Alice in Wonderland Characters: Who Is Who, Chapter by Chapter

The Short Version

The main Alice in Wonderland characters are Alice herself, the White Rabbit she follows down the hole, the Caterpillar, the Duchess and her grinning Cheshire Cat, the Hatter, the March Hare and the Dormouse at the tea party, the King and Queen of Hearts and their Knave, and the Gryphon and the Mock Turtle. Most of them end up at the Queen of Hearts’ court, as playing cards, guests or witnesses at the trial of the Knave. Several famous names, including Tweedledum and Tweedledee and the Red Queen, are not in this book at all.

This guide sticks to the text of Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, the twelve-chapter Project Gutenberg edition we also used for our Alice in Wonderland summary. Spoilers are light; the one line about the ending is marked.

Jump to: Who is who table · Alice · White Rabbit · Caterpillar · Cheshire Cat · Duchess · Mad Hatter · March Hare and Dormouse · Queen of Hearts · King and Knave · Gryphon and Mock Turtle · Who serves whom · Minor characters · Not in this book

Alice in Wonderland Characters at a Glance

Who Is Alice?

Alice is the girl who follows the White Rabbit down a rabbit hole while sitting by her sister on a riverbank. She is the only human with a speaking part for most of the book, and the story is seen through her eyes.

She is polite, curious and quick to argue, and she spends much of the book unsure who she is. After shrinking and growing in chapter 2 she fails her times tables and decides “I must be Mabel after all” (Ch. 2). She keeps mentioning her cat, Dinah, which offends the Mouse and empties the shore of birds. Her size changes drive the plot; our summary counts twelve. By the trial she has stopped being afraid, and tells the court what it is: “You’re nothing but a pack of cards!” (Ch. 12).

Ending, one line (spoiler): the cards fly at her and she wakes on the bank with her head in her sister’s lap; it was a dream.

Who Is the White Rabbit?

The White Rabbit is the rabbit “with pink eyes” (Ch. 1) who takes a watch out of his waistcoat pocket and disappears down the hole. He is the reason Alice enters Wonderland, and he turns up in almost every part of the story.

He is nervous and always late. His first words are “Oh dear! Oh dear! I shall be late!” (Ch. 1), and what he dreads is the Duchess, who he fears will be “savage” (Ch. 2). In chapter 4 he mistakes Alice for his housemaid, Mary Ann, and sends her for his gloves and fan. He has servants of his own: Pat, who is “Digging for apples” (Ch. 4), and Bill the Lizard. At the croquet ground he walks among the royal guests, and at the trial he is the herald, blowing the trumpet and reading the charge against the Knave.

Who Is the Caterpillar?

The Caterpillar is a large blue caterpillar sitting on a mushroom and smoking a long hookah in chapter 5. He asks Alice the question the whole book circles around, and he tells her how to control her size.

His opening line is short and stern: “Who are you?” (Ch. 5). Alice cannot really answer, because she has changed so often since morning. He is curt with her, makes her recite “You are old, Father William” (she gets it wrong), and takes offence when she calls three inches a wretched height, since he is exactly three inches high himself. Before he crawls away he tells her that one side of the mushroom will make her grow taller and the other side shorter. That advice is the most useful thing anyone gives Alice in the whole book; she uses the mushroom pieces for every size change from chapter 5 to the garden.

Who Is the Cheshire Cat?

The Cheshire Cat is the Duchess’s cat, found sitting on the kitchen hearth “grinning from ear to ear” (Ch. 6). He can appear and vanish at will, and he is the one character in Wonderland who talks to Alice as a near-equal.

When Alice asks why it grins, the Duchess answers, “It’s a Cheshire cat, and that’s why” (Ch. 6). Outside, the Cat sits in a tree and gives Alice directions: a Hatter lives one way, a March Hare the other, and “they’re both mad.” Then comes his best-known line: “we’re all mad here. I’m mad. You’re mad.” (Ch. 6). He vanishes slowly, tail first, until only the grin is left, and Alice thinks she has never seen “a grin without a cat” (Ch. 6). In chapter 8 his head appears over the croquet ground. The King wants it removed, and the executioner argues you cannot behead a head with no body. Alice settles it: “It belongs to the Duchess” (Ch. 8).

Who Is the Duchess?

The Duchess is a noblewoman who lives in a small house in the wood with her cook, her baby, her Cheshire Cat and a Frog-Footman. She is rough and bad-tempered in chapter 6 and strangely affectionate in chapter 9.

In her smoky, peppery kitchen she nurses a baby while singing a lullaby about beating it, then flings the baby at Alice so she can get ready for the Queen’s croquet game. The baby turns into a pig. The White Rabbit later explains that she is under sentence of execution because “She boxed the Queen’s ears” (Ch. 8). At the croquet ground in chapter 9 she is suddenly friendly, digs her sharp chin into Alice’s shoulder, and finds a moral in everything: “Everything’s got a moral, if only you can find it” (Ch. 9). Alice decides it was only the pepper that made her so savage before. The Queen then threatens her, and she leaves.

Who Is the Mad Hatter?

The character everyone calls the Mad Hatter is simply “the Hatter” in Carroll’s text; the words “Mad Hatter” never appear together in the book. He is a hat-seller who hosts the endless tea party in chapter 7, “A Mad Tea-Party”, and it is the Cheshire Cat who says he is mad.

His most famous line is a riddle he cannot answer: “Why is a raven like a writing-desk?” (Ch. 7). He tells Alice he quarrelled with Time at a concert given by the Queen of Hearts, where he sang “Twinkle, twinkle, little bat!” and the Queen shouted that he was murdering the time. Since then it is always six o’clock, always tea-time, so the party keeps moving round the table to clean cups. At the trial he is the first witness and explains that the hat he wears is not his: “I’m a hatter” (Ch. 11). He bites a piece out of his teacup in fright, then leaves without waiting to put his shoes on.

Who Are the March Hare and the Dormouse?

The March Hare is the Hatter’s co-host, and his house is the one with chimneys shaped like ears and a roof thatched with fur. The Dormouse sits asleep between them at the table, used as a cushion by the other two.

The March Hare offers Alice wine and then admits “There isn’t any” (Ch. 7). Alice expected him to be less mad because “this is May” (Ch. 6), which plays on the saying about hares in March; the Hatter dates his own troubles to “last March—just before he went mad” (Ch. 7), pointing at the Hare. The Dormouse wakes now and then, mutters “I breathe when I sleep” (Ch. 7), and tells a story about three sisters, Elsie, Lacie and Tillie, who lived at the bottom of a treacle well. At the end of the party the other two are trying to put him in the teapot. Both turn up at the trial, where the Dormouse objects to Alice growing.

Who Is the Queen of Hearts?

The Queen of Hearts is the playing-card queen who rules the garden and the croquet ground. She is the book’s chief threat, and her answer to almost every problem is an execution.

She first speaks to Alice in chapter 8 and, when Alice is rude to her, screams “Off with her head!” (Ch. 8). Her croquet game uses live flamingoes as mallets and hedgehogs as balls, and she orders beheadings throughout it. Her threats are mostly empty: the King quietly pardons everyone, and the Gryphon says “they never executes nobody” (Ch. 9). At the trial she wants “Sentence first—verdict afterwards” (Ch. 12), and it is her final “Off with her head!” that leads to Alice’s outburst. She is not the Red Queen; see the section on characters not in this book.

Who Are the King and the Knave of Hearts?

The King of Hearts is the Queen’s husband and the judge at the trial, wearing his crown over a wig. The Knave of Hearts is the card who carries the King’s crown in the procession and is put on trial for stealing the Queen’s tarts.

The King is milder than the Queen; he whispers “You are all pardoned” (Ch. 9) after her executions. As judge he is hopeless. He calls the Hatter’s hat “Stolen!” and invents a rule on the spot: “Rule Forty-two. All persons more than a mile high to leave the court” (Ch. 12). The Knave hardly speaks. The charge against him is a nursery rhyme read by the White Rabbit, “The Knave of Hearts, he stole those tarts” (Ch. 11). He denies writing the unsigned letter put in evidence, and when the King asks if he can swim, he asks, “Do I look like it?” (Ch. 12), being made of cardboard.

Who Are the Gryphon and the Mock Turtle?

The Gryphon is a creature asleep in the sun, whom the Queen orders to take Alice to hear the Mock Turtle’s history. The Mock Turtle sobs through his own story; the Queen says he is “the thing Mock Turtle Soup is made from” (Ch. 9).

His history opens with a sigh: “I was a real Turtle” (Ch. 9). At school in the sea, the master was an old Turtle they called Tortoise “because he taught us” (Ch. 9), and lessons were so called because they “lessen from day to day.” In chapter 10 he and the Gryphon dance the Lobster Quadrille and he sings “Beautiful Soup”. The Gryphon is the brisk one, laughing at the Queen behind her back and hurrying Alice off at the cry “The trial’s beginning!” (Ch. 10).

Who Serves Whom in Wonderland?

Wonderland looks random, but the text gives it a clear pecking order, nearly all of it leading back to the Queen of Hearts.

• The court is a pack of cards. Soldiers carry clubs, courtiers are ornamented with diamonds, the royal children with hearts. The gardeners Two, Five and Seven paint white roses red, and Five says the Queen wanted Seven beheaded for bringing the cook tulip-roots instead of onions (Ch. 8). Face down, they look like every other card, so the Queen cannot tell gardeners from soldiers or her own children.
• The Knave serves the King and Queen, carrying the crown in the procession, then stands trial before them.
• The White Rabbit serves the court as guest and herald, while ordering Pat, Bill and (he thinks) Mary Ann about at home.
• The Duchess is the Queen’s guest and prisoner. A Fish-Footman brings her the croquet invitation (Ch. 6); later she is under sentence for boxing the Queen’s ears. Her own household is the cook, the baby, the Frog-Footman and the Cheshire Cat, who “belongs to the Duchess” (Ch. 8).
• The tea party is its own small world. The Hatter and the March Hare host and the Dormouse is their cushion. Their only tie to the court is the Queen’s concert, until the trial pulls all three back in.

Minor Characters in Alice in Wonderland

• Alice’s sister (unnamed) and Dinah, Alice’s cat at home, who never appears but is mentioned often.
• The Mouse swims in the pool of tears, hates cats and dogs, and tells “a long and a sad tale” (Ch. 3).
• The Duck, the Dodo, the Lory and the Eaglet run the caucus race; the Dodo rules that “Everybody has won, and all must have prizes” (Ch. 3). An old Crab, a Magpie and a Canary leave when Alice mentions Dinah.
• Pat and Bill, the Rabbit’s servants. Bill the Lizard is kicked out of the chimney (Ch. 4) and later sits on the jury with a squeaking pencil.
• Guinea-pigs revive Bill (Ch. 4); at the trial, cheering ones are “suppressed” in a canvas bag (Ch. 11).
• The puppy (Ch. 4) and the Pigeon, who takes long-necked Alice for a serpent (Ch. 5).
• The Fish-Footman and the Frog-Footman, the cook and the baby who turns into a pig (Ch. 6).
• The executioner (Ch. 8), the flamingo mallets and hedgehog balls, and the jury of twelve animals and birds (Ch. 11).
• Father William is only the subject of a poem Alice recites (Ch. 5), not someone she meets.

Characters That Are Not in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland

Many names people link with Alice come from films or from Carroll’s sequel, Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There (published in 1871). The Looking-Glass facts below are well established about that book; we have not quoted it here.

• Tweedledum and Tweedledee: not in this book. They are Looking-Glass characters, and they appear in Disney’s 1951 Alice in Wonderland, which mixes both books.
• The Red Queen and the White Queen: not in this book. They are chess pieces in Looking-Glass, where the story is laid out as a chess game. The Queen of Hearts is a playing card. Adaptations often blend the two, but in Carroll they are different characters in different books.
• Humpty Dumpty, the White Knight, the Jabberwock, and the Walrus and the Carpenter: all from Through the Looking-Glass, not Wonderland.
• “Mad Hatter”: the character is in this book, but the text only ever calls him the Hatter. “Mad Hatter” is a nickname built from the chapter title “A Mad Tea-Party” and the Cheshire Cat’s “they’re both mad,” not the book’s name for him.