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When Alice is alone in the Forest of Wonderland, she encounters the Cheshire Cat, who gives her these strange directions to apparently the only people nearby. Alice begins by inquiring about possible people and places to visit

What sort of people live about here?' 'In that direction,' the Cat said, waving its right paw round, 'lives a Hatter: and in that direction,' waving the other paw, 'lives a March Hare. Visit either you like: they're both mad.' 'But I don't want to go among mad people,' Alice remarked.

After this discussion Alice settles on visiting the March Hare, however, it is very difficult to determine which way she took, given that both directions seemed to be very similar. When Alice finds a house, she assumes it’s the March Hare’s:

She had not gone much farther before she came in sight of the house of the March Hare: she thought it must be the right house, because the chimneys were shaped like ears and the roof was thatched with fur. It was so large a house, that she did not like to go nearer till she had nibbled some more of the lefthand bit of mushroom, and raised herself to about two feet high: even then she walked up towards it rather timidly, saying to herself `Suppose it should be raving mad after all! I almost wish I'd gone to see the Hatter instead!'

As she reaches the house, however, she finds both the March Hare and Hatter there. Given the strange yet similar directions given to Alice by the Cat, and the fact that both the March Hare and Hatter are present at the house Alice reached, is there evidence that both of them live in the same house?

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  • Which begs the question, had she gone in the other direction, would the house have looked like a hat? That is to say, if they do indeed live in the same house, does the house change it's shape, depending upon which direction it is approached from?
    – Greenonline
    Commented Mar 11, 2021 at 5:21
  • That is an extremely difficult, yet interesting, question to try to answer because, as far as I know, there is no textual or other evidence to decide one way or another. Its interesting to note that the ears-chimneys and fur-thatch seems to mirror the ears and straw on the Hare’s head.
    – ferjsoto42yahoocom
    Commented Mar 11, 2021 at 5:32

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This question is answered in the affirmative by Lewis Carroll in The Nursery Alice, as he introduces Chapter 10:

This is the Mad Tea-Party. You see Alice had left the Cheshire-Cat, and had gone off to see the March Hare and the Hatter, as the Cheshire-Cat had advised her: and she found them having tea under a great tree, with a Dormouse sitting between them.

Therefore it is clear that the Cheshire Cat’s directions amounted to the same thing in terms of where the Hatter and the March Hare lived, and that Alice had indeed gone off to see both of them, whether she knew it or not.

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