Alice's Adventures in Wonderland Decoded

by David Day

So, just as the pigeon of Dodona nested in the tallest tree in Dodona, Alice’s Pigeon has nested in the tallest tree in Wonderland. Once again Alice is confused about her identity, not just because of her size but also because of her body’s absurd proportions. And admittedly, with her ridiculously long neck, she looks more like a snake than a child. For a time, Alice forgets the Caterpillar’s instructions and loses her temper—and sense of proportion—as she attempts to argue with the Pigeon about her identity.

  The pigeon has landed: Zeus at Dodona.

  “And just as I’d taken the highest tree in the wood,” continued the Pigeon, raising its voice to a shriek, “and just as I was thinking I should be free of them at last, they must needs come wriggling down from the sky! Ugh, Serpent!”

  “But I’m not a serpent, I tell you!” said Alice. “I’m a—I’m a—”

  “Well! What are you?” said the Pigeon. “I can see you’re trying to invent something!”

  “I—I’m a little girl,” said Alice, rather doubtfully, as she remembered the number of changes she had gone through that day.

  “A likely story indeed!” said the Pigeon in a tone of the deepest contempt. “I’ve seen a good many little girls in my time, but never one with such a neck as that! No, no! You’re a serpent; and there’s no use denying it. I suppose you’ll be telling me next that you never tasted an egg!”

  A LIKELY STORY Alice’s sudden soaring up into the trees is a demonstration of the philosopher’s dictum “The mind is the pilot of the soul.” She experiences a mental flight into a world that can be seen only through the eye of the mind. When Alice disputes the Pigeon’s assertion that she is a serpent, and says she is a little girl, the Pigeon replies, “A likely story indeed!”

  To any student of Plato, the phrase “a likely story,” or eikos mythos, is immediately recognizable as the philosopher’s description of the physical world. It evokes the cardinal doctrine of Platonism that the visible world is only a likeness or model of an eternal reality. In Timaeus—Plato’s most Pythagorean and mystical work—he explains that in the physical material world, one “should not look for anything more than a likely story.” As the physical world is in a constant state of change, the philosopher must not trust this visible illusion of reality but rather focus on what is true and eternal.

  The Pigeon’s argument with Alice ultimately rests on its quite valid refusal to be deceived by arbitrary classifications determined by humans: “ ‘I’ve seen a good many little girls in my time, but never one with such a neck as that! No, no! You’re a serpent; and there’s no denying it. I suppose you’ll be telling me next that you never tasted an egg!’

  ‘I have tasted eggs, certainly,’ said Alice, who was a very truthful child; ‘but little girls eat eggs quite as much as serpents do, you know.’ ” From Alice’s perspective the Pigeon is pursuing a logical fallacy known to philosophers as the “undistributed middle.” Just because little girls and serpents are both egg eaters doesn’t mean they are both the same species, or are members of the same class.

  However, from the perspective of a brooding pigeon intent on guarding her eggs, any long-necked egg-eating creature might legitimately be classified as a species or class of serpent. Any other secondary characteristics that differentiate serpents from little girls are logically and practically irrelevant to the Pigeon.

  In describing Alice’s neck as being “like a serpent,” Carroll may be hinting at a connection to the neck-serpent and Pythagoras. Despite Alice’s claims to the contrary, the Pigeon insists she is “a kind of serpent”: she is a disciple of Pythagoras whose cult employs the symbol of a serpent coiled about an egg—to represent the creation of time and space.

  After some time spent swooping through the forest, Alice once again comes down to earth, and disentangling herself from the trees, she manages to bring herself “down to her usual height” and is once again on her way.

  Talking to herself, Alice says, “Come, there’s half my plan done now!” But of course Alice is not anywhere near halfway there. Nevertheless, she has at last achieved a sense of proportion and a sense of herself despite changes in physical size and shape. And she is in complete agreement with Pythagoras himself, who once observed, “The beginning is half the whole,” or, as it was put later by the Roman poet Horace, “Well begun is half done.”

  The creation of time and space: Symbol of the cult of Pythagoras.

  At one point in their dispute, the Pigeon provokes Alice: “Well! What are you?…I can see you’re trying to invent something!” This interjection is something of a riddle that can be answered only by understanding it as a mythological allusion.

  As already observed, Carroll has assigned Alice and her sisters the conflated mythological identity of the three Muses-Fates-Furies. In Wonderland’s prelude poem, we are told the “cruel Three” are indeed Fates, but they are also the inspirational muses and the source of this fairy tale. They are “Memory’s mystic band”: the Muses, whose mother is the goddess Mnemosyne, or Memory.

  The Pigeon’s taunt about “trying to invent something!” is an allusion to the old truism “Necessity is the mother of invention.” In Greek mythology, the goddess known as Ananke, or Necessity, is the mother of the Fates; Alice’s particular identity as a Fate was Secunda, or Lachesis, meaning “She who allots,” and who is, as Plato tells us, “the maiden daughter of Necessity.”

  “I have tasted eggs, certainly,” said Alice, who was a very truthful child; “but little girls eat eggs quite as much as serpents do, you know.”

  “I don’t believe it,” said the Pigeon; “but if they do, why then they’re a kind of serpent, that’s all I can say.”

  This was such a new idea to Alice, that she was quite silent for a minute or two, which gave the Pigeon the opportunity of adding, “You’re looking for eggs, I know that well enough; and what does it matter to me whether you’re a little girl or a serpent?”

  “It matters a good deal to me,” said Alice hastily; “but I’m not looking for eggs, as it happens; and if I was, I shouldn’t want yours: I don’t like them raw.”

  “Well, be off, then!” said the Pigeon in a sulky tone, as it settled down again into its nest. Alice crouched down among the trees as well as she could, for her neck kept getting entangled among the branches, and every now and then she had to stop and untwist it. After a while she remembered that she still held the pieces of mushroom in her hands, and she set to work very carefully, nibbling first at one and then at the other, and growing sometimes taller and sometimes shorter, until she had succeeded in bringing herself down to her usual height.

  Mother of the Muses: Mnemosyne, by Dante Gabriel Rossetti, 1881.

  After this debate about identity, Alice begins once again to experiment with—or measure and allot herself—the portions of her magic mushroom: nibbling a bit of one, then a bit of the other, until she reaches a satisfactory size and proportion. Slowly but surely she has gained some control. She no longer feels her identity is threatened by these rapid physical transformations, and knows she can use her powers to adapt to whatever context she finds herself in. No longer confused by her physical appearance, she begins to understand that at the deepest level of her immortal soul, she increasingly moves toward becoming the mistress of her own fate.

  It was so long since she had been anything near the right size, that it felt quite strange at first; but she got used to it in a few minutes, and began talking to herself, as usual. “Come, there’s half my plan done now! How puzzling all these changes are! I’m never sure what I’m going to be, from one minute to another! However, I’ve got back to my right size: the next thing is, to get into that beautiful garden—how is that to be done, I wonder?” As she said this, she came suddenly upon an open place, with a little house in it about four feet high. “Whoever lives there,” thought Alice, “it’ll never do to come upon them this size: why, I should frighten them out of their wits!” So she began nibbling at the right-hand bit again, and did not venture to go near the house till sh
e had brought herself down to nine inches high.

  Chapter 6: Pig and Pepper

  “We’re all mad here.”

  Inspirational vapours: The Priestess of Delphi, by John Collier, 1891.

  THE KITCHEN ORACLE Apollo, the god of knowledge, was the divinity most frequently portrayed in art, architecture and literature in Oxford. Apollo was also the god of prophecy, and his sanctuary at Delphi was the most respected oracle of the ancient world. Consequently, it was something of an Oxford tradition for classically educated students and dons to make comic allusions to the Delphic oracle in political pamphlets and squibs.

  One such pamphlet was Lewis Carroll’s “The Elections to the Hebdomadal Council,” published only a few months after Wonderland. It portrays the university’s governing council as an absurd and disastrously inept Delphic oracle. Pointedly quoting one of the council’s more convoluted proclamations, Carroll compares it to the obscure and ambiguous prophecies of Delphi, and concludes: “So says the oracle, and, for myself, I / Must say it beats to fits the one at Delphi!”

  PIG AND PEPPER.

  For a minute or two she stood looking at the house, and wondering what to do next, when suddenly a footman in livery came running out of the wood—(she considered him to be a footman because he was in livery: otherwise, judging by his face only, she would have called him a fish)—and rapped loudly at the door with his knuckles. It was opened by another footman in livery, with a round face, and large eyes like a frog; and both footmen, Alice noticed, had powdered hair that curled all over their heads. She felt very curious to know what it was all about, and crept a little way out of the wood to listen.

  The Fish-Footman began by producing from under his arm a great letter, nearly as large as himself, and this he handed over to the other, saying, in a solemn tone, “For the Duchess. An invitation from the Queen to play croquet.” The Frog-Footman repeated, in the same solemn tone, only changing the order of the words a little, “From the Queen. An invitation for the Duchess to play croquet.”

  Then they both bowed low, and their curls got entangled together.

  Alice laughed so much at this, that she had to run back into the wood for fear of their hearing her; and, when she next peeped out, the Fish-Footman was gone, and the other was sitting on the ground near the door, staring stupidly up into the sky.

  Alice went timidly up to the door, and knocked.

  “There’s no sort of use in knocking,” said the Footman, “and that for two reasons. First, because I’m on the same side of the door as you are; secondly, because they’re making such a noise inside, no one could possibly hear you.” And certainly there was a most extraordinary noise going on within—a constant howling and sneezing, and every now and then a great crash, as if a dish or kettle had been broken to pieces.

  “Please, then,” said Alice, “how am I to get in?”

  “There might be some sense in your knocking,” the Footman went on without attending to her, “if we had the door between us. For instance, if you were inside, you might knock, and I could let you out, you know.” He was looking up into the sky all the time he was speaking, and this Alice thought decidedly uncivil. “But perhaps he can’t help it,” she said to herself; “his eyes are so very nearly at the top of his head. But at any rate he might answer questions.—How am I to get in?” she repeated, aloud.

  “I shall sit here,” the Footman remarked, “till tomorrow—”

  At this moment the door of the house opened, and a large plate came skimming out, straight at the Footman’s head: it just grazed his nose, and broke to pieces against one of the trees behind him.

  “—or next day, maybe,” the Footman continued in the same tone, exactly as if nothing had happened.

  “How am I to get in?” asked Alice again, in a louder tone.

  “Are you to get in at all?” said the Footman. “That’s the first question, you know.”

  It was, no doubt: only Alice did not like to be told so. “It’s really dreadful,” she muttered to herself, “the way all the creatures argue. It’s enough to drive one crazy!”

  The Footman seemed to think this a good opportunity for repeating his remark, with variations. “I shall sit here,” he said, “on and off, for days and days.”

  “But what am I to do?” said Alice.

  “Anything you like,” said the Footman, and began whistling.

  “Oh, there’s no use in talking to him,” said Alice desperately: “he’s perfectly idiotic!” And she opened the door and went in.

  In Wonderland’s Duchess’s kitchen, Lewis Carroll has created a comic parody of the oracle of Apollo at Delphi gone badly wrong. Here and elsewhere (as in The Hunting of the Snark: An Agony in Eight Fits), Carroll uses the word fit in its archaic sense of “a fragment or part of a poem or song,” but of course the word also implies its common meaning of “a seizure or convulsion.”

  In the ancient temple at Delphi, a prophetess called Pythia sat on a three-legged stool and inhaled vapours from a great cauldron filled with a fragrant broth of laurel leaves and narcotic herbs. The cauldron was tended by the priestess of Hestia, goddess of the hearth. These vapours inspired Pythia to speak in tongues, and from these utterances came the enigmatic, riddling verses that were the prophetic “fits” of the oracle.

  In Wonderland’s kitchen, the Duchess sits on a three-legged stool inhaling the smoke and pepper from a great cauldron filled with a noxious broth. The cauldron and hearth are tended by the cook. These vapours of smoke and pepper inspire the Duchess to utter nonsensical riddling verses that are more like fits of rage than prophesies.

  The door led right into a large kitchen, which was full of smoke from one end to the other: the Duchess was sitting on a three-legged stool in the middle, nursing a baby; the cook was leaning over the fire, stirring a large cauldron which seemed to be full of soup.

  “There’s certainly too much pepper in that soup!” Alice said to herself, as well as she could for sneezing.

  There was certainly too much of it in the air. Even the Duchess sneezed occasionally; and as for the baby, it was sneezing and howling alternately without a moment’s pause. The only things in the kitchen that did not sneeze, were the cook, and a large cat which was sitting on the hearth and grinning from ear to ear.

  “Please would you tell me,” said Alice, a little timidly, for she was not quite sure whether it was good manners for her to speak first, “why your cat grins like that?”

  “It’s a Cheshire cat,” said the Duchess, “and that’s why. Pig!”

  The Duchess and the cook have the opposite temperaments expected of the spiritual and inspiring priestess of Apollo and the gentle and caring priestess of Hestia. And yet the Duchess is comparable to Pythia in many ways. The title Duchess also suggests a pun on the official name of the ancient Greek high priestess Dadochos (meaning “the torch-bearing priestess”), who reveals the mysteries. And the cook and Hestia’s priestess are certainly similar in their mutual duties of tending the hearths in the inner sanctums.

  Most significantly, the Duchess is a prophetess of sorts. And her baby can easily be interpreted as a manifestation of her predictions. When the Duchess screams “Pig!” over her curious backward-evolving child, it does indeed become a pig.

  Nor is this child-pig or pig-child allusion arbitrary. The most common offering made by supplicants to the oracle at Delphi was a pig, and when the sacrificial pig was offered up, it was ceremonially identified as “a child of the hearth of Athens” (or Corinth, etc., depending on the origin of the supplicant).

  Beyond these allusions to the Delphic oracle and to classical history and mythology, Carroll’s contemporaries would have recognized contemporary events and individuals being satirized in the episode in the Duchess’s kitchen.

  The real-life Oxford counterpart of both the temple of the oracle at Delphi and the Duchess’s kitchen is one of the most easily identified landmarks portrayed in the fairy tale. This is one of the oldest buildings at Oxford: Christ Church’s grea
t kitchen. Built by Cardinal Wolsey during the reign of Henry VIII, the kitchen is considered one of the ancient wonders of Christ Church. For most of its history, it had a massive hearth for the roasting of entire pigs, and like the Duchess’s kitchen was poorly ventilated and frequently filled with smoke.

  She said the last word with such sudden violence that Alice quite jumped; but she saw in another moment that it was addressed to the baby, and not to her, so she took courage, and went on again:—

  “I didn’t know that Cheshire cats always grinned; in fact, I didn’t know that cats could grin.”

  “They all can,” said the Duchess; “and most of ’em do.”

  “I don’t know of any that do,” Alice said very politely, feeling quite pleased to have got into a conversation.

  “You don’t know much,” said the Duchess; “and that’s a fact.”

  Alice did not at all like the tone of this remark, and thought it would be as well to introduce some other subject of conversation. While she was trying to fix on one, the cook took the cauldron of soup off the fire, and at once set to work throwing everything within her reach at the Duchess and the baby—the fire-irons came first; then followed a shower of saucepans, plates, and dishes. The Duchess took no notice of them even when they hit her; and the baby was howling so much already, that it was quite impossible to say whether the blows hurt it or not.

  Hell of a kitchen: Cooking at Christ Church.

  “Oh, please mind what you’re doing!” cried Alice, jumping up and down in an agony of terror. “Oh, there goes his precious nose!”, as an unusually large saucepan flew close by it, and very nearly carried it off.

  “If everybody minded their own business,” the Duchess said in a hoarse growl, “the world would go round a deal faster than it does.”