Th Ugly Duchess <strong>The</strong> Ugly Duchess haunts me. She has haunted me s<strong>in</strong>ce our first encounter, when I was seven. I was sitt<strong>in</strong>g with my parents on a tra<strong>in</strong> bound for New York read<strong>in</strong>g Alice <strong>in</strong> Wonderland. <strong>The</strong> Duchess—a character <strong>in</strong> the book—was also sitt<strong>in</strong>g, on a stool <strong>in</strong> her kitchen. She was <strong>in</strong> a very She was everyth<strong>in</strong>g a woman wasn't supposed to be. By Edith Pearlman bad mood, hold<strong>in</strong>g a howl<strong>in</strong>g baby who would soon turn <strong>in</strong>to a pig—a bit of Lewis Carroll whimsy that disturbed me then and disturbs me now. A few chapters later, the Duchess showed up at a croquet game. She was aggressively friendly to Alice. <strong>The</strong> Duchess is "very ugly," Alice thought. When I looked up from the book, it was late afternoon. <strong>The</strong> tra<strong>in</strong> was crawl<strong>in</strong>g past an <strong>in</strong>dustrial Connecticut city which, reddened by the sunset, looked complicated and <strong>in</strong>terest<strong>in</strong>g. I learned later it was considered a blighted city, an urban disgrace. But it didn't seem ugly to me. <strong>The</strong> Duchess didn't seem ugly either. In Alice <strong>in</strong> Wonderland, the Duchess' face is not described; the artist John Tenniel takes the responsibility of render<strong>in</strong>g her. I understood his draw<strong>in</strong>gs to be eyewitness, on-thescene sketches, just as I understood Alice's adventures to be true accounts. In these draw<strong>in</strong>gs, the Duchess looks cranky on her first appearance, smug on her second. She is short of nose and long of lip, wide of jaw and small of eye. Her girth is draped <strong>in</strong> a loose garment that drags on the ground. A comfortable sort of sandal peeps out below. It's the costume of a derelict, topped by a lunatic hat. But she didn't look unattractive, at least not to my young eyes. <strong>The</strong> Duchess looked—though I was astute enough not to mention it—a little like my great aunt Elsa. And compared to the Alice of the draw<strong>in</strong>gs, that starched child whose Mary- Janed feet stood stiffly <strong>in</strong> third position, and to the mannerly Alice of the prose, the Duchess was refresh<strong>in</strong>gly discourteous. "You don't know much," she snapped at Alice when they first met. <strong>The</strong> Duchess was everyth<strong>in</strong>g a woman wasn't supposed to be: disputatious, unmaternal, <strong>in</strong>different to the squalor of her kitchen, <strong>in</strong>capable of controll<strong>in</strong>g her cook. <strong>On</strong> her second and last appearance, she lobbed dissociated aphorisms at poor bewildered Alice. It seemed as if both the chronicler and the illustrator wanted me to dislike the Duchess. I resented the manipulation. I liked the lady. Decades later, I encountered the Duchess' predecessor. "<strong>The</strong> Ugly Duchess" hangs <strong>in</strong> the National Gallery <strong>in</strong> London. She was pa<strong>in</strong>ted by the Flemish artist Quent<strong>in</strong> Massys <strong>in</strong> the 16th century. This earlier Duchess is fiercer than Tenniel's. You can see how the illustrator of Alice softened his subject. In Massys' work, the brow is a high hairless dome; Tenniel br<strong>in</strong>gs the headdress down almost to the eyes, k<strong>in</strong>dly conceal<strong>in</strong>g the baldness. <strong>The</strong> upper lip of the Massys Duchess is as long as a primate's—this Tenniel allowed. But <strong>in</strong> the Massys pa<strong>in</strong>t<strong>in</strong>g, the Duchess' ears stick out like a greml<strong>in</strong>'s, her neck is leathery and l<strong>in</strong>ed, and her flaccid breasts are puffed up unconv<strong>in</strong>c<strong>in</strong>gly by a stiff cyl<strong>in</strong>der of a dress. Tenniel omits these features, opt<strong>in</strong>g for a broader distortion more suitable for children. His Duchess is a mess, but not upsett<strong>in</strong>g, whereas Massys' old lady is a frighten<strong>in</strong>g study of gussied-up old age—the romantic headdress jammed onto the ancient forehead, the r<strong>in</strong>ged f<strong>in</strong>gers spoiled by dirty nails, the heartbreak<strong>in</strong>gly expectant smile on a skimpy mouth. Old dear! I thought, ogl<strong>in</strong>g the Duchess. <strong>The</strong>re was still a resemblance to Aunt Elsa. I walked out of the gallery, wonder<strong>in</strong>g if there would someday be a resemblance to me. But I was off to meet a man for lunch and stopped th<strong>in</strong>k<strong>in</strong>g about the Duchess. At least for the afternoon. I didn't forget her face though. And I didn't forget her appellation: ugly. Is there any word a woman dreads more <strong>The</strong> fatigued grimace, <strong>in</strong> two versions of the Ugly Duchess: John Tenniel's draw<strong>in</strong>g for Lewis Carroll's Alice <strong>in</strong> Wonderland (above) and a portrait attributed to Quent<strong>in</strong> Massys, A Grotesque Old Woman, c. 1500 (right). ON THE ISSUES WINTER 1995
ON THE ISSUES WINTER 1995