Mouse (Alice's Adventures in Wonderland)

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Mouse
John Tenniel's illustration of the Mouse in "The Pool of Tears". An illustration from Alice in Wonderland.
First appearance	Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
Created by	Lewis Carroll
In-universe information
Species	Mouse
Gender	Male

The Mouse is a fictional character in Lewis Carroll's 1865 novel Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. He appears in Chapter II "The Pool of Tears" [1] and Chapter III "A Caucus-Race and a Long Tale" [2].

Alice, the eponymous heroine in the book, first talks to the mouse when she is floating in a pool of her own tears, having shrunk in size:

`O Mouse, do you know the way out of this pool? I am very tired of swimming about here, O Mouse!' (Alice thought this must be the right way of speaking to a mouse: she had never done such a thing before, but she remembered having seen in her brother's Latin Grammar, `A mouse—of a mouse—to a mouse—a mouse—O mouse!' The Mouse looked at her rather inquisitively, and seemed to her to wink with one of its little eyes, but it said nothing.

With no response from the mouse, Alice fears that it may not speak English and attempts to speak French. Upon mentioning the French word for cat, chatte, the mouse panics. This leads to a discussion about cats and dogs, culminating in the mouse telling Alice his history.