Alice's Adventures in Wonderland Decoded

by David Day

  Perhaps Alice can’t find this book of logarithms because it is actually “the book her sister was reading” before she went down the rabbit-hole—a book that Alice summarily dismissed: “what is the use of a book … without pictures or conversations?” It now appears that this book of rules and numbers would be very useful in resolving problems with ratios and proportions.

  Failing to discover a book or another key, Alice does find a bottle labelled “DRINK ME.” When she drinks from it, she shrinks to just ten inches, and exclaims: “What a curious feeling! I must be shutting up like a telescope.” Subsequently, she eats a cake in a glass box labelled “EAT ME,” and is again alarmed when she grows into a “great girl” some nine feet tall. Once again Alice compares this process of expansion and contraction to the opening and closing of a telescope: “ ‘Curiouser and curiouser!’ cried Alice…‘now I’m opening out like the largest telescope that ever was!’ ” Why is Carroll repeatedly using the mechanics of a telescope? What is he hinting at?

  In mathematics, the “telescoping series rule” has a specific meaning in calculus that could be applied to Alice’s attempts to control her size. Calculus is the mathematics of change, and the manipulation of the infinitely large and the infinitely small. These are exactly the problems Alice is confronted with in Wonderland.

  Alice is on the right track when she says, “Oh, how I wish I could shut up like a telescope! I think I could, if I only knew how to begin.” The telescoping series rule appears to be what she requires. It is the formula for determining to what number a convergent telescoping series converges.

  This is one of the only two common rules in calculus where you can determine what a convergent series converges to. The other rules for determining convergence or divergence do not allow you to do this—and, in Alice’s case, would result in uncontrolled and comic shifts in size and proportion.

  Calculus takes the regular rules of algebra and geometry and applies them to fluid, evolving problems. If Alice applies these rules, she may eventually overcome the many fluid and evolving problems she encounters as she passes through Wonderland’s mathematical maze.

  Strangely enough, in Dodgson’s time, resident undergraduates at Christ Church were not required to attend classes or meet with tutors. They were, however, required to take a certain number of meals in the hall as a qualification for graduation. The Great Hall was seen as a kind of waiting room where undergraduates had to abide until they were sufficiently prepared for a viva voce, or oral examination, before a panel of eccentric tutors. Successful candidates would then be granted graduate degrees and entry into a life in the “gardens of academia.”

  In Wonderland, Alice is confronted with a comparable scenario. Like the Christ Church undergraduate, she is compelled to loiter in the great hall, where she consumes a requisite number of peculiar meals and endures viva voce interrogation by a number of eccentric tutors before learning how to use her golden key to gain entry into “the loveliest garden you ever saw.”

  Wonderland’s hall is here: Temple of Ceres at Eleusis, by Joseph Gandy, 1818.

  Alice was not a bit hurt, and she jumped up on to her feet in a moment: she looked up, but it was all dark overhead; before her was another long passage, and the White Rabbit was still in sight, hurrying down it. There was not a moment to be lost: away went Alice like the wind, and was just in time to hear it say, as it turned a corner, “Oh my ears and whiskers, how late it’s getting!” She was close behind it when she turned the corner, but the Rabbit was no longer to be seen: she found herself in a long, low hall, which was lit up by a row of lamps hanging from the roof.

  There were doors all round the hall, but they were all locked; and when Alice had been all the way down one side and up the other, trying every door, she walked sadly down the middle, wondering how she was ever to get out again.

  Suddenly she came upon a little three-legged table, all made of solid glass; there was nothing on it except a tiny golden key, and Alice’s first thought was that it might belong to one of the doors of the hall; but, alas! either the locks were too large, or the key was too small, but at any rate it would not open any of them. However, on the second time round, she came upon a low curtain she had not noticed before, and behind it was a little door about fifteen inches high: she tried the little golden key in the lock, and to her great delight it fitted!

  On the mythological level, the counterpart to the Wonderland hall is the great hall in the Temple of Demeter-Persephone at Eleusis. Known as the Telesterion, or Hall of the Initiates, this was where all Eleusinian pilgrims gathered. Here they were tested on their knowledge of the procedures of the Mysteries before entering a labyrinth of chambers where they witnessed miraculous tableaux or epiphanies relating to the myth of Persephone—all of which we shall find are mirrored in Alice’s adventures.

  In Wonderland’s Telesterion-like hall, certain objects are displayed: the glass table with the golden key, the bottle with the label reading “DRINK ME,” the glass box with the cake marked “EAT ME”—all of which test and provoke Alice in her attempts to gain entry through the curtained door and into the inner sanctum of Wonderland’s garden.

  After she fails the initial test of the golden key and the curtained door, Alice finds herself wandering through a labyrinth (exactly like the pilgrim in the Mysteries) where one tableau vivant after another is revealed: the Pool of Tears, the Rabbit’s House, the Caterpillar and the Mushroom, the Duchess’s Kitchen, the Cheshire Cat, the Mad Hatter’s Tea Party. Each tableau is a riddle that reveals an essential life lesson so Alice may eventually learn how to use the golden key to achieve her aim of passing behind the curtain and through the little door to the garden.

  In the Eleusinian Mysteries, the initiate’s fast is broken by a special psychoactive drink of barley and pennyroyal called kykeon, taken in the Telesterion where certain “hiera” (sacred objects) are revealed to them, as they recite, “I have fasted, I have drunk the kykeon, I have taken from the kyste [box] and after working it have put it back into the kalathos [basket].”

  The rites in the Mysteries comprised three elements: dromena (“things done”), which was a dramatic re-enactment of the Demeter/Persephone myth; deiknumena (“things shown”), a display of sacred objects; and legomena (“things said”), commentaries accompanying the display of the sacred objects.

  Alice opened the door and found that it led into a small passage, not much larger than a rat-hole: she knelt down and looked along the passage into the loveliest garden you ever saw. How she longed to get out of that dark hall, and wander about among those beds of bright flowers and those cool fountains, but she could not even get her head through the doorway; “and even if my head would go through,” thought poor Alice, “it would be of very little use without my shoulders. Oh, how I wish I could shut up like a telescope! I think I could, if I only knew how to begin.” For, you see, so many out-of-the-way things had happened lately, that Alice had begun to think that very few things indeed were really impossible.

  There seemed to be no use in waiting by the little door, so she went back to the table, half hoping she might find another key on it, or at any rate a book of rules for shutting people up like telescopes: this time she found a little bottle on it, (“which certainly was not here before,” said Alice), and round the neck of the bottle was a paper label, with the words “DRINK ME” beautifully printed on it in large letters.

  The exact nature of these three elements—known as apporheta (“unrepeatables”)—cannot now be ascertained, as repeating them carried a penalty of death for initiates, who were sworn to secrecy. Consequently, Carroll creates his own version of a series of dramatic tableaux, rituals and sacred objects throughout Wonderland for Alice the initiate, who must follow the pattern of “things done,” “things shown” and “things said” in order eventually to emerge back into the world as an enlightened soul.

  In Wonderland’s version of the Telesterion, Alice, like any prospective initiate into the Mysteries, must take the sacram
ents of drink and food. On the glass table she finds a golden key that opens the door to the garden. She cannot enter, though, as she is too large, and so she returns to the table. There she finds a little bottle labelled “DRINK ME,” which seems to contain some kind of psychoactive mixture very like kykeon that gives her the illusion that she shrinks almost to the point of vanishing. To remedy this, she resorts to the contents of a box labelled “EAT ME,” which is comparable to the Eleusinian kyste, whose contents “must be worked.” Alice discovers that nothing happens initially after consuming the contents of her box, until “she set to work,” and finds it causes her to grow very large.

  On all levels, Alice certainly undergoes an education of sorts. However, she will have to endure a good number of interrogations and consume a number of strange meals before she is permitted to enter her garden. Indeed, her initial attempts to acquire the key to the door leading to the garden fail, literally ending in tears.

  It was all very well to say “Drink me,” but the wise little Alice was not going to do that in a hurry. “No, I’ll look first,” she said, “and see whether it’s marked ‘poison’ or not”; for she had read several nice little histories about children who had got burnt, and eaten up by wild beasts and other unpleasant things, all because they would not remember the simple rules their friends had taught them: such as, that a red-hot poker will burn you if you hold it too long; and that if you cut your finger very deeply with a knife, it usually bleeds; and she had never forgotten that, if you drink much from a bottle marked “poison,” it is almost certain to disagree with you, sooner or later.

  However, this bottle was not marked “poison,” so Alice ventured to taste it, and finding it very nice (it had, in fact, a sort of mixed flavour of cherry-tart, custard, pine-apple, roast turkey, toffee, and hot buttered toast), she very soon finished it off.

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  “What a curious feeling!” said Alice. “I must be shutting up like a telescope.”

  And so it was indeed: she was now only ten inches high, and her face brightened up at the thought that she was now the right size for going through the little door into that lovely garden. First, however, she waited for a few minutes to see if she was going to shrink any further: she felt a little nervous about this; “for it might end, you know,” said Alice to herself, “in my going out altogether, like a candle. I wonder what I should be like then?” And she tried to fancy what the flame of a candle is like after the candle is blown out, for she could not remember ever having seen such a thing.

  After a while, finding that nothing more happened, she decided on going into the garden at once; but, alas for poor Alice! when she got to the door, she found she had forgotten the little golden key, and when she went back to the table for it, she found she could not possibly reach it: she could see it quite plainly through the glass, and she tried her best to climb up one of the legs of the table, but it was too slippery; and when she had tired herself out with trying, the poor little thing sat down and cried.

  “Come, there’s no use in crying like that!” said Alice to herself, rather sharply. “I advise you to leave off this minute!” She generally gave herself very good advice (though she very seldom followed it), and sometimes she scolded herself so severely as to bring tears into her eyes; and once she remembered trying to box her own ears for having cheated herself in a game of croquet she was playing against herself, for this curious child was very fond of pretending to be two people. “But it’s no use now,” thought poor Alice, “to pretend to be two people! Why, there’s hardly enough of me left to make one respectable person!”

  Soon her eye fell on a little glass box that was lying under the table: she opened it, and found in it a very small cake, on which the words “EAT ME” were beautifully marked in currants. “Well, I’ll eat it,” said Alice, “and if it makes me grow larger, I can reach the key; and if it makes me grow smaller, I can creep under the door; so either way I’ll get into the garden, and I don’t care which happens!”

  She ate a little bit, and said anxiously to herself, “Which way? Which way?”, holding her hand on the top of her head to feel which way it was growing, and she was quite surprised to find that she remained the same size: to be sure, this generally happens when one eats cake, but Alice had got so much into the way of expecting nothing but out-of-the-way things to happen, that it seemed quite dull and stupid for life to go on in the common way.

  So she set to work, and very soon finished off the cake.

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  WONDERLAND’S MASONIC HALL Rosicrucianism was a major source of inspiration, and supplier of symbolism, for the highly organized Freemasons. It is not known whether Lewis Carroll himself was a Freemason; he was very diligent in keeping secrets. But we do know he was well acquainted with many high-ranking Freemasons, and from his diaries we know he purchased tickets to Masonic events and public functions. Furthermore, Carroll owned an 1851 edition of Avery Allyn’s A Ritual and Illustrations of Freemasonry Accompanied by Numerous Engravings and a Key to the Phi Beta Kappa.

  Consequently, Carroll was sufficiently familiar with Freemasonry to integrate their symbolism (in a somewhat disguised form) into Wonderland. For example, from the perspective of a three-inch Alice standing beneath the Wonderland hall’s three-legged glass table with its out-of-reach golden key, we have a challenge comparable (on a grander scale) to the Freemasons’ first degree apprentice tracing board—an aide-mémoire to the fraternity’s symbols and emblems—with its three gigantic pillars (wisdom, strength, beauty) and its out-of-reach golden key hanging from a ladder. Alice looks for “another key … or at any rate a book of rules for shutting people up like telescopes”—she is much concerned with size and proportion. At the base of the ladder in the Freemasons’ tracing board is a book, and with it instruments for measuring and levelling. There are also two blocks of stone—one rough cut, one a perfect cube.

  In the symbolic language of the fraternity, the ladder represents the ascent into the mysteries of Freemasonry. This ascent is achieved through the step-by-step process by which the raw ashlar or rough stone (the apprentice) is transformed into the perfect ashlar—or cubit of cut stone (the adept Alice is going through a similar step-by-step process of learning to gauge measurement and proportion.)

  The three female figures in the tracing board are Hope, Faith and Charity (comparable to the three fatal sisters of the prelude poem), the virtues that both Alice and the initiate require to win the golden key. In the centre of the tracing board, above the pillar of wisdom, we see the single most famous symbol of Freemasonry: the All-Seeing Eye. This symbol represents the Great Architect of the Universe. In Wonderland, Carroll uses a verbal sleight-of-hand trick to introduce the All-Seeing Eye into Alice’s garden.

  Alice finds herself too large to enter through the little door, but: “It was as much as she could do, lying down on one side, to look through into the garden with one eye.” Later, with the Lobster Quadrille, Carroll has her begin to recite the carefully worded first line of a poem: “I passed by his garden, and marked, with one eye.”

  Many of Carroll’s poems contain hinting references to the Freemasons and Rosicrucians, secret societies whose language and symbols were intentionally obscure to the uninitiated. “Ode to Damon” has the subtitle “(From Chloe, Who Understands His Meaning)” and ends with: “You’ll find no one like me, who can manage to see / Your meaning, you talk so obscurely.” Compare this with the final lines of the Rosicrucian Catechism: “Why do you people speak so obscurely? / So that only the true sons of God may understand me.”

  Masonic first degree tracing board, painted by Josiah Bowring in 1819.

  Chapter 2: The Pool of Tears

  “Oh dear, what nonsense I’m talking!”

  CURIOUS AND CURIOUSER After failing to reach the golden key on the glass table because she was too small, Alice thought she might remedy the situation by eating the little cake she discovered in a glass box under the table. By so doing she hoped to grow either larger
or smaller. In this she succeeded only too well, and to her astonishment telescoped upward to such a height that her head bumped against the ceiling.

  Something had gone badly wrong, for as we can see from both John Tenniel’s drawing in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Lewis Carroll’s own drawing in Alice’s Adventures Under Ground, Alice had not just grown far too large but was also wildly elongated and disproportionate. She is so disoriented and confused that she absurdly considers sending postal messages to her feet, which, she notes, are far below her next to the hall’s fireplace.

  This is a curious detail, as it has frequently been observed over the years that the andirons in the fireplaces of Christ Church’s Great Hall are decorated in the shape of maidens’ heads with greatly elongated necks. Tenniel’s and Carroll’s illustrations of the elongated Alice bear a strong resemblance to those posts.

  Great Hall andirons: Uncanny resemblance to the image on this section’s opener.

  Alice attempts to make the best of her new stature. After all, she can now easily retrieve the golden key that will open the little door. However, she immediately recognizes another obstacle: she is far too large to even get her head through the door and into the passageway to the garden.

  Frustrated by her inability to solve the logical conundrum of the key, lock and door standing between her and the garden, the nine-foot-tall Alice begins to weep so copiously that she creates a large pool of tears that flows down the hallway. This flood is so great that when she is later reduced to a height of a couple of inches, she nearly drowns in what appears to be a flowing river.