I think that MacDonald makes Irene’s first adventure up the stairs into a metaphor for a process wherein the self (in this case Irene, but really any child) is challenged by its most primal fears to risk safety in order to learn more and be in command of its own powers. When Irene runs down the stairs thinking she has found her way back to her “safe nursery,” MacDonald adds enigmatically: “So she thought, but she had lost herself long ago. It doesn’t follow that she was lost, because she had lost herself, though” (p. 9).
