Genres of Popular Literature I:

Chilren’s Literature & Young UNIT 2 THROUGH THE LOOKING GLASS: A

Adult Fiction
DETAILED ANALYSIS

Structure
2.0 Objectives
2.1 Introduction
2.2 Alice Liddell and her Adventures
2.3 The World of the Looking Glass
2.3.1 Sense and Nonsense
2.3.2 Chess Motif
2.3.3 The Two Queens
2.3.4 Language
2.3.5 The Train Journey and Tweedledee and Tweedledum
2.3.6 Humpty Dumpty
2.3.7 The Lion and the Unicorn
2.3.8 Meeting the Knight and Becoming a Queen
2.4 Let Us Sum Up
2.5 Glossary
2.6 Hints to Check Your progress
2.7 Abbreviations
2.8 Questions
2.9 Suggested Readings & References

2.0 OBJECTIVES
The primary objective of this unit is to analyse chronologically and in detail
Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking Glass. This is being done with the aim of
supplementing your reading of the novel and is not a substitute for your reading
of the novel. Additionally, it looks at the category of children’s literature, popular
fiction and the text as a fantasy narrative. Let us begin by introducing the author.

2.1 INTRODUCTION
Lewis Carroll, pseudonym of Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, was born on 27th
January, 1832, and is known today as the famous Victorian author of the Alice
books. He was a mathematician at Oxford and an ordained deacon at Christ
Church. As a child, Carroll was always shy but gifted with an inquisitive mind
and greatly enjoyed the company of his siblings and invented games and riddles
for them. He had a fondness for stories and wordplay and invented many using
fantasy and imagination. Though born left-handed, Carroll suffered psychological
trauma when he was forced to correct this tendency, but later not only excelled
in mathematics but grew equally fond of wordplay and photography. Little is
known about Dodgson today except his interest in little girls—the most famous
being Alice Liddell—who became the muse for his Alice books. The Alice Books
included the following works, written between 1865 and 1889: Alice’s Adventures
in Wonderland (1865), Through the Looking Glass and What Alice Found There
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(1871), The Wasp in a Wig (1877), The Nursery Alice (1889), and Alice’s Lewis Carroll: Through the
Looking Glass
Adventures Under Ground (1965). Incidentally, The Wasp in a Wig is the lost
chapter from Through the Looking Glass that John Tenniel (the llustrator) had
objected to in 1870, as a result of which Lewis Carroll had dropped the entire
episode from his novel. This was later published as part of the Alice Books. The
Nursery Alice (1890) was a shortened version of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland
(1865) that Lewis Carroll himself adapted for children “from nought to five”.
The book was published by Macmillan a quarter-century after the original Alice.
Alice’s Adventure Under Ground (1862-64) was the original manuscript for Alice’s
Adventures in Wonderland, written for Alice Liddell. Alice Liddell will be our
next point of entry into the author and his life and works.

2.2 ALICE LIDDELL AND HER ADVENTURES

Carroll’s inspiration behind the young protagonist of the Alice books was Alice
Liddell— the daughter of Henry George Liddell, the Dean of Christ Church
College at Oxford. Dodgson penchant for young girls was well known and he
was fond of the Liddell sisters, particularly Alice Liddell. In a diary entry, dated
4th July 1862, Carroll describes a boating expedition he undertook with the ten
year old Alice Liddell and her two sisters. Carroll began to tell the children a
made-up fantastical story of a young girl - Alice’s adventures. This invented
story was expanded as Carroll’s first novel Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland
(1865), and was followed by its sequel, Through the Looking Glass and What
Alice Found There (1871). Through the Looking Glass was published in 1871
when Alice Liddell was already a young woman of sixteen-and-a-half and not a
child anymore. However, in the book she is presented as a seven-and-a-half year
old child. Let us begin by looking at the world of the looking glass in the next
section.

2.3 THE WORLD OF THE LOOKING GLASS

The book opens with Alice mock scolding her black kitten for unwinding a ball
of yarn. While the boys are out in the snow gathering sticks for the bonfire, Alice
being a girl is confined to the house and can only amuse herself through ‘pretend’
games. Alice is presented as an imaginative child with a propensity to daydream
as she lists the mistakes Kitty has made, all along talking to herself and pretending
she is in a dialogue with Kitty. Playing with chess pieces, Alice asks Kitty if it
plays chess and then putting the Red Queen piece before Kitty asks it to imitate
it. Scolding Kitty in the manner of a Victorian governess, she threatens to put
Kitty into the looking glass house for the mischief. We see Alice thinking about
the chess game as she falls asleep and enters the fantastic world of the looking
glass. The story runs like the dream of a half-asleep child in which Alice magically
crosses over to the other side of the mirror into the world of looking glass. The
use of fantasy not only establishes daydreaming as a motif in the text but also
presents the restricted life of young Victorian girls who were denied the freedom
available to boys. A little girl like Alice in a conservative patriarchal society can
wander freely only through her imaginative daydreaming. The next section deals
with the use of nonsense in the novel.

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Genres of Popular Literature I:
Chilren’s Literature & Young
2.3.1 Sense and Nonsense
Adult Fiction
The use of nonsense to depict the world of the looking glass is yet another theme
as this alternative world does not follow any logic and is characterised by its
absence of sense. The book is bracketed in the category of nonsense genre as it
has many fantasy elements and subverts any logical reasoning. There are talking
flowers, a Queen who has to run fast in order to stay at the same place and
animals like sheep that shifts shape. The rules of the mirror world are topsy-
turvy and based on the inverted logic of the outside world as there is a constant
inversion and reversal at work. Alice has to walk in the opposite direction to
reach the Red Queen. The cake is passed around first and then sliced. It is a
highly illogical world where sense or rationality is absent.

Nonsense in literature is often used to produce an alternative reality to critique

conventions and to comment on the lack of sense in our real world. The use of
literary nonsense questions the construction and definition of ‘sense’. What may
seem absurd and nonsensical to adults may have meaning for a child. Martin
Gardner believes that the Alice books have to be read differently since “we are
dealing with a very curious, complicated kind of nonsense, written for British
readers of another century” (AA, 7). By adopting a young girl’s view of her
surroundings, Lewis Carroll looks at the adult world afresh from a child’s
perspective and shakes our definition of ‘sense’. What adults may consider as
normal and sensible may clash with a young child’s perspective. What may be
dismissed as whimsical nonsense in the real world may make complete sense in
the world of the looking glass. The Chess Motif will be examined next.

2.3.2 Chess Motif

The entire book is structured in the form of a chess game. Conventionally, chess
is taken to be a game for the adults since it involves certain well-defined rules
and thought-out irreversible moves. Learning chess is an important stage in
maturation since it is based on unchanging moves. The use of chess as a motif is
also reminiscent of the fact that Carroll taught chess to the Liddell sisters and
even invented the traveller’s chess. The chess motif that runs throughout the text
becomes a key to the narrative. The game represents a map for the entire book
and can be read at multiple levels: at the physical level, at the metaphysical
level, and, at the dream world level of the looking glass. Ostensibly, the world of
the looking glass is laid out in the form of a chess game, where the land itself is
in the form of a giant chess board with rows separated from each other and
divided by brooks and hedges. Alice looks down from the hill and finds that “it
is a huge game of chess that’s being played – all over the world”, and wishes she
“could be one of the chess pieces… (and) wouldn’t mind being a pawn… though
of course I should like to be a Queen best”(22). It is here that Alice finds herself
a chess piece— a white pawn—herself a part of the bigger chess game that Carroll
is playing by constructing the narrative. While, in the middle ages chess was
played on enormous fields with human beings as chess pieces, Carroll borrows
from this idea and presents it as a laid out path for Alice to move on. Given that
it is a fantasy narrative, the text only loosely subscribes to the rules of the game
of chess. The kings remain fixed and dormant while the two queens move/scurry
about. Alice is a mere pawn who progresses from square to square before she
reaches the last square and becomes a queen. The game of chess is conflated
with fantasy and produces a nonsensical narrative. At the physical level, chess
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becomes a symbol of Alice’s journey through life where she begins as a young Lewis Carroll: Through the
Looking Glass
white pawn and eventually becomes a queen. Her unidirectional progress on the
chessboard and its linearity presents her ageing and maturation where she has to
leave behind her childhood and emerge a woman. This development fits in with
the actual rules of the game of chess, where, upon successfully reaching the last
row of the chess board, a pawn may become any piece the player desires (which
is usually a queen, the most powerful of all chess pieces). As mentioned earlier,
the game of Chess represents Alice’s journey to maturation. She is entrapped in
the “adult space” of the world of the chess game, where “each square is a
progression in successive stages of maturity”, with her “arrested movement
symbolized (by) the word ‘checkmate’” (Gordon, 162).

The narrative also carries a metaphysical dimension with the structure of chess
delineated as a metaphor of the world with all its rules. We see the influence of
religion on Carroll as an ordained man of the church who raises philosophical
question on the nature of our existence. The Chess motif presents a deterministic
concept of life. It explores the idea of us humans as pawns, as a part of the bigger
game of chess, journeying through the predetermined plot of life and moving
according to what has been already planned for us. Just as Alice’s journey in the
world of the looking glass is guided by a set of rules that lead to a preordained
conclusion, our lives are akin to an illogical game of chess, with us being a part
of God’s dream. This idea is presented through Tweedeldee, who informs Alice
that she is living the Red King’s dream. It is the Red King who controls the
dream and Alice is but a figment of his dream following a preordained path
already set for her. Life is often drawn as a game of chess where we are mere
pieces in a higher game of chess. According to Martin Gardner, the game of
chess becomes an allegory of life itself (AA, 10). Alice can move freely but only
within the confines of a square and has no real agency, just as we too are living
out the dream of some God. It draws upon the idea of humans as mere chess
pieces on earth with limited influence like Alice’s movement on the board where
things happen to her and she has no real agency. The chess motif helps Carroll
throw light on the predeterministic nature of the universe where free will is an
illusion and we humans are merely pawns being moved by an invisible hand. In
the next section we shall look at the two queens in the novel.

Check Your Progress I

1) The chess motif of chess is central to our understanding of Through the

Looking Glass. Explain.
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2.3.3 The Two Queens

The concept of time in the looking glass world is very complex and warped and
is exemplified by the two queens who are presented as opposites of each other.
The White Queen is feeble and fading and lives backwards in time, so that she 25
Genres of Popular Literature I: remembers only a series of ‘yesterdays’ and ‘tomorrows’ and never ‘todays’.
Chilren’s Literature & Young
Adult Fiction
Her regressiveness is contrasted with the fast forward progression of the Red
Queen who tells Alice that in the looking glass world one has to run twice as fast
in order to stay at the same place (23). In being diametrically opposite to each
other, the figure of the White Queen personifies the nostalgia of bygone childhood
days whereas the Red Queen symbolises the forward march of time contained in
Victorian progress.

Alice’s conduct in the mirror world depicts her patriarchal upbringing where she
is conditioned by the Red Queen to obey, follow the rules and not answer back.
Though Alice is polite and courteous towards everybody, most of the characters
are rude to her. We find that the Red Queen gives her lessons in propriety and
manners but is bossy and overbearing and tries to subdue Alice even when Alice
tries to please her. In his diary entry (vol4) Carroll wrote that he pictured the Red
Queen as formal and strict and the “concentrated essence of all governesses”
with her commands to “look up, speak nicely and don’t twiddle your thumbs all
the time”(20 ). It is the Red Queen who is in charge and assigns Alice the role of
the white pawn and tests Alice towards the end. She is the authority figure who
teaches Alice morals and manners on how to be obedient, civil and good-mannered
and snaps at her often. In the beginning we find Alice speaking to Kitty probably
in the same way as she is scolded at home. It is considered that the Red Queen
was modeled after Mary Prickett, governess of the Liddell children who was
nicknamed ‘pricks’. Language plays a very important part in Through the Looking
Glass, and we shall look at language and how it is used next.

2.3.4 Language
The language of the looking glass world is full of ambiguities and wordplay
since it is used in its literal sense. In the world of the looking glass, language
becomes a source of great confusion for Alice as it is highly nonsensical and
unintelligible and in conflict with her sense and use of language. Though the
characters she meets speak English, the orderly system of language is disrupted
as the language is used in an arbitrary way.

There exists linguistic anarchy in the mirror world as often the language used by
the characters lack sense and appears to be nonsensical. For instance, in the
garden full of talking flowers, Rose tells Alice that the branches of a tree are
called boughs and therefore a tree could bark bough-wough. In the real world,
‘bark’ of a tree and bark of a dog are not related whereas in the world of the
looking glass their meaning cannot be evaded. The trees have a ‘bark’ and can
scare people off to protect the flowers with its ‘bough(s)’. We find many instances
of linguistic wordplay and puns in the text. The flowers of the looking glass
world chatter and fight and aren’t sleep since the flower ‘bed’ is not made soft by
the gardener. At another instance, Alice is befuddled when a frog she meets says
it can’t understand why anyone should “answer” the door unless it has been
“asking” something. Similarly, when Alice “begs pardon”, the White King tells
her “it isn’t respectable to beg”. When Alice remarks she sees “nobody” on the
road, King wishes he had good eyesight to be able to see “nobody” (63).The use
of homophones and homonyms are a source of confusion since one word can
mean different things in different contexts. This is Carroll’s ingenious use of
homophones where two words sound the same but have a different meaning. It
shows that language as our lived experience defies common sense and is highly
26 arbitrary in its use. Similarly, the arbitrary nature of language in defining the
meaning of words is presented throughout the text through the use of homonyms Lewis Carroll: Through the
Looking Glass
(bark, bed, bough and so on) and homophones (tail-tale, flower-flour and so on).

On the face of it, the language of the looking glass world appears nonsensical,
but on deeper interrogation, one finds that the language is highly orderly and
logical and is used in its literal sense. Gnat asks Alice the use of names if they do
not represent literally, the object they denote, and goes on to locate several insects
in Looking Glass Land, including the rocking-horse-fly, the snap-dragon-fly and
the bread-and-butter-fly, that represent the literal meaning of the names. Bread
and butter fly’s wings are thin slices of bread and butter with its head as a lump
of sugar. The rocking horse fly is made up of wood, swings from branch to
branch and lives on sawdust, whereas the snap-dragon–fly as a Christmas - themed
insect is made of plum-pudding. There exists extreme literalness of language as
the insects literally represent the objects they denote. If we carefully analyse, the
use of language in the Looking Glass Land, unlike the slippery language of our
world, where there is a tenuous connection between logic and language, the
language used in the Looking Glass Land is highly coherent and logical. However,
the language of the inverted mirror world lacks sense for Alice since she has
imbibed the language of her own Victorian world. This linguistic nonsense is
used as a form of critique to depict the lack of sense and semantics in our real
adult world where a single word can have many meanings and where it is
necessary to know not only the correct meaning of the words but also how a
particular word is used in different contexts and situations.

We find that the language of the looking glass world is very logical and is not
used loosely at all like in our world. Words have the power not only to create
events but also to manifest them. Lewis Carroll demonstrates this power of
language to create events through the use of nursery rhymes that must follow the
determined the course of action. Whatever is written in the nursery rhymes shall
come to pass: Humpty Dumpty shall “have a great fall”, Tweedledee and
Tweedledum shall “fight over the rattle” not because they want to, but because it
is written. Words give rise to events simply by being spoken. Language is not
passive and has the power to predict and predetermine events! The author depicts
how words have the power to assign identity to people and things. The very act
of ‘naming’ not only identifies but also categorises, labels and stereotypes. It is
through language that hierarchy and order are created and imposed. In the forest
with no names, the fawn and pawn (Alice) are initially friends, but as soon as
they reach the end of the wood, the fawn darts away in fear realising that Alice
is a human child and hence, not harmless. The forest in which things have no
names is a reflection of the pre-lapsarian universe where things exist without
any imposed socio-cultural meanings and a ‘human’ and ‘animal’ are at the same
level. Let’s look at the train journey that Alice undertakes and her meeting with
Tweedledee and Tweedledum next.

Check Your Progress 2

1) How does language work in Through the Looking Glass? Explain the
linguistic ambiguities and wordplay in the novel.
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Genres of Popular Literature I:
Chilren’s Literature & Young
2.3.5 The Train Journey and Tweedledee and Tweedledum
Adult Fiction
Since Through the Looking Glass is a fantasy narrative, there is no real continuity.
As Alice goes from the second square to the third, while trying to avoid some
elephants behaving like bees, she suddenly finds herself seated in a train
compartment with co-passengers who are - a goat, a beetle and a man dressed in
paper. Alice discovers that she is travelling without a ticket, when the guard asks
Alice to show her ticket, claiming “his time is worth a thousand pounds a minute,”
(26). Funnily enough, the guard’s statement is extended and applied to trivial
things and used as a refrain to represent a mechanised way of thinking where
everything is seen by adults in terms of time and money. It reflects a commercialist
society where time is equated with money. The appearance of the train shows
not only a child’s fascination with trains but also presents trains as mechanised
wonder of industrial England— a symbol of progress for Victorian England that
signals its fast-paced development and regimented way of life.

The twins, Tweedledee and Tweedledum, Alice meets in the fourth square are
based on a nursery rhyme by James Halliwell’s ‘The Nursery Rhymes of England’
(1886). The phrase tweedle-dee and tweedle-dum was used to describe two
identical things. The twins are the mirror images of each other which suggest
that the world of looking glass is based on the theme of inversion. The twins are
not only the physical inversion of each other but also have inverted thought
processes and represent contradictions and fights. They are fat grown up men
who have been infantilised for being immature and fighting over a rattle like
boys. Critics see the twins as a satire on the Whigs and Tories of England who
were constantly at loggerheads.

The twins admonish Alice for not beginning right by greeting them and teach her
the social protocol on how to correctly shake the right hand. Tweedledee begins
reciting “The Walrus and the Carpenter”, a poem that describes the story of a
Walrus and a Carpenter who trick young, gullible oysters into leaving their
underwater home for a stroll and eats them. The poem is an original nursery
rhyme written by Lewis Carroll and is a departure from traditional nursery rhymes
that always came with a moral instruction. The poem “Walrus and the Carpenter”
instead becomes a cautionary tale about misleading promises of the corrupt adult
world. It paints the adult world as that of lost innocence and the knowledge that
comes through the experience of suffering and deception.

Carroll dwells on the metaphysical question of the nature of reality through

Tweedledee who tells Alice that she is not real but only a “sort of thing” in the
Red King’s dream, adding that, Alice is a figment of the sleeping Red King’s
dream and would vanish if he were to wake up. Though Alice considers this as
nonsense and claims she is real and not imaginary, Carroll questions if we are
indeed a part of some God’s dream. The identical twins also illustrate the power
of language to create events through the use of words. The nursery rhyme must
follow a predetermined course of action, and Tweedledee and Tweedledum shall
“fight over the rattle”, not because they want to, but because it is already written
in the nursery rhyme. And, as the poem predicts, they are both ‘frightened” away
by a “monstrous crow”. Alice meets Humpty Dumpty next and we shall examine
the role Humpty Dumpty places in the novel next.

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2.3.6 Humpty Dumpty Lewis Carroll: Through the
Looking Glass

In the sixth square, the egg purchased from the sheep’s shop turns into Humpty
Dumpty whom Alice now finds perched atop a wall. Alice is able to recognise
him from the nursery rhyme. Humpty Dumpty asks Alice her name and upon
being told the name, declares that ‘Alice’ is a stupid name since it means nothing
and gives us no information about the person. For Humpty Dumpty, a proper
name like ‘Alice’ must tell us something about the person and his/ her attributes.
Humpty Dumpty exposes the ambiguity inherent in language where a person’s
name does not represent him in any way, and believes the name of a person
should necessarily give us an idea about the person since a person is represented
by his/her name. Humpty Dumpty raises important questions on the construction
of language and the arbitrary nature of words by arguing that there is no link
between words and what they signify in the real world.

When Alice tries to compliment Humpty Dumpty on his cravat but is unsure if
he is wearing a belt or a neck tie, Humpty Dumpty explains that it is a tie that
was an ‘un-birthday present’— a present which can be given on any day which
is not one’s birthday. Humpty Dumpty turns logic on its head by coining new
words like ‘unbirthday present’ that denote presents given on non-birthdays.
According to him, since the connection between words and what they signify is
arbitrary, the speaker can make the words mean whatever he wants them to mean.
He assigns new meanings to existing words like ‘glory’ which for him mean ‘an
argument that knocks-down an opponent’. By giving his own personal meanings
to words, he considers himself to be a master of language: “when I use a word, it
means just what I want it to mean.” (57) He questions if we own the language or
is it language that controls us? What Humpty Dumpty means is that language is
made by humans for their ease of communication and we are the masters of
language. Therefore, he condescendingly assigns his own private meaning to the
words and declares that he will make a word mean whatever he wishes it to
mean.

Humpty Dumpty translates “Jabberwocky’ for Alice—the poem written in reverse

that she found upon entering the looking glass world. Ostensibly, the poem is
about a boy who goes on an adventure to find Jabberwock—a mythical dragon
like beast—and kills it to return home triumphant to his father as a hero. The
poem is an example of literary nonsense since it is full of obscure,
incomprehensible words that make little sense. The poem has a number of
‘portmanteau’ words that Humpty Dumpty defines as those words where “two
meanings are packed up into one word” (59). Jabberwocky is full of made-up
portmanteau words like ‘frabjous’ which is a portmanteau of ‘fair’, fabulous and
joyous, ‘mimsy’ that is a combination of “miserable and flimsy”. The poem also
has nonce words or invented words created for a single occasion to solve an
immediate problem of communication like ‘uffish’, which is explained by Carroll
as “a state of mind where voice is gruffish, manner roughish and temper huffish.”
(AA, 163)The poem shows great inventiveness with language and has several
mythical animals like ‘raths’ or green pigs, bandersnatch and jubjub bird that do
not exist in reality. Like Humpty Dumpty, Carroll coined new words and also
created new meanings of existing words to show the evolving nature of language
where the meaning of words is not fixed but ever changing.
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Genres of Popular Literature I: We find Humpty Dumpty to be a wordsmith who is fond of inventing new words
Chilren’s Literature & Young
Adult Fiction just like Lewis Carroll was. Today, the English dictionary has a number of words
that were originally coined by Carroll. Even the word ‘jabberwocky’ which means
a monster beast in the poem, has found its way into the English dictionary and is
used to mean literary nonsense or ‘meaningless speech or writing’. Humpty
Dumpty is a linguist who is extremely proud of his knowledge and is a literal
egghead as his head is shaped like an egg. It is noteworthy that the word ‘egghead’
is often disparagingly used for an intellectual who is too proud of his knowledge,
and that is exactly how Alice finds him to be. However, as the nursery rhyme
says, Humpty Dumpty’s pride has a fall.

2.3.7 The Lion and the Unicorn

In the next square, Alice meets the White King’s messengers Hatta and Haiga
who are Mad Hatter and March Hare from Alice in Wonderland. The messenger
informs the White King that the lion and the unicorn are fighting for the King’s
crown. The animosity between the Lion and Unicorn is presented through a
famous nursery rhyme. The Lion and the Unicorn traditionally were the animals
used in Britain’s and Scotland’s coat of arms in the 12th century and talks of the
rivalry between Britain and Scotland.

At another level, the episode with the lion and unicorn carries a topical reference.
Political cartoonist and illustrator of Alice books, John Tenniel, who was famous
for his Punch magazine cartoons as a political satirist, fabulises the lion and the
unicorn to caricature two famous politicians of his day—William Gladstone
and Benjamin Disraeli. These animals are not any generic lion and unicorn but
carry a reference to the contemporary politics of Carroll’s age, where Tenniel
shows the confrontation between the liberal Whigs and the conservative Tories
of his age by making the Unicorn look like Disraeli while the lion is made to
resemble Gladstone. These two politicians battled through Queen Victoria’s reign
and were always sparring with each other. Though Queen Victoria was personally
fond of Disraeli, it was lion Gladstone that “beat the Unicorn all around the
town” and had a longer stint as the nation’s Prime Minister. The Cake symbolically
represents the united electoral mandate that chose Gladstone, who succeeded
Disraeli and served as the Prime Minister for twelve years. The two political
contenders are depicted as the rational Gladstone and the irrational Unicorn,
both of whom desire a larger electoral slice of the national pie. There is a role
reversal when Disraeli—the unreal unicorn, himself known for his unrealistic
ideologies, ironically, calls Alice a “fabulous monster”. Then there is the difficulty
of cutting the cake which proves to be a difficult exercise as the slices of cut cake
fuse together time and again, despite Alice’s repeated slicing. The unicorn explains
that in the world of the looking glass, the cake has to be passed around first and
cut afterwards. On being passed around, the cake splits into three pieces on its
own—figuratively representing the United Kingdom of Wales, Scotland and
England and the united electoral mandate of the Britons. In the next section, we
shall look at Alice’s interaction with the Knight and her becoming a Queen.

2.3.8 Meeting the Knight and Becoming a Queen

In the chapter ‘In my Own Invention’, Lewis Carroll includes a caricature sketch
of himself in the form of the White Knight who accompanies Alice to the seventh
30
square before she reaches the last square and is crowned a queen. Tenniel shows Lewis Carroll: Through the
Looking Glass
a clear resemblance between the author and the White Knight in terms of their
“shaggy hair…gentle face and large mild eyes” (72) and other physical features.
Bearing a sword clearly shaped like a cross, the Knight is drawn very similar to
Carroll the clergyman, as a guardian of religion and the defender of truth and
morality. The portrayal of the White Knight as the gallant alter ego of the author
himself is highly self-referential as the Knight shares the same traits as Carroll.
While Carroll spoke with a stammer, the knight has an awkward gait, rides
miserably, and repeatedly falls off the steed. Not only this, the Knight too is fond
of wordplay and is a great inventor of things just as Carroll was. The Knight
carries around an array of objects such as a beehive, a dish, a mousetrap, and a
little box to keep clothes and sandwiches, and has even invented anklets to save
the horses from shark bites. Though these objects have little utility, it reminds us
of knick-knacks such as wind-up animals, chess set for travelers, sealing wax
and other things that Carroll invented. We also find that the White Knight is the
only character in the world of the looking glass that is chivalrous and kind to
Alice and saves her from the evil Red Knight. Before helping her cross the final
frontier, the knight sings a parting song to her about humans growing old and
losing their innocence. The plaintive song is Carroll’s tribute to his friendship
with young Alice and a sad realisation that they inevitably have to part ways
upon Alice’s maturation into a young woman.

As soon as Alice reaches the last square, she magically finds a golden crown on
her head and discovers she will soon be crowned with a formal feast in her
honour. The party can be taken as a symbolic coming-of-age feast, where all the
quirky characters of the looking glass world that have been a part of Alice’s
growing-up get to participate. The ceremony has two Queens examining Alice
on proper social conduct, dos and don’ts of appropriate behaviour, while teaching
her manners and etiquette to prepare her for her role as a young lady. The pushy
Red Queen criticises Alice and tells her to be obedient and behave appropriately
since she is now the queen. Carroll makes a comment on the excessive emphasis
on manners and the farcical rules that a person was expected to observe in
Victorian society. The Red Queen considers it rude to “cut any one you have
been introduced to” and applies this social protocol to the leg of mutton as well
(256).The banquet episode where stiff outward formality is put on display even
to food items such as a ‘leg of mutton’ and the ‘pudding’ is a caricature of Victorian
emphasis on manners.

The Red Queen asks Alice to give a speech. As Alice rises to assert herself as the
new queen, in a climactic moment, the banquet goes awry. The crockery comes
alive, candles grow taller and reach the ceiling and the White Queen tumbles
into the soup. Unable to make sense of this confusion and madness, Alice angrily
turns the table over and blames the Red Queen whom she considers responsible
for all the chaos. She grabs and shakes the Red Queen who begins to diminish
into a kitten. By taking hold of the Red Queen, Alice checkmates the Red King.
This signals the end of the game of chess of the dream world as Alice wakes up
and realises that she had been dreaming all along. She questions the nature of her
dream and wonders if it was she who was dreaming or whether she was indeed
living the Red King’s dream? The book ends with Carroll questioning the nature
of our existence and the question of whose dream is it that we are living?
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Genres of Popular Literature I: Check Your Progress 3
Chilren’s Literature & Young
Adult Fiction 1) Critics have called Lewis Carroll’s use of nonsense and fantasy as highly
subversive. Do you agree with this assessment?
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2.4 LET US SUM UP

In this unit we have looked at the following elements:
The use of fantasy and nursery rhymes anchor the text in the category of
children’s literature. Several fictional characters such as Humpty Dumpty,
Tweedledee and Tweedledum, the lion and the unicorn are based on the
traditional nursery rhymes of Victorian England.
Though Through the Looking Glass belongs to the genre of children’s
literature, there are well-disguised adult themes as well, that makes the work
more symbolic and allegorical. Unlike the other children’s books of the
author’s age, Through the Looking Glass registers a departure from the
conventional form of children’s literature.
The mirror world is characterised by creatures that are rude to Alice and
often talk down to her. It becomes a reflection of the actual adult world
Alice inhabits with its conventions and rules of conduct. In her politeness
and courtesy towards the characters of the glass world, Alice exemplifies
the conduct expected of a Victorian girl child.
Carroll uses the guise of fantasy to look critically at Victorian society and
the authoritarian world of the adults. Alice as a young girl is a representative
figure of Victorian childhood and the character of Alice, critiques a number
of subjects ranging from God and religion (Red King), arbitrary construction
of language (Humpty Dumpty and Jabberwocky), political tussles (lion and
the unicorn), to the imposed order and restrictive world of the Victorian
patriarchal society (Red Queen).
The use of the chess motif is symbolic and works at different levels. At an
allegorical level, the game of chess represents the progression of life. As
one grows and matures through the journey of life one wakes up to reality.

2.5 GLOSSARY
Victorian: Pertaining to Queen Victoria of England or the period of Queen
Victoria’s reign (20 June 1837—22 January1901)

Didactic: intending to teach, particularly in having moral instruction as an ulterior

motive.

32 Fantastic: imaginary or not based on reality; foolish or irrational.

Portmanteau: a word that combines the sounds and meanings of two words. Lewis Carroll: Through the
Looking Glass
Neologism: a newly coined word or expression.
Jabberwocky: this word has come to mean ‘nonsense’ was originally coined by
Lewis Carroll.
Wordsmith: an expert in the use of words.
Unicorn: an unreal animal represented as a horse with a single straight horn
projecting from its forehead.

2.6 HINTS TO CHECK YOUR PROGRESS

Check Your Progress 1

1) Read Section 2.3.2 carefully and then write the answer in your own words.

Check Your Progress 2

1) Read Section 2.3.4 carefully and then write the answer in your own words.

Check Your Progress 3

1) Read the whole of Section 2.3 carefully and then write the answer in your
own words.

2.7 ABBREVIATIONS
AA—The Annotated Alice.

TLG—Through the looking Glass.

2.8 QUESTIONS
1) How does language work in Through the Looking Glass? Explain the
linguistic ambiguities and wordplay in the novel.
3) Would it be correct to say that Through the Looking Glass comes under the
purview of both popular fiction and children’s literature?
4) What do we learn about the Victorian society from Alice’s adventures in the
world of the Looking Glass?
5) The instability of language in Through the Looking Glass is intended to
question the very foundation of the Victorian emphasis on reason, order and
propriety. Discuss.
6) How does Carroll posit a relook at the established concepts of logic and
reality in the guise of fantasy?
7) Critics have called Lewis Carroll’s use of nonsense and fantasy as highly
subversive. Do you agree with this assessment?

2.9 SUGGESTED READINGS & REFERENCES

Fiedler, Leslie. “Towards a Definition of Popular Literature”.C.W.E.Bigsby and
Bowling Green University Press.
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Genres of Popular Literature I: Gardner, Martin. The Annotated Alice. London, Penguin. 1970.
Chilren’s Literature & Young
Adult Fiction Gordon, Jan B. “The Alice Books and the Metaphors of Victorian Childhood”.
Through the Looking Glass. ed Brinda Bose. Delhi: Worldview Publication,2000.
143-165.Print.
Halder, Deb Dulal. Popular Fiction: Critical Essays. Book Age Publications,
Delhi: 2014
Hughes ,Felicity. “Children’s literature: Theory and Practice”. ELH. Vol. 45, No.
3 (1978), pp. 542-561.
Spacks, Patricia Meyer. “Logic and Language in Through the Looking Glass”.
Through the Looking Glass. Brinda Bose (ed.). Worldview Publications. Delhi:
2000.
Shodhganga: http://shodhganga.inflibnet.ac.in/bitstream/10603/13038/9/
09_chapter%203.pdf
https://www.alice-in-wonderland.net/resources/chapters-script/a-wasp-in-a-wig/

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