The Worlds of Men and Women

Peterson: See that also seems to me to be related to the postmodern emphasis on power because there’s something terrible underground going on there. And that is. . .

I think this is the sort of thing that was reflected in the Soviet Union, too. Especially in the 20s when there was this idea, a radical idea, that you could remake human beings entirely because they had no essential nature.

So, if your fundamental hypothesis is that nothing exists except power, and you believe

that, then that also gives you the right in some sense to exercise your power at the

creation of the kind of humanity that your utopian vision envisions. 

And that also seems

to me to justify the postmodern insistence that everything is only a linguistic construct.

It again goes down to the notion of power, which Derrida and Foucault and Lacan are

so bloody obsessed with.

It seems to me what they’re trying to do is to take all the potential power for the

creation of human beings to themselves without any bounding conditions whatsoever.

There’s no history, there’s no biology, and everything is a fluid culture that can be

manipulated at will.

In Canada there are terrible arguments right now about biological essentialism, let’s

say. And one of the things that happened, which was something I objected to precisely

a year ago, is that the social constructionist view of human identity has been built

11

now into  Canadian law. So there’s an insistence that biological sex, gender identity,

gender expression, and sexual proclivity vary independently with no causal relationship

between any of the levels.

And so that’s in the law, and not only is it in the law, it’s being taught everywhere. It’s

being taught in the Armed Forces, it’s being taught in the police, it’s being taught to the

elementary school kids, and the junior high school kids. And underneath it all I see this

terrible striving for arbitrary power that’s associated with this crazy utopianism.

But I still don’t exactly understand it. I don’t understand what seems to be the hatred

that motivates it that you see bubbling up, for example, in identity politics, and in the

desire to do nothing but, let’s say, demolish the patriarchy.

It kind of reminds me. . . And this is something else I wanted to talk to you about.

You’re an admirer of Erich Neumann and of Carl Jung. 

The Neumann connection is really interesting because I think he’s a bloody genius. 

I really like The Great Mother.

It’s a great book and really a great warning, that book. And also The Origins and History of Consciousness.

Paglia: One my most influential books.

Peterson: Yeah well that’s so interesting. I read an essay that you wrote. I don’t remember when it was.

Paglia: It was a lecture I gave on Neumann at NYU, yes.

Peterson: Yes, it’s always been staggering to me that that book hasn’t had the impact that it should have had. I mean Jung himself, in the preface to that book,

wrote that that was the book that he wished that he would have written. It’s very much associated with Jung’s Symbols of Transformation. 

And it was a major influence on my book, Maps of Meaning, which was an attempt to outline the universal archetypes that are portrayed in the kind of religious structures that you put forward.

But the thing that I really see happening. . . And you can tell me what you think about this. 

In Neumann’s book, consciousness - which is masculine, symbolically masculine for a variety of reasons - is viewed as rising up against the countervailing force of tragedy from an underlying feminine, symbolically feminine, unconsciousness. 

And it’s something that can always be pulled back into that unconsciousness.

The microcosm of that would be the Freudian Oedipal Mother familial dynamic where the mother is so overprotective and all-encompassing that she interferes with the development of the competence not only of her sons but also of her daughters, of her children in general. 

And it seems to me that that’s the dynamic that’s being played out in our society right now.

And it’s related in some way that I don’t understand to this insistence that all forms of masculine authority are nothing but tyrannical power. 

So the symbolic representation is Tyrannical Father with no appreciation for the Benevolent Father, and Benevolent Mother with no appreciation whatsoever for the Tyrannical Mother.

I thought of ideologies as fragmentary mythologies. 

That’s where they get their archetypal and psychological power. 

In a balanced representation you have the Terrible Mother and the Great Mother, as Neumann laid out so nicely. 

And you have the Terrible Father and the Great Father. 

So that’s the fact that culture mangles you have

to death while it’s also promoting you and developing you. 

You have to see that as balanced. 

Then you have the heroic and adversarial individual.

But in the postmodern world - and this seems to be something that’s increasingly seeping out into the culture at large - you have nothing but the Tyrannical Father, nothing but the destructive force of masculine consciousness, and nothing but the benevolent Great Mother.

It’s an appalling ideology, and it seems to me that it’s sucking the vitality - which is exactly what you’d expect symbolically - it’s sucking the vitality of our culture. 

You see that with the increasing demolition of young men, and not only young men, in terms

of their academic performance. 

They’re falling way behind in elementary school, way behind in junior high, and bailing out of the universities like mad.

Paglia: Well the public school education has become completely permeated by this kind of anti-male propaganda. To me, public school is just a form of imprisonment.

They’re particularly destructive to young men, who have a lot of physical energy.

I identify as transgender myself, but I do not require the entire world to alter itself to fit my particular self-image. I do believe in the power of hormones. I believe that men exist and women exist, and are biologically different. I think there is no cure for the culture’s ills right now, except if men start standing up and demanding that they be respected as men again.

Peterson:

Okay, okay, so I’ve got a question about that.

We did a research project a year ago trying to figure out if there was such a thing as political correctness from a psychometric perspective, to find out if the loose aggregation of beliefs actually clump together statistically. And we actually found two factors, which I won’t go into. 

Then we looked at things that predicted adherence to that politically correct creed. There were a couple that were surprising.

One was - being female was a predictor. The personality attributes associated with femininity - so that would be agreeableness and higher levels of negative emotion - were also both independent predictors.

But so were symptoms of personality disorder, which I thought was really important.

Because part of what I see happening is that. . . I think that women whose relationship with men has been seriously pathologized cannot distinguish between Male Authority and Competence and Male Tyrannical Power. They fail to differentiate because all they see is The Oppressive Male.

And they may have had experiences that. . . Their experiences with men might have been rough enough so that differentiation never occurred. Because it has to occur. And you have to have a lot of experience with men - and good men, too - before that will occur.

But it seems to me that we’re also increasingly dominated by a view of masculinity that’s mostly characteristic of women who have terrible personality disorders, and who are unable to have healthy relationships with men. But here’s the problem.

This is something my wife has pointed out, too. She said, ‘Well men are going to have to stand up for themselves.’ But here’s the problem.

I know how to stand up to a man who’s unfairly trespassing against me. And the

reason I know that is because the parameters for my resistance are quite well defined, which is:

We talk, we argue, we push, and then it becomes physical.

If we move beyond the boundaries of civil discourse, we know what the next step is.

That’s forbidden in discourse with women. And so I don’t think that men can control crazy women. I really don’t believe it. I think they have to throw their hands up in. . . In what? It’s not even disbelief. It’s that the cultural. . . There’s no step forward that you can take under those circumstances, because if the man is offensive enough and crazy enough, the reaction becomes physical right away. Or at least the threat is there.

And when men are talking to each other in any serious manner, that underlying threat of physicality is always there, especially if it’s a real conversation. It keeps the thing civilised to some degree. If you’re talking to a man who wouldn’t fight with you under any circumstances whatsoever, then you’re talking to someone [for] whom you have absolutely no respect.

But I can’t see any way. . . For example there’s a woman in Toronto who’s been organising this movement, let’s say, against me and some other people who are going to do a free speech event. And she managed to organize quite effectively, and she’s

quite offensive, you might say. She compared us to Nazis, for example, publicly, using the Swastika, which wasn’t something I was all that fond of.

But I’m defenseless against that kind of female insanity, because the techniques that I would use against a man who was employing those tactics are forbidden to me. So I don’t know. . . It seems to me that it isn’t men who have to stand up and say, 

‘Enough of this.’ Even though that is what they should do, it seems to me that it’s sane women who have to stand up against their crazy sisters and say, 

‘Look, enough of that. Enough man-hating. Enough pathology. Enough bringing disgrace on us as a gender.’

But the problem there - and then I’ll stop my little tirade - is that most of the women I know who are sane are busy doing sane things. They have their career. 

They have their family. They’re quite occupied, and they don’t seem to have the time, or maybe even the interest, to go after their crazy, harpy sisters. And so I don’t see any regulating force for that terrible femininity. And it seems to me to be invading the

culture and undermining the masculine power of the culture in a way that’s, I think, fatal. I really do believe that.

Paglia: I, too, believe these are symptomatic of the decline of Western culture. And itwill just go down flat. I don’t think people realize that masculinity still exists in the world as a code among jihadists. And when you have passionate masculinity circling the borders like the Huns and the Vandals during the Roman Empire. . . That’s what I see. 

I see this culture rotting from within and disemboweling itself, literally.

Now I have an overview of why we’re having this problem, and it comes from the fact that I’m the product of an immigrant family. All four of my grandparents and my mother were born in Italy.

So I remember from my earliest years in this factory town in upstate New York, where my relatives came to work in the shoe factory.

I can remember, still, the life of the agrarian era - which was for most of human history - the agrarian era where there was The World of Men and The World of Women.

And the sexes had very little to do with each other. 

Each had power and status in its own realm. 

And they laughed at each other, in essence. 

The women had enormous power. 

In fact, the old women ruled, not the young beautiful women like today. 

But the older you were the more you had control over everyone, including the mating and marriage. 

There were no doctors, so the old women were like midwives and knew all the ins and outs and [had] inherited knowledge about pregnancy and all these other things.

I can remember this. And the joy that women had with each other all day long. Cooking with each other, being companions to each other, talking, conversing. 

My mother remembered, as a small child in Italy, when it was time to do the laundry they would take the laundry up the hill to the fountain and do it by hand. 

They would sing, they would picnic, and so on.

We get a glimpse of that in the Odyssey when Odysseus is thrown up naked on the shores of Phaeacia and he hears the sound of women, young women, laughing and singing. 

And it’s Nausicaa, The Princess, bringing the women to do the laundry. 

It’s exactly the same thing. So there was. . . 

Each gender had its own hierarchy, its own values, its own way of talking. 

And the sexes rarely intersected.

I can remember in my childhood in a holiday - it could be a Christmas, it could be a Thanksgiving, whatever - women would be cooking all day long, everyone would sit down to eat, and then after that the women would retire en masse to the kitchen. 

And the men would go. . . I would look at them through the window and see all the men.

The men would be all outside, usually gathered around the car - at a time when cars didn’t work as well as they do today - with the hood up. 

And the men would be standing with their hands on their hips like that. 

Everyone’s staring at the engine. 

That’s how I learned men were refreshing themselves by studying something technical and mechanical after being with the women during the dinner.

So all of these problems of today are the direct consequence of women’s emancipation and freedom from housework thanks to capitalism, which made it possible for women to have jobs outside the home for the very first time in the nineteenth century. No longer to be dependent on husband or father or brother.

So this great thing that’s happened to us, allowing us to be totally self-supporting,

independent agents has produced all this animosity between men and women,

because women feel unhappy.

Women today - wherever I go, whether it’s Italy or Brazil or England or America or Toronto - the upper-middle class professional women are unhappy, miserable.

And they don’t know why they’re unhappy. They want to blame it on men. The men must change. Men must become more like women. No. That is the wrong way to go.

It’s when men are men, and understand themselves as men, are secure as men - then you’re going to be happier.

Peterson: Well, there’s nothing more dangerous than a weak man.

Paglia: Absolutely. Especially all these quislings spouting feminist rhetoric. When I hear that it makes me sick. 

But here’s the point. Men and women have never worked side by side, ever. Maybe on the farms when you were like. . . Maybe one person is in the potato field and the other one is over here doing tomatoes, or whatever.

You had families working side by side, exhausted with each other. No time to have any clash of this. It was a collaborative effort on farms and so on. Never in all of human history have men and women been working side by side. And women are now. . . The pressure about Silicon Valley - they’re all so sexist, they don’t allow women in, and so on. Men are being men in Silicon Valley.

Peterson: Especially the engineers.

Paglia: And the women are demanding that. . . ‘Oh, this is terrible, you’re being sexist.’ Maybe the sexes have their own particular form of rhetoric, their own particular form of identity. Maybe we need to reexamine this business about. . . Maybe we have

to perhaps accept some degree of tension and conflict between the sexes in a work

environment.

I don’t mean harassment — I’m talking about women feeling disrespected. Somehow their opinions, when they express them, are not taken seriously. Even Hillary Clinton is complaining ‘When a woman writes something online she’s attacked immediately!!!’ —

Everyone is attacked online!

What are you talking about? 

The world is tough. The world is competitive. 

Identity is honed by conflict. The idea that there should be no conflict, that we have to be in this bath of approbation. . . It’s infantile.

Peterson: That’s right. It’s absolutely infantile. 

THE 9 RULES OF UNCLE CHRIS

'Graham’

means 

'Grey Haired One’. 

That's why Graham is called Graham.

“Since this is The Generations Award, I'm going to cut to The Chase and I am going to speak to you, The Next Generation.

I Accept The Responsibility as Your Elder. 

So, listen up.

1.

"Breathe. 

If you don't, you will suffocate."

2.

"You have a soul. 

Be careful with it."

3.

"Don't be a Turd. 

If you are Strong, be a Protector. 

If you are Smart, be a Humble Influencer. 

Strength and Intelligence can be weapons, so do not wield them against The Weak. 

That makes you a bully. 

Be bigger than that."

4.

"When giving a dog medicine, put the medicine in a little piece of hamburger and they won't even know they're eating medicine."

5.

"It doesn't matter what it is. 

Earn it. 

A good deed. 

Reach out to someone in pain. 

Be of service. 

It feels good and it's good for your soul."

6.

"God is Real. 

God Loves You, God Wants The Best for You. 

Believe that, I do."

7.

"If you have to poop at a party, but you're embarrassed because you're going to stink up the bathroom, just do what I do. 

Lock the door, sit down, get all of the pee out first. 

And then, once all the pee is done, poop, flush, boom! 

You minimize the amount of time that the poop's touching the air. 

Because if you poop first, it takes you longer to pee and then you're peeing on top of it, stirring up the poop particles, create a cloud, goes out, then everyone at the party will know that you pooped. 

Just Trust Me, it's Science."

8.

"Learn to Pray. 

It's easy, and it is so good for your soul."

9.

"Nobody is Perfect. 

People will tell you that you are perfect just the way that you 
are, 
YOU ARE NOT! 

You are Imperfect. 

You always will be, but there is a Powerful Force that designed you that way, and if you are willing to accept that, you will have Grace. 

And Grace is a Gift. 

Like the freedom that we enjoy in this country, that grace was paid for with Somebody Else's Blood. 

Do Not Forget That. 

Don't take that for granted."

Red Pawn, Blue Queen

As the Knight sang the last words of the ballad, he gathered up the reins, and turned his horse’s head along the road by which they had come. ‘You’ve only a few yards to go,’ he said, ‘down the hill and over that little brook, and then you’ll be a Queen—But you’ll stay and see me off first?’ he added as Alice turned with an eager look in the direction to which he pointed. ‘I shan’t be long. You’ll wait and wave your handkerchief when I get to that turn in the road? I think it’ll encourage me, you see.’

‘Of course I’ll wait,’ said Alice: ‘and thank you very much for coming so far—and for the song—I liked it very much.’

‘I hope so,’ the Knight said doubtfully: ‘but you didn’t cry so much as I thought you would.’

So they shook hands, and then the Knight rode slowly away into the forest. ‘It won’t take long to see him off, I expect,’ Alice said to herself, as she stood watching him. ‘There he goes! Right on his head as usual! However, he gets on again pretty easily—that comes of having so many things hung round the horse—’ So she went on talking to herself, as she watched the horse walking leisurely along the road, and the Knight tumbling off, first on one side and then on the other. After the fourth or fifth tumble he reached the turn, and then she waved her handkerchief to him, and waited till he was out of sight.

‘I hope it encouraged him,’ she said, as she turned to run down the hill: ‘and now for the last brook, and to be a Queen! How grand it sounds!’ A very few steps brought her to the edge of the brook. ‘The Eighth Square at last!’ she cried as she bounded across,

  *    *    *    *    *    *    *

    *    *    *    *    *    *

  *    *    *    *    *    *    *

and threw herself down to rest on a lawn as soft as moss, with little flower-beds dotted about it here and there. ‘Oh, how glad I am to get here! And what is this on my head?’ she exclaimed in a tone of dismay, as she put her hands up to something very heavy, and fitted tight all round her head.

‘But how can it have got there without my knowing it?’ she said to herself, as she lifted it off, and set it on her lap to make out what it could possibly be.

It was a golden crown.

CHAPTER IX. Queen Alice

‘Well, this is grand!’ said Alice. ‘I never expected I should be a Queen so soon—and I’ll tell you what it is, your majesty,’ she went on in a severe tone (she was always rather fond of scolding herself), ‘it’ll never do for you to be lolling about on the grass like that! Queens have to be dignified, you know!’

So she got up and walked about—rather stiffly just at first, as she was afraid that the crown might come off: but she comforted herself with the thought that there was nobody to see her, ‘and if I really am a Queen,’ she said as she sat down again, ‘I shall be able to manage it quite well in time.’

Everything was happening so oddly that she didn’t feel a bit surprised at finding the Red Queen and the White Queen sitting close to her, one on each side: she would have liked very much to ask them how they came there, but she feared it would not be quite civil. However, there would be no harm, she thought, in asking if the game was over. ‘Please, would you tell me—’ she began, looking timidly at the Red Queen.

‘Speak when you’re spoken to!’ The Queen sharply interrupted her.

‘But if everybody obeyed that rule,’ said Alice, who was always ready for a little argument, ‘and if you only spoke when you were spoken to, and the other person always waited for you to begin, you see nobody would ever say anything, so that—’

‘Ridiculous!’ cried the Queen. ‘Why, don’t you see, child—’ here she broke off with a frown, and, after thinking for a minute, suddenly changed the subject of the conversation. ‘What do you mean by “If you really are a Queen”? What right have you to call yourself so? You can’t be a Queen, you know, till you’ve passed the proper examination. And the sooner we begin it, the better.’

‘I only said “if”!’ poor Alice pleaded in a piteous tone.

The two Queens looked at each other, and the Red Queen remarked, with a little shudder, ‘She says she only said “if”—’

‘But she said a great deal more than that!’ the White Queen moaned, wringing her hands. ‘Oh, ever so much more than that!’

‘So you did, you know,’ the Red Queen said to Alice. ‘Always speak the truth—think before you speak—and write it down afterwards.’

‘I’m sure I didn’t mean—’ Alice was beginning, but the Red Queen interrupted her impatiently.

‘That’s just what I complain of! You should have meant! What do you suppose is the use of child without any meaning? Even a joke should have some meaning—and a child’s more important than a joke, I hope. You couldn’t deny that, even if you tried with both hands.’

‘I don’t deny things with my hands,’ Alice objected.

‘Nobody said you did,’ said the Red Queen. ‘I said you couldn’t if you tried.’

‘She’s in that state of mind,’ said the White Queen, ‘that she wants to deny something—only she doesn’t know what to deny!’

‘A nasty, vicious temper,’ the Red Queen remarked; and then there was an uncomfortable silence for a minute or two.

The Red Queen broke the silence by saying to the White Queen, ‘I invite you to Alice’s dinner-party this afternoon.’

The White Queen smiled feebly, and said ‘And I invite you.’

‘I didn’t know I was to have a party at all,’ said Alice; ‘but if there is to be one, I think I ought to invite the guests.’

‘We gave you the opportunity of doing it,’ the Red Queen remarked: ‘but I daresay you’ve not had many lessons in manners yet?’

‘Manners are not taught in lessons,’ said Alice. ‘Lessons teach you to do sums, and things of that sort.’

‘And you do Addition?’ the White Queen asked. ‘What’s one and one and one and one and one and one and one and one and one and one?’

‘I don’t know,’ said Alice. ‘I lost count.’

‘She can’t do Addition,’ the Red Queen interrupted. ‘Can you do Subtraction? Take nine from eight.’

‘Nine from eight I can’t, you know,’ Alice replied very readily: ‘but—’

‘She can’t do Subtraction,’ said the White Queen. ‘Can you do Division? Divide a loaf by a knife—what’s the answer to that?’

‘I suppose—’ Alice was beginning, but the Red Queen answered for her. ‘Bread-and-butter, of course. Try another Subtraction sum. Take a bone from a dog: what remains?’

Alice considered. ‘The bone wouldn’t remain, of course, if I took it—and the dog wouldn’t remain; it would come to bite me—and I’m sure I shouldn’t remain!’

‘Then you think nothing would remain?’ said the Red Queen.

‘I think that’s the answer.’

‘Wrong, as usual,’ said the Red Queen: ‘the dog’s temper would remain.’

‘But I don’t see how—’

‘Why, look here!’ the Red Queen cried. ‘The dog would lose its temper, wouldn’t it?’

‘Perhaps it would,’ Alice replied cautiously.

‘Then if the dog went away, its temper would remain!’ the Queen exclaimed triumphantly.

Alice said, as gravely as she could, ‘They might go different ways.’ But she couldn’t help thinking to herself, ‘What dreadful nonsense we are talking!’

‘She can’t do sums a bit!’ the Queens said together, with great emphasis.

‘Can you do sums?’ Alice said, turning suddenly on the White Queen, for she didn’t like being found fault with so much.

The Queen gasped and shut her eyes. ‘I can do Addition, if you give me time—but I can’t do Subtraction, under any circumstances!’

‘Of course you know your A B C?’ said the Red Queen.

‘To be sure I do.’ said Alice.

‘So do I,’ the White Queen whispered: ‘we’ll often say it over together, dear. And I’ll tell you a secret—I can read words of one letter! Isn’t that grand! However, don’t be discouraged. You’ll come to it in time.’

Here the Red Queen began again. ‘Can you answer useful questions?’ she said. ‘How is bread made?’

‘I know that!’ Alice cried eagerly. ‘You take some flour—’

‘Where do you pick the flower?’ the White Queen asked. ‘In a garden, or in the hedges?’

‘Well, it isn’t picked at all,’ Alice explained: ‘it’s ground—’

‘How many acres of ground?’ said the White Queen. ‘You mustn’t leave out so many things.’

‘Fan her head!’ the Red Queen anxiously interrupted. ‘She’ll be feverish after so much thinking.’ So they set to work and fanned her with bunches of leaves, till she had to beg them to leave off, it blew her hair about so.

‘She’s all right again now,’ said the Red Queen. ‘Do you know Languages? What’s the French for fiddle-de-dee?’

‘Fiddle-de-dee’s not English,’ Alice replied gravely.

‘Who ever said it was?’ said the Red Queen.

Alice thought she saw a way out of the difficulty this time. ‘If you’ll tell me what language “fiddle-de-dee” is, I’ll tell you the French for it!’ she exclaimed triumphantly.

But the Red Queen drew herself up rather stiffly, and said ‘Queens never make bargains.’

‘I wish Queens never asked questions,’ Alice thought to herself.

‘Don’t let us quarrel,’ the White Queen said in an anxious tone. ‘What is the cause of lightning?’

‘The cause of lightning,’ Alice said very decidedly, for she felt quite certain about this, ‘is the thunder—no, no!’ she hastily corrected herself. ‘I meant the other way.’

‘It’s too late to correct it,’ said the Red Queen: ‘when you’ve once said a thing, that fixes it, and you must take the consequences.’

‘Which reminds me—’ the White Queen said, looking down and nervously clasping and unclasping her hands, ‘we had such a thunderstorm last Tuesday—I mean one of the last set of Tuesdays, you know.’

Alice was puzzled. ‘In our country,’ she remarked, ‘there’s only one day at a time.’

The Red Queen said, ‘That’s a poor thin way of doing things. Now here, we mostly have days and nights two or three at a time, and sometimes in the winter we take as many as five nights together—for warmth, you know.’

‘Are five nights warmer than one night, then?’ Alice ventured to ask.

‘Five times as warm, of course.’

‘But they should be five times as cold, by the same rule—’

‘Just so!’ cried the Red Queen. ‘Five times as warm, and five times as cold—just as I’m five times as rich as you are, and five times as clever!’

Alice sighed and gave it up. ‘It’s exactly like a riddle with no answer!’ she thought.

‘Humpty Dumpty saw it too,’ the White Queen went on in a low voice, more as if she were talking to herself. ‘He came to the door with a corkscrew in his hand—’

‘What did he want?’ said the Red Queen.

‘He said he would come in,’ the White Queen went on, ‘because he was looking for a hippopotamus. Now, as it happened, there wasn’t such a thing in the house, that morning.’

‘Is there generally?’ Alice asked in an astonished tone.

‘Well, only on Thursdays,’ said the Queen.

‘I know what he came for,’ said Alice: ‘he wanted to punish the fish, because—’

Here the White Queen began again. ‘It was such a thunderstorm, you can’t think!’ (‘She never could, you know,’ said the Red Queen.) ‘And part of the roof came off, and ever so much thunder got in—and it went rolling round the room in great lumps—and knocking over the tables and things—till I was so frightened, I couldn’t remember my own name!’

Alice thought to herself, ‘I never should try to remember my name in the middle of an accident! Where would be the use of it?’ but she did not say this aloud, for fear of hurting the poor Queen’s feeling.

‘Your Majesty must excuse her,’ the Red Queen said to Alice, taking one of the White Queen’s hands in her own, and gently stroking it: ‘she means well, but she can’t help saying foolish things, as a general rule.’

The White Queen looked timidly at Alice, who felt she ought to say something kind, but really couldn’t think of anything at the moment.

‘She never was really well brought up,’ the Red Queen went on: ‘but it’s amazing how good-tempered she is! Pat her on the head, and see how pleased she’ll be!’ But this was more than Alice had courage to do.

‘A little kindness—and putting her hair in papers—would do wonders with her—’

The White Queen gave a deep sigh, and laid her head on Alice’s shoulder. ‘I am so sleepy?’ she moaned.

‘She’s tired, poor thing!’ said the Red Queen. ‘Smooth her hair—lend her your nightcap—and sing her a soothing lullaby.’

‘I haven’t got a nightcap with me,’ said Alice, as she tried to obey the first direction: ‘and I don’t know any soothing lullabies.’

‘I must do it myself, then,’ said the Red Queen, and she began:

   ‘Hush-a-by lady, in Alice’s lap!
   Till the feast’s ready, we’ve time for a nap:
   When the feast’s over, we’ll go to the ball—
l!
   Red Queen, and White Queen, and Alice, and a
l

‘And now you know the words,’ she added, as she put her head down on Alice’s other shoulder, ‘just sing it through to me. I’m getting sleepy, too.’ In another moment both Queens were fast asleep, and snoring loud.

‘What am I to do?’ exclaimed Alice, looking about in great perplexity, as first one round head, and then the other, rolled down from her shoulder, and lay like a heavy lump in her lap. ‘I don’t think it ever happened before, that any one had to take care of two Queens asleep at once! No, not in all the History of England—it couldn’t, you know, because there never was more than one Queen at a time. Do wake up, you heavy things!’ she went on in an impatient tone; but there was no answer but a gentle snoring.

The snoring got more distinct every minute, and sounded more like a tune: at last she could even make out the words, and she listened so eagerly that, when the two great heads vanished from her lap, she hardly missed them.

She was standing before an arched doorway over which were the words QUEEN ALICE in large letters, and on each side of the arch there was a bell-handle; one was marked ‘Visitors’ Bell,’ and the other ‘Servants’ Bell.’

‘I’ll wait till the song’s over,’ thought Alice, ‘and then I’ll ring—the—which bell must I ring?’ she went on, very much puzzled by the names. ‘I’m not a visitor, and I’m not a servant. There ought to be one marked “Queen,” you know—’

Just then the door opened a little way, and a creature with a long beak put its head out for a moment and said ‘No admittance till the week after next!’ and shut the door again with a bang.

Alice knocked and rang in vain for a long time, but at last, a very old Frog, who was sitting under a tree, got up and hobbled slowly towards her: he was dressed in bright yellow, and had enormous boots on.

‘What is it, now?’ the Frog said in a deep hoarse whisper.

Alice turned round, ready to find fault with anybody. ‘Where’s the servant whose business it is to answer the door?’ she began angrily.

‘Which door?’ said the Frog.

Alice almost stamped with irritation at the slow drawl in which he spoke. ‘This door, of course!’

The Frog looked at the door with his large dull eyes for a minute: then he went nearer and rubbed it with his thumb, as if he were trying whether the paint would come off; then he looked at Alice.

‘To answer the door?’ he said. ‘What’s it been asking of?’ He was so hoarse that Alice could scarcely hear him.

‘I don’t know what you mean,’ she said.

‘I talks English, doesn’t I?’ the Frog went on. ‘Or are you deaf? What did it ask you?’

‘Nothing!’ Alice said impatiently. ‘I’ve been knocking at it!’

‘Shouldn’t do that—shouldn’t do that—’ the Frog muttered. ‘Vexes it, you know.’ Then he went up and gave the door a kick with one of his great feet. ‘You let it alone,’ he panted out, as he hobbled back to his tree, ‘and it’ll let you alone, you know.’

At this moment the door was flung open, and a shrill voice was heard singing:

   ‘To the Looking-Glass world it was Alice that said,
   “I’ve a sceptre in hand, I’ve a crown on my head;

   Come and dine with the Red Queen, the White Queen
   Let the Looking-Glass creatures, whatever they be
,, and me.”’

And hundreds of voices joined in the chorus:

  ‘Then fill up the glasses as quick as you can,
  And sprinkle the table with buttons and bran:
 And welcome Queen Alice with thirty-times-thr
  Put cats in the coffee, and mice in the tea—
 ee!’

Then followed a confused noise of cheering, and Alice thought to herself, ‘Thirty times three makes ninety. I wonder if any one’s counting?’ In a minute there was silence again, and the same shrill voice sang another verse;

  ‘“O Looking-Glass creatures,” quoth Alice, “draw near!
  ‘Tis an honour to see me, a favour to hear:

  Along with the Red Queen, the White Queen, 
  ‘Tis a privilege high to have dinner and te
aand me!”’

Then came the chorus again:—

  ‘Then fill up the glasses with treacle and ink,
  Or anything else that is pleasant to drink:
ine—
  And welcome Queen Alice with ninety-times-n
  Mix sand with the cider, and wool with the 
wine!’

‘Ninety times nine!’ Alice repeated in despair, ‘Oh, that’ll never be done! I’d better go in at once—’ and there was a dead silence the moment she appeared.

Alice glanced nervously along the table, as she walked up the large hall, and noticed that there were about fifty guests, of all kinds: some were animals, some birds, and there were even a few flowers among them. ‘I’m glad they’ve come without waiting to be asked,’ she thought: ‘I should never have known who were the right people to invite!’

There were three chairs at the head of the table; the Red and White Queens had already taken two of them, but the middle one was empty. Alice sat down in it, rather uncomfortable in the silence, and longing for some one to speak.

At last the Red Queen began. ‘You’ve missed the soup and fish,’ she said. ‘Put on the joint!’ And the waiters set a leg of mutton before Alice, who looked at it rather anxiously, as she had never had to carve a joint before.

‘You look a little shy; let me introduce you to that leg of mutton,’ said the Red Queen. ‘Alice—Mutton; Mutton—Alice.’ The leg of mutton got up in the dish and made a little bow to Alice; and Alice returned the bow, not knowing whether to be frightened or amused.

‘May I give you a slice?’ she said, taking up the knife and fork, and looking from one Queen to the other.

‘Certainly not,’ the Red Queen said, very decidedly: ‘it isn’t etiquette to cut any one you’ve been introduced to. Remove the joint!’ And the waiters carried it off, and brought a large plum-pudding in its place.

‘I won’t be introduced to the pudding, please,’ Alice said rather hastily, ‘or we shall get no dinner at all. May I give you some?’

But the Red Queen looked sulky, and growled ‘Pudding—Alice; Alice—Pudding. Remove the pudding!’ and the waiters took it away so quickly that Alice couldn’t return its bow.

However, she didn’t see why the Red Queen should be the only one to give orders, so, as an experiment, she called out ‘Waiter! Bring back the pudding!’ and there it was again in a moment like a conjuring-trick. It was so large that she couldn’t help feeling a little shy with it, as she had been with the mutton; however, she conquered her shyness by a great effort and cut a slice and handed it to the Red Queen.

‘What impertinence!’ said the Pudding. ‘I wonder how you’d like it, if I were to cut a slice out of you, you creature!’

It spoke in a thick, suety sort of voice, and Alice hadn’t a word to say in reply: she could only sit and look at it and gasp.

‘Make a remark,’ said the Red Queen: ‘it’s ridiculous to leave all the conversation to the pudding!’

‘Do you know, I’ve had such a quantity of poetry repeated to me to-day,’ Alice began, a little frightened at finding that, the moment she opened her lips, there was dead silence, and all eyes were fixed upon her; ‘and it’s a very curious thing, I think—every poem was about fishes in some way. Do you know why they’re so fond of fishes, all about here?’

She spoke to the Red Queen, whose answer was a little wide of the mark. ‘As to fishes,’ she said, very slowly and solemnly, putting her mouth close to Alice’s ear, ‘her White Majesty knows a lovely riddle—all in poetry—all about fishes. Shall she repeat it?’

‘Her Red Majesty’s very kind to mention it,’ the White Queen murmured into Alice’s other ear, in a voice like the cooing of a pigeon. ‘It would be such a treat! May I?’

‘Please do,’ Alice said very politely.

The White Queen laughed with delight, and stroked Alice’s cheek. Then she began:

    ‘“First, the fish must be caught.”
   That is easy: a baby, I think, could have caught it.
    “Next, the fish must be bought.”
uld have bought it.

    “Now cook me the fish!”
   That
   That is easy: a penny, I think, w
o is easy, and will not take more than a minute.
    “Let it lie in a dish!”
!”
   It is easy to set such a dish on the ta
   That is easy, because it already is in it.

    “Bring it here! Let me su
pble.
    “Take the dish-cover up!”
   Ah, that is so hard that I fear I’m unable!

    For it holds it like glue—
dishcover the riddle?’
  Holds the lid to the dish, while it lies in the middle:
    Which is easiest to do,
  Un-dish-cover the fish, or
 

‘Take a minute to think about it, and then guess,’ said the Red Queen. ‘Meanwhile, we’ll drink your health—Queen Alice’s health!’ she screamed at the top of her voice, and all the guests began drinking it directly, and very queerly they managed it: some of them put their glasses upon their heads like extinguishers, and drank all that trickled down their faces—others upset the decanters, and drank the wine as it ran off the edges of the table—and three of them (who looked like kangaroos) scrambled into the dish of roast mutton, and began eagerly lapping up the gravy, ‘just like pigs in a trough!’ thought Alice.

‘You ought to return thanks in a neat speech,’ the Red Queen said, frowning at Alice as she spoke.

‘We must support you, you know,’ the White Queen whispered, as Alice got up to do it, very obediently, but a little frightened.

‘Thank you very much,’ she whispered in reply, ‘but I can do quite well without.’

‘That wouldn’t be at all the thing,’ the Red Queen said very decidedly: so Alice tried to submit to it with a good grace.

(‘And they did push so!’ she said afterwards, when she was telling her sister the history of the feast. ‘You would have thought they wanted to squeeze me flat!’)

In fact it was rather difficult for her to keep in her place while she made her speech: the two Queens pushed her so, one on each side, that they nearly lifted her up into the air: ‘I rise to return thanks—’ Alice began: and she really did rise as she spoke, several inches; but she got hold of the edge of the table, and managed to pull herself down again.

‘Take care of yourself!’ screamed the White Queen, seizing Alice’s hair with both her hands. ‘Something’s going to happen!’

And then (as Alice afterwards described it) all sorts of things happened in a moment. The candles all grew up to the ceiling, looking something like a bed of rushes with fireworks at the top. As to the bottles, they each took a pair of plates, which they hastily fitted on as wings, and so, with forks for legs, went fluttering about in all directions: ‘and very like birds they look,’ Alice thought to herself, as well as she could in the dreadful confusion that was beginning.

At this moment she heard a hoarse laugh at her side, and turned to see what was the matter with the White Queen; but, instead of the Queen, there was the leg of mutton sitting in the chair. ‘Here I am!’ cried a voice from the soup tureen, and Alice turned again, just in time to see the Queen’s broad good-natured face grinning at her for a moment over the edge of the tureen, before she disappeared into the soup.

There was not a moment to be lost. Already several of the guests were lying down in the dishes, and the soup ladle was walking up the table towards Alice’s chair, and beckoning to her impatiently to get out of its way.

‘I can’t stand this any longer!’ she cried as she jumped up and seized the table-cloth with both hands: one good pull, and plates, dishes, guests, and candles came crashing down together in a heap on the floor.

‘And as for you,’ she went on, turning fiercely upon the Red Queen, whom she considered as the cause of all the mischief—but the Queen was no longer at her side—she had suddenly dwindled down to the size of a little doll, and was now on the table, merrily running round and round after her own shawl, which was trailing behind her.

At any other time, Alice would have felt surprised at this, but she was far too much excited to be surprised at anything now. ‘As for you,’ she repeated, catching hold of the little creature in the very act of jumping over a bottle which had just lighted upon the table, ‘I’ll shake you into a kitten, that I will!’

CHAPTER X. Shaking

She took her off the table as she spoke, and shook her backwards and forwards with all her might.

The Red Queen made no resistance whatever; only her face grew very small, and her eyes got large and green: and still, as Alice went on shaking her, she kept on growing shorter—and fatter—and softer—and rounder—and—

CHAPTER XI. Waking

—and it really was a kitten, after all.

CHAPTER XII. Which Dreamed it?

‘Your majesty shouldn’t purr so loud,’ Alice said, rubbing her eyes, and addressing the kitten, respectfully, yet with some severity. ‘You woke me out of oh! such a nice dream! And you’ve been along with me, Kitty—all through the Looking-Glass world. Did you know it, dear?’

It is a very inconvenient habit of kittens (Alice had once made the remark) that, whatever you say to them, they always purr. ‘If they would only purr for “yes” and mew for “no,” or any rule of that sort,’ she had said, ‘so that one could keep up a conversation! But how can you talk with a person if they always say the same thing?’

On this occasion the kitten only purred: and it was impossible to guess whether it meant ‘yes’ or ‘no.’

So Alice hunted among the chessmen on the table till she had found the Red Queen: then she went down on her knees on the hearth-rug, and put the kitten and the Queen to look at each other. ‘Now, Kitty!’ she cried, clapping her hands triumphantly. ‘Confess that was what you turned into!’

(‘But it wouldn’t look at it,’ she said, when she was explaining the thing afterwards to her sister: ‘it turned away its head, and pretended not to see it: but it looked a littleashamed of itself, so I think it must have been the Red Queen.’)

‘Sit up a little more stiffly, dear!’ Alice cried with a merry laugh. ‘And curtsey while you’re thinking what to—what to purr. It saves time, remember!’ And she caught it up and gave it one little kiss, ‘just in honour of having been a Red Queen.’

‘Snowdrop, my pet!’ she went on, looking over her shoulder at the White Kitten, which was still patiently undergoing its toilet, ‘when will Dinah have finished with your White Majesty, I wonder? That must be the reason you were so untidy in my dream—Dinah! do you know that you’re scrubbing a White Queen? Really, it’s most disrespectful of you!

‘And what did Dinah turn to, I wonder?’ she prattled on, as she settled comfortably down, with one elbow in the rug, and her chin in her hand, to watch the kittens. ‘Tell me, Dinah, did you turn to Humpty Dumpty? I think you did—however, you’d better not mention it to your friends just yet, for I’m not sure.

‘By the way, Kitty, if only you’d been really with me in my dream, there was one thing you would have enjoyed—I had such a quantity of poetry said to me, all about fishes! To-morrow morning you shall have a real treat. All the time you’re eating your breakfast, I’ll repeat “The Walrus and the Carpenter” to you; and then you can make believe it’s oysters, dear!

‘Now, Kitty, let’s consider who it was that dreamed it all. This is a serious question, my dear, and you should not go on licking your paw like that—as if Dinah hadn’t washed you this morning! You see, Kitty, it must have been either me or the Red King. He was part of my dream, of course—but then I was part of his dream, too! Was it the Red King, Kitty? You were his wife, my dear, so you ought to know—Oh, Kitty, dohelp to settle it! I’m sure your paw can wait!’ But the provoking kitten only began on the other paw, and pretended it hadn’t heard the question.

Which do you think it was?

              ——

         A boat beneath a sunny sky,
         Lingering onward dreamily
       Children three that nest
         In an evening of July—

 
 le near,
         Eager eye and willing ear,
    Long has paled that sunny sky:
    
         Pleased a simple tale to hear—

    
      Echoes fade and memories die.
         Autumn frosts have slain July.

         Never seen by waking eyes.

     
         Still she haunts me, phantomwise,
         Alice moving under skies
    Children yet, the tale to hear,
     Dreaming as the days go by,
  
         Eager eye and willing ear,
         Lovingly shall nestle near.

         In a Wonderland they lie,
   
        Dreaming as the summers die:

         Ever drifting down the stream—
         Lingering in the golden gleam—
         Life, what is it but a dream?

                THE END