Sublime

Alice's accomplishment remains a mystery. As with the Mad Hatter's conundrum ("The riddle initially had no solution"), numerous solutions have been presented but are really afterthoughts. Some have argued that the book is an allegory, but it is not; the book's principal undertones are light satire—on children's schooling and on well-known

once or twice she had peeped into the book her sister was reading, but it had no pictures or conversations in it, 'and what is the use of a book,' thought Alice 'without pictures or conversation?'

“I quite agree with you,” said the Duchess; “and the moral of that is—‘Be what you would seem to be’—or if you’d like it put more simply—‘Never imagine yourself not to be otherwise than what it might appear to others that what you were or might have been was not otherwise than what you had been would have appeared to them to be otherwise.’”