Charles Synyard (@CharlesSynyard)

7/9 “‘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’m—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 deepest contempt. ‘I’ve seen a good many little girls in my time, but never one with such a nexk 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’ve 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.’ “‘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.” One of the most ponderous exchanges in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1865), by Lewis Carroll. Alice learns a new and uncomfortable way of seeing herself, and keeps silent for a while, lost in thought. When Alice’s neck grows so that her head pokes above the leaves, a scene many will remember from the groteque depiction by Tenniel, the Pigeon is alarmed that Alice is after her eggs, and becomes defensive. In the 1982 Pennyroyal edition with woodcut engravings by Barry Moser, the Pigeon is shown attacking with a mother’s fierceness. But as always, the one way we can be certain the scene should not be read is how James R. Kincaid does in the Notes, ”Alice, as often happens, has fallen into a logical trap and is defeated by her own weapons. Here she seeks to make a distinction between little girls and serpents—and fails.” Clearly, this is not a question of taxonomy, for the Pigeon or for Alice. The sleep-deprived mother sees a long-necked creature, and thinks serpent. If Alice lacks scales and has a head of hair, but still devoured her eggs, it would be a distinction without a difference. Her unusual appearance could mean either a different variety of predator after the same kind of meal, or a disguise put on by a common serpent to look innocuous. The mother is acting rationally. For Alice, though, this is a moment revelatory of her true little girl, and human, nature. Of all humans, little girls are the most harmless, and are seen, and taught to see themselves, as cute and innocent—yet they too are carnivores. We eat animal products, bought at a market, in such an abstracted way where we can see no link to the hunt and chase hunter-gatherers had to go through for the same. To be sure, we harvest eggs in such a way where the domesticated hen population’s continuance is assured—but still, these little girls eat, as just part of one meal a day, one or more of these eggs, which by nature are, to these birds, the focus of all their hopes and anxieties! Had the Pigeon seen Alice at table, she would have had good reason to see her as one more threatening serpent, a creature portrayed as especially heinous due to its role in the Fall. Alice is confronted with the predatory in her nature, and considers it for a minute. I don’t think she is about to feel guilt over it, and turn vegan like some do now. But she can no longer think of herself as just some dainty, harmless creature, whose only concern needs be avoiding falling prey to others. Even as a girl, there is something zero-sum about her good, that can or must come at the expense of others. That awareness will be part of her restored sense of identity once she leaves Wonderland. I have written so many lengthy posts on the Pennyroyal Alice already. Best only to touch on two other conundrums that come up: another that gives Alice pause, and one that baffles even the Queen of Hearts. When Alice arrives at the Mad Tea-Party, and takes a seat at the table, the March Hare offers her wine, but finds none and is told there isn’t any—would she have taken a glass? I can only think of the first episode of the anime Candy Candy, which has two little girls picnicking and drinking wine—setting off a terse exchange. The Hatter—would you believe it? Moser’s model was translator Allen Mandelbaum!—tries to divert the conversation by asking the famous riddle: “Why is a raven like a writing-desk?” Alice tries to puzzle this out, but a few pages later admits defeat. ”’No, I give up,’ Alice replied. ‘What’s the answer?’ “‘I haven’t the slightest idea,’ said the Hatter. ”’Nor I,‘ said the March Hare. ”Alice sighed wearily. ‘I think you might do something better with the time,’ she said, ‘than waste it asking riddles with no answer.’” As Kincaid notes, the riddle initially had no answer. Carroll later offered, “Because it can produce a few notes, though they are VERY flat; and it is never put with the wrong end in front.” The American readership has made itself felt with the prominence of the answer, “Poe wrote on both of them,” which I was familiar with, and can be found among some of the “many other solutions” on this Reddit thread. https://www.reddit.com/r/aliceinwonderland/comments/1c8t13r/why_is_a_raven_like_a_writing_desk/ One great answer, rooted in the wordplay of the text, is given on Wikipedia: ”After the riddle ’Why is a raven like a writing-desk?’, the Hatter claims that Alice might as well say, ’I see what I eat… I eat what I see‘ and so the riddle's solution, put forward by Boe Birns, could be that ’A raven eats worms; a writing desk is worm-eaten.’” Perhaps the most remarkabke thing is that the raven and writing-desk riddle, whose speaker didn’t know the answer, and meant it to break the flow of conversation, has itself proved a rich conversation starter and point of conjecture, highlighting something uncanny about language itself as Carroll always liked to do. Later, we get another stumper, when the Chestire Cat shows up at the Queen’s croquet ground, as he told Alice he would. But only his head appears! When the Queen and King notice, readers will be able to guess how the spouse who “wears the pants” in that relationship desires to rid the ground of the nuisance. “The Queen had only one way of settling all difficulties, great or small. ’Off with his head!‘ she said, without even looking round.” But—how to do that? “When she got back to the Cheshire Cat, she was surprised to find quite a large crowd collected round it: there was a dispute going on between the executioner, the King, and the Queen, who were all talking at once, while all the rest were quite silent, and looked very uncomfortable. “The moment Alice appeared, she was appealed to by all three to settle the question, and they repeated their arguments to her, though, as they all spoke at once, she found it very hard indeed to make out exactly what they said. “The executioner's argument was, that you couldn't cut off a head unless there was a body to cut it off from: that he had never had to do such a thing before, and he wasn't going to begin at his time of life. “The King’s argument was, that anything that had a head could be beheaded, and that you weren’t to talk nonsense. “The Queen’s argument was, that if something wasn't done about it in less than no time she’d have everybody executed, all round. (It was this last remark that had made the whole party look so grave and anxious.) “Alice could think of nothing else to say but ‘It belongs to the Duchess: you'd better ask her about it.’” It is thankful the Queen was so set on beheading: had she ordered the head bashed in, the poor Cheshire Cat would be no more. Alice again shows her cleverness, moral goodness, and presence of mind: rather than try to solve this ridiculous problem, she instinctively uses the opportunity to get the Duchess sprung from prison. She defies the presented logic of the situation, whose resolution would only lead to injustice, by necessitating freeing one of the victims of the always-arbitrary Queen. Since there was extra space again, two more by Arthur Rackham: Alice herself—just a harmless little girl, right?—and at the Mad Tea-Party. Rackham gives the others Alice encounters an inhuman alienness; they would be easy to distrust if they looked like that. Next time, we’ll look at moments when Wonderland, seen by some as a land of anarchic freedom, almost loses its mask. It is a nightmare of our world, its absurdities and malevolent falsehoods taken directly from real life. #LewisCarroll #BarryMoser #AlicesAdventuresInWonderland #AliceInWonderland #PennyroyalPress #Pennyroyal #woodcutting #woodcut #engraving #illustration #ArthurRackham #riddles #carnivore #meateating #art #dreams #fantasy #childrensliterature #childrensbooks #literature #books