SOURCE: Ashbourne, M. S. “The Cheshire-Cat: Sign of Signs.” Interdisciplinary Journal for Germanic Linguistics and Semiotic Analysis 6, no. 1 (spring 2001): 79-106.

[In the following essay, Ashbourne examines the semiotic implications of the Cheshire Cat in the Alice stories.]

On January 14, 1898, Charles Dodgson, a.k.a. Lewis Carroll, died at the age of 65 years, leaving the world to grieve the loss of one of its most gifted writers of books for children. Both Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (hereinafter: Wonderland) and Alice Through the Looking Glass (hereinafter: Looking Glass) are considered to be childhood classics, although some believe that “the time is past when a child under fifteen, even in England, can read Alice with the same delight as gained from, say, The Wind in the Willows or The Wizard of Oz. It is only because adults—scientists and mathematicians in particular—continue to relish the Alice books that they are assured of immortality” (Gardner 1998:7, 8). Whether one agrees with this view or not, one might hasten to add that the Alice books also could be appreciated by other non-mathematical and non-scientific audiences consisting of semioticians of virtually every persuasion, for the Alice stories are about unique signs signifying, and for this reason, children—born semioticians—of all ages and stripes can continue to enjoy them.

Dodgson added The Cheshire-Cat and several other characters to his original Alice's Adventures Under Ground, and published the modified story as Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. Wonderland, along with its sequel Looking Glass, has enjoyed enduring success not only as a story for children, but as an object of delight and continuing study for many adults. This study examines the Carrollian Cheshire-Cat as a sign.

CHARLES DODGSON: BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES

Several biographies of Charles Dodgson have been written during the past century, and although biographers necessarily must select and interpret their data and present their findings according to their own lights, this study will include only those elements which seem most salient for its own purposes. The excellent biography by Morton N. Cohen (1996) is the source and the touchstone for most of the biographical information contained herein.

Charles Lutwidge Dodgson was born January 27, 1832 in the Anglican parsonage of Daresbury, Cheshire, the first son and third child of the Reverend (later, Archdeacon) Charles Dodgson and his wife Frances Lutwidge. Young Charles was afflicted with a stammer and chronically hearing-impaired by one ear from childhood, but it is unclear as to whether or not the jerky or unsteady gait he exhibited as an adult was present from his youth, or even whether it was symptomatic of a disturbance of balance or co-ordination precipitated by middle-ear anomalies that may have contributed to his partial deafness. In other respects, however, it seems that the young Dodgson enjoyed a healthy and happy childhood.

The Rev. Dodgson undertook responsibility for his son's early education, teaching him (in addition to matters pertaining to Christian doctrine) mathematics, classics, Latin and English literature. When the family moved to the village of Croft, the eleven year-old Charles began to attend the nearby Richmond School where the headmaster noted his extraordinary giftedness, writing that he

possessed ‘a very uncommon share of genius’, that ‘he is capable of acquirements and knowledge far beyond his years, while his reason is so clear and so jealous of error, that he will not rest satisfied without the most exact solution of whatever appears to him obscure. He has passed an excellent examination just now in mathematics, exhibiting at times an illustration of that love of precise argument, which seems to him natural’.

(Cohen 1996:15)

At the age of fourteen, Charles began almost four years of studies at Rugby, and then spent a year preparing at home for his stint as an undergraduate at Christ Church, Oxford. In January 1855, a month after receiving his Bachelor of Arts, he began his professional career at Christ Church, residing there for the rest of his life while maintaining contact with his beloved family through cards, letters and visits.

From early childhood through adolescence, Charles had entertained himself and his siblings (eventually, seven sisters and three brothers) by inventing toys, games, puzzles, theatrical and puppet plays, and by writing poetry and essays and making drawings for the domestic “scrapbooks” or magazines that he initiated and edited. In March, 1856, he began to publish his writings under his pseudonym, Lewis Carroll. Dodgson “evolved [the name] by the simple process of latinizing, reversing, and reanglicizing his given names: Carolus Ludovicus, Ludovicus Carolus, Lewis Carroll” (Lennon 1972:145). His early writings indicate not only a deep sensitivity towards his fellow creatures and a profound ability for critical self-reflection, but a brilliant penchant for puns, parody, anagrams and word games. The astonishingly nimble wit, the sense of humor and the creative genius which burst forth in the Alice books and many of his other writings is clearly discernible in many of his earliest extant works. Although Dodgson never married, his generosity and kindness, along with his special devotion to children persisted, stirring up his many interests and providing outlets for his unique talents throughout his life.

Dodgson was ordained to the Anglican Diaconate in 1861. Although certain elements of his personal theology are evident in a few of his writings, most notably in his Sylvie and Bruno (initiated in 1867, concluded in 1893), thus far they neither have enjoyed systematization nor engaged scholarly theological analysis. Notwithstanding, Dodgson had a keen interest in psychic and supernatural phenomena and was a charter member of the Society for Psychical Research. He also joined the Ghost Society and became acquainted with the spiritualist movement of his day, acquiring books on various occult subjects including fairies (Cohen 1996:368-9). Although he is said to have professed belief in fairies, referring to Wonderland as a “fairy tale” (Cohen 1996:369), it is impossible to determine precisely what, for Dodgson, a “fairy tale” was, and from the contexts of his writings and conversations about fairies, his “belief” could have been set forth as a playful tease rather than a personal credo. Moreover, the paucity of evidence that could argue for Dodgson's holding a particular cosmology allows only speculation to conclude what Dodgson actually believed a fairy to be, if indeed he did believe in their existence. In his Preface to Sylvie and Bruno Concluded, first published in 1893, he wrote:

It may interest some of my Readers to know the theory on which this story is constructed. It is an attempt to show what might possibly happen, supposing that Fairies really existed; and that they were sometimes visible to us, and we to them; and that they were sometimes able to assume human form: and supposing, also, that human beings might sometimes become conscious of what goes on in the Fairy-world—by actual transference of their immaterial essence, such as we meet with in ‘Esoteric Buddhism’.

I have supposed a Human being to be capable of various psychical states, with varying degrees of consciousness, as follows:

• (a) the ordinary state, with no consciousness of the presence of Fairies;
• (b) the ‘eerie’ state, in which, while conscious of actual surroundings, he is also conscious of the presence of Fairies;
• (c) a form of trance, in which, while unconscious of actual surroundings, and apparently asleep, he (i.e. his immaterial essence) migrates to other scenes, in the actual world, or in Fairyland, and is conscious of the presence of Fairies.

I have also supposed a Fairy to be capable of migrating from Fairyland into the actual world, and of assuming, at pleasure, a Human form; and also to be capable of various psychical states, viz.

• (a) the ordinary state, with no consciousness of the presence of Human beings;
• (b) a sort of ‘eerie’ state, in which he is conscious, if in the actual world, of the presence of actual Human beings; if in Fairyland, of the presence of the immaterial essences of Human beings.

I will here tabulate the passages, in both Volumes [of the Sylvie and Bruno stories] where abnormal states occur. …

(Carroll 1994:463-464)

It is important to note that nowhere in the foregoing quotation does Dodgson, amidst his “supposings”, state his belief in the existential being of fairies. In his Preface to the first volume of Sylvie and Bruno (Carroll 1994:255), however, he discusses the evolution of the stories of Sylvie and Bruno, as well as his creation of the last line of his famous The Hunting of the Snark (see Cohen 1996:366-370) in terms which Peircean scholars instantly would recognize as experiences of “musement” or “Firstness”. But Dodgson wrote that he attributed these and other “unusual experiences” to the

existence of a natural force, allied to electricity and nerve-force, by which brain can act on brain. I think we are close on the day when this shall be classed among the known natural forces, and its laws tabulated, and when the scientific sceptics, who always shut their eyes, till the last moment, to any evidence that seems to point beyond materialism, will have to accept it as a proved fact in nature.

(in Cohen 1996:369)

According to biographer Morton Cohen (1996), Dodgson assumed his office as Mathematical Lecturer at Christ Church in 1855, and he and the new Christ Church Dean, Henry George Liddell, enjoyed a professional relationship by the start of 1856. Dodgson also was sublibrarian for Christ Church, and in that capacity, he had a small office which afforded a view of the deanery lawn and the children playing there. Dodgson's first encounter with Alice Liddell occurred in April, 1856, when Alice was four years old. A few months earlier, Dodgson had taken up photography as a hobby; since photography was then a new and novel art, Dodgson found that with his camera and photographs he could gain social access to people who either were intrigued by the technology and its applications, or who wished to be or to provide subjects for his pictures. Dean Liddell and his wife consented to Dodgson's photographing their children, and shortly thereafter Dodgson became a frequent and regular visitor to the deanery. His friendship with the Liddell children grew, with Alice being his most dearly loved favorite. Dodgson and the children played together in his own rooms at Christ Church, at the Deanery, on picnics and on various outings on a very frequent basis until the middle of 1863. In June of that year an apparently irreparable break in the relations between Dodgson and the Liddells occurred, and while the cause or nature of this crisis is uncertain, it is clear that Dodgson was cut off from the children (Cohen 1996:100-104). Thereafter, his encounters and interactions with members of the Liddell family, including Dodgson's darling Alice (aged 11 at that time), were infrequent and formal, if not strained.

The events leading to Dodgson's creation of Wonderland are well-documented by Dodgson's biographers: on the afternoon of July 4, 1862, Dodgson, then Oxford mathematician and logician, and his friend Robinson Duckworth took the three very pretty young daughters (Lorina, Alice and Edith) of Christ Church's Dean Liddell out on an afternoon's boating trip on the Isis, a branch of the Thames near Oxford. In response to the girls' demands that he tell them a story, Dodgson made up a tale about a child named Alice who fell down a rabbit hole and had various adventures underground until she suddenly awakened and realized that she had been dreaming. At the conclusion of that idyllic summer day, Alice Liddell begged Dodgson to write out the story, and in November 1864 Dodgson presented Alice with a hand-written booklet as a Christmas gift, illustrated by himself, entitled Alice's Adventures Under Ground.

The manuscript was enjoyed by various visitors to the Christ Church deanery who prevailed upon Dodgson to publish it; Dodgson complied after adding more chapters, characters and incidents to the original story, and working closely with the well-known artist John Tenniel, whom Dodgson employed as his illustrator. Dodgson also changed the title to Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, and in June, 1865, the Clarendon Press printed the first edition. The following month, Tenniel having expressed some dissatisfaction with the way his pictures were printed, Dodgson recalled the two thousand copies produced by Clarendon, engaged a different printer, and on November 9 that year, the first new copy was produced. Tenniel expressed his satisfaction with the printing, and the finally published Wonderland was an immediate triumph with the reading public which clamored for more Alice. The success of both Wonderland and its sequel, Through the Looking Glass (first published in 1871), has continued to this day through more than seventy-five editions, and through translations into at least seventy other spoken languages as well as Braille.

The price of such success, however, has included intense and continuing interest in and speculation about the relationship between Charles Dodgson and Alice Liddell. Where the provenance or “real life” models and/or “real” identity of the characters and adventures of the Alice stories has been sought, as Morton Cohen observes:

[t]he critiques, commentaries, exegeses, and analyses that have appeared during the past hundred years and more—some profound and interesting, some absurd—offer many bewildering theories.

… The actors in both Alice books are transplants from real life, as are the episodes, and those who sat in the gliding boat recognized them as Charles related them, just as they would later experience flashes of memory upon reading Looking-Glass. The landmarks, the language, the puns, the puffery—it was all rooted in the circumscribed enclave of their Victorian lives. Oxford provided the landscape, its architecture, its history, its select society, its conventions. In Under Ground and in the additions that Charles later made to the tale and in the sequel, his listeners (and readers) would have instantly picked up on the references, to the Sheep Shop on St. Aldate's, the treacle well at Binsey, the lilies of the Botanic Gardens, the deer in Magdalen Grove, the lion and the unicorn from the royal crests, the leopards from Cardinal Wolsey's coat of arms that graces the fabric of Christ Church and are known as the ‘Ch Ch cats’. Charles parodied familiar verses and songs, some of which they sang together as they rowed up or down the river. … They would readily penetrate the thin disguises of John Ruskin as the conger eel, Bartholomew Price as the Bat, Humpty Dumpty as some egghead don pontificating, the Caterpillar as another conducting a viva. The Mad Tea-Party as a parody of Alice's birthday party would have elicited howls of laughter. A good many of the references are lost to us, so localized as they were.

(1996:135-6)

In semiotic terms, then, the Alice books' denizens and incidents originally were signs constructed by Dodgson, deliberately designed to prompt his beloved Alice Liddell to recall and reflect upon real-life incidents and acquaintances known to them both. Indeed, in the final verse of the prefatory poem of Wonderland, Dodgson addresses Alice herself, having recalled in the poem the events that gave rise to Wonderland's composition:

                              Alice! A childish story take,
                                        And with a gentle hand
Lay it where Childhood's dreams are twined
                                        In Memory's mystic band,
Like pilgrim's withered wreath of flowers
                              Pluck'd in a far-off land.

If it is assumed that the citizens and adventures of Wonderland signify “transplants from real life”, and as such, that they would indeed have been recognized by Alice Liddell as signs of her own experiences “twined” in the memories of childhood, the world shared by Dodgson and Alice Liddell should reveal clues as to the character and situational “identities” of Wonderland.

By the time Dodgson had completed and given Alice Liddell the manuscript of Under Ground in November 1864, his social bonds with Alice had been severed for more than a year. Nevertheless, given his earlier relationship to Alice, it must be assumed that the sensitive and observant Dodgson would have had access to the inner springs of her Umwelt, i.e., her world and her interpretations of and responses to it, and he also would have had innumerable opportunities to have made important, if not definitive contributions thereto. As philosopher and semiotician John Deely observes:

A perceived pattern is what constitutes an object of experience, not an existing thing. Our experience consists in the building up of a structure or network of cognitive and cathectic relations which constitute an objective world. This world partially includes aspects of the physical environment, to be sure, but it includes such elements according to its own plan and without being reducible to them. If we consider the environment to be the world of things, then the objective world is constructed according to a quite different plan, and divisions in the one world vary relatively independently of divisions in the other world. Moreover, each world extends beyond the other's boundaries: not all things are known to us, and not all objects known to us are things.

… Thus, the objective world is the sphere of an individual's experiences built up out of relationships, and the internal constitution of this sphere is precisely that of a web the various intersections of whose strands present to us the objects according to the meaning of which we lead our lives.

(Deely 1994:218, 219) [emphasis added]

As noted above, Dodgson gave Wonderland a prefatory poem, urging Alice with unrivable poignancy to remember their times together “with a gentle hand”. Given the inclusion of this poem, it stands to reason, or perhaps only to the pure firstness of “hunch”, that the other new additions and modifications Dodgson made to Under Ground before its publication as Wonderland must have had some special purpose, i.e., the signification of some pattern that would spark Alice's memory, and that these additions were meant to signify more than Under Ground which, according to Dodgson himself, had been concocted purely for childish entertainment (Cohen 1996:135). Thus, Under Ground never could be assumed to have been Dodgson's last word to Alice Liddell, for from the imagined or supposed perspective of Charles Dodgson, Wonderland (and Looking Glass) might be viewed as a kind of scrapbook, containing bits and pieces of information that would trigger Alice Liddell's recollection of the special moments—confidences, conversations, stories, songs, places and activities—that she and Dodgson had shared beyond and besides the boat ride and the stories he had extemporized in a boat on that idyllic summer day.

We cannot know what memories Under Ground or Wonderland prompted for Alice Liddell, for her Umwelt, i.e., her objective world, belonged to her alone. Keeping in mind, however, that experience consists of patterns, of objects (things known) and relations, and that Wonderland was written for children in general and for Alice Liddell in particular, it is to the patterns woven into and making up the fabric of the stories, as well as to the characters and “events” recounted in those stories, that semiotics must look in order to discern possibilities for analysis in Wonderland.

THE CHESHIRE-CAT: SIGNIFYING CHARACTER AS A CHARACTER

The unforgettably comic and casual Cheshire-Cat was one of the characters added by Dodgson to the original Under Ground stories. Although the Cheshire-Cat is virtually synonymous with Wonderland, there are few extant studies of it as a sign of anyone or anything else. At the end of the story, where various sounds of Wonderland are identified with “real” sounds of a “real” environment, the Cat is not mentioned. Yet, it is one of the most prominent characters, with attitudes (or “cattitudes”) universally observed in “real” cats serving as a foundation for the decidedly “uncat-like” and hilarious behavior of the Cheshire-Cat. The Cat evidently does not walk, run, jump, or engage in other cat-like modes of locomotion; but its cat-like independence is manifested as it enters the life of Alice in Wonderland, for it either chooses to be present, slowly “fading in” or suddenly “popping in” to sit or hover, or it leaves the scene, “fading out” or disappearing suddenly, offering no sign of where it has been or what it has been doing between appearances. Nevertheless, its independence takes on uncat-like or even anti-catlike characteristics when it neither seems interested in nor to frighten the other fantastical creatures in the story, including the mice and birds, and its eating and bathing habits seem to be part of the Cat's business for “elsewhere”. Its sole object of interest seems to be Alice, although it is “owned” by the Duchess; but as cat observers know, real cats do the adopting, and may or may not recognize their “actual owners” with anything remotely resembling respect or deference, much less interest. Thus, while the Cat exhibits some of the tendencies or characteristics of many pet cats, its grin, its speech, its mode of locomotion and its unique “logic” make it also decidedly uncat-like. As a character, the Cheshire-Cat exhibits or participates in certain patterns within the overall patterns of Wonderland, and in order to discover what the Cheshire-Cat could have signified to Alice Liddell, semiotic analysis requires that those patterns be considered and related, where possible, to actual events in the life of the young Alice Liddell.

Those familiar with Wonderland will recall that the Cheshire-Cat enters the story four times; the first time it sits, grinning, on the floor beside the hearth of the ugly Duchess and is identified to Alice as a “Cheshire-Cat” when she asks why it grins. The second time, it sits on a bough of a tree and displays its talents for speech, syllogistic (albeit erroneous) logic, and for appearing and disappearing. It asserts its own madness and that of Alice, noting that “we're all mad here”. It appears for the third time sitting on a branch of a tree a short distance from the first tree, asking for clarification of something Alice had said moments earlier. In response to Alice's complaint that its sudden (unexpected) appearances and vanishings make her giddy, it (unexpectedly) disappears slowly, teasingly and decidedly unsuddenly for the exasperated Alice, ultimately leaving only its grin to follow the rest of it into invisibility. At its fourth epiphany, only its head appears, grin first, hovering in mid-air over the Queen of Hearts' croquet game, to ask Alice solicitously how she's getting on, and how she likes the Queen. Just as Alice is about to confide her complaints to the Cat, having waited for its ears to become visible, the Queen and her company stroll past. When Alice introduces the Cat to the King, the Cat, in response to being given permission by the King to kiss the King's hand, replies with majestic cheekiness, “I'd rather not”. It quickly becomes the center of attention when, in response to the murderous Queen's command that it be beheaded, the executioner and other characters present ponder the possibility of beheading a bodiless head.

In her biography of Charles Dodgson, Florence Becker Lennon offers an opinion about the provenance of the Cheshire-Cat, taking into account certain models which could have provided inspiration for Dodgson's character:

Cranleigh Parish Church, near Guildford, where the Misses Dodgson lived and their brother visited them, puts out an engaging postcard of the stone head of a cat from the north transept. It would be pleasant to imagine this as the original Cheshire Cat, except that the Dodgson ladies did not move to Guildford till 1869, and besides that Guildford is in Surrey, not Cheshire.

Mr. George Arthur Carter, the dedicated librarian of the public library in Warrington (near Dodgson's birthplace in Daresbury), is building up a solid Carroll collection; he took me to see a “real” Cheshire Cat on the roof of the old church at Grappenhall, where the Dodgsons did go in Charles's childhood. The cat, while available and authentic, unfortunately looks nothing like Tenniel's.

(Lennon 1972:2)

Lennon believes that the Cheshire-Cat signifies Dinah, the beloved tabby of the Liddell children; she notes that Dinah was chased out of Christ Church library (Dodgson's domain) many times, and that although Dinah technically belonged to Lorina, Alice demonstrated the greatest affection for the cat (Lennon 1972:144). In Lennon's view:

[t]he appearing and disappearing Cheshire Cat is a sort of guardian imp and liaison officer between the two worlds [Wonderland and the ‘real’ world]; an undercurrent of Wonderland is Alice's longing for Dinah, so perhaps the cat with the disappearing head (the Cheshire Cat, from Charles's birthplace), is Dinah's dream-self, who, by the laws of dreamland, instead of frightening the creatures away, only keeps them pleasantly on edge. It is significant that the Cheshire Cat remarks, ‘we're all mad here’. Dinah is the one link to the daily world, the one person (?) Alice misses; she says, ‘They will put their heads down and say “Come up again, dear!’”—is the Cheshire Cat Dinah's head recalling her to the world across the border?

(Lennon 1972:146)

As interesting as this speculation is, it is problematic for several reasons. Notwithstanding that Lennon is unclear about the nature of “Dinah's dream self” (is Dinah dreaming, or is Alice dreaming of Dinah, or are the two actually sharing one dream?), and that the “laws” of dreamland in general, or Wonderland in particular are not specified, (indeed, one might argue that the whole of Wonderland is a discovery of Wonderland's unique laws or, in Peircean terms, its “Thirdness”), the longing for, musing and blabbing about Dinah that Alice carries on during her fall down the rabbit hole and in the company of the Mouse and the other creatures in The Pool of Tears, are not sustained as “an undercurrent” throughout the book. In a dream-within-a-dream as Alice is falling, she does walk hand in hand with Dinah, but this dream-promenade ends abruptly without Dinah having uttered a word when Alice hits the bottom of the rabbit hole and “awakens”. Dinah is not mentioned again in the story.

Although Lennon finds it “significant” that the Cheshire-Cat opines “we're all mad here”, she does not develop the significance of this remark (except when she suggests that Dodgson could have questioned his own sanity, and even so, she does not relate the Cheshire-Cat's other characteristics to Dodgson) (1972:146). However, if Dinah herself dreamt or was dreamt of by Alice as the Cheshire participant in the madness of Wonderland, it seems unlikely that she could serve as a “liaison officer” between Wonderland or any “dreamland” and the world of wakefulness: unlike the mute Dinah, the Cat not only proclaims its own madness, but espouses a quasi-mad logic founded upon ideas which Alice believes to be erroneous or of doubtful veracity. Moreover, Alice does not wake up or “come up” from Wonderland until several chapters after the Cat's final appearance, and the Cheshire-Cat nowhere invites Alice to return to “reality”: instead, it cheerfully points the way for Alice to encounter further incarnations or situations of madness. As well, although Alice talks to others in Wonderland about Dinah before she meets the Cat, she says nothing of Dinah to the Cheshire-Cat whom she views as a stranger, and initially approaches with trepidation, having taken account of the Cat's many teeth and extraordinarily long claws. This contrasts with Alice's effusive descriptions of Dinah and of her relationship with Dinah in her conversation with the Mouse in the Pool of Tears. Finally, those familiar with Looking Glass will recall that Dinah was female and indeed the mother of kittens; Alice refers to Dinah as “she” in Wonderland, even as “ma chatte”, thus emphasizing Dinah's gender; the Cheshire-Cat, however, is consistently referred to with the neutral pronoun throughout Wonderland.

Thus, it seems unlikely that the Cheshire-Cat signifies Dinah, but as Lennon notes, it seems equally unlikely that Dodgson was inspired by anything fancied to be a likeness of “a real Cheshire-Cat”. Nevertheless, Lennon's conception of the Cat as a “guardian imp” suggests (however inadvertently on Lennon's part) that the Cat could be a fairy. This possibility will be discussed below.

Other writers have suggested a few other explanations for the Cat's origins and peculiar characteristics. In annotations related to the Cheshire-Cat, Hugh Haughton attests:

‘To grin like a Cheshire-Cat’ is a proverbial expression, the origin of which was extensively discussed in Notes and Queries, no. 55, 16 November 1850, and no. 130, 24 April 1852. It was suggested that the expression referred either to the fact that 1) Cheshire was a county Palatine and 2) some Cheshire cheese was produced in cat-shaped moulds or 3) some painted inn-signs in Cheshire notoriously looked more like grinning cats than growling lions. Carroll, who was born in Cheshire, was a regular subscriber to Notes and Queries and may well have grinned at these linguistic speculations.

(Haughton, in Gardner 1998:309 n.4)

These notes are echoed by Gardner (1998:83 n.2), who adds that “‘Grin like a Cheshire-Cat’ was a common phrase in Carroll's day”. Insofar as the Cheshire-Cat may be thought a sign, then, these points merit consideration. As Dodgson's birthplace, the name “Cheshire” could be a sign of Dodgson himself, but whether or not it is meant to signify him in Wonderland remains to be seen as further semiotic relations and patterns accrue. Neither cheese nor cheese moulds are part of Wonderland. Insofar as the Cat's title implies its citizenship of a Palatine, the Cheshire-Cat's bold words and attitude towards the King of Hearts could be explained, except for the fact that Cheshire had lost its Palatine status by the 19th century.

Nonetheless, the Cat's general attitude of cheekiness, discernible in its patterns of behavior and certainly evident to someone familiar with the cultural and societal “rules of etiquette” of mid-19th century England, provides certain clues—especially as the Cat responds to and interacts with the King and Queen of Hearts. The exchanges that occur in this context could point to an actual event shared by Dodgson and Alice Liddell.

Cohen (1995:97-98) quotes Dodgson's diary account of Dodgson's participation in the momentous visit of the Prince and Princess of Wales to Christ Church in June, 1863 (just days before the rupture in relations between Dodgson and the Liddells). A bazaar was held as part of the festivities, and the Liddell children had a booth there. Dodgson recorded the event:

After I had helped in their [the Liddell children's] stall a short time the Royal party arrived. There were very few admitted with them and the place was comparatively clear. I crept under the counter and joined the children outside, and the Prince (I don't know if he knew me) bowed and made a remark about a picture [possibly one of Dodgson's photographs]. The children are selling some white kittens … and as Alice did not dare offer hers to the Princess, I volunteered to plead for her, and asked the Prince if the Princess would not like a kitten—on which she turned around and said to me, ‘Oh, but I've bought one of those kittens already’ (which I record as the only remark she is likely ever to make to me). Ina's had been the favored one.

It seems that Dodgson's emphasis of the word “she”, referring to the Princess, signifies a sense in Dodgson of his or of his beloved Alice's having been rebuffed by the royals (insofar as Alice might have identified herself with her “unfavored” kitten and its rejection). In Wonderland, Alice does the pleading on the Cat's behalf—“a cat may look at a King”. But it is the Cat, and ultimately also Alice, who rebuff the Royals; hence, in this Wonderland event the Cheshire-Cat could signify Dodgson, with the unruly croquet game as a venue symbolizing the royal couple's visit to Christ Church's bazaar and the outcome of the visit. One might easily imagine that as Dodgson joined the Liddell children at the bazaar, he must have asked Alice, “how are you getting on?”, much as the Cat does in Wonderland's bizarre croquet game, and Alice Liddell confiding her disappointment or distress much as the fictitious Alice attempts to do with the Cat in Wonderland. In the eyes of Alice Liddell, Dodgson might have seemed to have been extraordinarily brave to have confronted and pleaded with the Prince (and Princess) on her behalf, and the incident, along with some of the other details of the Royal Visit almost certainly would have been added to her stock of childhood memories. Further, Dodgson probably would have assumed that his actions and activities would have been central to Alice's perception of the bazaar's events, as if the “hub” of the patterns of those events, and her memories of these might be brought to the fore by the account of the Cheshire-Cat's cheekiness at Wonderland's croquet game.

There also is the possibility that if the children playing on the deanery lawn had looked up at the library office windows while Dodgson was at work there or looking down at them, only his head would have been visible to them. Biographers note that the children played croquet there, and so it is likely that Dodgson observed them from his window, perhaps occasionally settling disputes amongst the child-players from “aloft”, or watching as games deteriorated with the children spontaneously inventing new rules or testing their skills with croquet mallets upon any available object in lieu of an actual croquet ball. Such “madness” could have provided the foundation for the tale of the Queen of Hearts' chaotic croquet party, with the “disembodied” head of Dodgson taking intermittent interest in the proceedings (focusing, of course, upon his favorite child) being signified quasi-iconically by the Cheshire-Cat's head hovering over the Queen's party.

When, in Wonderland, Alice takes first notice of the Cheshire-Cat, the Cat sits on the floor by the hearth in the kitchen of the Ugly Duchess. Alice is rudely informed by the Duchess that the Cat grins because it is a Cheshire-Cat. Tenniel's illustration portrays the closed-mouthed but smiling Cheshire-Cat with the markings of a “tabby”; although biographers note that Dodgson frequently specified how the characters of the story were be to illustrated, there is no documentation about Dodgson's specifications regarding the Cat. However, it is noteworthy that The Oxford English Dictionary defines a tabbycat as a “brindled or mottled or streaked cat, esp. of grey or brownish colour with dark stripes; cat, esp. female”. Returning to Lennon's opinion that the Cat is an icon of Dinah and recalling that although Dinah is described as a “tabby”, descriptions of Dinah's actual markings and color(s) have not been found. Hence, Tenniel's illustrations of a tabby could be meant either to iconize Dinah, or the tabby appearance of the Cheshire-Cat could be mere coincidence and not intended to represent any particular cat. When the Cheshire-Cat shows up in Wonderland for the second time, it languidly occupies the bough of a tree. Alice approaches it timidly because it has “very long claws and a great many teeth”. The Tenniel illustrations do not show the Cat's claws, but biographers note that Dodgson was in the habit of wearing gray (the “tabby color”) cotton gloves year-round (Cohen 1995:471). The reason for this habit is undisclosed. However, if asked about them, Dodgson playfully might have told children that the gloves were to cover his “long fingernails” or “claws”; regardless, those long covered fingers, considered as if “cat paws” or even “cat fingers”, might lead one to believe that the “cat” had long claws indeed. The “great many teeth” in Tenniel's illustrations of the Cat's smile show only evenly spaced and sized upper teeth with short incisors, and thus they seem to depict human teeth. Alice, during her childhood relationship with Dodgson, doubtlessly would have lost her “baby teeth”, and in all likelihood, this would have been a topic of conversation with Dodgson, together with his assurances and personal demonstrations of the fact that adults have more and bigger teeth than children do. Such conversations could have been of special importance to Alice as her “adult teeth” developed; the possibility of losing her “permanent” teeth could have prompted discussions with Dodgson about how the greater number of adult teeth could compensate for the loss or extraction of a few.

As noted above, Cohen referred to the fact that Alice would know “the leopards from Cardinal Wolsey's coat of arms that graces the fabric of Christ Church and are known as the ‘Ch Ch cats’”.

The coat of arms of Cardinal Wolsey, founder of Christ Church, are now borne by that College; the arms are described as “Sable, on a cross engrailed argent, a lion passant gules between four leopards' faces azure …” (Foster 1893:395). The four leopards, the “Ch Ch cats”, portrayed in a photograph of their terracotta representation on Anne Boleyn's gatehouse at Hampton Court (Gwyn 1990: plate), do appear to be smiling, if only because of tricks played by light and shadow. Hardly fierce-looking, they seem friendly enough to have earned their nickname. Further, as we are aware of Dodgson's penchant for various word and linguistic games, it is easy enough to imagine he might take the “Ch Ch”, doubtlessly standing for “Christ Church” and reverse their pronunciation from “k-ch” to “ch-k”, as in “Cheshire-Cat”, and even “Charles Carroll” (although there is no evidence that Dodgson himself ever “mixed” his true name with his pseudonym). A similar play upon pronunciations and mixing of letters might have occurred elsewhere in Wonderland, however. Interestingly, explanations of the Caucus Race in Wonderland, including standard definitions of “caucus” and suggestions as to how “Caucus Race” might be construed in the sense of this particular race, generally fail to explain satisfactorily what Dodgson had meant by the term, nor do they suggest why he might have named Wonderland's event as he did. Notwithstanding, if the first letters of the words “Caucus Race” are reversed, i.e., “Raucus Case”; and if the “c” is pronounced not with the hard “k” sound (as in King) but rather with the “ch” sound (as in Child), some sense can be made of the term which becomes “Raucus Chase”.

The positions of the leopard heads on the Wolsey arms iconize the positions taken by the Cat in its four Wonderland epiphanies. The blue leopard heads are placed at the top, bottom and sides of the cross, surrounding the red lion in the center of the cross; as noted above, the cat appears on the floor, in the boughs of two trees, and then hovering over the “red” King and Queen at the croquet game. Some contemporary two-dimensional depictions of the Wolsey coat of arms on the Christ Church badge show the leopards with rectangular mouths, tongues sticking out and downwards. It is unclear as to whether or not the arms were depicted in this way in Dodgson's time, but regardless, to stick one's tongue out at someone or something is generally acknowledged to signify contempt or disdain (like the attitude of the Cheshire-Cat to its royal interlocutors). Whether the Wolsey leopards seem to smile or not is quite beside the point, for it is the positions of the “Ch Ch” cats upon the arms that are most relevant here.

Before taking the semiotic leap from “Christ Church” (as the place where Alice and Dodgson met, played and lived) to “Charles Dodgson” and on to “Cheshire-Cat”, there is one further point to consider: Lennon provides certain details about the deanery, including the fact that Dean Liddell had remodeled the house, building not only a great staircase in it, but decorating the main floor's gallery with three carved lions from the Liddell family crest. Lennon goes on to note that in an interview given as an adult, Alice had told how she, Lorina and Edith had rushed downstairs from their bedrooms at night to check on the lions, “in case the lions should leave their pedestals and chase them”. Alice also spoke of her own and her sisters' timidity about the swans on their boat trips, adding, “We were too happy to be really frightened” (Lennon 1972: 171).

It is a virtual certainty that Dodgson would have known about the girls' fear of the swans and the lions since he took the little sisters out on boat trips amongst swans and enjoyed their confidences; just what he might have said to them to calm their fears is unknown, but it is reasonable to suppose that he either showed them playfully how unfounded their fears were, assuring them that he could and would protect them from swans. As for the lions, he could have pointed to other decorative cats, perhaps the “Ch Ch cats”, to show that they did not move from their places, and neither did their lion. From that perspective, the “Ch Ch cats” on the arms might be understood to be guarding the lion, King of Beasts (and long-standing symbol of Royalty) not so much to protect it, as to keep it safely in its place. The Cheshire-Cat invites the wrath of royalty, putting the King of Hearts “in his place” so to speak, by fearlessly and effortlessly foiling the would-be executioner with word-play: how does one “off with the head” of a head already disembodied? Thus, the Cat could stand to Alice Liddell as a reminder of Dodgson's abilities to assuage her fears by protecting and amusing her according to Dodgson's unique, real-life talents and propensities.

When Alice tries to solicit directions from the Cat at the time of its second appearance, apparently taking for granted the fact that the Cheshire-Cat would be able to converse intelligently, its grin widens, and this is interpreted by Alice as a sign of the Cat's friendliness. At length, the Cat tells her that no matter which direction she takes, she will meet either the Mad Hatter or the March Hare. “Visit either you like: they're both mad” it tells her. When Alice says that she doesn't want to go about mad people, the Cat assures her, “Oh, you can't help that. We're all mad here. I'm mad. You're mad.” Alice must be mad, it tells her, or she wouldn't have come here. Alice does not think the Cat has proven her to be mad, but she nevertheless asks it how it knows that it's mad. The Cat then launches into a “proof” in the form of a syllogistic fallacy, having had Alice admit that a dog is not mad. A not-mad dog growls when displeased and wags its tail when it's pleased, but the Cat growls when it's pleased and wags its tail when angry; therefore the Cat is mad. Missing the fact that the Cat's conclusion is erroneous, Alice says, “I call it purring, not growling”, to which the Cat replies, like a devout nominalist, “Call it what you like.” Syllogistic “proofs” were the stock-in-trade of Charles Dodgson the logician. His Symbolic Logic and the Game of Logic of 1896 shows that he instructed children in Logic by inventing a game, complete with rules and game pieces, to provide an easy way for them to solve syllogisms and sorites, and therein he avowed his attachment to linguistic nominalism (Carroll 1958: 165-6). Thus, the “form of reasoning” employed by the Cat in “proving” its own madness likely would make Alice think of Dodgson, his games, his logic and his proofs, and his playfulness, as would the Cat's “great many” teeth and its “long claws”.

Dodgson signified words to be emphasized by italicizing them. The Cat's “We're all mad here” is free of italics; thus, it is up to the reader to provide his or her own emphasis. “We're all mad here” could allude to the difficulties that occur in the “space” or “place” of dreams and illusions. Dodgson had pondered the topic of dream-madness himself, noting in his personal diary, “when we are dreaming and, as often happens, have a dim consciousness of the fact and try to wake, do we not say and do things which in waking life would be insane? May we not then sometimes define insanity as an inability to distinguish which is the waking and which the sleeping life?” (in Gardner 1998: 90 n.8). Anyone, even a child who has awakened with terror from a nightmare would understand the importance of the question. If, in the Cat's “We're all mad here”, the word “here” is emphasized, it could signify either a collective dream, i.e., everyone in Wonderland is asleep and participating in one great dream of an unknown dreamer; or it could suggest only the “madness” of the actual dreamer known to the reader, i.e., Alice, who is unaware that she is dreaming and who, moreover, resists the notion that she herself is mad. The “here”, the locus, place or space signified by the word is consistent with the preceding passages, where the Cat indicates the places where Alice will find either the Mad Hatter or the March Hare, and it tells Alice that she must be mad or else she would not have come “here”. There also is the implication that “here, we're mad; elsewhere, perhaps we're not mad”. Again, this is consistent with an alteration of the intellect of one asleep, leading to a dreamer's inability to distinguish intentional or purely mental being from real being. But if the statement is read as “We're all mad here” the implication is that Alice is not mad, for she is the outsider. This seems, in fact, to be the interpretation favored by Alice herself; the evidence of her alleged madness solicited from the Cat fails to convince her, even though she already has questioned her own cognitive abilities, including her memory, which she herself says have taken a “curious” turn. As she moves through Wonderland, Alice will find herself judging some creatures or items as nonsensical if not “impossible” objects or creatures, and judging herself as confused, puzzled, offended, angry and so forth, until finally she concludes that she is very different from the other creatures there. But all of this points to one of the most profound puzzles in Wonderland: would someone who is mad know his or her (or its) madness to be real, and if so, would his, her (or its) knowing so be doubtful by virtue of that very madness? Or would the doubt be mad? The Cat's nominalism prompts one to ask what madness is, and who could judge and authoritatively pronounce upon actual madness or, for that matter, actual sanity if everyone experiences the madness of dreams or dreams of madness? Would syllogistic logic be applied by someone with authority to diagnose, and if so, would the foundations of the syllogism be erroneous or mad? Could the authority of logic itself prevail, and would Dodgson have attempted to teach or to reassure Alice about the safety and stability of her Oxford world with logic? It seems a virtual certainty that if the children had confided to Dodgson that they had dreamt of being chased by swans or lions, Dodgson would have tried to help them distinguish the creatures of their imaginations from those encountered in reality.

As noted above, the reasons for the Liddells' severing their ties, and especially those of Alice with Charles Dodgson, are unknown. It seems not unreasonable, however, to think that the Dean and his wife might have suggested to their daughters that it would be “madness” to encourage or allow further contact with him. The Cheshire-Cat, even if “mad”, is essentially benign and benevolent, but it invites its fictitious, its real and its virtual audience to ponder the notion of madness and the application of the word to creatures of fiction, “reality” and virtuality. But it does not contradict; it simply invites the consideration of alternatives. If the Cat can call purring “growling”, there is reason to wonder if by “madness” everyone means the same thing.

The Cat's brief third appearance occurs because the Cat claims that it is unsure whether it heard Alice say “pig or fig”. As it becomes visible for its fourth appearance, Alice waits for its ears (“or at least one of them”) to appear before answering its question. Evidently, the Cat is slightly deaf and Alice must be sure to see its ears before she can expect it to hear her. Again, the difficulty with hearing could point to Dodgson, but there is more: biographers cannot agree, interestingly, on which of Dodgson's ears was afflicted, with Cohen (1995:8) claiming it was the right ear, Lennon (1972:51) offering two sources who favor respectively the right or the left, while Gattégno (1974) does not mention Dodgson's hearing impairment at all. It is possible that both ears were affected, one worse than the other, and various environmental and physiological conditions could have exacerbated his deafness from time to time, even unilaterally, as well. However, the fact that Alice feels that she must see the Cat's ears in order to be heard could be reminiscent of her times with Dodgson, and of Dodgson inclining one or both ears towards her in order to hear her.

The Cat's most notorious habit of appearing grin-first and vanishing grin-last needs to be taken into account. Gardner (1998:91 n.9) observes:

The phrase ‘grin without a cat’ is not a bad description of pure mathematics. Although mathematical theorems often can be usefully applied to the structure of the external world, the theorems themselves are abstractions that belong in another realm ‘remote from human passions’, as Bertrand Russell once put it in a memorable passage, ‘remote even from the pitiful cosmos, where pure thought can dwell as in its natural home, and where one, at least, of our nobler impulses can escape from the dreary exile of the actual world’.

It is unlikely that Alice herself would think of Gardner's or Russell's views, for true and fitting though they may be (and despite the fact that they point to Dodgson the mathematician), they represent the adult views of mathematician and philosopher. There is, though, a simpler explanation for the Cat's trick, as any child who had visited Dodgson's darkroom would know (and apparently some children, including Alice, succeeded in being invited into that “sanctum sanctorum” (Cohen 1996:164)). Lighter colors develop, or seem to develop, more quickly than darker lines and colors. The Cat “fades” in, toothy white grin first, and out, toothy white grin last, like a photograph being developed or even over-developed. This, doubtlessly, would make Alice think of photography and so of Dodgson, for he certainly photographed her during her childhood, and in fact, it was through photography that Alice and Dodgson first met.

THE FAIRY TALE

As noted above, Dodgson referred to Wonderland as a fairy tale, but gave no actual definition of what he meant either by “fairy” or “fairy tale”. At Christmas 1867, he wrote a new, second prefatory poem entitled Christmas Greetings (From a Fairy to a Child) for Wonderland (Carroll 1994:13; the poem has been located in few extant editions of Wonderland). In essence, the poem (addressing its reader as “Lady dear”) tells that at Christmas time, fairies for a moment may be permitted to leave aside their tricks and play and wish the “Lady dear” a Merry Christmas and Glad New Year. The fairy-author recalls being told by “gentle children, whome we love” that Christmas angels had wished “Peace on earth, good-will to men”, and that this heavenly message echoes down the ages and is recalled at Christmas time by adults. But for those with child-like hearts, the whole year is Christmas time, for in the hearts of children the “heavenly guests abide”. Thus the poem stands not only to signify Christmas and the ancient joy of the angels which reverberates in the joyful hearts of “children”; it also could signify the Christmas gifts of Under Ground and later Wonderland (as well as other Christmas gifts) from Dodgson to Alice Liddell. Most importantly, perhaps, the poem is “from a fairy”—and so Dodgson has referred to himself as a fairy, albeit one who has momentarily discarded its/his customary levity in order to wish perpetually to its/his reader(s) the joys of Christmas time/childhood.

Above, it was noted that Lennon's assertion that the Cheshire-Cat was a “guardian imp” serving as a “sort of liaison officer” between Wonderland and the real world could suggest that the Cat is a fairy. It also was noted above that Dodgson had “supposed” in his Preface to Bruno and Sylvie that a fairy could assume a “Human form”, and that the “immaterial essences” of humans and fairies could “migrate” to each other's worlds. Although Dodgson's suppositions were penned twenty-eight years after the publication of Wonderland, the “fairy nature” (or otherwise) of the Cheshire Cat merits serious consideration.

In 1890, Dodgson prepared and had published a condensed version of Wonderland (The Nursery “Alice”) for very young children which included twenty illustrations colored by Tenniel (Cohen 1996:440). Tenniel's picture of the Cheshire-Cat sitting on the bough of a tree grinning at Alice was included in The Nursery “Alice,” and Gardner (1998:89) notes:

In The Nursery “Alice” Carroll calls attention to the Fox Glove showing in the background of Tenniel's drawing for this scene. … Foxes do not wear gloves, Carroll explains to his young readers. ‘The right word is “Folk's-Gloves”. Did you ever hear that Fairies used to be called ‘the good Folk?’

Thus, iconically, the potential presence of fairies is signified by the Fox Glove in this illustration; moreover, it is at least possible that the inclusion of Fox Glove in the illustration was specified by Dodgson for that very reason (he also probably would have explained the “right word” for the plant to little Alice Liddell at some point). And it also seems very likely that Dodgson knew that Fox Glove, insofar as it is the source of the cardiotonic Digitalis, signifies “the heart”, and so also could signify love. Fox Glove is portrayed only in the two aforementioned illustrations; however, mushrooms also were considered to be foci of fairy activities and gatherings as well, and we recall that Alice meets the Hookah-smoking, pontificating Caterpillar as it lounges upon the top of a mushroom (also splendidly illustrated by Tenniel).

In Wonderland, the Fox Glove and Cheshire-Cat illustration follows the picture of Alice holding the Duchess's pig-baby; in this drawing, Alice is standing next to another Fox Glove, which again intimates the presence of fairies. The transformation of the baby character from one “thing” into another is the only event of its kind in Wonderland. (The Caterpillar, being a caterpillar, holds within itself the potential for transformation, but its metamorphosis or final disposition are left to Wonderland's readers' imaginations.) Dodgson's “suppositions” about fairies, especially their ability to take “Human forms”, were not simply products of his own imagination, for at that time, there was great interest in fairies, with fairy lore and tales from medieval England enjoying a renaissance in certain Victorian circles (Thomas 1971:724-734). Thus, through Dodgson's acquaintance with fairy stories and books about fairies (Cohen 1996:369), he would have known that his own ancestors probably had believed that even a moment of parental neglect of an infant could invite malevolent fairies to steal a baby and substitute a “changeling” which could take several forms, the forms depending upon the fairy lore and beliefs of the locale. Elves and pixies, trolls and gnomes, giants and dwarves, brownies and banshees—all are “kinds” of fairies, benevolent, mischievous, or otherwise, each with its own distinguishing characteristics.

unsociable tricksters whose malice was best thwarted by humans wearing their coats inside-out while passing places presumed inhabited by pixies. Recall that in Alice's initial encounter with the Cheshire-Cat, the Cat sits on the hearth while the Ugly Duchess nurses a baby who howls and sneezes incessantly as the cook stirs a cauldron of “pepper soup”. The Duchess violently shakes and tosses the baby up and down, singing a hilarious “sort of lullaby” to it. Eventually, announcing that she has to get ready to play croquet with the Queen, the Duchess tosses the baby to Alice, who catches it with “some difficulty”. The baby begins its transformation in Alice's arms, who finds it difficult to hold the baby until she figures out “the proper way of nursing it (which was to twist it up into a sort of knot, and then keep tight hold of its right ear and left foot, so as to prevent its undoing itself)”. In effect, the coatless Alice turns the baby inside-out, and with its transformation into a pig complete, she sets it down and watches it trot quietly into the woods. Has the baby become a “pigsey”—a fairy? Or, having ingested “magical” bits of cakes, mushrooms and potions that have affected her size, has Alice by now turned into a fairy who takes the Duchess's baby and (literally) turns it into a changeling? The answer to this last question may be found by reviewing part of Dodgson's description of the abilities of fairies (see above, p. 82):

I have also supposed a Fairy to be capable of … various psychic states, viz., … a sort of ‘eerie’ state, in which he is conscious … if in Fairyland, of the presence of the immaterial essences of Human beings.

Alternatively, the “immaterial essence” of Alice Liddell, who, enjoying the “psychical state”

in which, while unconscious of actual surroundings, and apparently asleep, [s]he (i.e.[her] immaterial essence) migrates to other scenes, in the actual world, or in Fairyland, and is conscious of the presence of Fairies. …

becomes Wonderland's Alice. Alice's “immaterial essence”, while in Wonderland, well might have assumed the powers of Dodgson's fairies; but if another “real” fairy, after all, is the Cheshire-Cat who “is conscious of the presence of the immaterial essence” of his beloved Alice Liddell, then as Dodgson's own “immaterial essence”, it also could, in the manner of a delightfully deranged “shape-shifter” or Pooka,

migrate to other scenes … in Fairyland, and [be] conscious of the presence of Fairies. …

Thus, as fairies or as sharers of some altered state of consciousness, Dodgson (as the Cheshire-Cat) and Alice (as herself or fairy-self) could meet in Wonderland/Fairyland, be conscious of each other's presence, but not necessarily recognize each other in each other's “fairy” state. Or, one or both of them could have recognized the “human essence” presented by the other as a “human essence” regardless of the other's appearance. Hence, just a few years after Wonderland's success, Dodgson could preface Wonderland's sequel, Looking Glass, with yet another poem:

                              Child of 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. …
                    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.

[emphasis added]

CONCLUSION: THE CHESHIRE-CAT AS SIGN OF CHARLES DODGSON, SIGNIFIED BY “LEWIS CARROLL”

The foregoing analysis can be summarized as follows:

1. “Cheshire” r Birthplace of Dodgson
2. “Grinning” r Dodgson at play or in the company of the children
3. Cheshire-Cat's attitude towards the King r Dodgson at the Bazaar, June 1863
4. Disembodied head r Dodgson in his library room viewed through the window from deanery lawn below; the “Ch Ch cats”, see n7.
5. Cheshire-Cat's long claws r Dodgson's gray gloves r Fox Glove illustration(s)
6. Cheshire-Cat's many teeth displayed in grin r human teeth displayed in grin or smile r Dodgson smiling with the children; possible conversation about the loss of “baby teeth” and adult dentition
7. Position of Cheshire-Cat in its appearances r Wolsey leopards a.k.a “Ch ch” cats r Christ Church r scene of Dodgson's encounters with Alice
8. “Ch ch” cats r “k ch” cats r “ch k” cats r Cheshire-Cat r Charles—Carroll
9. Relation of Wolsey leopards to lion on arms r Dodgson protecting the children from the imagined harm of swans and the Liddell lions; possible conversations about dreams, see n11
10. Cheshire-Cat's use of syllogistic logic, word-play, teasing r Dodgson as logician, playmate
11. The “logic” of madness r Dodgson as logician r possible conversations with Alice about dreaming, madness and the logical possibilities involved in diagnosing (vs. opining) madness.
12. Cheshire-Cat signifying hearing impairment r Dodgson's partial deafness
13. Cheshire-Cat fading in and out r photographic development r Dodgson
14. Cheshire-Cat's judgmental, caring and interested attitude towards Alice r Dodgson's love and care for Alice

If it is accepted that the Cheshire-Cat signifies Charles Dodgson, it well might be asked why Dodgson would choose a cat to signify himself. If we return to Alice's thoughts and words in the rabbit hole and in The Pool of Tears, we see that it is her cat, Dinah, that Alice loves and admires so deeply and unconditionally that she wishes everyone could know Dinah. She talks about Dinah's ability to catch birds and mice, of how “she's such a quiet and dear thing” that purrs as she washes herself by the fire, about how Dinah will miss her, about Dinah's softness. The Cheshire-Cat does not catch birds or mice, does not purr, does not wash itself by a fire, and it neither touches nor is touched by Alice. It pops into visibility and invisibility quite casually, like a memory prompting memories, a sign producing signs, of animals, people, events and situations long since extinguished by time. But the Cheshire-Cat cares for Alice with a tenderness and concern, and with a respect for her that is not exhibited by any other Wonderland creature when it asks how she's getting along; and it listens attentively to and considers the opinions, thoughts and feelings she talks about. It does not give advice, but presents her with options, telling her about the risks involved in each. It teases her mercilessly with bad logic and with its comings and goings, smiling with friendliness all the while. It does not judge her or admonish her for displays of bad temper or frustration, for making errors or for being who and what she is. It simply cares in its own and unique way, unconditionally, for her and her well-being. Upon reflection, it is, in its way, a “quiet and dear thing”.

Thus, the Cheshire-Cat stands as a sign of Charles Dodgson, signified by Lewis Carroll. By pointing gently but with relentless semiotic decisiveness to Dodgson, by providing directions not to the madness of a dream world, but to the real patterns of Dodgson's relationship with Alice, and by embodying the characteristics Dodgson doubtlessly would have wanted Alice to remember as his own, the Cheshire-Cat signifies most significantly.

References

Carroll, Lewis (Charles Dodgson). 1958. Symbolic logic and the game of logic. New York: Dover Publications, Inc.

———. 1993. Alice's adventures in Wonderland. Sir John Tenniel, Illustrator. New York: Dover Publications, Inc.

———. 1994. The complete works of Lewis Carroll. New York: Barnes and Noble.

Cohen, Morton N. 1996. Lewis Carroll: A biography. New York: Vintage Books.

Deely, John. 1994. New beginnings: Early modern philosophy and postmodern thought. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.

Foster, Joseph. 1893. Oxford men and their colleges. Oxford: J. Parker & Co.

Gardner, Martin. 1996. The universe in a handkerchief: Lewis Carroll's mathematical recreations, games, puzzles and word plays. New York: Copernicus.

———. 1998. Introduction and notes in the annotated Alice, by Lewis Carroll. Sir John Tenniel, Illustrator. New York: Random House.

Gattégno, Jean. 1974. Lewis Carroll: Fragments of a Looking Glass. Tr. Rosemary Sheed. New York: Thomas Y. Crowell.

Gwyn, Peter. 1990. The king's cardinal. London: Barrie and Jenkins.

Haughton, Hugh. 1998. Introduction and notes in Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass and What Alice Found There, by Lewis Carroll. Sir John Tenniel, Illustrator. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books Ltd.

Lennon, Florence Becker. 1972. The life of Lewis Carroll. New York: Dover Publications, Inc.

Thomas, Keith. 1971. Religion and the decline of magic: Studies in popular beliefs in sixteenth and seventeenth-century England. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books.

Wakeling, Edward. 1992. Lewis Carroll's games and puzzles. New York: Dover Publications, Inc., in association with the Lewis Carroll Birthplace Trust.