Cheshire Cat
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Cheshire Cat is a fictional cat popularised by Lewis Carroll’s depiction of it in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. Known for his distinctive mischievous grin, the Cheshire Cat has had a notable impact on popular culture.
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
Popular culture
The Cheshire Cat is one of many iconic characters depicted in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland that have become enmeshed in popular culture, appearing in various forms of media, from political cartoons to television. One of its distinguishing features is that from time to time it disappears, the last thing to be seen being its grin.
* 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, and thus, in some cases, is classified as a “Disney Villain”. He is voiced by Sterling Holloway and later by Jim Cummings after Holloway’s death (making him the third character that Cummings has taken from Holloway). The Disney version of the character can also be spotted during the final scene of the 1988 film Who Framed Roger Rabbit. The Cheshire Cat is heard singing the poem Jabberwocky before he materializes in front of Alice. 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 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.
