“The Lumber Room” is set in an upper-class home in England in the early 20th century. The class position of the characters is apparent in the fact that their house has a “lumber room,” a room found in stately English homes where inhabitants would store their extra furniture.
The lumber room in the story both signifies socioeconomic class and also symbolically represents the children’s natural wildness that the aunt tries to control (or lock up). The following passage in the story communicates the symbolic appeal of the lumber room to the mischievous and precocious Nicholas:
Often and often Nicholas had pictured to himself what the lumber-room might be like, that region that was so carefully sealed from youthful eyes and concerning which no questions were ever answered. It came up to his expectations. In the first place it was large and dimly lit, one high window opening on to the forbidden garden being its only source of illumination. In the second place it was a storehouse of unimagined treasures.
Here, Nicholas enters the lumber room for the first time—after secretly breaking into it—and finds that it “came up to his expectations,” with its gentle illumination and store of “unimagined treasures.” The “treasures” are furniture and decorative items that are far more colorful and appealing that the mundane decorations of the rest of the house.
It is notable that the lumber room contains many pieces of décor that feature wild animals, as this denotes the sort of wild energy the aunt locks away. Additionally, these particular pieces signify that the aunt’s family likely had some connection to the Asian nations then under English control, such as India and Myanmar (where Saki actually lived as a child).
