March

March is the month that, within the logic of Wonderland, explains the Hatter's perpetual tea-time and the March Hare's madness, and it frames the temporal structure of Alice's entire adventure. The narrative opens on a hot day when Alice is growing tired of sitting by her sister with nothing to do, and the action unfolds across a single afternoon. The story concludes with Alice waking from her dream on the bank, her sister reflecting on the summer day, and the whole adventure is revealed to have taken place within a single afternoon's sleep. March functions as the origin point for the Hatter's personal catastrophe and as the month that gives the March Hare his name and his seasonal madness, while the main events of the book occur in May, creating a contrast between the frozen time of the tea-party and the forward-moving time of Alice's journey.

Temporal Setting and the Frame of the Dream

The story begins on a hot day, with Alice sitting on a bank beside her sister, feeling sleepy and stupid from the heat. She follows the White Rabbit down the rabbit-hole, and her entire adventure in Wonderland unfolds during what appears to be a single afternoon. At the end of the book, Alice wakes up on the same bank, with her head in her sister's lap, and her sister tells her, "Wake up, Alice dear! Why, what a long sleep you've had!" Alice then tells her sister about her curious dream, and her sister, after Alice runs off to tea, sits watching the setting sun and dreaming of little Alice and her adventures. The entire Wonderland episode is thus framed as a dream that occurs on a single summer day, with March serving as a referenced month within the dream's internal chronology rather than the season of the frame narrative.

The Hatter's Quarrel with Time

The most significant event associated with March occurs during the Mad Tea-Party. The Hatter explains to Alice that he quarreled with Time "last March—just before he went mad, you know—" pointing at the March Hare. The quarrel happened at the great concert given by the Queen of Hearts, where the Hatter had to sing "Twinkle, twinkle, little bat!" The Queen jumped up and shouted, "He's murdering the time! Off with his head!" Since that quarrel, the Hatter says, Time "won't do a thing I ask! It's always six o'clock now." This explains why the tea-party is perpetual: it is always tea-time, and the Hatter, the March Hare, and the Dormouse keep moving around the table as the things get used up, never washing the dishes between whiles. March is thus the month that broke the Hatter's relationship with Time, freezing him in an endless present of tea and crumbs.

The March Hare and Seasonal Madness

The March Hare is named for the month of March, and his madness is explicitly linked to the season. When Alice first hears about him from the Cheshire Cat, the Cat tells her that the Hatter and the March Hare both live nearby and that they are both mad. Alice later reflects to herself, "the March Hare will be much the most interesting, and perhaps as this is May it won't be raving mad—at least not so mad as it was in March." This suggests that the March Hare's madness is seasonal, peaking in March and diminishing in May, the month in which Alice actually meets him. The Hatter's quarrel with Time also occurred in March, reinforcing the idea that March is a month of disruption and madness in Wonderland, while May, the month of Alice's visit, offers a slightly calmer version of the same characters.

Thematic Significance: Frozen Time and the Dream's End

March functions as a temporal anchor for the Hatter's personal tragedy and for the March Hare's identity, but it also serves as a contrast to the dream's own temporal structure. The Hatter is trapped in an eternal six o'clock, unable to move forward, while Alice's adventure has a clear beginning, middle, and end within a single afternoon. The dream ends when Alice, having grown to her full size, declares to the Queen of Hearts and her court, "Who cares for you? You're nothing but a pack of cards!" The pack rises into the air and flies down upon her, and she wakes up on the bank. The final paragraphs of the book show Alice's sister dreaming of the same Wonderland creatures, imagining how Alice will one day be a grown woman who tells the story to other children, keeping "the simple and loving heart of her childhood." March, as the month of the Hatter's quarrel, represents the danger of time becoming stuck, while the frame narrative's summer day represents time moving forward naturally, with childhood giving way to adulthood and the dream becoming a memory.