The Eggification of Humpty Dumpty

Rev'd Prof Helen Hall, Nottingham Law School https://www.ntu.ac.uk/staff-profiles/law/helen-hall

Photo by Jasmin Egger on Unsplash

“When I use a word,' Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, 'it means just what I choose it to mean— neither more nor less.'

'The question is,' said Alice, 'whether you can make words mean so many different things.'

'The question is,' said Humpty Dumpty, 'which is to be master— that's all.'”

This exchange between Alice, and the grumpy, slightly unhinged, Humpty Dumpty, is one of the most frequently quoted passages from Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking-Glass. Lawyers in particular are drawn to it, and numerous articles in legal journals have used it to segue into a discussion about statutory interpretation, or defined contractual terms. For obvious reasons, scholars and practitioners of the law have a vested interest  in the question of whether words are infinitely plastic, or whether there is an inevitable snapping point.

Yet, there are other aspects of Humpty’s situation that deserve attention. It is tempting to speculate about whether the occupier of the land on which the wall stood had any potential responsibility for his fall, or whether the king was vicarious liable for the negligent failure of his supposedly expert troops to put him back together.   Unfortunately however, we do not have sufficient background information to usefully analyse those points. What we do have though, is Humpty’s utter indignation at being labelled an egg. 

'It's very provoking,' Humpty Dumpty said after a long silence, looking away from Alice as he spoke, 'to be called an egg— very!'

'I said you looked like an egg, Sir,' Alice gently explained. 'And some eggs are very pretty, you know' she added, hoping to turn her remark into a sort of a compliment.

As is often the case, Carroll was playing with his readers here. By the time that he was writing in this book, the sad tale of Humpty Dumpty had long been appearing in children’s books as a nursery rhyme. Illustrations invariably depicted him as an egg, leading generations of the “well actually” brigade to point out that the text does not justify this. There were various versions of the poem, but none of them explained who or what poor Humpty actually was.

One likely explanation is that the verse was originally intended to be a riddle. Humpty Dumpty was an eighteenth-century term for a short, dumpy person, who was usually on the clumsy side. The idea of the poem is a little round thing, dropped from a height, that even a king could not command to be reconstructed. No amount of worldly power and military force can repair a smashed egg.

Why does this matter for lawyers? Well, the point is that we, like Alice, know that Humpty Dumpty is an egg. The modern nursery rhyme operates successfully as a text because of this shared cultural knowledge. It is what makes it sweet and funny rather than distressing. For good or ill, during the nineteenth century fairy tales, songs and other children’s literature had a lot of the violence (not to mention sex) removed. We are shielded from imagining (even briefly) that the splattered Humpty is human. Even though it is not explicitly stated, we have been taught from our infancy that Humpty is an egg and are all participating in this cultural metanarrative.

Legal texts, whether legislation, case law or even non-statutory guidance all operate not just on the basis of the accepted meaning of words (whether generally or in a particular context), but also of the wider culture in which they sit. The way in which laws are understood, and therefore operate, is entirely dependent on the culture surrounding them, and the assumptions, ideas and beliefs that everybody brings to the table.   Concepts like reasonableness, harm or jeopardy can only be measured against prevailing societal norms. For example, various mainstream parenting UK techniques of the 1950s would constitute “significant harm” if assessed by a contemporary court, justifying and necessitated the intervention of public authorities.

Lawyers are comfortable with words, and see them as their bread and butter, but sometimes shy away from engaging with questions of culture. Yet the way in which we receive particular words is dependent on culture as much as language. This means that a willingness on the part of legal academics and students to ask questions about culture can only help in better understanding the outworking of law, identifying problems and proposing real world solutions.