Behind the Smile

Although it is easy to believe that the idea of the smirking cat was something that came purely out of Lewis Carroll’s (or Charles Dodgson’s) arcane imagination, the term ‘grinning like a Cheshire cat’ actually predates Alice in Wonderland. It appears in print as early as the late 1700s, in works of the satirical writer William Thackeray and the author and essayist Charles Lamb. However, the exact origins of the phrase are still a source of debate. The favoured theory among natives of Cheshire county is that the cat’s grin was brought about by the abundance of dairy farms in Cheshire. Another popular explanation is centred on Cheshire cheese, which was traditionally moulded in the shape of a grinning cat. This explanation is particularly fitting in the context of Alice in Wonderland, as it issaid (in Cheshire) that the cheese was consumed tail-end first, its smile left till last. The emergence of the smiling cat may also have evolved from the poorly-drawn lions (the rampant lion being a symbol of England) depicted on signs in the Cheshire area in the early 1800s. Lewis Carol was no stranger to the ancient monarchical symbols; his sequel to Alice in Wonderland, Through the Looking Glass, portrays a lion and a unicorn (the heraldic symbol of Scotland) fighting for the White King’s crown. No matter its origins, which seem as mysterious as the disappearing cat itself, the grinning cat seemed to appeal to Dodgson’s prolific fantasy, and it became an iconic figure in his curious, intriguing children’s novel.

Dodgson's Cheshire cat has become so iconic that it is applied to represent ideas in a variety of subject areas. One simply has to look up the words ‘Cheshire Cat’, with any scholarly search engine, and an abundance of articles will appear, from as disparate fields as psychology, or strategic security, or service industry studies, or even nuclear physics. These have all taken advantage of the iconic cat figure as a useful way to represent complex ideas. Andrew Silke uses Dodgson's Cheshire cat in his article Cheshire-Cat logic: The Recurring Theme of Terrorist Abnormality in Psychological Research, which addresses terrorist psychology. Silke explores how‘‘attribution’’ error is supposedly seen in the way we perceive people who have committed acts of violence. Upon meeting Alice, the Cheshire cat decides that she must be mad because everyone in Wonderland is mad (‘‘but we're all mad here’’). With our ‘‘Cheshire-cat logic’’, we have expectations about someone's personality based on their actions (or in the Cheshire Cat's case, Alice's personality is associated with her location). Hassan Aref's article, Order in Chaos, also uses the Cheshire cat to describe his research in fluid dynamics, and the‘‘recurrent patterns created using electromagnetic forces”. I won’t pretend to understand anything aboutefficient laminar mixing’’ (and neither should the reader feel obligated to) and will simply quote Aref: ‘‘The periodic laminar flow exhibits chaotic advection within which a persistent pattern recurs once per cycle of the forcing. The pattern gradually fades out over about 100 cycles’’, however, ‘‘the striations maintain constant thickness”. Such constancy in the striations is then compared to how the body of the Cheshire cat disappears, whereas the smile is still visible.

Dodgson himself may have been applying the Cheshire cat smile to mathematical principles. He would often embed mathematical theories into Alice in Wonderland as he was himself a tutor of mathematics at Christ Church College Oxford. It is said that the smile of the Cheshire cat in Alice in Wonderland was also about a mathematical theory, that of the catenary: the curve of a horizontally-suspended chain. One might ask why the Cheshire cat is so colourfully used as an analogy for such a variety of concepts. It seems that the ideas presented in Alice in Wonderland are so abstract and thus so applicable to the real world.

When I was younger Dodgson’s Cheshire cat would scare me. Its ceaseless eerie smile gave the impression of slight, indistinct malevolence. Instinctually,we are prone to feel distrustful of someone who smiles constantly, as this can only mean that they must be hiding something. Another reason why the cat is discomforting is that cats are not often associated with smiling. Alice comments on this herself when she says:

‘‘I have seen a cat without a grin but never a grin without a cat.’’

There was also something about how the cat watched over everything that happened in Wonderland, in a sort of omnipotent position perched on his branch. However, this really did capture the precise essence of cats. They give the impression that they are the possessors ofa whole world of knowledge of which we lowly humans cannot even begin to comprehend. Dodgson’s cat may be smiling because it is mad, (which it admits itself), it may also be a sadistic, snobbish smile and a way of patronising the ignorant Alice.

Whatever the case may be concerning its symbolism or origins, Dodgson has created a wonderful character in his children's book. The figure captured many a child's imagination, even if it was in slight horror or uneasiness. It was grounded in fascinating mathematical as well as symbolic ideas, and at the same time, is the perfect representation of the cats we know of and maybe even live with. It is also based on folklore and English culture, and it has then gone on to affect many other cultures and subject matters, finding its way into all manner of disciplines that offer a variety of perspectives on our complex world. I sincerely hope that this cat will continue to exert its magical influence on humankind - mathematicians, poets, philosophers and children alike.

Composed by,

Freya Lindroos, Undergraduate of English Literature