CHAPTER X. The Lobster Quadrille
Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll
Quick Facts
- Word Count
- 2,025
Summary
The Mock Turtle, sobbing until the Gryphon thumps his back, introduces the Lobster Quadrille, while the Gryphon supplies eager corrections. They enumerate the dance’s absurd figures—clearing jelly-fish, advancing with lobsters as partners, changing lobsters, throwing them out to sea, swimming after them, turning somersaults—and then demonstrate the first figure around Alice, repeatedly treading on her toes, as the Mock Turtle sings “Will you, won’t you… join the dance?” Afterward, a comic tutorial on sea life follows: Alice nearly admits she has seen whitings at “dinn—,” is corrected about “crumbs” washing off in the sea, hears the Gryphon’s mock-causal tale of how whitings got their tails stuck in their mouths, and is told that “a whiting” polishes “boots and shoes,” with “soles and eels.” The Mock Turtle defends “porpoise” as necessary travel “purpose,” refusing Alice’s correction. Pressed to narrate, Alice begins her adventures, and—when her Caterpillar recitation comes up—the creatures order a lesson: she must stand and repeat “’Tis the voice of the sluggard,” which emerges instead as “’Tis the voice of the Lobster,” riddled with dance imagery. The Gryphon demands “the next verse,” the Mock Turtle demands explanations, and confusion mounts. Choosing spectacle over sense, they ask for a song; the Mock Turtle sings the sentimental “Beautiful Soup” until a distant cry—“The trial’s beginning!”—cuts the performance short. The Gryphon seizes Alice’s hand and runs her toward the
Analysis
Dancing as Drill, Language as Game: How Chapter X Tightens the Book’s Pedagogical Satire
Chapter X turns education into choreography. The Gryphon and the Mock Turtle itemize the Lobster Quadrille—“advance twice… change lobsters… throw the—” “The lobsters!”—in a crescendo that culminates in swimmers somersaulting after their partners. When they perform the first figure “without lobsters,” circling Alice and “treading on her toes,” the rules literally step on the learner. The sudden switch from frenetic capering to “very sadly and quietly” sitting captures Wonderland’s ritual mood swings: affect is a costume that fits the next figure rather than truth.
Language instruction devolves into pun-drill. The whiting-and-snail ballad yields a tutorial: Alice’s empirical correction—“crumbs would all wash off in the sea”—briefly asserts sense, only to be buried beneath the Gryphon’s parodic causality (“So they got thrown… So they had to fall… So they got their tails fast in their mouths”) and the solemn etymology joke, “It does the boots and shoes,” capped by “soles and eels.” When Alice protests “Don’t you mean ‘purpose’?”, the Mock Turtle replies, “I mean what I say,” a manifesto for Wonderland literalism that treats homophones as law, not slip.
Pressed to recite “’Tis the voice of the sluggard,” Alice produces “’Tis the voice of the Lobster,” proof that memory is plastic under context: her head is “so full of the Lobster Quadrille” that the didactic verse morphs into dance nonsense. The Gryphon’s “explanations take such a dreadful time” prefers display over understanding, while the Mock Turtle’s insistence—“What about his toes?”—treats interpretation as a test Alice must fail. This pairing crystallizes the book’s critique of Victorian drill: recitation and interrogation enforce form, not insight.
Identity flickers within this pedagogy. Alice asserts, “it’s no use going back to yesterday, because I was a different person then,” yet she is still “ordered” to lessons—an exposure of how institutions try to freeze a changing self. The chapter ends by snapping from one ritual to a larger one: “Beautiful Soup” (a parody of sentimental ballads and consumer desire—“pennyworth only”) is silenced by “The trial’s beginning!” The handoff from dance-floor to courtroom prepares the next satire: law as another choreography of empty steps.
By dancing “without lobsters” around Alice and stepping on her toes, the Gryphon and Mock Turtle turn instruction into a physical imposition. Their enumerated steps—advance, change partners, throw, somersault—expose rules as spectacle that disregards fairness or sense, echoing the croquet ground’s chaotic “play.”
Ordered to repeat “’Tis the voice of the sluggard,” Alice produces “’Tis the voice of the Lobster,” her memory overwritten by the Quadrille. The Gryphon’s “explanations take such a dreadful time” prioritizes performance over understanding, while the Mock Turtle’s fussy questions parody schoolroom interrogation that mistakes puzzlement for pedagogy.
From “porpoise/purpose” to “whiting” that polishes “boots and shoes,” and “soles and eels,” Wonderland replaces cause with wordplay. Alice’s attempt at observation—crumbs wash off—momentarily reasserts reality, but the Gryphon’s chain of “So…” explanations demonstrates how authority can dress nonsense as reason.
Language and parody toolkit in Chapter X
- The refrain “Will you, won’t you…” uses repetition as social pressure, turning invitation into coercion.
- Mock etymology: “whiting” as shoe-polish, extending to “soles and eels.”
- Homophone literalism: “porpoise” defended against “purpose.”
- Lesson-parody: ’Tis the Voice of the Sluggard becomes ’Tis the Voice of the Lobster, with dance jargon (“first position”).
- Sentimental song spoof: “Beautiful Soup” hawks “pennyworth” dainties, a marketplace lullaby.
- Faux-causality: the Gryphon’s “So… So… So…” chain mimics explanation while supplying none.