Queen of Hearts (Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland): Difference between revisions

Character from Lewis Carroll’s novel Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland

Fictional character

The Queen of Hearts is a fictional character and the main antagonist in the 1865 book Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll. She is a childish, foul-tempered monarch whom Carroll himself describes as “a blind fury”, and who is quick to give death sentences at even the slightest of offenses. One of her most famous lines is the oft-repeated “Off with his/her head!” / “Off with their heads!”

The Queen is referred to as a card from a pack of playing cards by Alice, yet somehow she is able to talk and is the ruler of the lands in the story, alongside her husband, the King of Hearts. She is often confused with the Red Queen from the 1871 sequel, Through the Looking-Glass, although the two are very different.

Overview[edit]

Alice observes three playing cards painting white roses red. They drop to the ground face down at the approach of the Queen of Hearts, whom Alice has never met. When the Queen arrives, along with the King and their ten children, and asks Alice who is lying on the ground (since the backs of all playing cards look alike), Alice tells her that she does not know. The Queen then becomes frustrated and commands that her head be severed. She is deterred by her comparatively moderate husband by being reminded that Alice is only a child.

Generally, however, as we are told by Carroll:

The Queen had only one way of settling all difficulties, great or small. ‘Off with his head!’ she said, without even looking around.

One of the Queen’s hobbies – besides ordering executions – is croquet; however, it is Wonderland croquet, where the balls are live hedgehogs and the mallets are flamingoes. This is presumably with the aim that the birds’ blunt beaks should strike, but, as Alice observes, it is complicated by the fact that they keep looking back up at the players- as well as the hedgehogs’ tendency to scuttle away without waiting to be hit. The Queen’s soldiers act as the arches (or hoops) on the croquet grounds, but have to leave off being arches every time the Queen has an executioner drag away the victim, so that, by the end of the game in the story, the only players that remain are the Queen herself, the King, and Alice.

Despite the frequency of death sentences, it would appear few people are actually beheaded. The King of Hearts quietly pardons many of his subjects when the Queen is not looking (although this did not seem to be the case with The Duchess), and her soldiers humor her but do not carry out her orders. The Gryphon tells Alice, “It’s all her fancy: she executes nobody, you know.” Nevertheless, all creatures in Wonderland fear the Queen. In the final chapters, the Queen sentences Alice again (for defending the Knave of Hearts), and she offers a bizarre approach towards justice: sentence before the verdict.

Modern portrayals in popular culture usually let her play the role of a villain because of the menace the character exemplifies, but in the book she does not fill that purpose. She is just one of the many obstacles that Alice has to encounter on the journey, but unlike other obstacles, she makes a higher potential threat.

Origins[edit]

The Queen is believed by some^[who?] to be a caricature of Queen Victoria, with elements of reality that Dodgson felt correctly would make her at once instantly recognizable to parents reading the story to children, and also fantastical enough to make her unrecognizable to children. Some elements of reality in line that would make the Queen of Hearts recognizable as Queen Victoria were the way in which their subjects viewed them as rulers as one Queen was loved while the other was feared. Queen Victoria was loved more by her people in contrast with her consort, Prince Albert, in part because some did not trust him as he wasn’t English.^[1] The Queen of Hearts was feared by the people of Wonderland and would give the order for execution for even the slightest offense, although her husband would often quietly pardon them. The reference to Queen Victoria is explicit in Jonathan Miller‘s 1966 television version where she and the King of Hearts are portrayed without any attempt at fantasy, or disguise as to their true natures or personality.

The Queen may also be a reference to Queen Margaret of the House of Lancaster. During the War of the Roses, a red rose was the symbol of the House Lancaster. Their rivals, the House of York, had a white rose for their symbol. The gardeners’ painting the white roses red may be a reference to these two houses. It is also possible that she is based on Queen Elizabeth I, as her yelling off with their head demonstrates the Victorian stereotype of a Tudor king/queen.

Illustrations[edit]

After unsuccessfully attempting to illustrate Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland himself, Lewis Carroll was persuaded to engage a professional artist to provide the illustrations. He turned to cartoonist John Tenniel, who was…