Nicholas, the protagonist of “The Lumber Room,” is a quick-witted boy with a robust imagination. He comes up with very creative ideas to escape from and rebel against the drab rules imposed on him by the authoritarian aunt he lives with. Throughout the story, Saki celebrates Nicholas for being an especially imaginative child and makes it clear that he disapproves of the aunt’s stultifying ways. With this, Saki suggests that children’s imagination and curiosity are wonderful things, and he is critical of adults who discourage them.
Throughout the story, Saki upholds the boy’s fantastic imagination as a source of humor and wonder and contrasts it with the aunt’s glaring deficiencies in that department. She is described as “a woman of few ideas, with immense powers of concentration,” dogged in her single-minded pursuit of obedience from the children in her charge. At the beginning of the story, the narrator points out that the aunt is Nicholas’s cousins’ aunt and not actually Nicholas’s aunt, but she “insisted, by an unwarranted stretch of imagination, in styling herself his aunt also.” The narrator then goes on to explain the punishment she “invented” for Nicholas. Thus, the entire force of the aunt’s imagination and innovativeness is limited only to preserving her authority. In contrast, Nicholas is teeming with creative ideas and imagination. His quick thinking gives him a huge advantage over the aunt, while she ends up defenseless against his machinations. For instance, Nicholas tricks the aunt into “self-imposed sentry duty” at the gooseberry garden so he can have some time to explore the lumber room (a room the children are forbidden to enter). The aunt easily falls into this trap—and then literally falls into a nearby water tank—painting her as slow-witted. Because of his vivid imagination and curious mind, Nicholas comes across as her intellectual superior.
Also, in her attempts to stifle the children’s imagination and creativity, the aunt keeps her home and the children’s lives bland and sterile. For instance, the children’s breakfast is boring bread-and-milk, which Nicholas refuses to eat. The aunt has previously refused to give him strawberry jam, lying that there was none. It seems that even from the food she offers the children, the aunt is in favor of the unexciting. Similarly, while exploring the lumber room, Nicholas is struck by “a teapot fashioned like a china duck, out of whose open beak the tea was supposed to come.” He thinks, “How dull and shapeless the nursery teapot seems in comparison!” Once again, when choosing for the children, the aunt has opted for the “dull” option. Additionally, the lumber room is described as a “region that was so carefully sealed from youthful eyes and concerning which no questions were ever answered.” So, the aunt not only keeps the imaginative treasures of the lumber room locked away but also denies the children any information about it, and in this way stifles their imagination and curiosity.
Saki implies that adults (like the aunt) relegate fun and imagination to a room kept under lock and key in order to achieve a sterile sense of orderliness, but that this makes everyone’s lives empty and uninteresting. In contrast, Nicholas dives headlong into ideas and imagination, and though it causes some chaos that unthreads the orderliness that the aunt so desperately tries to cultivate, Saki suggests that children need the space to delight in their imaginations and explore their curiosity. Despite being discouraged and punished by his aunt, Nicholas’s wit and imagination cannot be repressed. By rebelling against her strictures, he enters the lumber room which he discovers is a “storehouse of unimagined treasures.” The lumber room is mostly filled with unused household objects that others might consider boring, but to Nicholas they are fascinating and beautiful. His imagination and unbridled curiosity transform these objects into treasures. When he comes across a tapestry that was used as a fire screen, he is transfixed by the picture it depicts of a hunter who has just shot a stag while four wolves approach him without his knowledge. This scene becomes “a living, breathing story” for Nicholas, and he spends “many golden minutes” inspecting its various details and trying to figure out what will happen next in the story of the tapestry. It lingers in his thoughts even hours later, at teatime that evening when the children come back disappointed from their trip to Jagborough and the aunt is seething at being left in the water tank for so long. Nicholas shares in their silence, but unlike the others who are unhappy and sulking, he is pleasantly lost in the magic of his imagination, still thinking about the tapestry he encountered in the lumber room. His imagination helps him to escape the dullness and discomfort that surrounds him. Thus, for Saki, Nicholas’s imagination has great power and value, and he is critical of the aunt’s attempts to curb it.
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Imagination 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[.]
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?
But there were other objects of delight and interest claiming his instant attention; there were quaint twisted candlesticks in the shape of snakes, and a teapot fashioned like a china duck, out of whose open beak the tea was supposed to come. How dull and shapeless the nursery teapot seemed in comparison!
“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.
