Essay Questions

The narrator of the novel is confident that the reader will not be able to guess his or her identity, but in actual fact the narrator's identity is very easy to guess. Why is this?

There are two main reasons for the identity of the narrator being easy to guess; firstly, the narrator heaps so much praise on Oswald Bastable in comparison to the one or two nice things stated about each of the other children that it becomes clear by the bias that Oswald is indeed the narrator. He is said, for example, to always have a great many good ideas, to be very good at thinking up adventures,to be slow to rise to the provocation of a quarrel like so many other children might; he is said to be very advanced for a boy of his age when it comes to thinking of others and thinking things through, and is a model of politeness. The second reason for Oswald's identity as the narrator being easy to deduce is his occasional lack of consistence in the secrecy; an example of this would be when the narrator says that Dicky is being a baby and complaining, very unfairly, that Oswald is kicking him, which is very untrue, and the narrator states, "and of course I didn't kick him", in his ire about the complaint forgetting to hide the fact that he is the narrator.

Oswald's narration shows that sometimes incidents appear very differently to children than they do to adults. What are some of these incidents that he mentions?

Early on in the novel, Oswald says that some of their housekeepers have been very careless young women, losing several things of value. For example, their last-but-one housekeeper lost Dora's silver thimble, and never could find it again. Jewelry was also said to be misplaced as well, but nothing of little value ever seemed to go astray. Similarly, the silverware was sent out to be cleaned but went missing whilst it was at the cleaning establishment, when the truth of the matter is that Mr Bastable could not afford to reclaim it from the pawnbroker it had been sent to.

The children also assume that the Castillian sherry is supposed to taste nice so they sweeten it with as much sugar as they can dissolve, believing that they have made it much nicer than before and therefore much more sellable. They do not realise that sherry is supposed to taste quite bitter and that they have ruined the sample that they have spent their money on. Another example of their perception being different than the actual reality of the situation is assuming the business opportunity advertised in the newspaper is genuine. Their perceptions of things are not colored by life experience but by the rose-colored way in which children believe the best in everyone and everything.

Why are the children in E. Nesbit novels so appealing, and what is it about her novels that has endured through generations spanning over one hundred years?

Although the children in the novel would be very unfamiliar in terms of possessions, what they are interested in and the knowledge they have of the world around them, they are also very appealing characters to children of every generation because they are very natural, and not at all priggish, as some children in novels written by adults tend to be. E. Nesbit does not seem to have forgotten what it is like to be a child, which set her apart from most writers of children's books who seem to have no memory of what it is like to be a child and write their child characters from their adult perspective. The author here allows the Bastable children to be basically nice, loved kids who are sometimes naughty, act on impulse, are disobedient and think that they know much better than adults do which is why they try to keep their adventures a secret. It is also interesting to note that Dora, who is sensible and will not let them try some of their more outlandish ideas, is sometimes seen as too much like a grown-up by her siblings, who associate putting a damper on potential fun as a very adult thing to do. This is also a concept that children reading the book are very easily able to understand and agree with. This is also one of the reasons why they are able to identify with the Bastable children in the book even though they are separated in real terms by over a century.