Heartless

The narrative is haunted by the reader’s knowledge that Cath will become the Queen of Hearts. Her journey is not an ascent but a descent into the eponymous heartlessness and cruelty that characterize Lewis Carroll’s original character in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. The narrative is overshadowed by this foregone conclusion and the fate that awaits its characters. However, at the same time, the narrative explores the question of whether a person can escape their fate, and how responsible they are for sealing their own fate.

In the novel, Cath is not the only one haunted by her future. Hatta is equally haunted, perhaps even more so, because he’s aware of his fate. In fact, Hatta is the one who first introduces the theme of escaping fate; in Chapter 31, he tells Cath of his history and his desperation to escape mental illness and reveals that the key to avoiding his fate is merely to stay ahead of Time. Hatta’s primary motivation throughout the narrative is to avoid the mental illness in his family history; his character, then, represents a race against Time and a battle against Fate to be allowed to determine his own destiny.

The narrative examines the influence of individual choices versus contrived circumstances in determining fate. The Three Sisters of the treacle well, as explicit characterizations of Fate, communicate this. When they present their prophecies to Hatta, Raven, Cath, and Jest in Chapter 43, they represent the events as simultaneously immutable and avoidable. They tell Cath that the prophecies are “written on stone, but not in it” (373) and that they are “fate, and fate is inevitable” (373). This implies that there are still factors that can influence outcomes but introduces the question of whether fate is determined not by a supernatural governing force but by the characters’ entrenchment in their own habits and behavioral cycles. This is reinforced when the Sisters advise the group to not go through any doors so the prophecies will not come to pass but then address Cath as “Your Majesty” as she leaves (376), implying that at least Cath’s fate has already been decided. The question remains whether the Sisters foresee how Cath’s inclination to take certain actions inevitably leads to her becoming Queen or whether she simply has a predetermined destiny.

Cath herself does not always acknowledge her own influence in affecting outcomes, which in turn affects her perception of her own agency. Cath exhibits a pattern of blaming others for severe losses in her life: She blames Mary Ann for Jest’s near-capture in Chapter 37 and later blames her for Jest’s death, despite the fact that it was Cath’s choice to enter Peter’s pumpkin patch, against the Sisters’ warning. The narrative also explores this behavior in relation to Lady Peter’s situation as the Jabberwock. In Chapter 47, Peter blames Hatta for his wife’s transformation, shouting at Hatta, “Look what you did to my wife” (404). Although Hatta bears some responsibility for Lady Peter’s fate, as Cath reflects, “Peter was the one who had captured Mary Ann. He was the one trying to keep a monster as a pet and feed it innocent lives” (104). Regardless of Hatta’s responsibility in exposing Lady Peter to the cursed pumpkins, Peter Peter still had his own agency in the situation and could have made different choices. Instead, he chose to keep his wife’s condition a secret and become complicit in her terrorization of the people of Hearts. The characters’ perceived victimization by their circumstances directs how they respond to their circumstances, in turn influencing the decisions that contribute to determining their fates.

Significantly, the only one who takes responsibility for his choices is Hatta. In Chapter 52, he acknowledges Cath’s accusations that he is at fault for the whole series of events. This scene between Cath and Hatta calls back to a previous scene in Chapter 31, when each accused the other of having had a hand in the Mock Turtle’s transformation. At that point in time, neither Hatta nor Cath was willing to admit to the possibility that the work they so loved—hat-making and baking, respectively—was dangerous to others. But in Chapter 52, Hatta acknowledges his role in how the events played out and the irresponsibility of his decision to plant the pumpkin seeds in Peter Peter’s patch despite suspecting the consequences it could have. Hatta says that he has “paid for it with his sanity” (435). In this moment, Hatta accepts his fate but retains the awareness that his decisions were responsible for it.

By contrast, Cath still clings to revenge and focuses her grief onto Peter as the target of revenge for Jest’s death. Ironically, Cath’s refusal to accept the events is what leads her to seal her own fate: Her desire for revenge leads her to make the deal with the Sisters to give away her own heart, bringing her prophesied destiny to completion. Ultimately, the narrative suggests that if one’s fate is unavoidable, it is only because one cannot break out of one’s own beliefs and behaviors.