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42-54. the Healing Nature of Peter Pan Banas P42-54 The Healing Nature of Peter Pan Alyssa Banas Introduction: J.M. Barrie’s Peter Pan made its stage debut on December 27th, 1904. Since that day it has kept its audience captive for generations, inspiring literary critics such as Nell Boulton, Peter Hollindale, Sarah Dunnigan, Ann Wilson, Maria Tatar, and Peter Dudgeon to utilize different lenses to interpret the text. After all, as Matt Freeman, a writer for Reading Today, once stated, “Barrie was one of those rare writers who managed to create a story with close to universal relevance and a prodigious ability to endure.” For this reason alone his tale continuously garners attention and scholarly intrigue. Yet, no matter how many times it has been studied only two possible recurring meanings have been put forth, both of which Nell Boulton mentions in her essay “Peter Pan and the Flight From Reality: A Tale of Narcissism, Nostalgia, and Narrative Trespass.” Boulton claims that the tale has a “curiously divided reputation” (307). She notes that some critics, like Freeman, have found the story to be “one of the immortals of literature” and “a symbol, even an archetype, of eternal childhood and innocence” (Boulton 307). While others, she finds, read the tale as “morally suspect, even verging on the abusive” (Boulton 307). In her essay, she discusses the darker interpretation by using Freudian theory to “explore the more perverse elements of Barrie’s vision” and claims that Peter represents Barrie’s suppressed sexuality (Boulton 308). However, I disagree with Boulton’s interpretation. In combining the biographical works of Hollindale and Tatar, and psychologists’ research on the therapeutic nature of fairy tales, I interpret Barrie’s tale as one of innocence with the purpose of healing. While many in the world know this famous tale, not many know the story of the man behind the masterpiece. In the article “A Hundred Years of Peter Pan,” Peter Hollindale, a foremost expert on Peter Pan, recounts the history of this now mythical tale and its somewhat unknown origins. But before he begins his retelling he reminds his audience that “the origins of Peter Pan have become [their own] narrative” and as such they have “affect[ed] the reception of the play,” making interpreters mix Oracle 2019-2020 42 “biography and text together in a speculative psycho-sexual cocktail” and taking away from the original purpose of the text (Hollindale 201). For this reason, interpreters vitally need to understand the key events that led up to the conception of the tale. Especially since, as Maria Tatar wrote in her introduction to The Annotated Peter Pan, “a recent biography by Peter Dudgeon serve[s] as a cautionary example in substituting speculation for evidence” (Tatar xxxi). In this biography, Dudgeon “paints a portrait of Barrie as a predatory monster” but through her research with “The Morgue,” a collection of letters and other odds and ends written by Barrie, Tatar “discovered that nothing could be further from the truth” (Tatar xxxi). Interpreters and scholars must have a clear understanding of Barrie’s past before psychoanalyzing his most famous work. In knowing that six-year-old Barrie experienced the “traumatic loss” of his brother David on the eve of his 14th birthday one could see how the idea of an eternal boy came to be (Hollindale 202). After all, time continued to move on for Barrie, but “remained fixed for David” (Hollindale 202). This thought was so prominent in his mind that when Barrie wrote about this event in Margaret Ogilvy, the biography of his mother, he said “when I became a man…he was still a boy of thirteen” (Hollindale 202). This knowledge combined with the psychology of fairy tales aids in the understanding that Peter Pan is not a tale of darkness and suppressed sexual desires but one of coping with trauma. In the article “Fairytales, Psychodrama, and Action Methods: Ways of Helping Traumatized Children to Heal,” Rebecca Walters describes how fairy tales, when implemented with psychodrama techniques, “help children” who have experienced trauma “tell their stories, express strong feelings in a safe way, and learn new ways of coping” (Walters 54). Barrie’s Peter Pan is a prime example of this. Through the use of New Historicism, psychoanalysis, and trauma theory, I argue that J.M. Barrie’s novel Peter Pan is more than a stock children’s tale and representation of his suppressed sexuality but rather a subconscious response to the traumatic childhood loss of his brother. The tale thus serves as a coping mechanism to simultaneously heal Barrie’s psyche and preserve his innocence. Psychoanalysis of Fairy Tales: Although Barrie’s Peter Pan is not considered a traditional fairy tale with its modern conception, having been conceived in the twentieth century and not focused upon a prince or princess, it nevertheless remains a fairy tale. After all, it holds the same elements of the traditional tales. Elements such as wondrous lands, fantastical creatures, and the ability to impart a cultural idea, value, or lesson. J.M. Barrie’s Peter Pan fits the first category by mostly taking place in the exceptional Neverland, a Oracle 2019-2020 43 land that confounds the reader to its existence. After all, “the Neverland is always more or less an island,” residing as a map in the minds of each child and just as each child is different so too “the Neverlands vary a good deal” (19). Yet if it resides inside the minds of children, how then can Peter and the Darling children travel there together? But that is not the end of the puzzle, for Neverland is not just any ordinary magical island, it is also alive. When Peter is away “things are usually quiet on the island” slumbering until it feels “that Peter was on his way back” and again “woke into life” (64). Neverland contains a wide variety of people and creatures revolving around the island in a cycle such as the lost boys who “were out looking for Peter,” the pirates who “were out looking for the lost boys,” the redskins “looking for the pirates,” and the beasts “looking for the redskins,” and the host of mythical creatures such as the mermaids and the fairies (64). Add in the kidnapping of princess Tiger Lily, Peter acting as a knight in shining armor, Hook as the malicious villain, and the societal concept that “all children, except one, grow up” (13) you have all the elements for a perfect fairy tale. For generations, fairy tales have been used to entertain children and teach life lessons. But what about them is so appealing? With the gruesome details and sometimes not so “happily ever after’s,” what keeps drawing people back to these tales? Dr. Meredith Mitchell, a Jungian analyst, believes their draw comes from the heroic struggle found in each of these stories. In her article “Learning about Ourselves through Fairy Tales: Their Psychological Value” Mitchell explains that “stories frequently provide clues as to the basic struggles of human beings” (264). Many of the common personal inner struggles of adults can be found in the fairy tales told to children. As such, the reading and writing of fairy tales allow children and adults to “gain insights into some of our basic human tendencies” (264). She continues her explanation contending that each story “can be analyzed in a practical way” for each person as “a means of developing useful tools” to help in “reflecting upon things that we observe and do in our daily lives” (264). That is, when read, these tales provide a mirror that can illuminate the self and reveal possible sources and solutions to struggles and problems. The process of analyzing fairy tales as a representation “of what goes on inside of us” begins with the “basic assumption that every feature of every story—setting, characters, objects, activities, etc.—corresponds to a factor, principle, or process within the personality” (264). This process is similar to that of analyzing dreams. However, where “dream contents come from the dreamer,” symbols and metaphors found in fairy tales “can be viewed as collective or universal dreams that can apply to all of us,” one of the reasons that fairy tales are so relatable (265). Oracle 2019-2020 44 Psychodrama: The initial purpose of fairy tales was to covertly assimilate children to cultural ideas such as not entering a home that does not belong to you and stealing things from that home, a lesson found in “Jack and the Giant Beanstalk.” We use fairy tales today in a similar but different manner. Rebecca Walters explains how fairy tales can be used to aid in the healing of traumatized children through the method of psychodrama. Psychodrama is a clinical method of acting out a story with characters and events similar to the people and details involved in the original traumatizing event. It is believed that psychodrama assists in helping “children tell their stories, express strong feelings,” and learn to cope with the “overwhelming feelings” left from their experience (54). Over time, this practice will “increase their ability to self-regulate and develop better social skills,” helping them look less “disturbed and more like regular kids” (54). This is possible because, as stated in Marilyn Fleer and Marie Hammer’s article “Emotions in Imaginative Situations: The Valued Place of Fairytales for Supporting Emotion Regulation,” “fairytales represent a long-standing cultural practice” of “supporting children’s social and emotional development” that when told in a collective setting that allows them to roleplay the stories the “fairytales help” in “collectively develop[ing] emotion regulation,” something that everyone needs to learn at one point or another if they want to become functional members of society (Fleer and Hammer, 240).
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