Charles Synyard (@CharlesSynyard)

3/13 “The way Dinah washed her children’s faces was this: first she held the poor thing down by its ear with one paw, and then with the other paw she rubbed its face all over, the wrong way, beginning at the nose: and just now, as I said, she was hard at work on the white kitten, which was lying quite still and trying to purr—no doubt feeling that it was all meant for its good.” With a paw to the nose, a heavy dose of foreshadowing! Post theme: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-jfRsIoTC4c Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There (1871), by Lewis Carroll, can be a confusing read, even moreso than the first Alice book. But I find it amusing, if a little discouraging, that it is widely taken as a departure from didacticism in children’s literature: moral instruction as a primary end. Critics have taken the author’s occasional, almost transparently exaggerated comments at face value. This strikes me as awfully strange, given how the prefatory poem and first chapter carry repeated instructions to read as a pedagogical allegory. Let us begin by reproducing the poem in its entirety. “CHILD of the pure unclouded brow And dreaming eyes of wonder! Though time be fleet, and I and thou Are half a life asunder, Thy loving smile will surely hail The love-gift of a fairy-tale. “I have not seen thy sunny face, Nor heard thy silver laughter: No thought of me shall find a place In thy young life’s hereafter— Enough that now thou wilt not fail To listen to my fairy-tale. “A tale begun in other days, When summer suns were glowing— A simple chime, that served to time The rhythm of our rowing— Whose echoes live in memory yet, Though envious years would say ‘forget.’ “Come, hearken then, ere voice of dread, With bitter tidings laden, Shall summon to unwelcome bed A melancholy maiden! We are but older children, dear, Who fret to find our bedtime near. “Without, the frost, the blinding snow. The storm-wind’s moody madness— Within, the firelight’s ruddy glow, And childhood’s nest of gladness. The magic words shall hold thee fast: Thou shalt not heed the raving blast. “And though the shadow of a sigh May tremble through the story, For ‘happy summer days’ gone by, And vanish’d summer glory— It shall not touch, with breath of bale, The pleasance of our fairy-tale.” Notes author James R. Kindaid, an American-Jewish academic and “expert” in Victorian children’s literature, needs two columns of shoulder notes to explain away Carroll’s intent. He absurdly treats the lines “I have not seen thy sunny face, Nor heard thy silver laughter:” as meaning Carroll’s memory of Alice is “so far away as nearly to have evaporated”! He might have gainfully pondered the first lines: “CHILD of the pure unclouded brow And dreaming eyes of wonder!” He speaks to every pure-hearted child, not just the by-then grown Alice Liddell, the little girl Alice living in his memories, or even the Alice of literature he created. Yet this is the same story he began by telling it the Liddell sisters on their rowing expedition, on a golden afternoon nine years prior. “A tale begun in other days, When summer suns were glowing— A simple chime, that served to time The rhythm of our rowing—“ “Our rowing” shows the intimacy Carroll feels with his young readers, who shared vicariously in what was once a private story for a small party, but had since become a beloved part of childhood for many thousands: particularly for the little girls of whom the author was so fond. True, some anxiety can be read in the next verse: “Come, hearken then, ere voice of dread, With bitter tidings laden, Shall summon to unwelcome bed A melancholy maiden!” For a few minutes, I wondered if Kincaid was right. Is Carroll simply gloomy that the girls in the audience will grow up? Does he see adulthood as bad simply, and wish he could keep them little girls forever? There’s just one little problem: Carroll clarifies that this is a continuation of “A tale begun in other days,” Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, which, contra Kincaid, is a deeply Christian story. https://gab .com/CharlesSynyard/posts/116218003930865619 On a third reading, the operative words stuck out: “hearken then, ere voice of dread, With bitter tidings laden, Shall summon to unwelcome bed A melancholy maiden.” Why is it a voice of dread? Why are the tidings bitter? Why is the bed unwelcome, and why is the maiden melancholy? These questions all hinge on the maiden’s attitude. Kincaid, following William Empson, is right to point out that marriage is a more likely end to maidenhood than death, but why would a young woman dread marriage? She would, if she was stubborn, clung to the world she knew, and refused to move on to the next stage of her life—which fears are exactly those Christians are supposed to master by faith as they prepare for their deaths. “Without, the frost, the blinding snow. The storm-wind’s moody madness— Within, the firelight’s ruddy glow, And childhood’s nest of gladness. The magic words shall hold thee fast: Thou shalt not heed the raving blast.” This is the interiority fundamental to the Christian life. Whatever lies may be current in the world, the Words of Eternal Life preserve our souls from its evils. This isn’t escapism. Though Carroll admits at the end that there might be a tone of melancholy—the author, like the readers, is only human, and admits, “We are but older children, dear, Who fret to find our bedtime near.” that like other grown folk, he sometimes has fears worthy only of a big baby—this is a joy-giving tale. And an instructive one. The opening image, of the Liddells’ cat Dinah cleaning first Kitty, then Snowdrop, is unmistakable: “first she held the poor thing down by its ear with one paw”—held by its ear, like the audience hearing a story—“and then with the other paw she rubbed its face all over, the wrong way”—the wrong way, as things are in a mirror—“she was hard at work on the white kitten, which was lying quite still and trying to purr—no doubt feeling that it was all meant for its good.” If even the kittens can tell that getting washed, even in this unusual, uncomfortable way, is for their best, then surely the kids hearing Through the Looking-Glass (and the adults reading it to them, and writing interpretive essays on it!) should be able to recognize it’s for their own good, too! Not only is it instructive, it’s a labor of love. After Kitty, the black kitten, unrolls the ball of worsted Alice had been trying to wind up, she responds, “‘Oh, you wicked wicked little thing!’ cried Alice, catching up the kitten, and giving it a little kiss to make it understand that it was in disgrace. ‘Really, Dinah ought to have taught you better manners! You ought, Dinah, you know you ought!’ she added, looking reproachfully at the old cat, and speaking in as cross a voice as she could manage” to which Kincaid manages to remark, “One sign that Alice has moved to a new stage of development is her eagerness to play the most uninteresting of all adult or parental roles: inculcating rules and doling out punishments.” I am sure most every girl who is mother to a doll, and well before reaching seven-and-a-half, Alice’s age here, has practiced punishing a naughty child. The text gives the lie to Kincaid’s cynical assessment: she tells Kitty she is in disgrace with a kiss! Correction of a child, and leading her right, is one of the most important and interesting parts of parenthood. But six months on from her dream of Wonderland, she’s still the same Alice we love: “and then she scrambled back into the arm-chair, taking the kitten and the worsted with her, and began winding up the ball again. But she didn't get on very fast, as she was talking all the time, sometimes to the kitten, and sometimes to herself.” Alice constantly speaks to herself, shifting from words to thoughts and back again, a sign of her startlingly high intelligence. Our heroine is no NPC. During her monologue to Kitty, which like a Socratic dialogue often falsely presents itself as in two parts—“What have you got to say for yourself? Now don’t interrupt me!”—she asks, “‘Do you hear the snow against the windowpanes, Kitty? How nice and soft it sounds! Just as if some one was kissing the window all over outside. I wonder if the snow loves the trees and fields, that it kisses them so gently? And then it covers them up snug, you know, with a white quilt; and perhaps it says, “Go to sleep, darlings, till the summer comes again.” And when they wake up in the summer, Kitty, they dress themselves all in green, and dance about—whenever the wind blows—oh, that's very pretty!’ cried Alice, dropping the ball of worsted to clap her hands. ‘And I do so wish it was true! I’m sure the woods look sleepy in the autumn, when the leaves are getting brown.’” Knowing that Kincaid is reliably wrong, this is anything but “Alice’s adoption of adult sentimental evasions”, and definitely not something “the book is so relentlessly attacking.” The rich image bespeaks Alice’s fertile imagination, while the concluding disclaimer, “And I do so wish it was true!”, marks her as a good little girl. In Victorian times, there was more wariness of children suspending disbelief as they heard a story with sprites or anthropomorphic nature; I remember books where little girls were told stories, but had to promise not to believe them. Yet she follows this proper expression with a final avowal: “I’m sure the woods look sleepy in the autumn, when the leaves are getting brown.” The metaphorical resemblances in nature are so strong, that even to a rational adult, it isn’t truly clear that such poetic expressions ARE untrue. Might the seasons not just be expressions of God’s superabundant love? The Liddell home’s windows getting kissed by the snow, while all warmth and life inside, recalls the Christian “Without,” “Within” distinction in the opening poem, and Alice kissing Kitty as a reproof—suggesting that even the winter season of life, the threats of age death, are but gentle, loving promptings to embrace “the magic words”: the “Words of Eternal Life” (John 6:68) that preserve life and the childlike cleanliness of the soul even through death. Alice changes the subject, asking Kitty if she can play chess (she appeared to be watching a game attentively), and when Kitty imitates the Red Queen poorly, she threatens to put her into Looking-glass House, about which she shares her notions. “Now, if you’ll only attend, Kitty, and not talk so much [!], I’ll tell you all my ideas about Looking-glass House. First, there’s the room you can see through the glass—that’s just the same as our drawing-room, only the things go the other way. I can see all of it when I get upon a chair—all but the bit just behind the fireplace. Oh! I do so wish I could see that bit! I want so much to know whether they've a fire in the winter: you never can tell, you know, unless our fire smokes, and then smoke comes up in that room too—but that may be only pretence, just to make it look as if they had a fire. Well then, the books are something like our books, only the words go the wrong way: I know that, because I’ve held up one of our books to the glass, and then they hold up one in the other room.” It’s an extremely careful, empirical description. She doesn’t take for granted that things in this realm would be the same beyond what she can see. Her notion that the smoke coming from the hearth “may be only pretence, just to make it look as if they had a fire” sounds like something learnt in Wonderland—and makes me believe Alice shared my belief (and disagreed with Kincaid) that in the first book, much that appeared wondrous (like the perpetual tea-party, and the lessons that always “lessen”) was just pretended sham. Next, Alice pretends she and Kitty can step through the mirror, and swift as thought, she does, without even willing it. Turns out, there is a fire! But the chess pieces come to life, and we get a scene which sets up for the later action. In Barry Moser’s woodcut engravings for the 1983 Pennyroyal edition, the twelve chessmen shown mirror the twelve jurors of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. Then, after Alice’s dealings with the pint-sized chess pieces, who can neither hear nor see her, she comes to one of the great interpretive keys in the book, as significant as the opening and ending poems or the greetings to young readers outside the text proper. She spies a book on the table, containing a poem in reversed writing. Thinking to hold it up to a mirror, she reads within a remarkable poem, “Jabberwocky”: which will be the subject of my next post in this series. Alice in the armchair looks so delicate. Moser does not say why she is with Snowdrop, the white kitten, instead of Kitty as in the text. Perhaps it is on token of the affinity they will have in Looking-Glass Land. #LewisCarroll #BarryMoser #ThroughTheLookingGlass #AliceInWonderland #PennyroyalPress #Pennyroyal #woodcutting #woodcut #engraving #illustration #art #Christianity #Christian #Gospel #interiority #interiorlife #allegory #metaphor #poetry #morals #pedagogy #parenting #criticalthinking #intelligence #dreams #fantasy #childrensliterature #childrensbooks #literature #books