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Wendy: Barrie’s Representation of Womanhood
Everyone who knows the story of Peter Pan, the Darling children, and the lost boys thinks of Neverland as the place one goes to never grow up. But that is only the case for boys; in J. M. Barrie’s world, girls are born women. From the beginning of the story Wendy is portrayed as a very mature child. Though Wendy is in the same age group as Peter, her brothers John and Michael, and the lost boys, she is placed in the roles of an adult woman, a wife, and a mother and seldom as a girl.
J. M. Barrie’s invention of the perpetually young Peter Pan began with short stories and a play and culminated in the publishing of Peter and Wendy in 1911. The character of Peter shows Barrie’s “extravagant devotion to childhood and his horror of maturity” which at the time “coincided with a period when the British public felt much the same.” (Avery 173) Children were revered as pure and encouraged to stay young as long as possible. Barrie had his own “obsession with immaturity” (Avery 174), which is evident in Peter’s actions. He is impulsive and unrestrained. However, Wendy’s actions do not reflect this theme. From the very beginning of the novel, Wendy is portrayed as very mature. As the narrator says, “Wendy was every inch a woman, though there were not very many inches” (Barrie 26) and she “always liked to do the right thing.” (Barrie 27). We can see this at several points in the novel: Wendy loves to fantasize about being a woman and is flattered when her mother borrows her bracelet when she goes out (Barrie 16). That night, Peter, a boy she had only met in her dreamland, enters her room through the window but Wendy is “not alarmed” but rather “pleasantly interested” (Barrie 24). Her reaction shows a level of maturity not normally found in children. She is open to things she does not understand and is not scared by the unknown.
From the beginning of the story, Barrie makes clear that Wendy has a strong sense of what is right and what is wrong, as well as knowledge of customs and expectations. When discussing Peter with her mother she “admits with regret” that he is “very cocky” (Barrie 10). This shows that in her few years of life she already knows that his arrogant and cocky attitude is unacceptable and is embarrassed of the way he behaves. Also, just as Mrs. Darling “loved to have everything just so” (Barrie 7), Wendy is called “a tidy child” (Barrie 11). She finds it “naughty” that Peter tracked leaves into the house through the window (Barrie 11). This fastidiousness is seen multiple times in the novel, especially when she takes on the role of mother in Neverland.
When Wendy and Peter officially meet for the first time, Wendy practices the customs she has observed from her parents and introduces herself using her full name and goes on to ask where he lived and about his mother. (Barrie 24-25) Barrie seems to use Wendy’s behavior to conform to a stereotype of gender roles. When Wendy reattaches Peter’s shadow to her “little man” (25) she, ever the tidy woman, wants to iron it out but Peter was “boylike, indifferent to appearances” and did not want to be bothered with it. (26) When Peter tries to take credit for her work, Wendy become indignant but Peter is able to placate her “in a voice that no woman has ever yet been able to resist” by assuring her that “one girl is more use than twenty boys” (26). This interplay reinforces the belief that women are easily swayed by sweet talk and flattery. Barrie is modeling Wendy’s actions after her adult counterparts even though she is still a child.
J. M. Barrie never states what age Wendy is, all we know is that she is young enough to return to Neverland three years later. That being said, Wendy shows that along with having a mature personality, she is also at an age where she is attracted to Peter. This may be a legitimate attraction or another example of her following customs, but regardless it makes itself known through her actions. The night Wendy met Peter she wishes to give him a kiss, a concept he, a perpetual boy, is unfamiliar with (Barrie 26). Tinkerbell, however, understands quite well and this starts the clichéd jealous competition between females for Peter’s unknown affections. Wendy wishes that Peter had come only for her and not for the stories she can tell him (Barrie 30). Peter and Wendy quickly become inseparable, to the point that Peter personally stands guard at Wendy’s house while she recuperates from being shot upon her arrival in Neverland (Barrie 65). As the Darling children fall into a routine with Peter and the lost boys, Wendy took on the role of the loyal housewife and repeated the rule of “Father knows best” even when she sympathized with the boys (Barrie 88). This submission to Peter is seen again when Wendy makes a pirate suit for Peter after he defeats Hook. She was afraid that with the new suit would come a more violent and pirate-like Peter, but she still went ahead and made the outfit for him (Barrie 134-135). Barrie also includes a lengthy section where Wendy and Peter make-believe that they are mother and father to the lost boys. Wendy tells the boys to meet their father at the door and they try to convince him and Wendy to dance with them. They continue comparing the boys’ features with their own, much like actual parents do. (Barrie 91-92) However, immediately following this conversation Wendy asks Peter to define his feelings for her, which he defines as “those of a devoted son” (Barrie 92). This brings us to the third role Wendy plays, that of a mother.
Wendy’s role as a mother is her most famous role. Peter Pan asked Wendy to go to Neverland with him to tell the boys stories and act as their mother but she had already had some “practice” at being a mother. John and Wendy would pretend to be Mr. and Mrs. Darling, reenacting the addition of each child into the family. This game forced Wendy to resolve conflicts between her brothers, much like a mother would do (Barrie 16). During their trip to Neverland Wendy continues to act as a guardian for her brothers by keeping track of them and voicing Michael’s concerns about supper (Barrie 41). Upon their arrival, she is quick to bond with the lost boys. Tootles follows Tinkerbell’s instructions to shoot Wendy with an arrow and nearly kills her, but like a mother, Wendy forgives him even though she doesn’t know him yet! (Barrie 59) The boys take to her right away, calling themselves her servants (they consistently honor her because she is a girl) and building a house for her to her specifications using both real and imaginary things. (Barrie 61-65) Shortly after building her house, they ask her to be their mother to which she responds, “Of course its frightfully fascinating, but you see I am only a little girl. I have no real experience.” But when Peter says she just needs to be a “nice motherly person” she says, “you see I feel that is exactly what I am” and takes on the role immediately, admonishing them, putting them to bed, and telling them a story (Barrie 65).
As a mother of nine boys, Wendy has the responsibility of doing the washing, cooking, putting the boys to bed by seven o’clock, monitoring their behavior, comforting them (especially Peter) and sewing “when she has breathing time for herself” (69). She even saves their lives by keeping them from eating a poisoned cake left by Captain Hook and his men. Wendy is so consumed by her duties that when captured by the pirates her top complaint is that “the ship had not been tidied in years” (120). With all these responsibilities to her children, Wendy twice states that “spinsters are to be envied” (69, 90).
Despite all this work, Wendy loves playing mother to her pseudo-children. She thinks that every mother needs a baby, so she makes Michael, the youngest, play that role by putting him in a cradle. He protested, but as Barrie’s narrator says, “you know what women are” so he had to suffer through it (68). Although she loves her sons, Wendy wants the boys to remember their real parents, especially John and Michael, so she quizzes them on random information about their parents. When captured by the pirates, she encourages the boys to use her as an excuse not to switch sides since “mothers alone are always willing to be the buffer” (119). But when the pirates threaten to make the boys walk the plank, she acknowledges the boys’ real mothers’ wish for them to “die like English gentlemen” (121). Wendy shows her love for the lost boys by knowing when to assume the role of mother and when to remind them of their real mothers at home.
Though she acts mature and takes on the roles of wife and mother, Wendy Darling is still a girl. Barrie gave her an active imagination, the “Edwardian concept of what constituted the ideal child” (Avery 178). Wendy’s youth is used as a plot device of sorts. When the children are attacked by pirates on Marooner’s Rock, it is because Wendy made the mistake of a “young mother” and didn’t wake them from their afternoon nap despite hearing danger approaching (75). Wendy’s youth is again mentioned when she meets and is fascinated by Captain Hook. She is described as “only a little girl” and the narrator wishes that she had reacted differently to Hook which would have prevented the children from being tied up (108). However, if she had not reacted in the way she did, the story would have lost its dramatic appeal, so one can believe that the narrator’s wish is disingenuous. These scenes are the only scenes where Wendy displays any real fear and vulnerability and Wendy finds herself “long[ing] to hear male voices,” a symbol of security for her (75). Through all these adventures, Wendy knows that she needs her own mother, even though she is now a mother herself. She leaves her adult life in Neverland to head back to England and return to her life as a child.
Of course, eventually Wendy Darling has to grow into actual adulthood but “she was one of the kind that likes to grow up. In the end she grew up of her own free will a day quicker than other girls” (146). However, in the end, growing up in the real world made her lose her ability to be a mother to Peter. When he returned to bring her to Neverland a realized she had grown, “He sat down on the floor and sobbed, and Wendy did not know how to comfort him, though she could have done it so easily once. She was only a woman now…” (151). Barrie is now diminishing the ability of adults because as children are seen to be incapable in the real world, adults cannot function within the rules of Neverland. Wendy goes from being a child with adult abilities and maturity to being an adult who cannot connect with youth. Barrie sends Wendy to Neverland to act as an adult and now that she is an adult, she is ill-equipped. These adult responsibilities now fall to Jane, her daughter.
I. Introduction
A. “Fantasy, more than any other genre, is a literature of empowerment.” TP
B. Portals of Power focuses on books that “depict magic being either performed by of provided to (via a magical helper) an entity typically lacking, or
perceiving an absence of control and knowledge in real-world terms.” LC
C. Thesis: In children’s fantasy literature, a portal story requires a disempowered protagonist for the sake of both the story and the reader.
II. Disempowered Children (Victorian/Edwardian)
A. How they are before entering the portal
1. Idealizing children (esp Edwardian [cult of peter pan])
2. “In fantasy, those normally perceived as unimportant are vital players.” TP
B. Their experience
C. The result and impact (a place to belong)
III. Disempowered females (Victorian/Edwardian)
A. How they are before entering the portal
1. “…Sandra M. Gilbert and Susan Gubar place the literary Victorian woman in a state of societal limbo: ‘Precisely because a woman is denied the
autonomy… that the pen represents, she is not only excluded form culture… but she also becomes herself and embodiment of just those
extremes of mysterious and intransigent Otherness which culture confronts with worship or fear, love or loathing’.” LC
B. Their experience
C. The result and impact (a place to belong)
IV. The impact on the reader
A. Child readers
1. Theme of finding a place to belong (especially those who are suffering; escapism)
2. Irony of children’s lit (especially since talking about the value of being a child) can help children grow up
i. Help them cope with trauma they may not understand; Good vs Evil (9/11 and Harry Potter) CR
ii. “Intelligent readers will come to relate the questions raised in these books to their own lives. If a question nags at youngsters intensely
enough, they will grow up to devise an answer—to move their world forward…” TP
3. Journey of self-discovery, morals, friendship CR
B. Adult readers
1. Fantasy literature is a “cross-over” genre
2. “Fantasy creates hope and optimism in readers.” TP
3. “…valuable for understanding social marginalization, and may be therapeutic in their own right.” LC
V. Conclusion
A. Summarize Characters
B. Summarize Readers
C. Restate Thesis
My group took on the challenge of presenting a comparison of L. Frank Baum’s The Wonderful Wizard of Oz and MGM Studio’s film The Wizard of Oz. There are enough differences between the two works to discuss for hours so we decided that we needed to come from one direction and resent a clear thesis. The thesis we decided on was rooted in the excerpt of Rhetorics of Fantasy by Farah Mendlesohn that we read for class. She makes the point that Dorothy has a “highly individualistic morality” and that her “journeys do not result in her own moral growth” which is in contrast to her portrayal in the 1939 adaptation. Our goal was to support Mendlesohn’s assertion with our own observations.
We split up our work with my portion focusing on the differences between the film and book at the introduction and conclusion. These parts are crucial in how the film is shaped and portray the goal of the creators. With the introduction I focused on the film’s extension of the story by adding significant back-story to Dorothy’s life in Kansas. In the text we have a brief introduction setting up Kansas as a boring, colorless contrast to the Land of Oz. However, in the film we have foreshadowing of the characters we will meet in Oz as well as Aunt Em’s directive to “find yourself a place where you won’t get into any trouble,” spurring Dorothy’s desire to get away.
As we all noted, the end was very different; nearly the entire second half of the book is omitted. I explained how the end of the book sends Dorothy off with new friends who have benefited from her quest to Oz, but with no lesson learned for herself. However, in the film there is a conversation between Dorothy and Glinda which spelled out her lesson: “if I ever go looking for my heart’s desire again, I won’t look any further than my own back yard.” The adaptation has its own constructed moral that is in direct contrast with Mendlesohn’s evaluation of the text.
As a group we worked really well together to construct our argument and were in agreement on the direction we would take. We stayed in contact with each other and divided work in a way that satisfied all of us. I really enjoyed working with Robin, Olivia and Jenn.
Joanna's Knot Hole 