Summary
From the wood, Alice sees a fish in footman’s livery approach
the house and knock on the door. A similarly dressed frog answers
the door and receives a letter inviting the Duchess to play croquet
with the Queen. After the Fish Footman leaves, Alice approaches
the Frog Footman, who sits on the ground staring stupidly up at
the sky. Alice knocks at the door, but the Frog Footman explains
that now that she is outside, no one will answer her knock since
the people inside are making too much noise to hear her. He tells
her he plans to sit there for days and seems unsurprised when the
door opens a crack and a plate flies out and grazes his nose. Annoyed
with his idiotic manner, Alice opens the door and finds herself
in a kitchen. A Duchess nurses a baby, a grinning cat sits on the
hearth, and a Cook stands at the stove, dumping pepper into a cauldron
of soup. The pepper causes the Duchess and the baby to sneeze incessantly.
Alice inquires why the cat grins and learns from the Duchess
that it is a Cheshire Cat. Wondering aloud why a cat would grin
at all, the Duchess insults Alice, telling her that she must not
know very much. Meanwhile, the Cook hurls objects randomly at the
Duchess and the baby, including fire-irons, saucepans, and plates.
Alice tells the Cook to mind herself, and attempts to change the
subject of conversation by bringing up the earth’s axis. The Duchess
mishears Alice, and thinking she is talking about axes,
spontaneously shouts, “Chop off her head!” The Duchess starts to
sing a nasty lullaby to the baby, roughly tussling it as she sings.
Upon finishing, she flings the baby at Alice and hurries out of
the room to prepare for croquet with the Queen.
Alice takes the baby outside, only to discover that it
is a pig. After she lets the pig toddle off, she encounters the
Cheshire Cat again, grinning broadly as it rests on the bough of
a tree. After inquiring of the Cheshire Cat where she might go next,
he tells her that no matter where she goes she will end up somewhere.
The Cheshire Cat arbitrarily suggests she visit the Mad Hatter and
the March Hare, but warns her that they are both mad. When Alice
responds that she does not want to be among mad people, he tells
her that all people are mad, and if she is in Wonderland, she must
be mad too. Alice attempts to press the point, but the Cheshire
Cat changes the subject, telling Alice that it will see her at the
Queen’s croquet match later. The Cheshire Cat vanishes and reappears
before fading to nothing but a disembodied grin, leaving Alice to
travel onward to the March Hare’s house. Upon discovering that the
house is larger than she is, Alice consumes a portion of the Caterpillar’s
mushroom and grows to two feet tall.
Analysis
Chapter 6 derives humor from the fact that the inhabitants
of Wonderland consider their environment and actions to be completely
normal. The Frog Footman reacts to the near miss of the flying plate
with complete nonchalance, talking on as if nothing had happened.
The Frog Footman seems to expect nothing less than total chaos.
Alice attempts to fit the Frog Footman’s behavior into a logical
structure, failing to understand that Wonderland’s order is defined
by chaos. She does not realize how close she comes to the truth
with the exclamation that the Frog Footman’s belligerence is “enough
to drive one crazy!” As the Cheshire Cat later explains, Alice must
be “mad” herself in order to understand the nature of things in
Wonderland.
Even though there seems to be a rigid social structure
in Wonderland, the Frog Footman and the Duchess reject normal social
conventions and behave arbitrarily. The presence of a Duchess with
a Footman suggests a rigid social order, complete with codes of
conduct. This hierarchy reminds Alice of her own society, but their behavior
destroys any traditional notion of social convention. The Frog Footman
is idiotic and argumentative, and the Duchess exhibits vile and
violent behavior. Traditional social codes are ignored, as the Frog
Footman has no comprehension of time and thinks nothing of plates
flying at his face. The Duchess treats her baby rudely and aggressively,
and would likely scoff at the ways that Victorian women care for
their babies. The Duchess’s rhyme emphasizes the rejection of social
convention, drawing upon a Victorian poem by David Bates that recommends
gentle treatment of babies, a message that the Duchess completely
ignores. Alice begins to accept the rejection of tradition and social
order when she discovers that the baby is in fact a pig, considering
that other children she knows from home might also “do very well
as pigs . . . if only one knew the right way to change them.” Despite
the pun on “change” (to change a baby’s diaper, to literally change
a baby into a pig), Alice begins to accept the bizarre social behaviors
of Wonderland.
The Cheshire Cat explains to Alice that madness is the
chief characteristic of the residents of Wonderland, and that to
be in Wonderland is to be mad. In order to exist at all in Wonderland,
one must accept its inherent irrationality. The Cheshire Cat reasons
that in order to accept this irrationality at all, one must be mad.
Alice’s unflagging curiosity makes her mad in the Cheshire Cat’s
eyes, since it characterizes her unique and illogical approach to
Wonderland’s natives. The Cheshire Cat’s use of the word “mad” puns
on the word “made,” since everything in Wonderland is fabricated.
Alice’s willingness to venture into her own dream means that she
herself is similarly fabricated. The Cheshire Cat understands that
Wonderland and all of its inhabitants exists as a figment of Alice’s
dreaming imagination.
