May 14, 2024 6:12:59 PM

Peter Pan: Primary Thesis is Mother Appreciation

Ok, admittedly this section doesn’t have a bunch to do with Taylor Swift, it’s simply where the research took me. We need to follow that trail to it’s conclusion, but I promise the next couple of installments tie directly to Taylor. This section came to fruition because I was trying to annihilate the story for its treatment of women, and this is the rabbit hole I was led down. Little did I know, J.M. Barrie, the author of Peter Pan, wrote a refutation of gendered norms, and a love letter to mothers. Read on to see why his intentions do actually shine through the text once it is put in context of the times.

Peter Pan a commentary on: Masculine-Maternal Anxieties

The story of maternal love and mental illness is a medicalization story that frames the problem of pathological emotions as a relational issue. Maternal love was seen as a pathogen for the vulnerable child. Different forms of this pathological love—smothering love, ambivalent love, love that masked an actual desire to dominate and control—were supposed to have different effects on children, ranging from lack of fitness for military service to homosexuality to juvenile delinquency to outright psychosis, especially schizophrenia. “Mother blaming” associated with mental illness was prominent in Barrie’s lifetime (18).

These critical interpretations need to be readdressed to view the queer aspects of the text and to recognize Barrie's critical position on nineteenth-century masculinity and constructions of gender. During the time that Barrie was an active writer, Oscar Wilde was being prosecuted for his sexual orientation. Wilde's case demonstrates and reflects nineteenth-century attitudes towards homosexuality and masculine identity (9).

… The novel’s implicit struggle between… maternity and masculinity. This dynamic is initially presented as one of tenderness, safety, and comfort, as illustrated by the relationship between Mrs. Darling and the three Darling children.

As the narrative deepens, however, this illustration of the tender relationship between mother and child is complicated by Peter’s explicitly articulated disapproval of mothers, deriving from his abandonment by his own mother; the text confirms this: “Not only had he no mother, but he had not the slightest desire to have one” (26).

Subsequently, the novel creates this fraught relationship between mother and son—one that parallels the widespread fear of the feminine among English men in the Victorian age... Yet, the text does so in order to illustrate that the reason why Peter is incapable of growing up, or does not want to, is due to the fact that he has no mother figure in his life. Thus, the novel criticizes this Victorian ideology of fearing the maternal, and contends that in order for a boy to successfully and efficiently transition into a man, he must develop a strong relationship with his mother.

And I didn't want to come down

I thought it was just goodbye for now

Victorian Norms:

The masculine values imbued in young men were also understood to be largely antithetical of the characteristics associated with femininity: domesticity, motherhood, passivity, and emotion. In the home, however, the woman represented a disruption in the male’s attempt to command each aspect of his life due to her inevitably powerful role in the domestic sphere—thus, she remained the man’s primary weakness (8).

The mother’s role was often linked to emotion, and that role was understood to be sacred, as she was responsible for raising her children and providing “a haven” for her husband in which he may escape the corrupted world of money and business (20). Thus, the woman “commanded domestic power” in the home, and her growing authority “was seen as a potential threat to male dominance” (8). … The mother’s power in the home made them aware of their continued dependency on women, which they considered to be jeopardizing their masculinity. This threat, then, led to a growing number of young boys who were taught to repress a relationship with their mothers; as a result, many young man matured with an underdeveloped emotional maturity, leading to a diminished sense of masculinity (8).

“In the gendered topography of the Victorian household, the nursery was clearly defined as a feminine space…On a metaphorical level, it was the woman’s domain from which the young Victorian boy needed to escape in order to proceed towards manhood.” (8).

During the 1800s boarding schools cemented an association with the British ruling class, trading the religious focus for a military one. The focus of education was diplomacy for the upper classes, and military life for those of lesser stature. Educated to become part of the imperial machine, sons of officers and administrators of the Empire attended boarding school while their parents fulfilled political and military postings overseas. In life, as in fiction, boarding schools were part of the backbone of the empire, educating its military officers, senior clerics, lawyers, and administrators. School practices reflected a popular belief in social Darwinism—survival of the fittest—and that academic, moral, and physical strength were gained through challenge and adversity. Strict discipline, discomfort, even bullying was considered a necessary experience in the progress of moral and physical development. Royals experienced these things, too, not just students who came from poor families or who attended substandard schools (17).

For that reason, the relationship between a boy and his mother came to seem threatening to his pursuit of masculinity, despite his need for intimacy and comfort found at home. As boys grew into men, these ideals of manliness remained necessary and relevant factors contributing to the development of their masculinity (8).

This fear, then, helped to Victorian England as a “mother-blaming” society in which the women and mothers became responsible for “the travails of men.” Subsequently, Victorian masculinity would come to be characterized by “narcissism, emotional immaturity and a preoccupation with self-sacrifice” (7). At the same time, however, the love of a mother and wife provided the only emotional outlet for the Victorian male—whose public identity was required to exude the qualities of competition, achievement, strength, and self-reliance (Mintz 107). Thus, despite the male’s reluctance towards establishing an affective relationship with his mother, that relationship created the safest space in which he was able to experience the care, help, and support he lacked daily among his male counterparts (8). Maternal power is both reassuring and terrifying (8).

Subsequently, while the Lost Boys seem to exhibit the character traits prevalent among Victorian males—the repression of the maternal—their explicit desire for a mother distinguishes them from the boys of Victorian England. Indeed, when Wendy finally wakes up, the boys beg her to be their mother: “Then all went on their knees, and holding out their arms cried, ‘O Wendy lady, be our mother’” (68).

Thus, the Neverland also seems to be a place in which the boys who have not been exposed to Victorian society and ideologies, specifically in regards to maternal companionship, display an inherent devotion to Wendy because she represents the mother figure they lack (8).

When Hook discovers that Wendy is on the island with the Lost Boys, he declares in defeat, “The game’s up…those boys have found a mother” (80). Later on when Smee asks if the mother is there to help Peter, Hook responds, “Ay, that is the fear that haunts me” (81). Hook, then, believes he has already been defeated, because having a mother seems to make the boys more powerful (8).

Despite Wendy’s supposed inferiority to Peter—suggested primarily by the way in which she refuses to talk negatively about Peter in front of the boys (Barrie 91)—she is the only character in the novel who Peter obeys (8). Wendy guides Peter to make the right choices. Moreover, the text’s emphasis on the capture of Wendy in particular suggests the idea that had she not been on board the ship with the other boys, perhaps Peter would not have been as inclined to save them. Consequently, Peter’s relationship with Wendy results in the display of a more honorable side to his character (8).

The novel criticizes the traditional view of masculinity in Victorian England, which holds that a boy’s relationship with his mother should remain distanced in order for the boy to properly develop into an adult male. Instead, the novel suggests the contrary: A boy must foster a strong relationship with his mother in order to mature into a responsible adult… Wendy successfully convinces the boys to join her in London… Thus, Wendy’s arrival in the Neverland provides the Lost Boys with the opportunity to grow up and mature into responsible adults (8)

I hoped you'd return

With your feet on the ground, tell me all that you'd learned

'Cause love's never lost when perspective is earned

. …The novel’s critical attitude towards Victorian ideologies of masculinity; because Wendy represents the maternal, it is the Lost Boys’ ultimate acceptance of, and emotional attachment to her that allows them to leave Neverland in order to grow into English gentlemen (8). points readers in the direction of a better model of manhood (8). The Lost Boys signify a newer generation of young men more willing to embrace a maternal relationship rather than repress it (8). The novel offers a solution for this masculinity crisis: not to fear the feminine authority in the domestic sphere and to embrace a maternal bond (8).