The Cheshire Cat is a fictional cat popularised by Lewis Carroll's depiction of it in Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. The term originated from an English saying coined by Peter Pindar. The Cheshire Cat has had a notable impact on popular culture. Cheshire is an English county famous for its cheese, salt mining and silk.[1] The Cheshire Cat's grin is reminiscent of the vagaries of human character or of a trickster.[2][3]
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Origins
The phrase first appears in print in John Wolcot's pseudonymous Peter Pindar's Pair of Lyric Epistles in 1795: "Lo, like a Cheshire cat our court will grin."
Cheese moulds
Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable says grinning like a Cheshire cat is "an old simile, popularised by Lewis Carroll". Brewer adds, "The phrase has never been satisfactorily accounted for, but it has been said that cheese was formerly sold in Cheshire moulded like a cat that looked as though it was grinning".[4] The cheese was cut from the tail end, so that the last part eaten was the head of the smiling cat.
Dockyard cats
Another origin for the story concerns the cats that lived in the port of Chester. Until the late 1970s, a monument to the Cheshire Cat stood beside the River Dee, where there had formerly been a cheese warehouse. It was said that cats sitting on the dock would wait for the rats and mice to leave the ships transporting Cheshire cheese to London and were the happiest cats in the kingdom; hence their grins. The monument was destroyed when Copfield House, which stood on the site of the warehouse, was demolished in 1979.
Church carvings
There are reports that Carroll found inspiration for the Cheshire Cat in a carving in a church in the village of Croft-on-Tees, in the north east of England, where his father had been rector. Another view is that the cat is based on a gargoyle found on a pillar in St Nicolas Church, Cranleigh, where Carroll used to travel frequently when he lived in Guildford. The cat is named after Carroll's home county, Cheshire. Others attribute it to a carving on the west face of the tower at St Wilfrid's Church, Grappenhall, Warrington, Cheshire.
Grosvenor family
The Cheshire cat is found in the coat of arms of the area's Grosvenor family. What started out as a lion on the crest came to resemble, in the bumbling hands of the Cheshire sign painters, an inebriated alley cat.[citation needed]
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
Alice first encounters it at the Duchess's house in her kitchen, and then later outside on the branches of a tree, where it appears and disappears at will, engaging Alice in amusing but sometimes vexing conversation. The cat sometimes raises philosophical points that annoy or baffle Alice. It does, however, appear to cheer her up when it turns up suddenly at the Queen of Hearts' croquet field, and when sentenced to death baffles everyone by having made its head appear without its body, sparking a massive argument between the executioner and the King and Queen of Hearts about whether something that does not have a body can indeed be beheaded.
At one point, the cat disappears gradually until nothing is left but its grin, prompting Alice to remark that she has often seen a cat without a grin but never a grin without a cat.[5]
Popular culture mention
The Cheshire Cat is one of many iconic characters depicted in Alice's Adventures in Wonderland that have become enmeshed in popular culture,[6] appearing in various forms of media, from political cartoons to television.[7][8]
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- In the 1951 Disney movie, Alice in Wonderland, the Cheshire Cat is depicted as an intelligent yet mischievous character that sometimes helps Alice and sometimes gets her into trouble. He is voiced by Sterling Holloway and later by Jim Cummings after Holloway's death. The Disney version of the character can also be spotted during the final scene of the 1988 film Who Framed Roger Rabbit. Prior to the release of the Walt Disney animated adaption of the story, scholars observed few specific allusions to this character. Martin Gardner, author of the The Annotated Alice, wondered if T. S. Eliot had the Cheshire Cat in mind when writing Morning at the Window but notes no other significant allusions in the pre-war period.[9]
- The Cheshire Cheese Campaign won a Gold award at the 2009 Cheshire County Show with their entry into the cheeseboard category. The board, called 'The Cheshire Cat' was constructed using White, Coloured & Blue Cheshire cheese, all made at the Joseph Heler dairy in Cheshire.
- Images of and references to the Cheshire Cat cropped up more frequently in the 1960s and 1970s, along with more frequent references to Carroll's works in general.[10] The Cheshire Cat appeared on LSD blotters as well as in song lyrics and popular fiction.[11][12] For example, in the Star Trek episode Who mourns for Adonais?, Kirk and Chekov argue over the origin of the "vanishing cat" and Chekov amusingly alleges that it came from Minsk.[13] while in the second-season finale of Prison Break'. Theodore "T-Bag" Bagwell describes his smile as the Cheshire Cat when he meets Brad Bellick in the jail cell in Panama.[14]
- An exhibit called The Cheshire Cat at the Exploratorium in San Francisco, created by Bob Miller in 1978, features a mirrored eyepiece that allows visitors to look at a picture of the Cheshire Cat's face with one eye while the other eye sees a reflection of a white screen to the side. When the visitor waves a hand in across the white screen, the cat image starts to disappear. If the visitor focuses on the cat's smile while doing this, the smile will remain while the cat disappears. The general phenomenon of a moving stimulus presented to one eye causing a static image to disappear from the other eye is called the Cheshire Cat effect, named after this exhibit. The effect is part of a broader visual phenomenon called binocular rivalry.[15]
- In the book The Lottery (Beth Goobie), Sal Hanson, main character of the book and this year's lottery victim of the shadowy organisation of shadow council, referred in her description of The Shadow president's Willis Cass as the Cheshire cat, because of his exaggerated smile.
- In a Garfield comic, Garfield sneaks into Jon's room at night and gives a wide grin (which is all that can be seen in the pitch black, making it appear that the rest of his body is missing). After turning on the lights, Jon comments to him, "You've been reading Alice in Wonderland again, haven't you?" to which Garfield responds, "You must be psychic."
- Pop rock band, Blink-182, entitled their debut studio album Cheshire Cat.
- The band Radiohead have the lyrics, 'The walls are bending shape, you've got a Cheshire Cat grin' in the song Jigsaw Falling Into Place from the 2007 album, In Rainbows.
- Ted Nugent's Free for All contains the lyrics, "See you there with your cheshire grin, I got my eyes on you"
- In DC Comics, the New Goddess Malice Vundabar, niece of the villain Virman Vundabar who resembles Alice, controls a carnivorous creature called Cheshire that looks like nothing more than a grinning face. Cheshire is also the codename of the human assassin Jade Nguyen who has a daughter with the heroic archer Roy "Speedy" Harper. Though the comic version bears no similarity to the Cheshire Cat, the Cheshire from the Teen Titans Animated Series wears a mask of a grinning cat.
- In the Thursday Next series by Jasper Fforde, the Cheshire Cat is an overseer in the Great Library, a library within the "book-world" which contains copies of every book ever written. However, due to "boundary changes", the Cat is renamed the "Unitary Authority of Warrington Cat". Thursday has a conversation with the Cat identical to that between the Cat and Alice, which she later notices. The Cheshire Cat of this series, however, is not only sane but helpful to some extent as an active member of Jurisfiction, the metafictional justice agency for characters within books.
- In the Peanuts comic strip, Snoopy has shown the ability to perform the Cheshire Cat's signature disappearing act, but has gotten stuck several times
- In the PlayStation 2 version of Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell: Double Agent there are 2 exclusive levels. In the second level entitled "bunker" Sam is kidnapped and must escape through gas filled chambers etc. In one instance he's asked how he's doing, Sam replies "Either the stuff is still in my system or I'm being followed by the Cheshire Cat". This is a reference to him hallucinating from the gas.
- In Kingdom Hearts, the Cheshire Cat offers Sora, Donald and Goofy clues to prove that the Heartless attempted to steal the Queen of Hearts' heart and not Alice, along with the blizzard spell (In the manga, the Cheshire cat grants Sora the ability to perform all types of magic, not just blizzard).
- In the video game American McGee's Alice (2000), the Cheshire Cat is portrayed as an enigmatic, yet wise guide for Alice in the corrupted Wonderland. His voice was provided by Roger L. Jackson, who also voiced the Mad Hatter and The Jabberwock in the game.
- In Frank Beddor's Looking Glass Wars, the Cat is Redd's nine-lived assassin.
- In the Laserdisc game "Dragon's Lair II", The Cheshire Cat appears only as a Head, reciting the Jabberwocky poem while trying to make a meal out of the hero "Dirk the Daring".
- In the popular Grateful Dead song China Cat Sunflower, a Cheshire cat is referenced in the lyrics "Crazy cat peekin through a lace bandanna, Like a one-eyed cheshire, like a diamond-eye jack."
- In the online series Harper's Globe, a tie-in with the CBS television murder mystery series Harper's Island, Robin Matthews works for Harper's Globe, the island's newspaper. As she investigates the past, it's her job to attract local involvement on the Globe's website. One user, the "Cheshire Cat," seemingly leads Robin down a path to gather more information about what lies beneath the surface of the island's people as she tries to find her missing love interest, Brent Cyr.
- In the TV show King Arthur's Disasters, when Arthur goes to retrieve "The Book of Cheshire", the Cat is visible on the front cover, with a wide grin.
- In the TV show Kiddy Grade, Tweedledee's and Tweedledum's high-speed cruiser spaceship is called the Cheshire Cat, nicknamed C-Square (based on the abbreviation), and is named thus due to its stealth ability of temporarily leaving normal space leaving only a periscope behind (not unlike the eponymous cat's grin).
- In the anime, Ouran High School Host Club, the characters Hikaru Hitachiin and Kaoru Hitachiin both play the part of the Cheshire Cat in the episode "Haruhi in Wonderland".
- In the manga, Pandora Hearts, one of the main characters, Alice, had a pet cat that died, but returns a 100 years later in the Cheshire Cat's Realm, known as the Cheshire with a more human-like appearance, or a catboy look. He is also a key character with vital information in the manga.
Notes
- ^ "Macclesfield Silk Museum Frequently Asked Questions". Macclesfield Silk Museum. http://www.macclesfield.silk.museum/frequently-asked-questions/index.htm. Retrieved on 23 December 2009.
- ^ Mulderig, Gerald P. (1977). "Alice and Wonderland: Subversive Elements in the World of Victorian Children's Literature". Journal of Popular Culture 11 (2): 320–329. doi:.
- ^ Roberts, Patrick (2006-02-17). "Lewis Carroll's Cheshire Cat". Purr-n-Fur UK. http://www.purr-n-fur.org.uk/fabled/cheshirecat.html. Retrieved on 2008-07-07.
- ^ As stated in the Annotated Alice
- ^ Annotated Alice; the statement "a grin without a cat" is a reference to mathematics dissociating itself completely from the natural world.
- ^ Silvey, Anita (2002). The essential guide to children's books and their creators. Houghton Mifflin. pp. 78. ISBN 0618190821. http://books.google.com/books?id=8GUNHGutszEC.
- ^ Joan L. Conners, "Popular Culture in Political Cartoons: Analyzing Cartoonist Approaches", Political Science & Politics 40 (2007): 261-265.
- ^ Nobuhiro Watsuki, Hayao Miyazaki, Yuji Oniki, Michelle Pangilinan (2005). The Art of My Neighbor Totoro. San Francisco, CA: Viz. ISBN 1591166985.
- ^ Gardner, Martin (1999). The Annotated Alice: Alice's adventures in Wonderland & Through the looking glass. W.W. Norton. pp. 62. ISBN 0393048470. http://books.google.com/books?id=-blJhrfvouUC.
- ^ Brooker, Will (2004). Alice' s Adventures: Lewis Carroll and Alice in Popular Culture. London: Continuum. pp. 81. ISBN 0-8264-1433-8. http://books.google.com/books?id=ub11oqKaT5oC&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_summary_r&cad=0#PPA81,M1. Retrieved on 2008-07-07.< Roos, Michael, (Summer, 1984.) The Walrus and the Deacon: John Lennon's Debt to Lewis Carroll. Journal of Popular Culture, 18(1).-->
- ^ Vanessa St Clair (June 5, 2001), A girl like Alice, The Guardian, http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2001/jun/05/gender.uk2
- ^ Real, Willi (2003). "The Use of Literary Quotations and Allusions in: Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451". http://www.heliweb.de/telic/bradcom.htm. Retrieved on 2008-07-07.
- ^ John Arthur Maddux (1997). The Classic Star Trek Trivia Book. Raleigh, N.C.: Boson Books. ISBN 1886420394. http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=Yy2zaN76a1wC.
- ^ Nancy Banks-Smith (June 12, 2007), Last night's TV: Prison Break, http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/tv/2007/06/last_nights_tv_prison_break.html
- ^ "Exploratorium: Science Snacks: Cheshire Cat". http://www.exploratorium.edu/snacks/cheshire_cat/index.html. Retrieved on 2009-03-23.
References
- Brooker, Will (2004). Alice' s Adventures: Lewis Carroll and Alice in Popular Culture. London: Continuum. ISBN 0-8264-1433-8. http://books.google.com/books?id=ub11oqKaT5oC.
- Gardner, Martin (1999). The Annotated Alice: Alice's adventures in Wonderland & Through the looking glass. W.W. Norton. ISBN 0393048470. http://books.google.com/books?id=-blJhrfvouUC.
- Silvey, Anita (2002). The essential guide to children's books and their creators. Houghton Mifflin. ISBN 0618190821. http://books.google.com/books?id=8GUNHGutszEC.
External links
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Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Cheshire Cat |
- Cheshire Cat character description
- BBC article about the Croft carving
- An article on the Grappenhall carving
- Compilation of the possible origins of the Cheshire Cat
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