The two main characters in “The Lumber Room”—Nicholas and the aunt he lives with—are both complex characters who behave in less-than-perfect ways throughout the story. Nicholas is a mischievous rebel, and judging by the aunt’s frustration and constant punishments, it seems that living with a child like him who is up to tricks all the time is extremely tiresome. Yet, while some of Nicholas’s tricks might be wrong—like ruining his breakfast by putting a frog in it—Saki implies that his tricks are not nearly as bad as the aunt’s self-righteous bullying and lies.
From the outset, Nicholas is characterized as an aggravating trickster who is “in disgrace” for the trouble that he causes. At the very opening of the story, he refuses to eat his breakfast because there is a frog in it, and when the aunt asks him to stop talking the “veriest nonsense,” he reveals that he knows for a fact that there is a frog in his food because he was the one who put it there. Later in the story, when the aunt has fallen into a water tank in the garden and asks Nicholas to help her get out, he refuses. He uses his aunt’s rule as a reason not to help her—“I was told I wasn’t to go into the gooseberry garden,” he says—but clearly, he is once again up to his tricks.
Yet, Nicholas is, after all, a child, and Saki describes his tricks with affectionate humor, making it clear that they are either harmless or merited. When he puts a frog in his breakfast, he wants to make a point that adults are not always correct about the things they express certainty about. If they think a frog in a breakfast of bread-and-milk is impossible, Nicholas will take it upon himself to demonstrate that it is not. A more generous adult might find his thought process somewhat charming, but the aunt definitely isn’t such a person. To her, it is a crime worthy of punishment. Also, the aunt doesn’t seem to be a good caregiver to her young charges. She is ignorant of Bobby’s tight boots because, as Nicholas points out to her, she doesn’t listen to the children when they tell her “important things.” She also seems to enjoy denying them small pleasures, like strawberry jam, for no good reason. When seen in this context, Nicholas’s rebellions against her seem like small, well-deserved victories.
In contrast to Nicholas’s impish tricks, the aunt is characterized as a dishonest hypocrite, which, in Saki’s eyes, makes her Nicholas’s moral inferior. The narrator describes her as “soi-disant aunt” and “aunt-by-assertion” because she isn’t really Nicholas’s aunt, even though she claims to be. She is in fact “his cousins’ aunt who insisted […] in styling herself his aunt also.” Nicholas has caught on to her fundamental dishonesty, which is revealed in her misrepresentation of the relationship they share. Later in the story, Nicholas is exploring the lumber room when he hears the aunt outside, yelling for him to come out of the gooseberry garden. She has forbidden him from going into the garden and suspects he is there, but, of course, he isn’t. “I can see you all the time,” the aunt calls out, which makes Nicholas smile as he realizes that she is lying once again—she can’t possibly see him hiding in the garden, as he’s hidden away in the lumber room.
Later, when the aunt falls into the rain-water tank in the gooseberry garden and calls for Nicholas to help her out, Nicholas refuses. He pretends to think that it must be the Devil inside the water tank pretending to be his aunt in order to fool him. To test this supposed hypothesis, he asks if he may have strawberry jam with his tea, which his aunt readily agrees to. Nicholas claims that this proves it is the Devil in the water tank, and not 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!” He then walks away triumphantly, leaving the aunt in the tank. The aunt has paraded herself as the guardian of morality and has often told Nicholas “that the Evil one tempts [him] and that [he] always yield[s],” so when Nicholas reveals her to be a liar, she has no comebacks. Even though Nicholas’s decision to leave his aunt inside the water tank isn’t a moral one, the story implies that the aunt very much deserved her brief sojourn there.
Related Themes from Other Texts
Morality and Hypocrisy ThemeTracker
Morality and Hypocrisy 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.”
“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.
