Through the Looking Glass (And What Alice Found There) was written by English clergyman and Oxford lecturer in mathematics, Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, better known as Lewis Carroll. Written in 1872 for the amusement of Carroll’s young friend Alice Liddell, it is the companion piece to Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.
Child of the pure unclouded brow
And dreaming eyes of wonder!
Though time be fleet, and I and thou
Are half a life asunder,
Thy loving smile will surely hail
The love-gift of a fairy-tale.1
One winter afternoon, with snow falling outside the window, “Alice was sitting curled up in a corner of the great arm-chair, half talking to herself and half asleep”2, telling the black kitten about The Looking Glass House. It was visible through the mirror hung over the mantle, and seemed to be the same as Alice’s house, at least as far as she could see. She wished she could get through the glass and see what was on the other side! The next thing she knew, the mirrored glass “was beginning to melt away, just like a bright, silvery mist." 3 Alice climbed up on the chimney piece to investigate.
Alice stepped through the glass and into the room beyond. The parts of this room which could be seen from the old room were quite common and uninteresting, but the rest were very different—less tidy, for one, and the books were all printed backwards ( YKCOWREBBAJ), and there were tiny little chess men walking around and talking down in the hearth. Alice picked up and talked to the white queen and king, but finding that they couldn’t see or hear her, she decided to explore the rest of the house:
She was out of the room in a moment, and ran downstairs—or, at least, it wasn’t exactly running, but a new invention for getting downstairs quickly and easily, as Alice said to herself. She just kept the tips of her fingers on the hand-rail, and floated gently down without even touching the stairs with her feet; then she floated on through the hall, and would have gone straight out at the door in the same way, if she hadn’t caught hold of the door-post. She was getting a little giddy with so much floating in the air, and was rather glad to find herself walking again in the natural way. 4
Alice leaves the house and explores the garden, where the flowers are awake and can talk (“in most gardens... they make the beds too soft—so that the flowers are always asleep.”5) She sees the Red Queen, now grown taller than Alice herself, and on the advice of the flowers, catches up with her by walking away from her (which makes perfect sense, since she is in a mirror-image world):
[ Alice ] explained, as well as she could, that she had lost her way.
”I don’t know what you mean by your way,” said the Queen: “all the ways about here belong to me--but why did you come out here at all?” she added in a kinder tone. “Curtsey while you’re thinking what to say. It saves time.” 6
Suddenly, Alice finds herself being pulled along by the Red Queen, who had begun running at a furious pace. Curiously enough, they don't get anywhere:
"...here, you see, it takes all the running you can do, to keep it the same place. If you want to get somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast as that!" 7
While walking with the queen, Alice looks out over the countryside and notices that it is marked like a large chessboard. The Red Queen tells Alice that she can play as a pawn in place of the White Queen’s infant daughter, Lily. She gives Alice some last minute advice (“Speak in French when you can’t think of the English for the a thing—turn out your toes as you walk—and remember who you are!” 8) and then leaves her, as a pawn, to make her first move.
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In the six years between the publications of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass, Charles Dodgson had been teaching Alice Liddell how to play chess.9 Each of the chapters in Through the Looking Glass describes a move on the chessboard:
[ The chess problem ] is correctly worked out, so far as the moves are concerned. The alternation of Red and White is perhaps not so strictly observed as it might be, and the “castling” of the three Queens is merely a way of saying that they entered the palace: but the “check” of the White King at move 6, the capture of the Red Knight at move 7, and the final “checkmate” of the Red King, will be found, by anyone who will take the trouble to set the pieces and play the moves as directed, to be strictly in accordance with the laws of the game.10
White Pawn (Alice) to play, and win in eleven moves.
1. Alice meets R. Q. 1. R. Q. to K. R.’s 4th
2. Alice through Q.’s 3rd (by railway) 2. W. Q. to Q. B.’s 4th (after shawl)
to Q.’s 4th (Tweedledum and
Tweedledee)
3. Alice meets W. Q. (with shawl) 3. W. Q. to Q. B.’s 5th (becomes sheep)
4. Alice to Q.’s 5th (shop, river, shop) 4. W. Q. to K. B.’s 8th (leaves egg
on shelf)
5. Alice to Q.’s 6th (Humpty Dumpty) 5. W. Q. to Q. B.’s 8th (flying from
R. Kt.)
6. Alice to Q.’s 7th (forest) 6. R. Kt. to K.’s 2nd (ch.)
7. W. Kt. takes R. Kt. 7. W. Kt. to K. B.’s 5th
8. Alice to Q.’s 8th (coronation) 8. R. Q. to K.’s sq (examination)
9. Alice becomes Queen 9. Queens castle
10. Alice castles (feast) 10. W.Q. to Q. R. 6th (soup)
11. Alice takes R. Q. & wins
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For whatever reason, people always think that Tweedledum and Tweedledee and Humpty Dumpty are in Alice in Wonderland, but they’re not; Alice meets them in Looking-Glass land. It is in this book that Alice makes the acquaintance of the Rocking-horse-fly, Snap-dragon-fly, and Bread-and-butter-fly, learns about living backwards from the White Queen and about unbirthdays from Humpty Dumpty, witnesses The Lion and the Unicorn fighting for the crown, and is captured by the White Knight. When Alice reaches the 8th square on the chessboard, she becomes a queen.
Everything was happening so oddly that she didn't feel a bit surprised at finding the Red Queen and the White Queen sitting close to her, one on each side: she would have like very much to ask them how they came there, but she feared it would not be quite civil. However, there would be no harm, she thought, in asking if the game was over. "Please, would you tell me -- " she began, looking timidly at the Red Queen.
"Speak when you're spoken to!" The Queen sharply interrupted her.
"But if everybody obeyed that rule," said Alice, who was always ready for a little argument, "and if you only spoke when you were spoken to, and the other person always waited for you to begin, you see nobody would ever say anything, so that -- "
"Ridiculous!" cried the Queen. "Why, don't you see, child -- " here she broke off with a frown, and, after thinking for a minute, suddenly changed the subject of the conversation. "What do you mean by `If you really are a Queen'? What right have you to call yourself so? You can't be a Queen, you know, till you've passed the proper examination. And the sooner we begin it, the better."
"I only said `if'!" poor Alice pleaded in a piteous tone.
The two Queens looked at each other, and the Red Queen remarked, with a little shudder, "She says she only said `if' - "
"But she said a great deal more than that!" the White Queen moaned, wringing her hands. "Oh, ever so much more than that!"
"So you did, you know," the Red Queen said to Alice. "Always speak the truth -- think before you speak -- and write it down afterwards."
"I'm sure I didn't mean -- " Alice was beginning, but the Red Queen interrupted her impatiently.
"That's just what I complain of! You should have meant! What do you suppose is the use of child without any meaning? Even a joke should have some meaning -- and a child's more important than a joke, I hope. You couldn't deny that, even if you tried with both hands." 11
The Red Queen is quite a quarrelsome character, and the White Queen speaks all manner of nonsense. Both bombard Alice with questions ("What's one and one and one and one and one and one and one and one and one and one ?"), invite her to a dinner party given in honor of her coronation, and then promptly fall asleep in her lap.
And then (as Alice afterwards described it) all sorts of things happened in a moment. The candles all grew up to the ceiling, looking something like a bed of rushes with fireworks at the top. As to the bottles, they each took a pair of plates, which they hastily fitted on as wings, and so, with forks for legs, went fluttering about . . .
”I can’t stand this any longer!” [ Alice ] cried, as she seized the table-cloth with both hands: one good pull, and plates, dishes, guests, and candles came crashing down together in a heap on the floor.
“And as for you,” she went on, turning fiercely upon the Red Queen, whom she considered as the cause of all the mischief—but the Queen was no longer at her side—she had suddenly dwindled down to the size of a little doll, and was now on the table, merrily running round and round after her own shawl, which was trailing behind her.
At any other time, Alice would have felt surprised at this, but she was far too much excited to be surprised at anything now. “As for you,” she repeated, catching hold of the little creature in the very act of jumping over a bottle which had just lighted upon the table, “I’ll shake you into a kitten, that I will!”12
CHAPTER XI
WAKING
------and it really was a kitten, after all.13
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This ‘and then she woke up’ ending is a bit weak, in my opinion, especially considering all the brilliant wordplay and fantastical imaginings that precede it, but given Lewis Carroll’s incredible contribution to children’s literature, I am willing to overlook this flaw. Both Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass are available here on E2 and throughout the web, thanks to Project Gutenberg. My advice is to find a copy that is accompanied by Sir John Tenniel’s fabulous illustrations,14 and enjoy.
1 Through the Looking-Glass And What Alice Found There, The Best of Lewis Carroll, © Castle, a division of Book Sales, Inc., p. 165.
2 ibid, p. 169.
3 ibid, p. 176.
4 ibid, p. 183.
5 ibid, p. 187.
6 ibid, pp.189-190.
7 ibid, p. 193.
8 ibid, p. 194
9 http://www.online-literature.com/carroll/lookingglass/
10 Through the Looking-Glass And What Alice Found There, Preface, p. 165.
11 ibid, pp. 273-274
12 ibid, pp. 287-289.
13 ibid, p. 291.
14See http://65.107.211.206/graphics/tenniel/lookingglass/gallery4.html