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Satire
Definition of Setting
Setting is where and when a story or scene takes place. The where can be a real place like the city of New York, or it can be an imagined... read full definition
Setting is where and when a story or scene takes place. The where can be a real place like the city of New York, or... read full definition
Setting is where and when a story or scene takes place. The where can be a real place like the... read full definition
Setting
Explanation and Analysis:
“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.
Related Themes:
