At this point, Alice's experience of adulthood is being totally at a loss as to what to do—as far as she knows, mutton is for cutting and eating and food doesn't speak. In this situation, Alice is up against all sorts of rules and regulations that she's never heard of, which makes her experience as an honorary adult even more anxiety inducing for her. With this, the novel suggests that having the crown doesn't make Alice an adult in the way she thinks an adult should be: she's still just as lost, if she's not even more lost than she was before entering the Eighth Square.