Duchess (Alice's Adventures in Wonderland)

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For the upcoming Fergie album, see The Duchess (album).

The Duchess is a character invented by Lewis Caroll, who appeared for the first time in Alice's Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Caroll, in 1865. Caroll does not describe her physically in much detail, although her hideous appearance is strongly established in the popular imagination thanks to John Tenniel's illustrations and from context it is clear that Alice finds her quite unattractive. The Duchess (and the characters which accompany her) is a character that was only added successively, in the 1865 version, and not in the earlier ones.

[edit] Origin

The Duchess was born as an antagonist to The Queen of Hearts and as a double of her personality. In Alice's Adventures Under Ground she is in fact absent, but many of her characteristics are the same as the Queen's. Probably Caroll Lewis wanted this nth caricature of the female sex (including the Cook), as another supplication to Alice to not lose her spontaneity and innocence of childhood, therefore to say that growing up is not necessarily a positive phenomenon (as testified by the child of the Duchess).

According to Martin Gardner in The Annotated Alice, John Tenniel, for his drawings, seems to be inspired by Quentin Massys 'La vecchia grotesqua' (1513). The painting seems to be a portrait of Margarete Maultasch a duchess of the XIV century passed down in history as the ugliest woman who ever existed. However since the painting was done 200 years after her death it is impossible to verify if Massy did a portrait of the real duchess.

[edit] Description

It is possible to give a description of her character by analyzing Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Alice on Stage.

The Duchess lives in Wonderland in a small palace just outside the forest of the Caterpillar. She is a duchess and has a Cook and a Valet; she moreover has a child (or at least, that is the way it appears) and a cat, (The Cheshire Cat). Lewis Caroll is not very explicit about her physical aspects, while Tenniels drawings illustrate a very ugly and grotesque woman. Her character is strongly voluble, at times she even seems to have a double personality: at her first meeting with Alice (which happens in the kitchen of her home) she shows herself to be nervous and aggressive and absolutely not disposed to interact, and she recites one of the more famous (or infamous) rhymes in the book, when she advocates beating a child for sneezing:

"Speak harshly to your little boy/and beat him when he sneezes/he only does it to annoy/because he knows it teases."

As the cook has absolutely saturated the kitchen with pepper, and the baby sneezes constantly, one can only conclude he has probably suffered quite a bit at his mother's hands. Taking pity on the child, Alice spirits him away only to find that he quickly transforms into a pig. It is never explained why this happens, but Alice looks on the bright side, concluding that while the baby wasn't a very attractive baby, it makes for a good-looking pig.

Of the Duchess' household, the Cat appears to be by far the most balanced and sensible, although he states that, like everybody else in Wonderland, he is mad. How he came to be with the Duchess is, like so many other matters in Wonderland, a mystery. Later, when he meets up with Alice, it appears he has left the Duchess for good.

When Alice meets the Duchess for the second time, the Duchess is much more chatty and almost flirtatious, seemingly determined to charm the young girl for reasons unknown. She now repeatedly places her chin firmly on Alice's shoulder, which Alice finds disturbing as well as uncomfortable, as the Duchess has a very sharp, pointy chin. (In Kurt Vonnegut's novel Breakfast of Champions he also has a character do this, and Vonnegut breaks the fourth wall to tell readers that it is a direct homage to this famous scene with the Duchess.) The Duchess' mood swing is so severe here that Alice thinks that perhaps her earlier irritability was due to all the pepper. In any case, the Duchess has no concern for her baby now that he's become a pig.

The Duchess is often seen as a child's-eye-view of emotionally volatile and mysterious adults, switching back and forth between dark moods and condescending affection at unpredictable times.

[edit] Other Media

• The Duchess is the first boss that Alice faces in American McGee's Alice. Appearing from the chimney, she is extremely large and ugly, wearing a stained apron and wielding a bizarre sort of pepper shaker, from which she shoots lethal black pepper at Alice. In this version, she seems to be a cannibal, as her first lines indicate that Alice would make a nice light snack. After being defeated, she becomes entoxicated with pepper, and her head blows up.