Figures of speech from Lewis Carroll characters

Cafe Society
1

I’ve found it of interest to notice recently, on a couple of message boards (in one, instance, on the Dope – I made so bold at the time, as to do an “annoying nitpick” response): posters citing the behavioural oddities of “queen” characters in Lewis Carroll’s Alice stories, but getting their queens wrong.

In both cases, the personage mentioned was the Red Queen, of Through The Looking Glass. Her speciality in the book, is being a bossy and irritating know-all; and trying to go about her occasions by running, but finding that she (and companion, if any) have to run as hard as they can, just to stay in the same pace and not be in reverse. On one occasion she was cited in mistake for her counterpart White Queen (expert in believing impossible / incompatible things, and who lives her life backwards – cries out in pain first, then accidentally sticks a pin in her finger, and is unperturbed). The other time, “mistaken identity” was re the Queen of Hearts in Wonderland – highly irascible, given to frequent shouts of “off with his / her head !” (Her gentler consort excuses her, saying “It’s just her way – she doesn’t mean anything by it”, and follows her around quietly rescinding the death sentences.)

This got me wondering how many other characters from Alice are in common parlance today – some century-and-a-half after the books’ publication – in illustration of human oddities; and how accurately or not as against the books, they are perceived by those who refer to them. I’ve always had the impression that plenty of people love, or love to hate, the bumptious and highly confrontational Humpty Dumpty (Through The Looking Glass) – “favourite” attribute of his, probably, his insistence that his utterances mean whatever he chooses that they should mean (though he does pay his words extra, for stressful or hazardous duty).

A character for whom I’ve always had a soft spot, is the White Knight in Through The Looking Glass. However, the one-time Carroll significance / relevance now lost here, I feel. Whereas the book’s character and his name were in times past, a byword for dreamy vagueness and general impracticality and ineffectiveness; in present-day parlance, a “white knight” refers metaphorically to someone who comes vigorously to the defence of such folk as are seen to need defending: while the need may sometimes be inaccurately perceived, the defender’s behaviour is decisive and in no way halting or vague.

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I actually thought “white knight” in that context was popularized by the old Ajax commercial.

3

Merriam Webster says the first documented use of “white knight” to mean “rescuer” dates to 1628, which way predates Ajax or Carroll.

4

“popularized”

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The song “My White Knight” from the very popular musical “The Music Man” pre-dates the 1960s Ajax commercial, I think.

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I buy it.

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Thanks, everyone. That’s all I know about white knights, then – seems that Carroll went up his own idiosyncratic “alley” with his dreamy and rather clueless White Knight; characterised as “white”, essentially just because of being allocated to that side in the game – as with all the book’s chess-piece characters, who are either "the White ***** ", or "the Red ***** ".

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Not sure exactly what you’re looking for here, but plenty of characters from Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass are familiar today (they keep adapting the books. I think Disney’s 1951 film still sticks in a lot of mind, not to mention the two Tim Burton re-imaginings he did for Disney). Without thinking too heavily, here are a few still used as figures of speech:

Red Queen
Queen of Hearts
Cheshire Cat
Mad Hatter
Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum – really iconic chubby pair
The Walrus and the Carpenter – Only appear in a poem, not in the actual story, but they show up – usually animated – in several film versions
Humpty Dumpty – not invented by Carroll, of course, but his version is as much remembered as the classic nursery rhyme, mostly because of his phrases – “When I use a word, it means what I mean it to say.”
The Jabberwock – “Jabberwocky” is the source of a lot of nonsense words in use by people who probably don’t know when they come from – “vorpal blade”, “bandersnatch”, “galumphing”, etc.

The White Rabbit, of course
The Caterpillar – the image of the hookah-smoking, enigmatic caterpillar became immensely popular in the 1960s, for some obscure reason.

On the other hand, a lot of characters aren’t all that well known, even if they appeared in film or cartoon versions. I’d argue that the White Knight 9thought to be an incarnation of Carroll himself) isn’t, despite what the OP says. Or the Dodo (who’s got quite a big part in the Disney cartoon), or the White Queen (who, as the OP points out, “lived backwards” – the first literary character I know of to do that, long predating T.H. White’s version of Merlin). I think the Griffin and the Mock Turtle are not as well known these days.

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I blame Grace Slick.

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I was thinking first and foremost, of characters which can be seen as illustrating or satirising particular human oddities / follies / foibles: IMO some of Carroll’s characters appeal to folk / stick in their minds simply because they’re fun, without much of that factor. Of those which you mention, but I didn’t in my OP: the Cheshire Cat basically just grins and vanishes; the Hatter, and his pal the Hare, are just generally across-the-board mad (while keen exponents of the crazy back-to-front logic which is the stock-in-trade of Carroll’s dreamland). Jabberwock and eponymous poem, a marvellous invention, but what they’re chiefly “about” is, as you say, being a great source of nonsense words. Hookah-Caterpillar, a nice whimsical creation and that’s all (asterion, sorry, I’ve never heard of Grace Slick !). Griffin and Mock Turtle, ditto.

The two “Tweedles”, I see as (as well as your iconically chubby) pointing out the foolishness of pairs of people or parties, who engage in furious and vehement quarrels over trivial issues. The Walrus has been a byword for hypocritical pretended regret about abuses which the culprit actually contributes to, and benefits by (he supposedly weeps with bitter sympathy over the oysters which he is busy consuming, plying his tear-absorbing handkerchief to conceal the fact that he’s selecting the biggest and juiciest). The Rabbit is a nervy, fussy bureaucrat-type, putting more energy into getting anxiously het-up than into actually doing his job. The Dodo is M.C. of the Caucus-Race, in which everyone is a winner and gets a prize – tough-minded conservatives see too much of this kind of thing in the upbringing and education of children in recent decades: failing to prepare the kids for life being fundamentally tough, effort-ful and not fair. (In this respect, one would tend to see Carroll as something of a prophet; or perhaps some radical educationalists in Victorian times were more forward-looking, than we from our historical era might imagine.)

I’ve just always found the White Knight lovably hopeless and altogether appealing – he may well not have many devotees !

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Hmm, well, the concept of a “Mad Hatter’s tea-party” is used to reference some kind of meeting or assembly that dissipates in absurdity or pointless bickering. And I’m sure I’ve seen “It was the best butter”, from the Hare’s response to the Hatter’s criticism of his using butter to lubricate the Hatter’s watch, used to suggest more broadly a feeble defense of a bad idea.

There’s also the White King’s “nothing like eating hay when you’re faint […] I didn’t say there was nothing better, I said there was nothing like it”. And the Queen of Hearts’s “Sentence first, verdict afterwards”. Actually it would take quite a while to unpick all the “Carrollisms” in modern popular culture.

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For the OP, White Rabbit.

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You’re well on to persuading me that the modern world is more Alice-conscious, than I’d imagined; and that I’m less of a Carroll scholar than I fancy myself as ! I’ve long loved the “…nothing better, I said there was nothing like it” crack; but though knowing it was from one of the “Alices”, I’d quite forgotten which character said it.

Thanks – a fun few minutes. Wonder what old Lewis would have reckoned to this number? One likes to think that he was a broad-minded soul…