Lunacy in the Ballroom: A Carollian Take on Traditional Mores
Rachel Hannah Beck - '96 (English 73, 1995)
"'You may not have lived much under the sea-' ('I haven't ,' said Alice)- 'and
perhaps you were never even introduced to a lobster-' (Alice began to say 'I once tasted-'
but then checked herself hastily and said 'No never') '-so you can have no idea what a
delightful thing a Lobster-Quadrille is!'
'No, indeed,' said Alice. 'What sort of a dance is it?'
'Why,' said the Gryphon, 'you first form into a line along the sea-shore-'
'Two lines!' cried the Mock Turtle. 'Seals, turtles, salmon and so on: then, when
you've cleared all the jelly-fish out of the way-'
"That generally takes some time,' interrupted the Gryphon.
'-you advance twice-'
'Each with a lobster as a partner!' cried the Gryphon.
'Of course,' the Mock Turtle said: 'advance twice, set to partners--'
'--change lobsters, and retire in same order,' continued the Gryphon." [Alice's
Adventures in Wonderland, Norton Critical Edition, 78]
ccording to Victorian guides on the subject, ballroom etiquette, should be conducted
"with becoming politeness"; avoiding, at all costs, the appearance of
"indecorous" behavior. Yet the madcap dance described by the Mock Turtle and the
Gryphon is anything but "becoming and graceful." Though tradition abhors
"galloping around...while dancing in quadrille," the Mock Turtle and the Gryphon
push the boundaries of the fantastic by recommending a wild session involving various
species and considerable water aerobics ("Turn a somersault in the sea!" cries
the Turtle as he "caper[s] wildly about").
By setting his child's fantasia
against the backdrop of established Victorian manners, Lewis Carroll both subverts
convention and emphasizes the slightly skewed nature of the world when viewed through the
eyes of a seven-year-old.
Just as the very name "Mock Turtle" derives from a child's interpretation of
an adult term, so too is the outrageous "Lobster-Quadrille" a perversion of an
adult reality. Carroll's images are not simply set in opposition to Lucien Carpenter's
world of arid "ballroom etiquette"--rather, they incorporate elements of that
sterner realm and realign them into a child's dreamland.
While such wordplay is easily
accessible to the young audience for whom Carroll originally wrote, it also forms a sly
poke at the pious Victorian world so devoted to proper behavior. Like the
nineteenth-century songs which recur throughout the book, stripped of their original moral
by Carroll and supplemented with an extra helping of silliness, the Lobster-Quadrille
draws on contemporary society to frame its hilarity.
It is this contextualization which
lends the Alice books their peculiar humor; without it, Carroll's satire could not
resonate in an adult world.
