Said the Cat: "we're all mad here. I'm mad. You're mad." -Lewis Carroll
The Cheshire Cat became most famous with the fiction work by Lewis Carroll, published in 1864. Lewis Carroll is the pen name of Rev. Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, who wrote, "Alice in Wonderland," after telling an improvisational tale to a real little girl named Alice. The origin of the book is a story in itself:
Charles Dodgson was a mathematics professor at Oxford's Christ Church College. He was good friends with the dean, Rev. Henry George Liddell, and frequently entertained Liddell's three daughters on campus. Having grown up with nine sisters himself, Dodgson was naturally good at amusing them. He and his friend Mr. Duckworth took the dean's daughters on a picnic one afternoon. The dean's youngest daughter Alice was the main character in an improvisational story Dodgson made up to amuse the girls. This picnic-story was the seedling for the tale we all know as, "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland."
In this improvisational story, Dodgson invented the characters of the duck, the dodo, and the eaglet, whom Alice encounters. These were all inside jokes. The duck represented Mr. Duckworth. The dodo represented Dodgson, as that was his nickname, due to an unfortunate stutter. Rev. Dodgson pronounced his own name, "Do-Do-Dodgson." The eaglet Alice meets is a bit more contrived, but suffice it to say the bird represented one of Alice's sisters.
The Liddell girls loved the picnic-story so much that they begged and pleaded with Dodgson to write it down for them. Some months later, at Christmas, he produced a beautiful hand-made book containing his own illustrations and the story which he had told to the three girls on that one afternoon. The Liddell family felt that the story was so imaginative they urged Dodgson to publish it!
The Cheshire Cat was made famous in the book published in 1864, but Lewis Carroll did not "create" the Cheshire Cat. The origins of the Cheshire Cat are somewhat clouded. Most people feel the Wonderland character was a play on a popular expression, "to grin like a Cheshire Cat." This originated in Dodgson's birthplace, the county of Cheshire. Cheshire cheese is a dairy product made in this region, which dates from 1597, (according to Mr. Webster's Dictionary.) It has been speculated a Cheshire dairy had a picture of a grinning cat on their label, and perhaps even their cheese was formed into the face of a smiling cat. The phrase, "to grin like a cheshire cat," meant someone was extremely pleased with themselves. Considering the number of mice on a cheese farm, the resident felines were probably smiling indeed!
It is humorous to note that Queen Victoria was quite enamoured with Dodgson's published tale, and demanded of an attendant, "Bring me every book written by this man Dodgson!" She was quite upset when she was handed several books on mathematics, not knowing that Dodgson was an Oxford don.
Is the Cheshire Cat a friend or villian?
The popularity of the grinning feline grew with the 1951 release of Disney's Alice in Wonderland. Sterling Holloway was cast as the voice of the Cheshire Cat, and made the movie a success with his powerful portrayal of this character. You may remember Holloway's voice as another Disney favorite, Winnie the Pooh. It seems odd that the Disney company classifies the character of the Cheshire Cat as a villain, which is represented in some of their official merchandise. Many movie critics of Alice in Wonderland have classified the character an antagonist as well.
Personally, I am amazed they find the Cheshire Cat to be evil. Mischievious, yes. In the Disney film we see Alice is lost and crying in the dark forest. Who comes to her rescue? The Cheshire Cat of course! He shows Alice the way out of the forest, and sends her on her way to meet the Queen of Hearts. Things turn out fine and they play an amusing game of croquet, complete with flamingos and hedgehogs.
Proponents of the "Villain" classification will remind us that the cat's devious humor nearly cost Alice her head. In the movie, the Cheshire Cat annoys the Queen of Hearts, making it appear to be Alice's folly. I will remind such critics that the Cat says in the movie, "Nobody really gets their head cut off." This is a Disney film after all. One could argue that the Cat knew all along that Alice would not be hurt.
The Question of Madness in Alice in Wonderland
Sterling Holloway plays the movie character with such intelligence that one begins to wonder: Is the Cat is really crazy? Perhaps he is just playing with Alice and isn't "mad" at all. Can you really be mad if you know that you are? If anything, the Cat appears to be the only sane resident of Wonderland in the Disney film, because he knows that none of it is real. Alice is just having a dream.
Lewis Carroll himself had some humorous ideas about "madness". The Cheshire Cat dialogue in the book developed from idle musings written in Charles Dodgson's own diary, (See the book: "The Annotated Alice"). Dodgson pondered the validity of consciousness, in a way only a mathematician could: He speculated that when a person dreams, they think it is real. Anyone who thinks something is real when it is not must be mad, so therefore, everyone is mad when they are sleeping... I'm mad, you're mad, we're all mad.
In the book, Alice asks, "Is everyone mad here?" The Cheshire Cat replies that of course they are, and, "You are too, otherwise you wouldn't have come here." The "here" being refered to is Dreamland, not Wonderland, so the cat knows Alice is having a dream, and Alice can not be harmed by a pack of cards. Not even ones with designs of decapitation.
The dream idea is reinforced in the Disney movie, when Alice wakes up at the end, and goes home. The Cheshire Cat in the Lewis Carroll story was meant to show how silly we can be when we are dreaming, and how it can still seem very real.
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Last updated: September 15, 1999