The Writer's Familar

The Writer’s Familar

Do you remember Sabrina the teenage witch’s familiar Salem? Or Hermione Granger’s Crookshanks? Apparently, in the witchcraft world, everyone has their own familiar. During the times of the European witch hunts, familiars were “said to be given to witches bythe devil”, according to Rosemary Guiley’s Encyclopaedia of Witches and Witchcraft. Essentially, familiars were small demons sent to help witches to reach their purposes. They would also represent their owner, be another living version of them. Any small animal could fulfil the requirements to be considered a familiar, but cats, probably for their mysterious allure, were the perfect candidate for such a role. This is partly how black cats gained their reputation for bringing bad luck. What is an artist if not a witch? Cursed souls who have a different truth.

Lewis Carroll is one of the greatest cursed souls of his era. Mathematician, writer, poet, and photographer –when this form of art had just been developed… Although his contribution to the literary world is very punctual and unique –as non-belonging to any movement –he wrote what remains today a real masterpiece in terms of children’s literature. It is perhaps due to Carroll’s status of outsider regarding literature that what he created could reach the level of a masterpiece, making his work incomparable, unrivalled and therefore eternal. From his soul emerged a new world made of madness, poetry, power and love. He created the Wonderland and his very own feline familiar is the Cheshire Cat.

Firstly, Carroll is the Cheshire Man; he was born on January 27, 1832, at Daresbury, Cheshire. But this is obviously not enough proof to assert that the Cheshire Cat is his familiar, his embodiment. One will remember that the ruler of Wonderland is the Queen of Hearts, a tyrant. In fact; the Cheshire Cat is the true ruler, as in being the one who knows the truth. He is Plato’s philosopher king, uninterested by power –in Tim Burton’s movie adaptation (2010) the Cat actually says to Alice ‘I’m not interested in politics’ and disappears. Despite this, he would still be a compelling and legitimate candidate for rulership due to his great sense of objectivity by acknowledging Wonderland’s problem: madness. Alice herself is surprised by his honesty: ‘we’re all mad here. I’m mad, you’re mad’. He even enlightens Alice about her own condition: even if she thinks she is not mad, then in Wonderland, she will be seen mad anyway. The majority wins, and her sanity would be such contrast that it would look like a doubled madness. The Cheshire Cat’s position, one of knowledge and clarity, makes him look like a superior figure, someone in control. Such a figure resembles this of the creator, the author; the almighty and omniscient force. In the book, the Cat’s playful attitude of appearing and disappearing is a trick which displays his limitless control over the world of Wonderland. Moreover, up on a tree, the Cheshire Cat’s physical position represents the idea of superiority: Alice has to look up. This position gives the Cat a fatherly connotation which we are reminded of during the narrative time of the book: all along, Alice nervously looks for the Cheshire Cat, in search for advice and intelligent conversation. The Cheshire Cat’s presence makes her feel safer. The image of the father, once again, echoes the author’s situation, father of his creation.

Drawing a parallel between Lewis Carroll and the Cheshire Cat is like opening a window and having before our eyes, the oeuvre’s genesis. Indeed, playfulness, wit and control; these attributes of the Cheshire Cat are the key ingredients for oral storytelling - the ultimate form of power and the process that gave birth to Alice in Wonderland…

A boat on the Thames near Oxford, the young Alice Liddell asks Charles Dodgson - her father’s friend who we all know under the pseudonym Lewis Carroll, a mathematics professor –to tell her and her sisters a story. Inspired by Alice Liddell’s very own behaviour and personality, Charles builds a semi-fictional character who will soon be who we now remember as the little golden-haired girl with the puffy blue dress. During each encounter with the Liddell family, Charles will bring with him his fictional creature, and a bit of nonsense to tell new adventures. At the occasion of the Christmas that followed this introduction to the fictional Alice, Charles offered a manuscript and some drawings to the youngest Liddell sister that he entitled ‘Alice’s Adventures Underground’, the first version of the future oeuvre. The book was renamed Alice in Wonderland and finally published in November 1875. Roughly at the same time, Charles also published a mathematical treatise: The Dynamics of a Particle. Charles Dodgson translates sense and Lewis Carroll creates magical nonsense.

However, what we all ignore is that, once outside Wonderland, Alice Liddell ended up growing up. She travelled all over Europe, painted numerous watercolours, posed for a great number of photographers and other artists, other cursed souls…They also say she had an amorous liaison with Leopold, Queen Victoria’s son! In the end, she married a certain Hargreaves –a rich cricket player –and then saw her three sons going to fight for the Great War, the First World War. Only one of them survived. A year before her death, eighty-two-year-old Alice Liddell was able to see the Alice from Paramount Pictures on the big screen (Alice in Wonderland, directed by Norman Z. McLeod and released in 1933), as if to say goodbye to the alter-ego who always accompanied her.

The Cheshire Cat became so intrinsic to the story that he entered our collective memory and our modern culture. We now see him as the symbol of Alice in Wonderland. He is the one we think of when the story is mentioned. Lewis Carroll’s familiar has overtaken him. They are rivals now. When James Bobin adapted Carroll’s second book of Alice’s adventures, Alice Through the Looking Glass in 2016, offering a sequel to Tim Burton’s film, he actually took the liberty to re-introduce the Cheshire Cat even though in the original literary version by Carroll, Alice does not meet the Cat again. This shows how the Cheshire Cat became an iconic character of the whole story.

A witch’s familiar is here to help its owner achieve their goal. But what if the familiar is free-spirited, appears, disappears, hides behind an enormous smile and climbs trees? The witch is therefore transported by their familiar, transported into the depth of imagination, creating an unexpectedly efficient spell. Charles Dodgson the man of science never understood how he became Lewis Carroll, the great author of children literature. That is the secret magic of familiars.

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