Chapter: For a minute or two she stood looking at the house, and wondering what
to do next, when suddenly a footman in livery came running out of the
wood--(she considered him to be a footman because he was in livery:
otherwise, judging by his face only, she would have called him a
fish)--and rapped loudly at the door with his knuckles. It was opened
by another footman in livery, with a round face, and large eyes like a
frog; and both footmen, Alice noticed, had powdered hair that curled all
over their heads. She felt very curious to know what it was all about,
and crept a little way out of the wood to listen.

The Fish-Footman began by producing from under his arm a great letter,
nearly as large as himself, and this he handed over to the other,
saying, in a solemn tone, 'For the Duchess. An invitation from the Queen
to play croquet.' The Frog-Footman repeated, in the same solemn tone,
only changing the order of the words a little, 'From the Queen. An
invitation for the Duchess to play croquet.'

Then they both bowed low, and their curls got entangled together.

Alice laughed so much at this, that she had to run back into the
wood for fear of their hearing her; and when she next peeped out the
Fish-Footman was gone, and the other was sitting on the ground near the
door, staring stupidly up into the sky.

Alice went timidly up to the door, and knocked.

'There's no sort of use in knocking,' said the Footman, 'and that for
two reasons. First, because I'm on the same side of the door as you
are; secondly, because they're making such a noise inside, no one could
possibly hear you.' And certainly there was a most extraordinary noise
going on within--a constant howling and sneezing, and every now and then
a great crash, as if a dish or kettle had been broken to pieces.

'Please, then,' said Alice, 'how am I to get in?'

'There might be some sense in your knocking,' the Footman went on
without attending to her, 'if we had the door between us. For instance,
if you were INSIDE, you might knock, and I could let you out, you know.'
He was looking up into the sky all the time he was speaking, and this
Alice thought decidedly uncivil. 'But perhaps he can't help it,' she
said to herself; 'his eyes are so VERY nearly at the top of his head.
But at any rate he might answer questions.--How am I to get in?' she
repeated, aloud.

'I shall sit here,' the Footman remarked, 'till tomorrow--'

At this moment the door of the house opened, and a large plate came
skimming out, straight at the Footman's head: it just grazed his nose,
and broke to pieces against one of the trees behind him.

'--or next day, maybe,' the Footman continued in the same tone, exactly
as if nothing had happened.

'How am I to get in?' asked Alice again, in a louder tone.

'ARE you to get in at all?' said the Footman. 'That's the first
question, you know.'

It was, no doubt: only Alice did not like to be told so. 'It's really
dreadful,' she muttered to herself, 'the way all the creatures argue.
It's enough to drive one crazy!'

The Footman seemed to think this a good opportunity for repeating his
remark, with variations. 'I shall sit here,' he said, 'on and off, for
days and days.'

'But what am I to do?' said Alice.

'Anything you like,' said the Footman, and began whistling.

'Oh, there's no use in talking to him,' said Alice desperately: 'he's
perfectly idiotic!' And she opened the door and went in.

The door led right into a large kitchen, which was full of smoke from
one end to the other: the Duchess was sitting on a three-legged stool in
the middle, nursing a baby; the cook was leaning over the fire, stirring
a large cauldron which seemed to be full of soup.

'There's certainly too much pepper in that soup!' Alice said to herself,
as well as she could for sneezing.

There was certainly too much of it in the air. Even the Duchess
sneezed occasionally; and as for the baby, it was sneezing and howling
alternately without a moment's pause. The only things in the kitchen
that did not sneeze, were the cook, and a large cat which was sitting on
the hearth and grinning from ear to ear.

'Please would you tell me,' said Alice, a little timidly, for she was
not quite sure whether it was good manners for her to speak first, 'why
your cat grins like that?'

'It's a Cheshire cat,' said the Duchess, 'and that's why. Pig!'

She said the last word with such sudden violence that Alice quite
jumped; but she saw in another moment that it was addressed to the baby,
and not to her, so she took courage, and went on again:--

'I didn't know that Cheshire cats always grinned; in fact, I didn't know
that cats COULD grin.'

'They all can,' said the Duchess; 'and most of 'em do.'

'I don't know of any that do,' Alice said very politely, feeling quite
pleased to have got into a conversation.

'You don't know much,' said the Duchess; 'and that's a fact.'

Alice did not at all like the tone of this remark, and thought it would
be as well to introduce some other subject of conversation. While she
was trying to fix on one, the cook took the cauldron of soup off the
fire, and at once set to work throwing everything within her reach at
the Duchess and the baby--the fire-irons came first; then followed a
shower of saucepans, plates, and dishes. The Duchess took no notice of
them even when they hit her; and the baby was howling so much already,
that it was quite impossible to say whether the blows hurt it or not.

'Oh, PLEASE mind what you're doing!' cried Alice, jumping up and down in
an agony of terror. 'Oh, there goes his PRECIOUS nose'; as an unusually
large saucepan flew close by it, and very nearly carried it off.

'If everybody minded their own business,' the Duchess said in a hoarse
growl, 'the world would go round a deal faster than it does.'

'Which would NOT be an advantage,' said Alice, who felt very glad to get
an opportunity of showing off a little of her knowledge. 'Just think of
what work it would make with the day and night! You see the earth takes
twenty-four hours to turn round on its axis--'

'Talking of axes,' said the Duchess, 'chop off her head!'

Alice glanced rather anxiously at the cook, to see if she meant to take
the hint; but the cook was busily stirring the soup, and seemed not to
be listening, so she went on again: 'Twenty-four hours, I THINK; or is
it twelve? I--'

'Oh, don't bother ME,' said the Duchess; 'I never could abide figures!'
And with that she began nursing her child again, singing a sort of
lullaby to it as she did so, and giving it a violent shake at the end of
every line:

   'Speak roughly to your little boy,
    And beat him when he sneezes:
   He only does it to annoy,
    Because he knows it teases.'

         CHORUS.

 (In which the cook and the baby joined):--

       'Wow! wow! wow!'

While the Duchess sang the second verse of the song, she kept tossing
the baby violently up and down, and the poor little thing howled so,
that Alice could hardly hear the words:--

   'I speak severely to my boy,
    I beat him when he sneezes;
   For he can thoroughly enjoy
    The pepper when he pleases!'

         CHORUS.

       'Wow! wow! wow!'

'Here! you may nurse it a bit, if you like!' the Duchess said to Alice,
flinging the baby at her as she spoke. 'I must go and get ready to play
croquet with the Queen,' and she hurried out of the room. The cook threw
a frying-pan after her as she went out, but it just missed her.

Alice caught the baby with some difficulty, as it was a queer-shaped
little creature, and held out its arms and legs in all directions, 'just
like a star-fish,' thought Alice. The poor little thing was snorting
like a steam-engine when she caught it, and kept doubling itself up and
straightening itself out again, so that altogether, for the first minute
or two, it was as much as she could do to hold it.

As soon as she had made 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,) she carried
it out into the open air. 'IF I don't take this child away with me,'
thought Alice, 'they're sure to kill it in a day or two: wouldn't it be
murder to leave it behind?' She said the last words out loud, and the
little thing grunted in reply (it had left off sneezing by this time).
'Don't grunt,' said Alice; 'that's not at all a proper way of expressing
yourself.'

The baby grunted again, and Alice looked very anxiously into its face to
see what was the matter with it. There could be no doubt that it had
a VERY turn-up nose, much more like a snout than a real nose; also its
eyes were getting extremely small for a baby: altogether Alice did not
like the look of the thing at all. 'But perhaps it was only sobbing,'
she thought, and looked into its eyes again, to see if there were any
tears.

No, there were no tears. 'If you're going to turn into a pig, my dear,'
said Alice, seriously, 'I'll have nothing more to do with you. Mind
now!' The poor little thing sobbed again (or grunted, it was impossible
to say which), and they went on for some while in silence.

Alice was just beginning to think to herself, 'Now, what am I to do with
this creature when I get it home?' when it grunted again, so violently,
that she looked down into its face in some alarm. This time there could
be NO mistake about it: it was neither more nor less than a pig, and she
felt that it would be quite absurd for her to carry it further.

So she set the little creature down, and felt quite relieved to see
it trot away quietly into the wood. 'If it had grown up,' she said
to herself, 'it would have made a dreadfully ugly child: but it makes
rather a handsome pig, I think.' And she began thinking over other
children she knew, who might do very well as pigs, and was just saying
to herself, 'if one only knew the right way to change them--' when she
was a little startled by seeing the Cheshire Cat sitting on a bough of a
tree a few yards off.

The Cat only grinned when it saw Alice. It looked good-natured, she
thought: still it had VERY long claws and a great many teeth, so she
felt that it ought to be treated with respect.

'Cheshire Puss,' she began, rather timidly, as she did not at all know
whether it would like the name: however, it only grinned a little wider.
'Come, it's pleased so far,' thought Alice, and she went on. 'Would you
tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?'

'That depends a good deal on where you want to get to,' said the Cat.

'I don't much care where--' said Alice.

'Then it doesn't matter which way you go,' said the Cat.

'--so long as I get SOMEWHERE,' Alice added as an explanation.

'Oh, you're sure to do that,' said the Cat, 'if you only walk long
enough.'

Alice felt that this could not be denied, so she tried another question.
'What sort of people live about here?'

'In THAT direction,' the Cat said, waving its right paw round, 'lives
a Hatter: and in THAT direction,' waving the other paw, 'lives a March
Hare. Visit either you like: they're both mad.'

'But I don't want to go among mad people,' Alice remarked.

'Oh, you can't help that,' said the Cat: 'we're all mad here. I'm mad.
You're mad.'

'How do you know I'm mad?' said Alice.

'You must be,' said the Cat, 'or you wouldn't have come here.'

Alice didn't think that proved it at all; however, she went on 'And how
do you know that you're mad?'

'To begin with,' said the Cat, 'a dog's not mad. You grant that?'

'I suppose so,' said Alice.

'Well, then,' the Cat went on, 'you see, a dog growls when it's angry,
and wags its tail when it's pleased. Now I growl when I'm pleased, and
wag my tail when I'm angry. Therefore I'm mad.'

'I call it purring, not growling,' said Alice.

'Call it what you like,' said the Cat. 'Do you play croquet with the
Queen to-day?'

'I should like it very much,' said Alice, 'but I haven't been invited
yet.'

'You'll see me there,' said the Cat, and vanished.

Alice was not much surprised at this, she was getting so used to queer
things happening. While she was looking at the place where it had been,
it suddenly appeared again.

'By-the-bye, what became of the baby?' said the Cat. 'I'd nearly
forgotten to ask.'

'It turned into a pig,' Alice quietly said, just as if it had come back
in a natural way.

'I thought it would,' said the Cat, and vanished again.

Alice waited a little, half expecting to see it again, but it did not
appear, and after a minute or two she walked on in the direction in
which the March Hare was said to live. 'I've seen hatters before,' she
said to herself; 'the March Hare will be much the most interesting, and
perhaps as this is May it won't be raving mad--at least not so mad as
it was in March.' As she said this, she looked up, and there was the Cat
again, sitting on a branch of a tree.

'Did you say pig, or fig?' said the Cat.

'I said pig,' replied Alice; 'and I wish you wouldn't keep appearing and
vanishing so suddenly: you make one quite giddy.'

'All right,' said the Cat; and this time it vanished quite slowly,
beginning with the end of the tail, and ending with the grin, which
remained some time after the rest of it had gone.

'Well! I've often seen a cat without a grin,' thought Alice; 'but a grin
without a cat! It's the most curious thing I ever saw in my life!'

She had not gone much farther before she came in sight of the house
of the March Hare: she thought it must be the right house, because the
chimneys were shaped like ears and the roof was thatched with fur. It
was so large a house, that she did not like to go nearer till she had
nibbled some more of the lefthand bit of mushroom, and raised herself to
about two feet high: even then she walked up towards it rather timidly,
saying to herself 'Suppose it should be raving mad after all! I almost
wish I'd gone to see the Hatter instead!'

 The Caterpillar's nasty mood, even if he does seem nonchalant, is a subtle symbol of all the verbal chaos in Wonderland. Yet, here, in Chapter VI, that linguistic nonsense is replaced by random, violent, physical disorder in the action of the story. Alice has come upon a house, just as a Fish-Footman delivers a letter to the Frog-Footman of the house. The letter is an invitation, which the Fish-Footman reads: "For the Duchess. An invitation from the Queen to play croquet." In a marvelous example of Wonderland's semantic, verbal fun, the Frog-Footman reverses the invitation: "From the Queen. An invitation for the Duchess to play croquet." In reality, it should end with "From the Queen." When Alice attempts to enter the house, she finds herself further into the world of nonsense. The Frog-Footman is sitting before the door and is totally uncooperative as she knocks at the door. He replies to her every question in "absurd" reasoning -- as if Alice had suddenly found herself in a Samuel Beckett play. With elegant precision, the Frog-Footman explains that her knocking on the door is useless because he can only answer the door from inside. Again, we see an illustration where the reply to a question is never addressed to the question, but to something else. Alice's knocking on the door is "useless," she is told, because the Frog-Footman, who opens the door from inside the house, is now outside; thus, he can't answer her; and, in any event, the noise from inside the house would prevent the Frog-Footman from hearing her knock even if he were inside. Truly, this is the World of the Absurd. Yet, this kind of confusion is quite normal in Wonderland; all of reality here is viewed, so to speak, on a scale of values which are completely alien to the "normal" Victorian world of Alice. A large plate suddenly comes flying out of the house and barely misses hitting the Frog-Footman's head. The Frog-Footman is totally oblivious to this. And his indifference to chaos is characteristic of Wonderland's creatures and indicates to Alice that there surely must be an underlying order here. Or perhaps it involves only a fatalistic indifference. For the Caterpillar and the Frog-Footman, things have no purpose. "I shall sit here," the Frog-Footman muses, "on and off for days and days." "But what am I to do?" asks Alice. "Anything you like," says the Frog-Footman. The Frog-Footman's reply to Alice's question is idiotic nonsense, and with a child's simplicity, Alice finds the Frog-Footman's values totally illogical. Alice has been brought up to believe that things should be done and that they should be done with a purpose. In her world, there is order and there are schedules and tasks to be accomplished at certain times. Carroll's method in creating the tension between these two worlds is to increase the difference in the values "above-ground" and those of Wonderland. One is, therefore, not entirely correct in relating Wonderland's anarchy and nonsense to the creatures' irrational behavior. Alice, in fact, is making the assumption that there is -- and should be -- an order here; she is trying to make logic from illogic. Wonderland is a world of illogic, and Alice, as a proper little Victorian girl, keeps trying throughout the novel to relate, logically, to these creatures -- who seem like adults and who, therefore, should be logical. The creatures' acceptance of disorder may seem to be a parody of reality to the reader. Yet Wonderland's chaos is not altogether unreal. Our own reality, as a historical one, is impermanent and never without some degree of ambiguity. When we consider what has been accepted as "reality" throughout the ages regarding our world and its place in the Order of Things, we see how flimsy a word "logic" can be. Indeed, Albert Einstein, the father of relativity, was deeply worried that God was "playing dice with the universe." If Alice fails to discover a correlation between her reality above-ground and her dream, it must be because she is "inside" her dream. To put it another way, one might even say that she is trapped in an unadjustable frame of meaning. For her, there is no scale of values except the one which she brings to Wonderland. She has a strong sense of being lost and abandoned; but the creatures know where they belong, and none of them identifies with her plight. Nor are the creatures able to befriend her. Note that Alice meets no other children like herself in Wonderland. And the creatures all speak to her on the inscrutable and mysterious level of adults. Unless they direct her to do something, their utterances are quite beyond her comprehension. In that sense, in Alice's dream, they are echoing memories of the many puzzling things that adults living above-ground have said, things that Alice did not understand. Inside the house, Alice meets the Duchess, who nurses a crying baby. A cook, meanwhile, stirs a cauldron of soup and, indiscriminately, she shakes a pepper mill. The baby is crying, and it is sneezing, it seems, because of all the flying pepper. Next to the cook sits the Cheshire-Cat with his famous smile. The kitchen is in an absolute turmoil. But the Duchess ignores the sneezing, the crying, and the cook throwing pans. Alice watches silently as the Duchess brutally shakes and pounds the baby. The Duchess' rudeness and cruelty is the most extreme thus far in the story; even the cook is provoked to the point of directing her pans at the Duchess. Calmly, the Duchess ignores the others' reactions. "If everybody minded their business," the Duchess says, "the world would go around a deal faster than it does." "Which would not be an advantage," observes Alice. "Talking of axes," says the Duchess, "Chop off her head!" The Duchess is abominable, and the baby bears the worst of her cruelty. While violently throwing the baby around, the Duchess sings a crude and savage lullaby: Speak roughly to your little boy,And beat him when he sneezes:He only does it to annoy,Because he knows it teases. The cook and the baby then recite a chorus to each stanza: Wow! wow! wow! This verse, like the others before it, is another parody of a well-known poem in Carroll's time. Alice is rightly appalled at the lullaby's sentiments and the Duchess' cruelty. Every now and then, the Duchess calls the baby "Pig!" This is proof enough that the Duchess has a barbarous nature. As the Duchess prepares to go play croquet with the Queen, she tosses the baby to Alice. Suddenly, Alice feels maternal and thinks that she must save the baby from the violent Duchess and from the crazy cook. But in the next moment, Alice finds that her sympathy is falsely placed. The baby struggles to get out of her embrace, and before Alice's very eyes, the baby is transformed into a grunting pig. Confident that she was doing the right thing -- despite the metamorphosis that is happening before her very eyes -- Alice still finds her good intentions subverted by Wonderland's absurdities. Finally, she has no choice but to let the pig trot off, but she cannot let it go without a twinge of guilt. She considers it a handsome pig -- but an ugly baby. Implicit in this observation is the assumption that "all things have a silver lining," a very Victorian type of thought. Alice remembers children who "might do well as pigs . . . if one only knew the right way to change them." Alice has a new sense of self-satisfaction and superiority that has been reinforced by the contemptible behavior of the Duchess. She "saved" the pig/baby. Indeed, in the face of the rudeness she has experienced, Alice is finding that she doesn't have to struggle so hard to remain a "lady." All she has to do is not react to the crazy provocation that she meets. But even so, her moral superiority illustrates her painful isolation, and not even the smiling Cheshire-Cat enables her to relax for very long, for despite his wonderfully large smile, the cat has "long claws and a great many teeth." Just after the pig trots away, Alice notices the Cheshire-Cat sitting on a bough in a tree. Whereas the Duchess is unpleasant and threatening, the friendly Cheshire-Cat treats Alice with a measure of respect -- though he is no less maddening in his response to her questions. The Cat is neither didactic nor hostile; still, he is no less inconsistent. If he doesn't snap at her, he still confuses her. Seemingly, he is an honest cat, but Alice cannot make sense of his "honesty." For example, when Alice asks him which way to go, he responds: "That depends a good deal on where you want to get to." As Alice responds that she doesn't care, he replies: "Then it doesn't matter which way you go." He assures her that she will get somewhere if she only walks long enough; she is sure to reach the same destination regardless of the direction that she takes. Unlike the other creatures, the Cheshire-Cat does seem fair. However, he too creates frustration within Alice in exactly the very same illogical ways that adults have so often verbally confused Alice. And, in addition, his constant disappearances and reappearances are terribly distracting. "How do you know I'm mad?" asks Alice. "You must be or you wouldn't have come here," the cat says. Alice then contradicts the cat when he claims to growl. "Call it what you like," he says. Then, in a clairvoyant moment, he casually mentions that he'll see Alice at the Queen's croquet game. At this point, Alice hasn't even been invited to the game, nor has she indicated any intention of going. But like the Frog-Footman, the Cheshire-Cat transfigures reality and anticipates events. He's not surprised that the baby became a pig; he's only uncertain whether Alice said "pig" or "fig." Ultimately, his smile is his most enduring and least confusing aspect. Alice complains that his vanishing and reappearing "so suddenly" make her dizzy. She asks him not to disappear; his response is to "slow down" his disappearance so that he appears to dissolve; in the end, only his grin remains, and then it too disappears. The Cheshire-Cat's smile is the embodiment of Wonderland's riddle; it is as famous and as enigmatic as Mona Lisa's smile. Curiously, it is the Cheshire-Cat who offers Alice a "meaning" to Wonderland's chaos. Alice's curiosity has led her into a mad world, and she has begun to wonder if she herself is mad. She realizes that there is just a possibility that she may be mad! And the fact that Alice is, finally, not surprised at the cat's vanishing does indicate a kind of madness on her part. And after being told that the Mad Hatter and the March Hare are also mad, Alice still insists on meeting them. In her conversation with the cat, Alice tries to come to terms with madness, but it seems that she has no choice in the matter. All roads, as it were, lead to mad people, and she seems to be one of them. The cat's grin undermines her security in anything she hears because the connection between subject and attribute has been severed. "Well," , "I've often seen a cat without a grin . . . but a grin without a cat! It's the most curious thing I ever saw in all my life." Here is a smile without a face, without any substance -- just a smile. The smile has become a nightmare of perplexity. Yet what the cat told Alice is logical; she can get somewhere by walking long enough in any direction. But it is not the answer to the question which Alice asked. Thus, the cat's responses to her inquiries are scaled to very different values than the values above-ground in Alice's familiar Victorian world. And looked at objectively, the Cheshire-Cat does not really accept Alice as an equal. He patronizes her gullibility as any adult might play with a child. In the end, Alice doesn't learn anything from him. Soon, Alice finds the house of the March Hare. Since it is May, she reasons , the Hare should be "mad" only in March. She nibbles at her mushroom until she becomes taller; increasing her size gives her more self-confidence, but she still has not learned that getting smaller or larger by such means will not enable her to deal with Wonderland any better.

