How Did Peter Pan Grow up Into a Children's Story?

How Did Peter Pan Grow Up Into A Children’s Story? Silvia Fallanti S1575791 Thesis Research Master Literary Studies Leiden University 6 July 2018 Supervisor: Dr. M. J. A. Kasten Second Reader: Dr. M. S. Newton Leiden University Faculty of Humanities Academic Year: 2017/18 Supervisor: Dr. M. J. A. Kasten Second Reader: Dr. M. S. Newton How Did Peter Pan Grow Up Into A Children’s Story? Silvia Fallanti Research Master Literary Studies [email protected] Contents Introduction ................................................................................................................................ 3 1. The Instability of the Peter Pan Materials and Their Psychoanalytical Meaning ................ 17 1.1 Introduction .................................................................................................................... 17 1.2 Jacqueline Rose’s Psychoanalytical Engagement with the Peter Pan Fictions .............. 20 1.2.1 Rereading Rose: The 2010 themed issue of The Children’s Literature Association Quarterly .......................................................................................................................... 27 1.3 Conclusion ..................................................................................................................... 31 2. Peter Pan: An Edwardian Kunstmärchen ? ........................................................................... 33 2.1 Introduction .................................................................................................................... 33 2.2 Ontogenesis and Phylogenesis of the Uncanny in Freud’s Analysis ............................. 34 2.2.1 The Acknowledgment of Darwin’s Theories in Charles Kingsley’s The Water Babies ............................................................................................................................... 39 2.3 “Do you believe in fairies?” ........................................................................................... 44 2.3.1 Peter Pan’s tragic return to reality ........................................................................... 54 2.4 Conclusion ..................................................................................................................... 58 3. Bonding with the Child ........................................................................................................ 61 3.1 Introduction .................................................................................................................... 61 3.2 The Little White Bird and Edwardian Consumer Culture .............................................. 65 3.3 “To the Five” .................................................................................................................. 74 3.4 Conclusion ..................................................................................................................... 79 4. Peter Pan and Ideology: ISA Education and ISA Cultural Apparatus ................................. 81 4.1 Introduction .................................................................................................................... 81 4.2 “Captain Hook at Eton” ................................................................................................. 84 4.3 Adaptation Theory ......................................................................................................... 96 4.3.1 Walt Disney’s Peter Pan ......................................................................................... 99 4.3.2 Steven Spielberg’s Hook ....................................................................................... 104 4.4 Conclusion ................................................................................................................... 113 5. Conclusions ........................................................................................................................ 117 Appendix 1 ............................................................................................................................. 125 Appendix 2 ............................................................................................................................. 126 Works Cited............................................................................................................................ 127 1 2 Introduction On the morning of 1 May 1912, the bronze statue of a young boy blowing a pipe appeared in Kensington Gardens. The same day, the acclaimed writer James Matthew Barrie published the following announcement in the Times : There is a surprise in store for the children who go to Kensington Gardens to feed the ducks in the Serpentine this morning. Down by the little bay on the south- western side of the tail of the Serpentine they will find a May-day gift by Mr. J. M. Barrie, a figure of Peter Pan blowing his pipe on the stump of a tree, with fairies and mice and squirrels all around. It is the work of Sir George Frampton, and the bronze figure of the boy who would never grow up is delightfully conceived. (Tatar xxiv) The celebrated British sculptor Sir George Frampton had been commissioned by Barrie for the project of a statue to be situated exactly where the hero of Barrie’s narrative world, the fictional character Peter Pan, lands in the story after leaving the nursery. The placement of the statue did not only testify Barrie’s lifelong involvement in philanthropic activities, but also his charities in favour of children (Tatar xxxii, xxxiii). 1 The event was meant to celebrate his main literary achievement: the recent publication in 1911 of his children’s novel Peter and Wendy – later renamed Peter Pan – based upon his incredibly successful play Peter Pan (1904), a work meant for the heterogeneous public consisting of both children and adults. Although the House of Commons questioned Barrie’s right to advertise his work in a public space, and the aesthetic response of the critics to the statue was not always positive, 1 Barrie’s most important charitable initiative was his decision to give the copyright of all versions of Peter Pan , and then bequeath all the proceeds derived from the play Peter Pan and the novel Peter and Wendy to the London children’s hospital on Great Ormond Street, better known as GOSH (Tatar xxxiii; Alton 30). 3 Frampton’s Peter Pan soon became a main attraction for the many fans of Peter Pan visiting London. Interestingly enough, Barrie was not happy with the outcome of his commission, which, according to him, did not “show the Devil in Peter” (Birkin 202). This statement may strike one as improper, considering that it refers to a character who has become an icon of children’s fantasy world. What exactly did Barrie mean when he referred to Peter Pan as a “Devil”? Barrie’s comment becomes clearer when we consider the genesis of Peter Pan. The path which led from the appearance of the adult play Peter Pan to the publication of the children’s novel Peter and Wendy had been quite taxing for Barrie. Being convinced that his characters might flourish only on stage, Barrie was very reluctant to write a narrative with Peter as a protagonist in a text for children. In 1907 the Bookman reported: “Mr. Barrie has often been asked to write a short narrative or libretto of his immortal child’s play and has often refused” (Tatar xviii–xix). More generally, Barrie’s reluctance to situate his stories in a stable text is also evident in the numerous revisions that the play underwent before being published for the first time only in 1928 –– 24 years after its première. From his point of view, Barrie was then right to complain about Frampton’s “suppression of the Devil” in Peter Pan. In his Peter Pan figure, Frampton had represented an uncomplicated, conventional version of the children’s fantasy, which was neither in tune with Barrie’s awareness of his own work nor with his original depictions of children as “gay, innocent, and heartless” at the end of Peter and Wendy . My research aims at exploring the significance of Barrie’s constant reshaping of the Peter Pan materials in order to recast the story for a young audience. Moreover, I will investigate as to what extent the ambiguity and instability of the Peter Pan fictions have been tamed in its school and cinema adaptations. These adaptations have deployed strategies to counter Barrie’s rebellious attitude against the didacticism and pedagogic expectations which 4 are conventionally associated with children’s literature. As will become clear in the following, Barrie challenged the traditional barriers between adults and children on many points. Nevertheless, Peter Pan has been singled out to become a cultural icon of children’s literature – hence, my central questions: How, exactly, did Peter Pan grow up into a children’s story? What conflicting discourses and ideologies concerning childhood may be seen to inform Barrie’s different versions of the Peter Pan story? Before illustrating the methodology which I have chosen to carry out my analysis, I will briefly describe the nature of the literary corpus which constitutes the topic of my research. My research will deal with what I will refer to in the following as, alternatively, the Peter Pan fictions or the Peter Pan materials. These will be limited to the study of the “Ur- Peter Pan novel” marketed for adults, The Little White Bird (1902), and the children’s novel Peter and Wendy (1911). Additionally, I will analyse the dedication written for the first published version of the play Peter Pan in 1928, “To the Five”, and

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