Carroll’s “The Bat” and “Beautiful Soup” parody Jane Taylor’s “The Star” and James M.
Sayles’s “Star of the Evening.” Carroll turns Taylor’s and Sayles’s twinkling and beautiful stars into the twinkling bat and beautiful soup. In his nonsense poems, he replaces ethereal beauty with everyday ordinariness. “The Bat” is nonsensical because a little bat can be after something, but cannot twinkle like a star, and it certainly can fly, but cannot be like a tea-tray in the sky. It looks like Carroll’s portmanteau; however, this time it is not two meanings packed into one word, but Carroll’s “The Bat” crashes headlong into Taylor’s “The Star”: two poems packed into one portmanteau verse. As to his “Beautiful Soup,” Carroll’s play is based on the permutations of these two words “beautiful soup.” Like an impromptu singing, each of these two words can be divided into any unit, or add and drop any letters, which results in different auditory effects. Also, some of the letters in these two words can suddenly turn uppercase for visual effect.35
Industriousness of the self, caring love of the world and scenic beauty of God are characteristic of Victorian morality of the commercial middle class. Victorian men, women,
35 Another interesting example is Carroll’s “pennyworth.” Sometimes it is a cohesive word, but at other times it resembles a group of hikers: some letters walk faster while others fall behind.
and their belief in God constitute the tripod that upholds Victorian morality. What the commercial middle class neurotically cares about is how to “improve” one’s mind before
“improving” one’s time. The best brainwashing tool is unquestionable readymade morality.
Like the Duchess, the commercial middle class is fond of finding (or founding?) morals in things: “Everything’s got a moral, if only you can find it” (AW 70). If Duchess is the embodiment of morals, then the way she rests her uncomfortably sharp chin on Alice’s shoulder (AW 70) is exactly Carroll’s point: morality hurts. But, at the very beginning of her adventure, Alice does find it before venturing to taste a bottle with a paper label that reads
“DRINK ME”:
. . . she had read several nice little stories 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 deep 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. (AW 10-11)
Here, it works as morality by death threat. As Donald Gray notes, this “traditional kind of children’s story [is] popular in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries . . . in which clear lessons of obedience and prudence were enforced by visiting terrible calamities upon children who transgressed” (11). To save the fictional Alice from the capture of Victorian institution, Carroll makes two suggestions to her: embracing death and invoking the dark side of language. More than once, Carroll tells Alice to stop growing (into womanhood) and even leave off at seven in a “fairy tale” of his. The subject of growing has been one of the recurring themes in the Alice stories. She is always growing larger at one time and smaller at another, so is her power relation with Wonderland or Looking-Glass Land inhabitants in
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constant flux. Alice’s concern about the pros and cons of stopping growing up is that “shall I
never get any older than I am now? That’ll be a comfort, one way—never to be an old
woman—but then—always to have lessons to learn! Oh, I shouldn’t like that” (AW 29)! But Carroll’s suggestion sounds ultimately radical from the ventriloquist’s dummy Humpty Dumpty:“Seven years and six months!” Humpty Dumpty repeated thoughtfully. “An uncomfortable sort of age. Now if you’d asked my advice, I’d have said ‘Leave off at seven’—but it’s too late now.”
“I never ask advice about growing,” Alice said indignantly.
“Too proud?” the other enquired.
Alice felt even more indignant at this suggestion. “I mean,” she said, “that one ca’n’t help growing older.”
“One ca’n’t, perhaps,” said Humpty Dumpty; “but two can. With proper assistance, you might have left off at seven.” (TLG 162)
We should direct our attention to Carroll’s pun on “One” here because that is where
“embracing death” criss-crosses with “invoking the dark side of language.” Apparently, Alice’s pronoun “one” means “anyone” while Humpty Dumpty’s “One,” with the assistance of “two,” goes suddenly astray to the order of cardinal numbers. “Two” from the divergent order of cardinal number buries a bullet in the skull of the grammatical order of pronoun.
Jacqueline Flescher, in “The Language of Nonsense in Alice,” explains that
Nonsense bears stamp of paradox. The two terms of the paradox are order and disorder. Order is generally created by language, disorder by reference. . . . Order dominates the formal pattern, yet disorder seems to dominate reference. . . . [the paradox arises from] a clash of opposing forces. . . . The pun is invaluable as a pivot for redirection. . . . By taking the literal and not the intended meaning, the
conversation is automatically channeled into a new direction.
(128, 137, 129, 138) Conversation becomes an agonistic battlefield where opposite forces crash headlong into each other so that meaning is murdered and formal structure dangles on its own. Lack of progress is at the core of nonsense because “development of ideas is evaded by deflection of meaning. . . . logical expansion of an idea is avoided” (Flescher 139-40). If “stop growing up” means “leave off at seven,” then Alice can ease her worries of “ever so many lessons to learn!”
In addition, Carroll turns upside down Alice’s knowledge (and her pride?) acquired from school by invoking the dark side of language. For example, when she tries if she still remembers all the things she used to know, the Multiplication Table doesn’t signify, Geography is transposed, and poems do not come the same as they used to (AW 15-16).
Another example comes when the subjects of day-school under the sea bear a similar but different resemblance to those of Alice’s. Here the pun works by avoiding intended curricula of Alice and taking deflective marine curricula of the Mock Turtle and the Gryphon. The distance between them and the “coming different” deflective curricula are the source of Carroll’s humor. The topsy-turvy world begins with Mock Turtle’s marine school master, who is a Turtle (marine), but is called Tortoise (land) “because he taught us” (AW 75). It is an example of quasi-portmanteau with two sounds packed into one word. As to the “best of educations” (AW 76) of Mock Turtle and Gryphon, they have “Reeling and Writhing,”
“different branches of Arithmetic—Ambition, Distraction, Uglification, and Derision,”
“Mystery, ancient and modern, with Seaography: then Drawling . . . Stretching, and Fainting in Coils. . . . Laughing and Grief” (AW 76-77) as regular courses, and “French, music, and
washing” (AW 76) as extras. Except for the “extras,” marine subjects distinguish themselves
from Alice’s “land” ones by only one feature, which we call minimal pairs. In addition to the81
Table 1.1
Subject Comparison between Marine Day-School and Alice’s Day-School
subject school Marine day-school Alice’s day-school
Literacy Reeling and Writhing Reading and Writing
Arithmetic Ambition, Distraction,
Uglification, and Derision
Addition, Subtraction, Multiplication, and Division Study of Time and Space Mystery and Seaography History and Geography
Fine Arts Drawling, Stretching, and
Fainting in Coils
Drawing, Sketching, and Painting in Oils
Classical Course Laughing and Grief Latin and Greek
Extra French, Music, and Washing French, Music
phonic level, probably the first thing that comes to our mind is the doubt: why are these useless subjects put on school curricula? It is hard to imagine how the old conger-eel’s teaching of Drawling, Stretching, and Fainting in Coils and the old crab’s classical teaching of Laughing and Grief are worth any penny of the tuition. Still, the way Mock Turtle and Gryphon talk about their “best of educations” with seriousness makes us laugh. Among the humorous deflective curricula, Washing and Uglification calls for further elucidation. First of all, Carroll uses the extra subject Washing to highlight its absurdity for both Mock Turtle and Alice. When comparing with Alice’s extras, the Mock Turtle is anxious to know whether his
“best of educations” finds no match in the world by the extra subject Washing. To his delight, Alice’s day-school is not really a good one because it provides no such “proud” extra. Alice is enraged at Mock Turtle’s underestimate. Earlier, she already feels unhappy about being ordered about first by the cardboard Queen of Hearts, and then by the animal Gryphon.
“Everybody says ‘come on!’ here” (AW 74).36 This reverses Alice’s power relation with Wonderland inhabitants—e.g. birds, animals, cardboards. Now, as one of the proud commercial middle class, the fictional Alice finds it most disagreeable about the suggestion that she has not been to a school and she has been taught any servile task like washing. This is a humiliating class reversal. This middle-class girl’s intellectual snobbishness is provoked.
In response, Alice disparages and comments sarcastically on Mock Turtle’s proud extra.
“We had the best of educations—in fact, we went to school every day—”
“I’ve been to a day-school, too,” said Alice. “You needn’t be so proud as all that.”
“With extras?” asked the Mock Turtle, a little anxiously.
“Yes,” said Alice: “we learned French and music.”
“And washing?” said the Mock Turtle.
“Certainly not!” said Alice indignantly.
“Ah! Then yours wasn’t a really good school,” said the Mock Turtle in a tone of great relief. “Now, at ours, they had, at the end of the bill, ‘French, music, and washing—extra.’”
“You couldn’t have wanted it much,” said Alice; “living at the bottom of the sea.” (AW 76)
The extra is absurd for Mock Turtle because at the bottom of sea where one couldn’t have wanted washing much, he regrets that he couldn’t afford to learn it. And the extra is also absurd for Alice because, as Donald Gray notes, “Alice, properly brought-up middle-class girl that she is, is indignant at the suggestion that she has been taught servile tasks, such as doing the wash” (76). Secondly, Carroll points out a contradiction in language: not every
36 The White Rabbit even mistakes her as his servant girl Mary Ann. At first, Alice is quite excited about this Prince and Pauper thing, but gradually feels uncomfortable about being ordered around so much.
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word has its antonym. The King says, important—unimportant—unimportant—important—”
(AW 93), trying to figure out which word sounds best. It seems natural to chant the antonyms with or without “un.” Although it is easy to infer that the antonym of strengthen is weaken, similar rule cannot be applied to the word “Uglification” because today’s dictionary only contains “Beautification.” Our logic contradicts itself, but at present we can do nothing about the institutionalized fact. Fortunately, in Carroll’s fantasy land, we can still intuitively palpate the antonym of Beautification. The Gryphon’s underground logic is that if one knows what to beautify is, he or she surely knows what to “uglify” is (AW 76).
The final epiphany for Alice comes when she compares her lessons with theirs.
“And how many hours a day did you do lessons?” said Alice. . . .
“Ten hours the first day,” said the Mock Turtle: “nine the next, and so on.”
“What a curious plan!” exclaimed Alice.
“That’s the reason they’re called lessons,” the Gryphon remarked: “because they lessen from day to day.” (AW 77)
The homophone of lesson is the word “lessen.” Their dangling formal structure is the identical pronunciation, but the meaning of lesson is reduced to a minimum when “lessen”
swerves to a new direction. However, what makes this passage nonsensically inspiring is its mathematical aspect. As days pass by, lessons lessen. “This is quite a new idea to Alice, and she thought it over a little before she made her next remark. ‘Then the eleventh day must have been a holiday?’ ‘Of course it was,’ said the Mock Turtle. ‘And how did you manage on the twelfth?’ Alice went on eagerly” (AW 77). Although the Gryphon is evasive about Alice’s question by “That’s enough about lessons” (AW 77), Martin Gardner does formulate his hypothesis: “On the twelfth day and succeeding days did the pupils start teaching their teacher” (99)? With the dark side of language coming, resistance becomes possible. Examples of seniors taking advantage of their youth abound in Alice stories. The sulky Lory said to
Alice: “I’m older than you, and must know better” (AW 21). Carroll wants us to give those moral values embedded in didactic poems a second thought. They pass from generation to generation as readymade “wisdom.” We stand on the shoulders of such a giant, but how can we accept his self-righteous stance without even bothering to think in the first place? Robert Southey’s 1799 poem “The Old Man’s Comforts and How He Gained Them” talks about how an old man is fearless of his mortal life by trading his youth for some good account at last.
However, Carroll turns this original poem into a fight between generations. Father William takes advantage of his son by finishing “the goose, with the bones and the beak—“ (19).
What’s more, he wants to profit from his moral lesson for his son: