As part of her Alice in Wonderland series Emily’s Queen of Hearts is a jogging ejit dressed in vibrant pink and carefully carrying a golden heart. Her crown bounces above her head as she runs. I love it because I don’t think you can have anything more revolutionary in the field of illustrations for children’s literature.
Some believe that the Queen of Hearts was Lewis Carroll’s caricature of Queen Victoria. The fact that the Queen in the story prejudged the outcome of any trial and wanted to sentence people before they were tried was one of the thinly masked critiques of the Victorian age that Carroll was fond of making. Prejudging is still a common factor in society but we have to hope that our justice system has made some advances since Victoria’s time. The Knave of Hearts didn’t steal the tarts. It was Alice.
The Queen is the only person in the story who doesn’t have anything to do with logic and is therefore the absolute opposite of the Cheshire Cat. She constantly tries to terrorise the population of Wonderland, calling for anyone that she doesn’t like, or agree with, to be executed, although her threats are empty ones. She is thought by some to embody the nonsensical, blustering and meaningless punishments that were handed out to children by adults in the Victorian age and perhaps also today.
The Wonderland stories are so whacky, so mad and so funny that they will never fade but I believe that fresh illustrations are well overdue. I hope Emily finds time to keep them coming. I’m looking forward to the appearance of The White Rabbit.
