Re-introduced as the White King’s Messengers, the March Hare and the Mad Hatter of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland are transformed in Carroll’s Through the Looking Glass. In a play on regional pronunciations, the Hare becomes “Haigha” and the Hatter, “Hatta.” However, the recurring characters are only identifiable through the embedded illustrations by John Tenniel. Carroll’s description within the narrative itself completely obscures the character’s familiar identities. Upon approach to Alice and the White King, “Haigha” is described as “skipping up and down, and wriggling like an eel…with his great hands spread out like fans” (Carroll 186). Although the first action suggests the hopping of a hare, the subsequent simile likening him to an “eel” and mention of his large “hands” confuses our understanding of what “Haigha” is. Is he a human or an animal? If the latter, what species?
Immediately following this idiosyncratic description, the White King declares “Haigha” is “an Anglo-Saxon Messenger” and explains his odd movement as a result of his “Anglo-Saxon attitudes” (Carroll 186). Here, Carroll seems to be using the historical definition of “attitude,” meaning “[a] posture of the body proper to, or implying, some action or mental state” (“Attitude” n. 2.a.). The description of “Haigha” as “Anglo-Saxon” also identifies him as human, complicating the initial description. Furthermore, this description displaces this character in time, since the Anglo-Saxons lived several centuries ago, perhaps suggesting that the Looking-Glass World exists somewhere outside of our linear chronology.
“Hatta” is introduced in a similarly vague manner, watching the fight “with a cup of tea in one hand and a piece of bread-and-butter in the other” (Carroll 189). While the tea and bread reference the first book’s “mad tea party,” this new version of “Hatta” is neither mad nor a hatter. While identifiably human, “Hatta” is not labeled as “Anglo-Saxon. However, his character is similarly displaced in time, at least within the narrative, as he first appears in the White Queen’s story on page 164 (Fig. 1). The White Queen uses “the King’s Messenger” as an example of “living backwards,” serving a prison sentence for a crime has not yet been tried for, or even committed (Carroll 164). This story is illustrated by an image on the opposite side of “Hatta” chained up in a jail cell, his elusive hat hanging on the wall above his head. “Hatta” is thus aligned with the concept of “living backwards,” jumbling chronological clarity.
While “Hatta” appears twenty pages prior to his official entry into the narrative, “Haigha” is not given visual form until noticeably after his introduction. The first drawing of “Haigha” comes on page 190 and pictures him retrieving a sandwich from his bag to hand to the King (Fig. 2). This illustration breaks into the text a full two pages after this action has occurred, scrambling the relationship between the textual and visual narratives that are being told. This divide is accentuated by the recognizability of the March Hare in Tenniel’s drawing as a hare (albeit with hands), opposing the vaguely human description in the text.
A second illustration on the opposite page (191) features “Haigha” and “Hatta” at last in the same frame, in which the “latta” (latter) sips from a teacup, a half-eaten piece of bread held in his other hand (Fig. 3). This drawing closely mirrors the character’s textual introduction, yet Tenniel has notably added a top hat, the identifiable accessory of the Mad Hatter. While Carroll’s writing obscures the clarity of these characters’ identities, Tenniel’s images work in contrast to help the reader find familiar faces in a bizarre, unfamiliar world.
Overall, the effect of this dissonance between text and image, interwoven together within this book, disrupts the reader’s perception of time within the narrative as well as its characters. Embodying the uncertain linearity of a dreamscape, the Looking-Glass World confuses our understanding of reality and reliability.
Dictionary Source:
“Attitude, N., 2.a.” Oxford English Dictionary, Oxford UP, December 2024, https://doi.org/10.1093/OED/1203692887.
I love how you point out that Carrol never states in the text that Haigha and Hatta are the same people as the March Hare and the Mad Hatter. It’s something I noticed too as I was reading the book. I’m really curious about what you think of the fact that Alice never notices that these are two recurring characters. I don’t think she ever references her previous dream which makes me wonder if she has strange dreams like these all of the time or if she simply just forgot her other dream.