41 pages • 1 hour read
E. NesbitFive Children and It
Fiction | Novel | Middle Grade | Published in 1996A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 4-6Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 4 Summary: “Wings”
Weather and a visit from their uncle prevent the children from making their next wish for two days. The day after, Anthea wakes early, creeps to the gravel pit, and finds the Sand-fairy. She snuggles it in her lap and asks for its advice in getting wishes to turn out well. She admits that their previous wishes have been silly and asks what it thinks of wings as a wish. It thinks that it’s a fine one as long as they are not flying at sunset.
Back with the others, Anthea proposes that they take turns with their wishes, as long as everyone agrees on the wish. She goes first, and the others agree that wings are an excellent idea. The Psammead grants their wish, and they instantly have large, beautiful wings. Soon, they are flying over fields and woods, finally feeling as if they are experiencing magic.
As they pass over a plum orchard, they realize that they are hungry. Cyril says, “Stealing is stealing even if you’ve got wings,” (88) but Jane insists that their wings mean they are birds and so can eat the plums. Anthea rethinks this idea and gives the astonished farmer who glimpses them a coin in payment. He, in turn, decides to become a better man and is much nicer to his wife.
The children soon discover that wings can both get them into trouble and get them out of it. Hungry, they try to beg for food at various farms but are chased by a dog and frighten people. They perch on a church tower and decide that they simply must eat before returning home. Cyril decides to fly into the vicar’s window and steal some food, which Anthea thinks is wrong. She convinces them to pay for the food and writes a note explaining that their intentions are honorable. They feast on the stolen food on top of the tower and fall asleep as the sun sets, waking up wingless and stranded on top of the tower with no way down. The door is locked.
Chapter 5 Summary: “No Wings”
As Anthea tries to comfort a howling Jane, Cyril suggests that they yell and try to awaken the vicar, which succeeds. He decides that the dangerous thief who stole their food is in the church tower and, with a cowardly servant named Andrew and the gamekeeper, goes to confront the “desperado.” When they discover the children, they bring them to the vicar’s wife. Robert tells a half-truth about how they went up in the tower and fell asleep—and he doesn’t know who locked the door.
Cyril, meanwhile, is trying to hide the soda water dispenser that they borrowed and meant to return, but the keeper asks what he is hiding, and the story of the stolen food comes out. The clergyman asks if the children have told the “whole truth” (108), to which Jane says no, but she can’t tell the rest. Asked if they are trying to protect someone, Anthea says yes, thinking of the Psammead. The vicar’s wife serves them cake and milk, and Andrew and the gamekeeper drive them home to the White House. The children become quite friendly with the keeper, Beale, who “amiably” explains their adventure to Martha.
Chapter 6 Summary: “A Castle and No Dinner”
The children are kept indoors the next day, except for Robert, who begs for half an hour to run an errand, which turns out to be a trip to see the Psammead to make a wish. However, he forgets everything he wanted and instead wishes that one of the others could get their wish. This is granted, and Robert returns home to find a castle with a moat in place of the White House, a wish of Cyril’s. The castle is under siege, and Robert is discovered by two soldiers, who take him to the leader of the besieging army.
Speaking in what he believes to be knightly language, Robert tells the leader of the discovery about the magical Psammead. The leader believes that Robert is being nonsensical but lets him go. Robert runs to the Psammead and asks to be with the others, and he immediately is. The children explore the castle and discover Martha, the cook, and the Lamb going about their daily lives, although the children cannot see implements such as the iron or poker that the servants are using. Nor can they see or feel the dinner that Martha serves to them.
Chapters 4-6 Analysis
Anthea’s wish for wings is the most successful of the children’s adventures; most of it is great fun, and they do not end the day longing for sunset to come and rescue them. They do need rescuing, however, as the adventure continues in Chapter 5. The chapter stands out in an otherwise episodic novel. It has no magic whatsoever, a point emphasized by the chapter title: “No Wings.” As in Chapter 7, which is also the continuation of an adventure, the Psammead never appears. Instead, Chapter 5 shows the children dealing with the consequences of the intersection of magic with daily life.
As they did when they were as beautiful as the day, they have yielded to an ordinary human need: sleep. Falling asleep at the top of the church tower during the flying adventure leads them into a new predicament. Now they must confront some of the most prosaic characters in British country life: a servant, a gamekeeper, and the vicar and his wife, from whom they have stolen food and a soda water dispenser. Furthermore, they must convince the adults to get them back home without revealing how they came to be locked up in the tower. Nesbit employs dramatic irony in this scene since her readers—presumably, children—know more than the grown-ups do.
The Relativity of Justice and Moral Codes is woven throughout Chapters 4 and 5, first as they weigh the justifiable nature of their crimes. Cyril and Jane both have moments in which they try to justify theft in Chapter 4, and in both instances, it is honest Anthea who offers money as payment. They then go through the exercise of trying to explain how they got locked in the church tower without mentioning the magic. Their genius for telling half-truths shines as even Jane, so quick to blurt out the existence of the Sand-fairy in other scenes, admits that they cannot tell the whole truth.
The children continue to stand up for each other in these chapters. Anthea tells only the Psammead that she thinks their wishes have been silly; she doesn’t want the others to know. Cyril does his best to hide the borrowed soda dispenser to protect them from the accusation of theft and bravely admits to it when he is discovered. It is as if they are their own little society, not only forced to rely on each other but also proud to do it regardless of their individual faults. As critic and author Gore Vidal pointed out in a 1964 article about Nesbit, Edwardian children had no control over their environment, so the author gave her young characters a powerful sense of community.
The children’s sense of community is apparent in Nesbit’s literary technique. While the author slips in and out of the point of view of each child at various times, the siblings also think collectively on occasion. For instance, after Anthea writes a letter to the vicar about the stolen food, “all the children fe[el] that when the clergyman [] read[s] it he w[ill] understand everything” (93).
Chapter 6 functions to set up the grand adventure, in the next chapter, of having the soldiers storm the castle. Here again, the author manages to create the adventure without locating the children farther away from their home than the gravel pit.
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By E. Nesbit
