INTRODUCTION Andrew Birkin's Book J. M. Barrie and the Lost Boys
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Notes INTRODUCTION Andrew Birkin's book J. M. Barrie and the Lost Boys (Birkin, 1979) was dramatised as a three-part television serial for BBC television in October 1978. CHAPTER I: PETER PAN AND FREUD References to Freud, by volume number, year ofwriting (in parenthesis) and first publication of work and page number, are to The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works 01 Sigmund Freud, 24 vols (London: Hogarth, 1953-74), and to the Pelican Freud where available. 2 'the first time he is founded in a Lye, it should rat her be wondered at as a monstrous Thing in him, than reproved as an ordinary Fault' (Locke, 1693, pp. 153-4). 3 There is no room here to discuss in detail Bettelheim's work on the fairy tale, but it should be noted that, while he interprets Little Red Riding Hood, for example, predominantly in terms ofthe girI's mastery ofOedipal conflict, he does stress throughout the book the partial nature of his reading and the multifarious and contradictory meanings which fairy tales carry in them selves, and which they may represent for different children at different moments of their psychic life. In fact, I see a tension between Bettelheim's stress on this complexity and his fundamental aesthetic - his belief in the artistic coherence ofthe fairy tale, the facility ofthe child's identification with its characters and meaning, and the assumption of its final and necessary resolution ofpsychic and sexual conflict. For the proximity ofthis concept of aesthetic form to realist forms of representation, see Chapter 2, pp. 60-5 below. 4 For more explicitly psychoanalytic discussions ofPeter Pan, seeJohn Skinner, 'James M . Barrie or The Boy Who Wouldn't Grow Up' (Skinner, 1957) , Martin Grotjahn, 'The Defenses Against Creative Anxiety in the Life and Work ofJames Barrie' (a commentary onJohn Skinner's article) (Grotjahn, 1957 ), and G. H. Pollock, 'On Siblings, Childhood Sibling Loss and Creativity' (Pollock, 1978 ). 5 See however Frederick Meisel, 'The Myth ofPeter Pan' (Meisel, 1977) - one of the few articles I have found wh ich attempts a reading of The Little White Bird and Peter Pan, not through Barrie's personal history, but in terms of the 145 146 The Case of Peter Pan unconscious scenario of narcissistic anxiety and defence which the stories might symbolise for the child. 6 'At lunch, the children asked about "the beginning ofthe world." Dan (six years one month) insists, whatever may be suggested as- "the beginning", there must always have been something before that' (Matthews, 1980, p. 22). 7 References to Beinecke and date refer to the J. M. Barrie collection at the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University; full details are given in the bibliography. 8 For a fuller discussion of this question of stage space in relation to classical and Shakespearian tragedy see Andre Green, Un Deil en lrop, le complexe d'Dedipe dans la ITagMie (Green, 1969, trs. 1979), pp. 11-29. 9 The adventure in Sendak's book can be read as a dream. On the first night of PeleT Pan in 1904, one critic objected that the adventure inPeler Pan could not, but his concern was for the adult rather than the child: 'Having regard to the mother' s feelings, it is customary in such cases to invoke the aid of the dream. We cannot imagine why Mr. Barrie has not done so.' 'Mr. Barrie's Peler Pan-tomime' (Enlhoven, dated 27 December 1904). 10 BothJohn Skinner (Skinner, 1957) and Martin Grotjahn (Grotjahn, 1957) (see note 4 above) comment on the failure ofthe Oedipal resolution in Peler Pan (Grotjahn criticises Skinner for not making this explicit enough), but make this the basis of an aesthetic (and moral) condemnation of Barrie hirnself Il On the reinstatement of the A]lerlhought and other aspects of the play mentioned here (e.g. the episode with Tiger Lily) see Note on the 1982 Royal Shakespeare Company production at the Barhican pp. 113--14. 12 See for example Paul Schilder, 'Psychoanalytic Remarks on Alice in Wonderland and Lewis Carroll' (Schilder, 1938) which describes nonsense as the effect ofincomplete object relations and analyses the Alice hooks in terms ofanal regression (a long note to this effect was cut out from thisarticle when it was reprinted in Aspects 0] Alice (Phillips, 1972)); Martin Grotjahn, 'About the Symbolisation of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland' (Grotjahn, 1947), replying to Schilder, rejects the moral judgement which declares the Alice books unsuitable for children but also defines them in terms ofpsychic and artistic regression; John Skinner, 'Lewis Carroll's Adventure's in Wonder land' (Skinner, 1947) does take account ofthe child's pleasure in illogicality, but again concentrates mainly on Carroll's biography; an exception is Alwyn Baum, 'Carroll's Alias: The Semiotics of Paradox' (Baum, 1977) which discusses the Alice books in terms of the operations wh ich they carry out on language. There is an interesting intellectual parallel between the psychoanalytic readings of the works of Carroll and Barrie, both analysed psychobiographically in terms of artistic and psychic regression, both receiving attention more recently in terms of the internal structure of the fantasies wh ich their hooks represent and how these fantasies are symbolised for the child (Baum, 1977; Meisel, 1977). Baum has this to say on the limits of psychobiography in dealing with children's fiction: 'Ifwe accuse Carroll of aberrance in his fantasies, we would similarly have to charge human society, as collective author of the world's traditional literature, with neurosis' (Baum, 1977, p. 87). Notes 147 CHAPTER 2: ROUSSEAU AND ALAN GARNER 'When Rousseau revolutionised the whole frame of children's existence, another era came in, with his notions ofteaching in play, and ofpreserving uneontaminated the minds of children by arranging for them an arbitrary world' (my italics). 'Literature ofChildhood', 1840, p. 143. 2 Red Shift (Gamer, 1973) is more complex than Gamer's other books in terms both oflinguistic structure and sexuality; it is now advertised as a book for 'older readers' (Frontispiece to The Stone Book, Gamer, 1976). 3 Compare for example '[children's] speaking voice has no accent; they cry out, but their words are not accented; and as there is very litde energy in their speech, there is litde emphasis in their voice' (Rousseau (1762) 1763, I, p. 202). Rousseau is here commenting on the child's inability to combine the three voices of man ('the speaking or articulate, the singing or melodious, and the accented or pathetic', Rousseau (1762) 1763, I, p. 202). 4 See also Hugh Crago, 'Cultural Categories and the Criticism of Children's Literature' (Crago, 1979), 5 For further discussion of Rousseau's philosophy of childhood in relation to colonialism, and the challenge to that conception represented by Marx and Freud, see Richard Appignanesi, 'Some Thoughts on Freud's Discovery of Childhood' (Appignanesi, 1979). 6 The origins of children's publishing are usually identified with the publishing houses of Newbery (Newbery, 1744, 1756) and Boreharn (1740-3; see also Muir, 1954); Thomas Day's book was not the first extended narrative for children; a similar use of child actors as the link between collections of stories was used by Sarah Fielding in The Governess or The Little Female Academy (Fielding, 1749) which teils the story of Mrs Teachum's [sie) boarding establishment for girls. 7 Compare 'Children and the poor understand eloquence, for eloquence speaks to the feelings, which the most unsophisticated have ever the most open to impressions.' 'Literature ofChildhood', 1840, p. 158. 8 There were numerous unofficial and pirated editions ofthe Peter Parley books. Goodrich himselflicensed the stories to the English publisher, Thomas Tegg, who, although he did not stick to the terms of their agreement, was largely responsible for distributing the tales in England. The tales were also issued by the London publisher John Parker in 1837; for fuHer bibliographical detail, see Darton (1932) 1982, pp. 223-6 and Goodrich (1827) 1977, pp. xxi-xlv. 9 'Whether all this Americanism is desirable for our children we doubt, were it only that, for them if possible, we would keep the "pure wells of English undefiled," and cannot at,all admire the improvements which it pleases that "go-a-head" nation to claim a right of making in our common tongue.' 'Literature of Childhood', 1840, p. 149; 'the whole fill-page family of the Peter Parleys, with their skin-deep gloss of colloquial familiarity - their "well's," and "you know's," and "what do you think's,".' 'Children's Books', 1844, p. 12. 10 Much controversy surrounds the provenance, authorship and audience of Charles Perrault's fairy tales; these questions, together with the issue oftheir relationship to oral and litera te culture in the seventeenth century, are 148 The Case of Peter Pan examined in Marc Soriano, Le dossier Charles PeTTault (Soriano, 1972) and in the introduction to Perrault's Contes (Perrault, 1967). II See Francis Mulhern, The Moment of Scrutiny (Mulhern, 1979). 12 In On Learning to Read, Bettelheim himself uses Piaget's concepts of assimilation and accommodation to describe changes in the child's response to external stimuli (Bettelheim and Zelan, 1981, pp. 41-2). 13 See especially Rosemary Stones, 'To the Salt Mines' (Stones, 1980) andJill Pa ton Walsh, 'The Devil and the Deep Blue Sea' (Paton Walsh, 1980). CHAPTER 3: PETER PAN AND LITERATURE FOR THE CHILD 'A task to be taken up at odd moments, rather than carried through under any kind ofpressure. Yet why, one may perhaps wonder, did he tackle it at all? Certainly not to make money. Possibly to please Hodder and Stoughton, or Charles Scribner who were always hoping for a word ofnew manuscript, but had had none since 1902.