and when it took out a pocket-watch and complained, “Oh dear! Oh dear! I shall be too late!” Alice was not shocked. She was curious. It was only natural to leap up, run after the rabbit and go down the hole after it. And so, the beginning of the book sets the tone for rest of the story, where each bizarre episode is responded to by Alice with the same curious equanimity.
FANTASTICAL INHABITANTS
Alice’s encounters with the extraordinary inhabitants of Wonderland – the Mad Hatter, the March Hare, the Cheshire Cat and the Queen of Hearts, among others – would become some of the most celebrated in all children’s literature, none more so than the tea party she attends. There is not much that evokes what is solid and unchanging in English culture more than a tea party. But Wonderland is so eccentric that words themselves become remarkably hard to pin down. They become mischievous and unpredictable:
“Take some more tea,” the March Hare said to Alice, very earnestly.
“I’ve had nothing yet,” Alice replied in an offended tone, “so I can’t take more.”
“You mean you can’t take less,” said the Hatter: “it’s very easy to take more than nothing.”
«Prendi dell’altro tè» disse seria ad Alice la Lepre Marzolina.
«Veramente non l’ho ancora preso,» rispose Alice in tono offeso «ragion per cui non posso prederne dell’altro.»
«Vuoi dire che non puoi prenderne di meno» disse il Cappellaio. «Se non si è avuto niente non si può che prendere qualcosa.»”.
A SOLITARY SMILE
Difficult to argue with reasoning like that. So, how come Alice’s words have ended up meaning precisely the opposite of what she intended? Consider also the meeting with the Cheshire Cat, who is in the habit of dematerialising until all that is left is a large grin:
“Cheshire-puss […] would you tell me, please, which way I ought to walk from here?”
“That depends a good deal on where you want to get to,” said the Cat.
“I don’t much care where -” said Alice.
“Then it doesn’t matter which way you walk,” said the Cat.
“ – so long as I get somewhere,” Alice added as an explanation.
“Oh, you’re sure to do that,” said the cat, “if you only walk long enough.”
“«Micetto del Cheshire [...] Vorresti dirmi di grazia quale strada prendere per uscire di qui?»
«Dipende soprattutto da dove vuoi andare» disse il Gatto.
«Non m’importa molto...» disse Alice.
«Allora non importa che strada prendi» disse il Gatto.
«... purché arrivi in qualche posto» aggiunse Alice a mo’ di spiegazione.
Ah, per questo stai pure tranquilla,» disse il Gatto «basta che non ti fermi prima»”.
Again, the Cat’s logic cannot be faulted. It is just that logic, in Wonderland, doesn’t help you very much.
MAD INCIDENT
The plot of Wonderland is not complex, though it is full of the sort of mad incident that might come up in dreams. One of Alice’s recurring experiences in this place – that of changing size – happens again in the witness box. The girl gets bigger and bigger and the Wonderlanders recede even further away until Alice finds herself back on that comfortable riverbank in the drowsy afternoon.
Alice makes her way through a land that is comically absurd, until she meets the Queen of Hearts and her company of playing cards. The Queen says almost nothing except to shout, “Off with her head!” Her repetitive desire to execute everyone she sees is an example of the undertone of menace that runs through this ostensibly children’s book. During a game of croquet – played, naturally, with hedgehogs for balls and flamingos for mallets – a mystery about a plate of tarts leads to a full-blown criminal trial, with Alice as star witness.
“The first witness was the Hatter. He came in with a teacup in one hand, and a piece of bread-and-butter in the other. “I beg pardon, your Majesty,” he began, “for bringing these in: but I hadn’t quite finished my tea when I was sent for.”
“You ought to have finished,” said the King. “When did you begin?”
The Hatter looked at the March Hare, who had followed him into the court, arm-in-arm with the Dormouse. “Fourteenth of March, I think it was,” he said.”
“Il primo teste era il Cappellaio. Venne con una tazza di tè in una mano e una fetta di pane e burro nell’altra. «Chiedo venia, Maestà,» cominciò «per l’introduzione di questi oggetti; ma non avevo finito di prendere il tè quando sono stato convocato.»
«Dovresti aver finito a quest’ora» disse il Re. «Quando avevi cominciato?»
Il Cappellaio guardò la Lepre Marzolina, che lo aveva seguito in aula a braccetto del Ghiro. «Mi pare che fosse il quattordici marzo» disse”.
AMAZING ILLUSTRATIONS
The book has been illustrated many times over the years, but nothing has ever matched the images of the first artist to draw Alice, John Tenniel. His rendering of the girl is so vivid that it comes as a surprise to realise that Carroll barely describes what Alice looks like. The immortal picture of a child in a blue dress and white pinafore, her blonde hair pulled back from a high forehead to reveal a serious, self-confident, but always unsmiling face, is Tenniel’s alone. And that is how she will be remembered for as long as anyone continues to read stories to kids: Alice, the child who travelled through a strange country, and who never let its various oddities and threats diminish her stubborn curiosity.
“This piece of rudeness was more than Alice could bear: she got up in great disgust and walked off: the Dormouse fell asleep instantly, and neither of the others took the least notice of her going, though she looked back once or twice, half hoping they would call after her: the last time she saw them, they were trying to put the Dormouse into the teapot.
“At any rate I’ll never go there again!” said Alice as she picked her way through the wood. “It’s the stupidest tea party I ever was at in all my life!”
“Quest’ultima sgarberia fu più di quanto Alice potesse tollerare: si alzò sdegnata e si avviò per andarsene; il Ghiro piombò nel sonno all’istante, e nessuno degli altri due parve prestare la minima attenzione al fatto che lei se ne andava, benché Alice si voltasse una volta o due, come sperando che la richiamassero; l’ultima volta che li vide, stavano cercando di mettere il Ghiro nella teiera.
«Comunque laggiù non ci torno più!» disse Alice inoltrandosi nel bosco. «Non sono mai stata a un tè più idiota in vita mia!»”.
ILLOGICAL TRUTHS
Like Shakespeare, Carroll’s Alice books –Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland joined in 1871 by Through the Looking-Glass – have given English speakers a stock of colloquial phrases so familiar they are often used without knowledge of where they originated from. For example: ‘Down the rabbit hole’ came to be used to describe becoming increasingly absorbed by the oddity of something; and ‘A Mad Hatter’s tea party’ captures the feeling of a social situation where the only sane person in the room is you. Yet they all refer to a particular sensation: that logic has gone awry, that the everyday world has abruptly become inexpressibly strange.