“The Lumber Room” is set in early 20th-century England, a time when children were expected to always be on their best behavior and unquestioningly obey adults. However, the story’s protagonist, a mischievous boy named Nicholas, goes against the grain of this expectation. As punishment for one of his many tricks, his cousins’ authoritarian aunt (who is not technically Nicholas’s aunt but “insist[s], by an unwarranted stretch of imagination, in styling herself his aunt also”) bars Nicholas from joining the other children on a trip to the sea. However, he ends up having an extraordinarily happy day at home, plotting his way into the forbidden lumber room, a mysterious locked room that only the adults are allowed to enter. Saki’s allegiance is with Nicholas, and when Nicholas refuses to obey the authoritarian aunt he lives with, thereby stripping her of her power over him, it is a moment of victory. At the end of the story, power has shifted from the aunt to Nicholas, and Saki implies that this is right and fitting because adults aren’t always worthy of the power they wield over children.
Throughout the story, Saki is critical of the aunt and describes her as being a small-minded bully rather than an adult worthy of respect and deference. When the story opens, Nicholas’ cousins and younger brother are going to the beach, but Nicholas is not being allowed to accompany them because he is “in disgrace” for putting a frog in his breakfast as a joke. The aunt has “hastily invented” the trip because “it was her habit, whenever one of the children fell from grace, to improvise something of a festival nature from which the offender would be rigorously debarred.” Clearly, the aunt organizes fun activities for the children solely to exclude and punish those who do not play by her rules, which makes her come across as petty and manipulative. She is one of the “older, wiser, and better people” (namely, adults) who have the authority to tell children what to do and how to be. However, Saki implies that though she might be older, she is neither wiser nor better than Nicholas, and is undeserving of the power she holds.
In contrast, the children in the story are portrayed in a much more sympathetic manner. For instance, when Nicholas tells his aunt that one of the children, Bobby, will not enjoy himself at the beach because his boots are too tight, the aunt is surprised to hear it. Nicholas says: “He told you [about the boots] twice, but you weren’t listening. You often don’t listen when we tell you important things.” With this, the story emphasizes that the children are voiceless and powerless under the aunt. She largely ignores their opinions and needs. The other three children are packed off to the sands of Jagborough just to punish Nicholas, though they might not really wish to go. One of them has tight boots, while another (Nicholas’s girl-cousin) skins her knee before they depart and leaves in tears. The aunt remains unaffected by or unaware of all this.
While the other children seem to play by the aunt’s rules, Nicholas is a rebel. His very first action in the story is a refusal to follow the aunt’s orders, and his attempts to thwart his aunt’s rules are depicted as humorous and clever. Saki sides with Nicholas’s transgressions, implying that the boy is superior to his aunt and deserves the position of power he achieves at the end of the story. For instance, as part of his punishment, Nicholas’s aunt orders him not to enter the gooseberry garden. While he has no interest in the garden, he pretends that he does. He wants the aunt to stand guard there so he can “rapidly put into execution a plan of action that had long germinated in his brain,” which is to explore the lumber room (a storage room, mainly containing spare furniture, in upper-class homes). Until this point in the story, the reader, like the aunt, believes that she has been in control of the events of the day. However, it is now clear that Nicholas has been working on his plan for a while and has effortlessly manipulated the aunt into doing exactly what he wants her to do.
Later, when the aunt topples into the water tank and asks Nicholas for his help—promising him a treat of strawberry jam if he does—he gleefully refuses. He claims that she must be the “Evil One” and not really his aunt, because “when [the children] asked aunt for strawberry jam yesterday she said there wasn’t any.” He says, “I know there are four jars of it in the store cupboard, because I looked, and of course you know it’s there, but she doesn’t, because she said there wasn’t any. Oh, Devil, you have sold yourself!” Of course, Nicholas knows that it is his aunt stuck in the water tank and not some evil presence trying to tempt him. With this little speech, Nicholas reveals to his aunt that he is aware of her lies and hypocrisy, and cleverly puts her in a position where she is unable to defend herself. He has the upper hand, and the tyrant is satisfyingly deposed.
At the conclusion of the story, the aunt is upset by the events of the day and maintains the “frozen muteness of one who has suffered undignified and unmerited detention.” Nicholas, on the other hand, doesn’t gloat over his victory or revel in her sadness. He has already moved on to thinking about the interesting tapestry he discovered in the lumber room. This is in complete contrast to the aunt, who expected “a few decent tears” from Nicholas when she prevented him from going to the beach at the beginning of the story. As the story comes to a close, Saki seems to imply that Nicholas wields his power with a largesse that she lacks.
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Adults, Children, and Power Quotes in The Lumber Room
The children were to be driven, as a special treat, to the sands at Jagborough. Nicholas was not to be of the party; he was in disgrace. Only that morning he had refused to eat his wholesome bread-and-milk on the seemingly frivolous ground that there was a frog in it.
“You said there couldn’t possibly be a frog in my bread-and-milk; there was a frog in my bread-and-milk,” he repeated, with the insistence of a skilled tactician who does not intend to shift from favourable ground.
His cousins’ aunt, who insisted, by an unwarranted stretch of imagination, in styling herself his aunt also, had hastily invented the Jagborough expedition in order to impress on Nicholas the delights that he had justly forfeited by his disgraceful conduct at the breakfast-table. It was her habit, whenever one of the children fell from grace, to improvise something of a festival nature from which the offender would be rigorously debarred[.]
“Bobby won’t enjoy himself much, and he won’t race much either,” said Nicholas with a grim chuckle; “his boots are hurting him. They’re too tight.”
“Why didn’t he tell me they were hurting?” asked the aunt with some asperity.
“He told you twice, but you weren’t listening. You often don’t listen when we tell you important things.”
The aunt had many other things to do that afternoon, but she spent an hour or two in trivial gardening operations among flower beds and shrubberies, whence she could keep a watchful eye on the two doors that led to the forbidden paradise. She was a woman of few ideas, with immense powers of concentration.
As a matter of fact, he had no intention of trying to get into the gooseberry garden, but it was extremely convenient for him that his aunt should believe that he had; it was a belief that would keep her on self-imposed sentry-duty for the greater part of the afternoon. Having thoroughly confirmed and fortified her suspicions Nicholas slipped back into the house and rapidly put into execution a plan of action that had long germinated in his brain.
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. […] [I]t was a storehouse of unimagined treasures.
That part of the picture was simple, if interesting, but did the huntsman see, what Nicholas saw, that four galloping wolves were coming in his direction through the wood?
“Nicholas, Nicholas!” she screamed, “you are to come out of this at once. It’s no use trying to hide there; I can see you all the time.”
It was probably the first time for twenty years that anyone had smiled in that lumber-room.
“Who’s calling?” he asked.
“Me,” came the answer from the other side of the wall; “didn’t you hear me? I’ve been looking for you in the gooseberry garden, and I’ve slipped into the rain-water tank. Luckily there’s no water in it, but the sides are slippery and I can’t get out. Fetch the little ladder from under the cherry tree—”
“I was told I wasn’t to go into the gooseberry garden,” said Nicholas promptly.
“Will there be strawberry jam for tea?” asked Nicholas innocently.
“Certainly there will be,” said the aunt, privately resolving that Nicholas should have none of it.
“Now I know that you are the Evil One and not aunt,” shouted Nicholas gleefully; “when we asked aunt for strawberry jam yesterday she said there wasn’t any. I know there are four jars of it in the store cupboard, because I looked, and of course you know it’s there, but she doesn’t, because she said there wasn’t any. Oh, Devil, you have sold yourself!”
As for Nicholas, he, too, was silent, in the absorption of one who has much to think about; it was just possible, he considered, that the huntsman would escape with his hounds while the wolves feasted on the stricken stag.
