All Hail The Queen Of Hearts!

The Queen of Hearts is not the most likable of characters in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. She often issues execution orders on what can be called a whim and she is the very ruler of the wonderland Alice is trying so desperately to understand. Clearly the protagonist of the story is Alice, and every protagonist needs an antagonist for a story to not be devoid of substance. The undesirable role of antagonist has often been given to the Queen of Hearts. However the most interesting and perhaps ironic thing about the Queen is that even as the antagonist, she is the one character in the book that is similar to Alice. Perhaps saying that they are similar would be going a bit far, because it is not necessarily that they are similar, but more that they are not different. Characters such as the Hatter, The March Hare, and the Cheshire Cat aren’t similar to Alice in any way, shape, or form, and are in fact very different from her as they are all completely mad. Or perhaps Alice is the one that is truly mad, and the March Hare, Hatter, and Cheshire Cat are merely the voices of reason, but either way these characters are very different from Alice, but the Queen of Hearts on one hand, is not.

Out of all of the quirky and eccentric characters in wonderland, which one is most similar to Alice?

If you look at it close enough, you will find that character to be the Queen of Hearts, the very character that Alice is in opposition to near the end of the book. But how is the Queen of Hearts, the character that is often looked at as Alice’s opposition in the tale, the one most similar to her? The answer to that is simply because unlike the many subjects over which she rules, the Queen isnt mind numbingly illogical. She may have a ferocious temper, often exclaiming “Off with their heads!”, but she also doesn’t show signs of being completely mad, as the rest of wonderland so clearly is. The Queen of Hearts is not as infatuated with nonsense as say the Hatter or March Hare, and her personality is more developed in the tale than characters such as the Gryphon or Mock Turtle, just like little Alice.

Alice is faced with many challenges in her foray through wonderland, but there never really is a true situation where Alice experiences fear until she meets the Queen. Sure, in the very beginning of the tale Alice experiences sadness due to her changes in size, but this is when she has just been introduced to wonderland. As she grows more accustomed to the nonsense of the world, she learns to cope with it better. That is, until she meets the Queen of Hearts who doesn’t seem to adhere to that same nonsense as her subjects that Alice has become used to, and instills fear in Alice, something that she hasn’t really experienced in wonderland yet. However when the Gryphon tells Alice that the Queen of Hearts has never actually followed through on any of her executions, Alice realizes that the Queen of Hearts is merely a playing card and is as empty and hollow of a shell as the very threats she so frequently orders.

It’s interesting to see how when Alice comes to the realization that the Queen is merely a playing card, her adventure finishes. It’s as if once she sees that her logic can actually be applied in wonderland, her illogical world disappears, as she proceeds to wake up from her rather curious dream after realizing that wonderland “doesn’t matter a bit”. Perhaps Carroll is insinuating that dreams are a way of equalizing our existence, as we live one life embodied by logic, the “real” one, and we live another embodied by what our mind creates, or our own personal wonderland.