Audiences, Progression and the Rhetoric of the Portal-Quest Fantasy

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“Second to the Right, and Straight on Till Morning”: Audiences, Progression and

the Rhetoric of the Portal-Quest Fantasy in J. M. Barrie’s Peter and Wendy

DISSERTATION

Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of The Ohio State University

Andres Alberto Montanes-Lleras

Graduate Program in Education Teaching & Learning

The Ohio State University

2018

Dissertation Committee:

Barbara Kiefer, Advisor

Linda Parsons

James Phelan

Copyrighted by

Andres Alberto Montanes-Lleras

2018

Abstract

Despite the long standing association between children’s literature and fantasy, most critical discussions on the genre have focused—especially from an educational perspective—on whether or not fantasy is attractive, engaging, and, most important of all, appropriate for young readers. Though recent years have seen an increased interest on the genre from a more text- or content-oriented perspective, there are still relatively few studies focused on the narrative and rhetorical strategies of fantasy, how the fantastic elements of the story are presented, and the way the reader is invited to negotiate and ultimately reflect on the relation between reality and fantasy.

The main purpose of this dissertation is to explore how the protagonists’ transit between worlds, characteristic of what Farah Mendlesohn calls the portal-quest fantasy, and featured in many children’s books, defines both the overall design of the text and the reader’s experience with the fantastic. Contrary to Mendlesohn herself, who finds the rhetoric of the form inherently problematic, emphasizing the way the fantasy world is presented, for both the characters and, on a different level, the reader, imposes an authoritative interpretation of the world, reducing the possibility of alternate or contradictory interpretations; I specifically seek to show how the transit between worlds itself serves as an effective rhetorical strategy to invite the reader into the world of the

ii story, and increase our sense of estrangement and wonder, while proposing a serious ethical and metafictional reflection on the fantastic.

In order to accomplish this, my study proposes an alternative approach to the form, using some of the key concepts or principles of rhetorical narrative theory developed in various works by James Phelan and Peter J. Rabinowitz, in particular the notion of narrative progression. As I argue in the first part of my study, by expanding the traditional notion of plot to include the interaction between author, narrator and the different audiences involved, as well as the ongoing and cumulative responses of the reader, it becomes easier to see how the distinctive plot dynamics characteristic of the portal-quest fantasy in general respond to a clear authorial intention and affect the way we approach, experience, and ultimately interpret the fantastic, suggesting a more complex reading and evaluation of the form.

While I use several examples to illustrate my ideas, the second part of my study focuses exclusively on the case of Peter and Wendy—a novel that despite being widely considered a classic of children's literature, has rarely been studied as a fantastic text proper. As my analysis seeks to show, while Neverland is presented early on as this ambiguous imaginary space, and we are constantly reminded that what we are reading is just a story, the island becomes increasingly real as the story progresses, leading to the climactic moment where the characters have to decide between staying in Neverland for good or going back home to the real world—a decision that, as the novel makes abundantly clear, is far from simple, emphasizing how Barrie’s book resists fixed interpretations. iii

Acknowledgments

I would have never been able to complete this dissertation without the support, guidance, and enthusiasm of several people, to whom I will be always indebted. First and foremost, my advisor, Barbara Kiefer, who has been my guide (in an almost portal-quest fantasy way) since I first arrived to Ohio, almost seven years ago, and I now consider part of my family. Thank you for everything!

To Linda Parsons, who has always been enthusiastic about this project, and reminded me to be enthusiastic as well, especially when things were tough and I was wondering if I would ever reach my destination. To Jim Phelan, who introduced me to rhetorical narrative theory (and Project Narrative and the potluck group), and challenged me to think about narrative and literature in different ways. I hope this dissertation contributes a little bit to your own projects.

To all the other people at Ohio State who supported me in one way or another.

My professors at the School of Teaching and Learning: Michelle Abate, Mollie

Blackburn, David Bloome, Patricia Enciso, Barbara Lehman, Mindy Rhoades and Anna

Soter. To Brian McHale at the English Department. To Jodi Pilatowski, who was always there to give me a hand (and a hug), and help me with everything I needed. To the people at Counseling and Consultation Services: Luis Cruz-Ortega and Gabriel Pagan-Llorens. iv

To all my classmates and friends: To Lisa and Erin who shared with me their experience and friendship, and made Ohio, and our shared office in the second floor, feel a little bit like home. To B.P. and the rest of Wayfarers Eight: Our journey “there and back again” is, in one way or another, in these pages.

To Leigh, who was there from the very beginning, sitting in a bench outside

Ramseyer Hall, imagining with me the moment we would graduate from OSU. These pages are also yours. Thank you for being my friend!

To my family: Beto, Susi, Juanfe, and especially my mom, who first got me interested in fantasy and children’s literature. You are the reason I always come home at the end of the journey.

Vita

1999 ...... Gimnasio Moderno (elementary and high

school)

2004 ...... B.A. Literature, Universidad de los Andes

2003 to 2006 ...... Spanish and Literature Teacher (8th to 11th

Grades), Colegio San Carlos

2009 ...... M.A. Creative Writing, Universidad

Nacional de Colombia

2011 to present ...... Graduate Research Associate and Graduate

Teaching Associate, Department of

Teaching and Learning, The Ohio State

University

Publications

Reilly-Sanders, E. F. and Montañés-Lleras, A. (2014). “Native, Gone Wandering: South African Author Diane Hofmeyr as Constant Explorer.” In B. Lehman, J. Heale, M. A. Hill, T. van der Walt & M. Vorster (Eds.), Voices and Images: Essays on South African Authors and Illustrators of Children’s and Young Adult Literature. Jefferson: McFarland.

Montañés Lleras, A. (2012). El dragón de vapor. Bogotá: Editorial Norma.

Montañés Lleras, A. (2010). Me llamo... Antonio Nariño. Bogotá: Editorial Norma.

Montañés Lleras, A. (2010). Páginas Blancas. Bogotá: Universidad Nacional de Colombia, Cooperativa Editorial Magisterio.

Montañés Lleras, A. (2009). Los héroes y los dioses. Relatos de La Ilíada y la guerra de Troya. Bogotá: Editorial Norma.

Montanes-Lleras, A. (2005). “Sólo un simple individuo en un mundo enorme: El hobbit, el lector y el mundo de fantasía.” Monografías Meritorias en Literatura 8. Bogotá: Ediciones Uniandes.

Fields of Study

Major Field: Education Teaching & Learning

Specialization: Literature for Children and Young Adults

vii

Table of Contents

Abstract ...... ii

Acknowledgments ...... iv

Vita ...... vi

Publications ...... vi

Fields of Study ...... vii

Table of Contents ...... viii

List of Tables...... xi

Introduction ...... 1

Why Fantasy? ...... 8

A Rhetorical Narrative Theory Perspective ...... 14

Note on the Selection of the Texts ...... 22

Part 1. Audiences, Progression and the Rhetoric of the Portal-Quest Fantasy ...... 27

1.1. From Fairy-Stories to Modern Fantasy ...... 32

Towards a definition...... 38

Authorial and narrative audiences...... 45 viii

1.2. Mendlesohn’s Taxonomy ...... 54

The portal-quest fantasy...... 61

Closing the narrative...... 74

1.3. An Alternative Approach...... 85

Narrative progression...... 92

“There and back again.” ...... 99

Beginning/Transition...... 101

Middle/Exploration...... 110

Ending/Return...... 126

Part 2. “Do You Believe in Fairies?”: Metafiction, Fantasy and Make-Believe in J. M.

Barrie’s Peter and Wendy ...... 136

2.1. Open Windows and Chinese Boxes: The Beginning of Peter and Wendy...... 141

The telling and the world...... 142

Mr. Darling, Mrs. Darling and Peter...... 158

“Come Away, Come Away!”...... 174

2.2. “The Island Come True”: The Middle of Peter and Wendy ...... 187

There, But Not Really...... 189

To Kill Captain Hook...... 201

Belief and Make-Believe...... 215

2.3. Looking Back, Looking Forward: The Ending of Peter and Wendy ...... 232

Here, but not really...... 234

Mr. Darling, Mrs. Darling and Peter (reprised)...... 242

“When Wendy Grew Up.” ...... 254

Conclusions ...... 268

Reading for the World ...... 276

Ethical and Metafictional Complexity ...... 282

Future Directions ...... 292

References ...... 296

List of Tables

Table 1: Beginnings, Middles and Endings ...... 96

Introduction

The main purpose of this dissertation is to explore how the protagonists’ transit from a familiar and recognizable setting into direct contact with the fantastic, characteristic of what British scholar Farah Mendlesohn calls the portal-quest fantasy

(2002; 2005; 2008), and featured in many children’s books, defines both the overall design of these texts and the reader’s resulting experience with the fantastic. I specifically seek to show how, in addition to affecting the manner in which the fantasy world is presented (for both the characters and, on a different level, the reader), this kind of plot dynamic responds to a clear authorial intention and has profound effects on the audience, serving as an effective rhetorical strategy to get the reader to accept as true the fantastic elements of the story, while proposing a serious ethical and metafictional reflection on the relation between reality and fantasy.

The project was initially conceived, back in 2011 when I was starting my doctoral degree, as a comparative analysis of several children’s books that displayed this kind of structure (specifically focused on the late Victorian and Edwardian Eras). However, as I started to read about the subject, and look for ways to approach, make sense and talk about this type of texts, I became increasingly aware that what I was interested in doing was to look at how the transit between worlds itself affected both the textual construction

1 and ongoing experience of the reader. Thus moving from a study essentially focused on a specific work or works to a broader reflection on the form that not only allowed me to address certain theoretical and critical issues, but also to go back to those texts with a greater understanding of how they function.

While the dissertation discusses and builds upon multiple theoretical and critical studies, from Tolkien’s seminal essay “On Fairy Stories” (1947/1966) and W. R. Irwin’s now classic book The Game of the Impossible: A Rhetoric of Fantasy (1976) to more recent works like Brian Attebery’s Strategies of Fantasy (1992), it particularly responds to and engages in critical dialogue with Farah Mendlesohn’s work on the genre. Her essay “Toward a Taxonomy of Fantasy” (2002) and later books, Diana Wynne Jones:

Children’s Literature and the Fantastic Tradition (2005) and especially Rhetorics of

Fantasy (2008), provide the starting point of my study, including the definition and characterization of the portal-quest fantasy itself, its distinctive stylistic features, and how it finally positions the reader in relation to the fantasy world.

This is not to say, however, that I completely agree with Mendlesohn conclusions.

While I find her description and analysis of the form quite useful, in particular how it situates both protagonists and readers as naïve, and then invites us to follow along as the characters themselves explore and learn more about their new setting—which is therefore described and explained to the audience through the explanations offered to the protagonist—I think she finally misses the point when she argues that this not only flattens the world into a mere guide of fantasyland, but also, by constantly asserting the reliability of the narrator and the different character-guides that the protagonists find 2 along the way, it impresses upon the reader an authoritative interpretation of the story, which for Mendlesohn makes the portal-quest fantasy much less interesting, by reducing the possibility of alternate or subversive readings.

As I argue in the first part of my dissertation, this not only responds to a certain critical prejudice against the use of reliable narration in general, when in fact it is a legitimate, often very effective, stylistic and rhetorical choice; but also fails to appreciate the manner in which the transit between worlds itself is used to address the main rhetorical challenge of the genre: To get the audience to accept as true what we would never expect to find in real life. While this can be achieved in different ways, my analysis of the various portal-quest fantasies I examine seeks to show how, by beginning the story in a familiar and recognizable setting and recreating through the reactions of the protagonist the incredulity and wonder of the reader, these texts take us little by little to the point where we have no problem accepting that there are such places as Narnia,

Prydain or Hogwarts that are all full of fantastic things.

As I further seek to show, while we are certainly invited to trust what the narrator and the different character-guides tell us about the nature and moral order of the fictional world, this is not only necessary for us to get our bearings (considering how, much like the protagonists, we are also strangers in that world), but also by putting both worlds or spaces side by side, and making the characters compare, even decide between the two, we are invited to question the desirability, customs and values of the other world, as well as look back on our own, and wonder what we would do if we were in a similar situation.

My intention is to finally argue that this can further be read as a metafictional reflection 3 on fantasy literature in general: A genre that, after all, effectively takes us into another world, while reflecting in one way or another on reality.

In order to do all this, my study proposes an alternative approach to fantasy and the question of the transit between worlds using some of the key concepts or principles of rhetorical narrative theory, developed in various works by American scholars James

Phelan and Peter J. Rabinowitz. As I explain below in more detail, I find rhetorical narrative theory in general a very productive way to approach narrative for the manner in which it not only pays attention to the construction and narrative devices of the text—a type of narratological analysis that I think is sorely missing from most studies and reflections on children’s fantasy—but, by conceiving narrative itself as a purposive act of communication, it also takes into account the interaction among authorial agency, textual phenomena (including the plot or sequence of events) and the affective, ethical and aesthetical effect that all this has on the reader.

In addition to adopting this broader theoretical and methodological perspective, there are two concepts in particular that are central to the dissertation’s argument. First is the distinction between authorial and narrative audience proposed by Rabinowitz in

“Truth in Fiction: A Reexamination of Audiences” (1977), a concept that as I argue at the beginning of my study can not only be used to define fantasy in terms of the distance between the two, but also helps understand how we are simultaneously invited to accept the fictional world as true, while being also aware of the fantastic nature of the story.

Second is the concept of narrative progression proposed by Phelan in Reading People,

Reading Plots (1989), which provides in turn the basis for my analysis and revaluation of 4 the characters’ transit between worlds as a legitimate and much more interesting narrative strategy than Mendlesohn at least gives it credit for.

My purpose is to show how by expanding the traditional notion of plot to include the interaction between author, narrator and the different audiences involved, what

Phelan calls narratorial dynamics, as well as the ongoing and cumulative responses of the reader, or readerly dynamics, it becomes easier to see how we are invited to identify with and follow the characters as they move from a familiar and recognizable setting into direct contact with the fantastic and then proceed to explore that world—which is therefore as strange and wonderful for them as it is, in one way or another, for the reader—while reflecting at the same time on what the transit itself entails, as well as our own experience with the fantastic. This suggests, in turn, a more complex interpretation and evaluation of the story, as well as what the author and the text are trying to accomplish and ultimately say about that same experience.

Last but not least, while the focus of the first part of my study is mostly theoretical, the idea has always been to get back to the texts themselves. Though I use several examples to illustrate and support what I say about the portal-quest fantasy in general—from The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe to Harry Potter—in order to show how these ideas can be used to approach a single work, and propose a productive and suggestive reading of it, the second part of my study focuses exclusively on the analysis of J. M. Barrie’s Peter and Wendy. This novel has not only been a long time favorite of mine, and a classic of children’s literature, but also has rarely been studied as a fantastic text proper, attending to how it takes the characters (and, on a different level, the reader), 5 from a realistically portrayed Edwardian London to the wonderful island of Neverland, where children can fly and stay young forever.

Contrary to most critical readings of the novel which approach the work either historically, commenting on the type values and image of childhood it portrays, as well as its connection with Barrie’s life and relation with the Llewelyn Davies family, or purely thematically, as a reflection on growing up and what this process entails, my analysis focuses primarily on the fantastic elements of the story as such. I essentially intend to show how, while Neverland is presented early on as this ambiguous imaginary or dream- like space, it becomes increasingly real as the story itself progresses, to the delight and wonder, but also uneasiness of the children, who suddenly find themselves fighting pirates and becoming part of the lost boys. All this leading to the climactic moment where they all have to decide between staying in Neverland for good and be with Peter or going back home to the real world and their family—a decision that, as the novel makes abundantly clear, is far from simple.

As my analysis of the novel’s distinct transit between worlds seeks to show, this not only serves, once more, to bring the audience into that world, and engage both affectively and ethically with the story, as well as wonder what we would do if we were in a similar situation, but also invites us to reflect on our own experience as readers and the relation between reality and fantasy in general. This impression is emphasized by the manner in which we are constantly reminded by the narrator—whose presence is clearly felt throughout the whole novel—that what we are reading is just a story, and we are not actually there, apparently subverting all the conventions and narrative strategies of the 6 form, while still encouraging us to assert, in what is perhaps the most theatrical and metafictional moment of the book, that we too believe in fairies, in order to save Tinker

Bell, who has been poisoned by Captain Hook.

The result is a much more ethically and aesthetically complex book than most people think about when they think about Peter Pan. Though it is still perfectly accessible for children, who enjoy both the playfulness of the story and the interaction between narrator and narratee, adult and child, the novel is meticulously constructed to get the audience to accept as true what we would never expect to find in real life, while simultaneously being reminded of the fantastic and fictional nature of the story. It also resists reductive interpretations about the nature of Neverland and, in many ways, Peter himself, the question of growing up or staying young forever, and the relation between reality and fantasy central to the portal-quest fantasy in general, of which Peter and

Wendy provides again a fascinating example.

Before I get to all this, however, I want to dedicate a few pages to comment on certain preliminary concerns. First, I will address the question of why we want children to read or, at least, be allowed to read fantasy, and therefore recognize the value of reading and studying this type of texts, particularly in the context of children’s literature studies.

Second, I will set forth some of the basic principles of rhetorical narrative theory that inform my study, including the definition of narrative as a multileveled form of communication, the different kinds of interests and responses that audiences can develop depending on what the texts themselves foreground, and the theory’s distinct a posteriori stance and what it means for my study. Finally I will say a little bit about my selection of 7 texts, including the examples I use in the first part and, of course, Peter and Wendy as my main object of analysis.

Why Fantasy?

Despite the long standing association between children’s literature and fantasy, and the enduring popularity and critical acclaim of books like Alice’s Adventures in

Wonderland, The Hobbit and The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, to name a few classics, as well as a recent publishing phenomena like the Harry Potter series, most critical discussions on children’s fantasy have focused—especially from an educational perspective—on whether or not the genre as a whole is really attractive, engaging and, most of all, appropriate for young readers. As Barbara Kiefer points out, in Charlotte

Huck’s Children’s Literature (2010), even nowadays there are still “some educators and parents that question the value of fantasy for today’s child,” forcing authors and critics to, in one way or another, defend the genre (p. 286).

Perhaps the most common charge against fantasy is the accusation of escapism:

How fantasy, as C. S. Lewis puts it when he tackles the defense of the genre in “On

Three Ways of Writing for Children” (1952/1982), supposedly allows and encourages young (and older) readers to “retreat into a world of wish-fulfillment—‘fantasy’ in the technical psychological sense of the word—instead of facing the problems of the real world” (p. 37). An accusation that not only assumes that children’s literature should deal, as the adult realistic novel does, with the struggles (less often, the joys) of everyday life, but also that reading imaginative or escapist literature might interfere with what educators

8 since the late eighteen century have considered the child’s “healthy acquisition of a sense of reality” (see Hughes, 1978/1983, p. 246-248).

As most apologists of the genre point out, however, while fantasy certainly takes us into another world (or an alternative version of our own), there is more to this than a mere abandonment or rejection of reality. According to J. R. R. Tolkien, whose essay

“On Fairy-Stories” (1947/1966) is still considered one of the definitive reflections on the subject, most critics who complaint about this actually misuse the term “escape” to describe something more akin to the “flight of the deserter,” who gives up and runs away from the battle, while what fantasy does—appropriately called Escape (capitalized in the original)—has more in common with longing the prisoner who, despite being locked away, still “tries to get out and go home” or, failing this, “thinks and talks about other topics than jailers and prison-walls” (p. 79).

Tolkien (1947/1966) actually sees this kind of Escape as “one of the main functions of fairy-stories,” emphasizing how it allows us to leave behind all the trappings and noise of modern life, which he found extremely uninspiring—from “street-lamps” and “motor-cars” to the “Morlockian horror of factories”—as well as escape some grimmer and more terrible things, like hunger, poverty and injustice, from which fairy- stories (like any other form of fiction) can provide an effective if temporary reprieve.

Perhaps more important yet, there are also “old ambitions and desires (touching the very roots of fantasy),” like being able to fly or communicate with other living beings—things that we never expect to happen in real life, and yet long for—for which this type of stories finally offer a “kind of satisfaction and consolation” (pp. 79-85). 9

It is in relation to this last point, more than anything else, that the difference between mere escapism and real fantasy becomes apparent. As Lewis (1952/1982) points out, what we usually call “realistic fiction” is just as likely (perhaps, even more so) to provide the child with the kind of self-rewarding escapism and wish fulfillment that teachers and parents find so problematic: While the desire to be “immensely popular and successful,” as it happens in most school stories, or be "the lucky boy or girl who discovers the spy’s plot or rides the horse that none of the cowboys can manage,” can be seen in many ways as psychologically “compensatory” and “sends us back to the real world undivinely discontented,” the desire for the fantastic entails a completely different kind of longing. According to Lewis:

[T]he child does not long for fairy land as a boy longs to be the hero of the first

eleven. Does anyone suppose that he really and prosaically longs for the dangers

and discomforts of a fairy tale?—really wants dragons in contemporary England?

It is not so. It would be much truer to say that fairy land arouses a longing for he

knows not what. It stirs and troubles him (to his life-long enrichment) with the

dim sense of something beyond his reach, and far from dulling or emptying the

actual world, gives it a new dimension of depth. (p. 38)

Contrary to the common assumption the young readers are particularly attracted to fantasy because they are more likely than adults to believe that the strange creatures and situations that in one way or another define the genre can exist or happen in real life, both

Tolkien and Lewis emphasize how children are able, even eager to distinguish between what is real (or, at least, possible in the real world) and what is properly fantastic— 10 implying that they are more perceptive and far less credulous readers than critics who complain about the genre apparently give them credit for. Perhaps more important yet, part of the pleasure that we get from reading this type of stories comes, precisely, from the fact that we would never expect such things to actually happen in real life, allowing the genre to produce a sense of estrangement and wonder.

While some people might still see this as a mere flight of fancy and question— like the upright, hard-working adult in Ursula Le Guin’s “Why Are American’s Afraid of

Dragons?” (1974/1982)—what is the use of it all, “dragons and hobbits and little green men;” the last fifty years or so have seen a reevaluation in the way we think about fantasy, particularly how it can help children (and adults) to develop what Le Guin herself describes as “the absolutely essential human faculty of imagination” (pp. 31-34).

Kiefer (2010) also sees this as one of the main functions or values of the genre, emphasizing in a similar manner how “to be able to imagine, to conceive of alternative ways of life, to entertain new ideas, to create strange new worlds, to dream dreams— these are all skills vital to human survival” (p. 286).

Though all forms of fiction require readers to “imagine” or visualize in their minds things that are not immediately available to the senses, both authors and critics highlight how fantasy not only encourages children to picture dragons and hobbits (or any other strange creature) in their minds, which requires, of course, a greater effort of imagination, but also look beyond what we usually assume is possible or inevitable in the real world—a capacity fundamental to innovate, invent, create, and seek for alternative solutions to the problems of real life. As author Tamora Pierce points out in “Fantasy: 11

Why Kids Read It, Why Kids Need It” (1996), remarking how fantasy is, first and foremost, a literature of possibilities, the genre effectively “opens the door to the realm of

‘What if’, challenging readers to see beyond the concrete universe and to envision other ways of being and alternative mindsets” (p. 180).

This does not mean, again, to abandon or reject the real world. As Tolkien

(1947/1966) highlights, while fantasy invites us to imagine how things could be in another universe, where nature and social norms are different, it not only takes its basic materials from the real world, but by presenting and recombining those materials in a completely different manner, it can help us achieve what the author of The Hobbit and

The Lord of the Rings calls Recovery or “regaining of a clear view,” allowing us to see the world anew, “freed from the drab blur of triteness or familiarity” (p. 77). In many ways, what fantasy does is give the world—perhaps give back or restore—a certain wondrous quality. As Lewis (1952/1982) remarks, building on Tolkien’s ideas: The child

“does not despise real woods because he has read of enchanted woods: the reading makes all real woods a little enchanted” (p. 38).

Last but not least, fantasy, like any other form of literature, inevitably responds to and reflects upon the real world and the essential questions of the human condition. As

Kiefer (2010) points out, citing examples like The Wind in the Willows and A Wizard of

Earthsea, while they might not talk about the problems of daily living—like a modern school story or a problem novel does—“great fantasies frequently reveal new insights into the world of reality,” from simple lessons on friendship and loyalty to how growing up and becoming one’s own person entails a difficult quest or process of self-knowledge 12 and taking responsibility for what we have done. From this perspective, Kiefer argues, good fantasy might actually “be critical to children’s understanding of themselves and of the struggles they will face as human beings” (p. 286).

According to Le Guin (1974/1982), who concludes her defense of the genre by making the exact same point—how fantasy and imaginative literature in general can tell us much about ourselves, and the world we live in, and our destiny—we should give more credit to our children. She points out how most young readers seem to be aware (at least more so than adults) that while fantasy might not be “factual” in the strict sense of the word, that does not mean it is not “true” or a way to reach the truth: “Normal children do not confuse reality and fantasy. (…) Children know perfectly well that unicorns aren’t real, but also know that books about unicorns, if they are good books, are true books”

(pp. 34-35). In the end, that is all that we can expect, not just from fantasy or children’s literature, but any artistic or literary work.

In order to understand how fantasy achieves all this, however, it is essential to look at the genre from a serious academic perspective that considers both the fantastic elements themselves and the way they affect the story, or what the authors are finally trying to say or get across to the reader, as well as how the text itself is constructed so that we accept those fantastic elements as true (at least while we are reading), and engage both mimetically and thematically with the story. As my dissertations seeks to show, this type of study will not only increase our understanding of these texts and how they work, as well as the effect they have on the reader, but also show how they are more complex

13 and literarily sophisticated than some critics give them credit for—an additional reason for both adults and children to read fantasy.

A Rhetorical Narrative Theory Perspective

The last half-century or so has seen an increasing academic and critical interest in both fantasy and children’s literature, as well as the intersection between the two, from early works like Marion Lochhead Renaissance of Wonder (1977) and Sheila Egoff’s excellent Worlds Within: Children’s Fantasy from the Middle Ages to Today (1988) to

Mendlesohn’s own take on the genre in Diana Wynne Jones: Children’s Literature and the Fantastic Tradition (2005) or Caroline Webb’s Fantasy and the Real World in British

Children’s Literature (2015). However, there are still relatively few studies like these last two, specifically focused on the narrative and rhetorical strategies of the genre, how the fantastic elements of the story are presented, and the way the reader is invited to negotiate the relation between reality and fantasy.

As Maria Nikolajeva points out in “Narrative Theory and Children’s Literature”

(2004): The majority of studies in the field have generally privileged pedagogical or, at least, pedagogically concerned approaches to research. As a result of this, narrative theory in general has been one of the areas of critical inquiry that has been least explored and developed in connection with children’s books: “The issues of form have been neglected mainly because they were considered secondary as opposed to ideology, social or moral values, and educational objectives” (p. 166). The very question of whether fantasy is appropriate or inappropriate for children, if it distorts or not their healthy

14 perception of reality, and whether or not it holds any value for today’s child, responds in no small part to this kind of pedagogical concerns.

While this general approach has produced an abundance of fascinating research, as well as encouraged authors and critics to reflect on the value of children’s literature and, particularly in the case of children’s fantasy, defend the appeal and relevance of certain books and genres; Nikolajeva (2004) finally shows how narrative theory can complement this type of pedagogically oriented studies, by helping us understand how the narrative elements of the text work as “bearers of psychological elements, social values, and ideology” (p. 176). Furthermore, it can also illuminate the distinctive features, variety, and complexity of children’s books, effectively challenging the

“common prejudice,” persistent among literary scholars (including narratologists), that children’s literature is a “simple” and therefore uninteresting literary form, with everything that implies in terms of critical and academic recognition (pp. 166-167).

This is, again, particularly true in the case of fantasy, a genre that has historically been regarded as “childish,” in the most reductive and dismissive sense of the word. As

Felicity Hughes (1978/1983) points out, there is a clear connection between the

“exclusion of children from the readership of the serious novel” and the acceptance of a very specific “version of realism” as the dominant form of fiction towards the end of the

19th Century. One of the main consequences of this was that fantasy was “immediately déclassé” as a “trivial or frivolous” form of fiction that did “not appeal to the mature mind,” and therefore was “abandoned to the child reader” (pp. 242-248). The implication, of course, was that children were only attracted to fantasy because they were less 15 experienced readers than their adult, more knowledgeable counterparts, who were reading realistic fiction.

In addition to assuming that young readers are unable to appreciate, even handle, the complexity and sophistication of the adult realistic novel and therefore prefer

“simpler” forms like fantasy, this is connected with the idea that children in general believe that the fantastic elements of the story can actually exist or happen in real life.

This assumption not only calls into question their capacity to distinguish between reality and fantasy, but also implies that the genre is simply playing on the child’s natural credulity, ignoring what W. R. Irwin (1976) considers the defining feature of the form:

How the text must “persuade the reader through narrative” that those fantastic elements, which specifically challenge our beliefs and expectations about reality, are “existentially valid” within the fictional world of the story (p. 60).

Perry Nodelman (1996) makes a similar point, emphasizing how, while most criticism on children’s fantasy has focused on describing the cosmology of the fantasy world, recognizing archetypal plot structures, and interpreting the psychological or moral meaning of the text—all legitimate and interesting approaches to the genre—it is the way in which the fantastic elements of the story are presented, in this case, to the child reader, that truly distinguishes the genre from other kinds of children’s fiction (pp. 175-176). It is not casual at all that Tolkien makes so much emphasis, in his essay “On Fairy-Stories”

(1947/1966), on how the real artistic achievement of the form—what he actually calls

“Fantasy”—is not so much the exercise of imagination, but the ability to give the world

16 of the story the “inner consistency of reality” (pp. 68-69). As the author of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings finally points out:

To make a Secondary World inside which the green sun will be credible,

commanding Secondary Belief, will probably require labour and thought, and will

certainly demand a special skill, a kind of elvish graft. Few attempt such difficult

tasks. But when they are attempted and in any degree accomplished then we have

a rare achievement of Art: indeed narrative art, story-making in its primary and

most potent mode. (p. 70)

As mentioned above, in order to show how this takes place in the case of the portal-quest fantasy in particular—specifically how the protagonist’s transit from a familiar and recognizable setting into direct contact with the fantastic contributes to bring the reader into that world, inviting us to accept as true the fantastic elements of the story, while proposing a serious ethical and metafictional reflection on the relation between reality and fantasy—my dissertation adopts a rhetorical narrative theory perspective, developed in various works by American scholars James Phelan and Peter J. Rabinowitz.

I find this approach particularly useful for the manner in which it not only looks at the text itself (including the plot or sequence of events), but considers also the author’s intentionality and narrative choices, as well as the effect that the different textual devices have on the ongoing experience of the reader.

According to Phelan and Rabinowitz (2012), the key difference between their rhetorical approach to narrative and other narratological perspectives is that instead of seeing narrative as an object, they see it as a purposeful act of communication between 17 two or more people: “Our starting point is the following skeletal definition: Narrative is somebody telling somebody else, on some occasion, and for some purposes, that something happened to someone or something” (p. 3). While they still pay attention to the different narrative and stylistic elements of the text, they do so in relation to the broader communicative situation—or, in the case of most fiction, situations, since they consider both the author’s and the narrator’s telling and interaction with their respective audiences

(a distinction central to my approach to fantasy)—attending in particular to how those elements serve a specific rhetorical purpose.1

In order to explain the effects of narrative—and, again, contrary to most traditional narratological approaches—rhetorical narrative theory further identifies what

Phelan and Rabinowitz (2012) describe as a “feedback loop” among authorial agency, textual phenomena, and reader response. In addition to assuming that texts are “designed by authors (consciously or not) to affect readers in particular ways”—what most people think about when they hear the term rhetoric—the approach also assumes, first, that those designs are “conveyed through the occasions, words, techniques structures, forms and

1 As I explain in more detail later on, when I discuss the theoretical definition of fantasy, in addition to the actual audience or “flesh-and-blood reader,” Phelan and Rabinowitz (2012) recognize two complementary positions that the reader is invited to assume in relation to the work: the authorial audience, which corresponds to the hypothetical image of the reader to whom the author was ideally writing for, and the narrative audience, “an audience that exists in the narrator’s world, that regards the characters and events as real rather than invented, and that accepts the basic facts of the story world regardless of whether they conform to those of the actual world” (p. 6).

18 dialogic relation of texts as well as genres and conventions readers use to understand them” and, second, that “since reader responses are ideally a consequence of those designs,” they can also serves as both “initial guide to (….) the workings of the text” and a “test of the efficacy of those designs” (p. 5).

When I say I am going to analyze how the transit between worlds, in a text like

Peter and Wendy, for example, contributes to bring the reader into the fantasy world of the story, I am therefore recognizing an authorial intention behind the portal-quest structure of the novel—how the author, in this case Barrie (as reconstructed from the text itself), chose that structure instead of any other, with the purpose of eliciting a specific response on his audience. Simultaneously with this, I am also attending to the manner in which that structure affects (or seeks to affect) the ongoing experience of the reader, allowing me to understand better how the narrative works as a whole. Though I take the text as my starting point (and it might seem like I focus on it the most) both the author’s intention and the effect that the text has on the reader are an integral part of my study.

As Phelan and Rabinowitz (2012) point out, emphasizing how they see narrative as a “multileveled” form of communication, one of the main consequences of this is that they are not only interested in the “meaning of narrative,” but also the experience of it:

“Thus, we are concerned with narrative’s affective, ethical and aesthetic effects—and with their interactions—as we are with its thematic meanings” (p. 3). This is intimately connected with concept of narrative progression, a notion that both authors consider key to understand how narrative works and refers precisely to the synthesis between the

“internal processes by which narratives move from beginning through middle to 19 ending”—what they call textual dynamics—and the “corresponding cognitive, affective, ethical, and aesthetic responses of the audience,” which they call in turn readerly dynamics and consider again part of the narrative (p. 6).

As I explain later on in more detail, I find the concept of narrative progression particularly useful to understand the manner in which the characters’ transit between worlds—what seems to be a purely plot related issue—affects both the overall design of the text and the ongoing experience of the reader. While my analysis finally proposes a thematic and metafictional interpretation of the journey, specifically how the portal-quest fantasy reflects on the relation between reality and fantasy in general, the main focus of my study (which supports in turn that interpretation) is centered on the interaction between textual and readerly dynamics: How we are invited to follow the characters and share their curiosity and wonder as they move from one world to another, as well as respond both ethically and aesthetically to their experience.

According to Phelan and Rabinowitz (2012), readers’ responses and interest in the text can be classified in three broad categories, each corresponding to a particular component of the narrative: mimetic (which deals with the characters, events and story world as possible), thematic (concerning the ideational function of the story) and synthetic (which highlights the artificial nature of the narrative and are therefore linked with the reader’s aesthetic judgments). While all three components are present in most narrative texts, different genres and works privilege one or two components above the others: “Some narratives (including most so-called realistic fiction) are dominated by the mimetic interests; some (including allegorical and political polemics such as Animal 20

Farm) stress the thematic; others (including the nouveau roman and much postmodern metafiction) put priority on the synthetic” (p. 7).

Though this again varies from text to text, the very nature of fantasy implies that the emphasis is, at least initially, on the mimetic component of the narrative. As C. N.

Manlove (1975) points out, emphasizing how any fantasy must contain a substantial and irreducible element of the supernatural: “It must not be possible wholly to explain the supernatural or impossible away, by seeing it simply as a disguised projection of something within our ‘nature’” (p. 5). It is not casual at all that an author like Tolkien was so wary about readers taking The Lord of the Rings as an allegory. While he recognized in many of his letters how good stories lend themselves to allegorical readings

(1947-1956/2000, pp. 121; 144-145), he believed that fantasy in particular must first

“succeed as a tale, excite, please, and even on occasion move, and within its own imagined world be accorded (literary) belief” (p. 233).

Since the genre seeks first and foremost to convince the reader to accept as true the fantastic elements of the story, it is also very rare for fantasy texts to emphasize the synthetic component of the narrative, at least in the way that most postmodern narratives do. According to Brian Attebery (1992), while fantasy is in many ways an inherently metafictional form, implying a “degree of self-reflexiveness and authorial manipulation of reality,” it not only does so implicitly by presenting us with a story that is manifestly unreal, in a purely ontological way—an awareness that is again key to get the full effect of the text—but is also about presenting those materials in a convincing, often traditional

(and, therefore, subversively) realistic manner: “Since fantasy makes no attempt to hide 21 its fictionality, it takes no effort at all to puncture the bubble but considerable artifice to maintain it” (p. 46).

Last but not least, rhetorical narrative theory assumes a distinct a posteriori stance, meaning that “rather than declaring what narratives invariably do or how they invariably do it,” the approach seeks to “understand and asses the variety of things narratives have done and the variety of ways they have done it” (Phelan and Rabinowitz,

2012, p. 5). While my study makes some generalizations about the portal-quest fantasy as a whole, these are not only the result of looking at specific works—including, but not limited to, the examples I mention explicitly to illustrate what I say about the form—and are meant to be only descriptive, rather than prescriptive, but also seek to explain and ultimately revaluate how certain children’s fantasies, like Peter and Wendy, for example, are constructed and achieve their particular rhetorical purposes.

Note on the Selection of the Texts

As mentioned early on, the original idea for my dissertation was to do a comparative analysis of several children’s books where the characters move from one world to another: A project that responded to a long time personal interest, as both reader and scholar, in the work of authors like Lewis, Tolkien and, of course, Barrie himself.

While my study finally evolved into a broader theoretical reflection on the portal-quest fantasy in general, I have made a conscious effort to keep the text themselves (and the experience of reading them) at the heart of the project. This allows me to not only illustrate and anchor that theoretical reflection on the study of specific cases, but also

22 focus on those works and show how they are much more ethically and aesthetically complex and interesting than most critics and scholars believe.

In order to achieve this double purpose, I have limited myself in the first part, where I define the portal-quest fantasy and articulate my objections to Mendlesohn’s analysis, before finally proposing my own take on the form, to a few significant examples that are both representative of the genre and interesting in and off themselves. I start with the two texts that Mendlesohn considers definitive in the development of the portal-quest fantasy: C. S. Lewis’ The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (1950/2002) and J. R. R.

Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings (1954-1955/2004). While the latter is not exactly a children’s book, and could had been replaced in this sense by The Hobbit, I decided to keep it as an example, since it is not only often read by children, but is also widely regarded as the archetypal modern quest fantasy, taking in many ways to the next level the structure, style, and world-building of The Hobbit.

In addition to Tolkien’s text, I use Lloyd Alexander’s The Book of Three

(1964/2006), the first entry in the author’s award-winning Prydain series, as my main pure quest example (explicitly intended for children and having a child as the main character). I often pair it with The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe to illustrate the similarities and differences between stories where the characters go through an actual portal—like the wardrobe in Lewis’ novel, which allows the children to travel between worlds—and stories where we are situated throughout in another universe and the characters simply move from a more familiar and recognizable setting—like Caer

Dallben in The Book of Three or the Shire in both The Hobbit and The Lord of the

Rings—into direct contact with the fantastic.

Last but not least, in order to achieve a balance between both forms, and include a more contemporary text, I use as my final example J. K. Rowling’s own Harry Potter series, specifically her first book, Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone (1997/2010).

As with both Lewis’ and Alexander’s texts, I focus on the first entry in each series (in the case of Lewis, the first book dealing with the Pevensie children), because it is where the effect of the transit between worlds is more dramatic and central to the progression of the narrative. Though I also make reference to later books, as well as the different series as a whole—a subject that would be interesting to explore in later studies—by focusing on just one entry, I am also able to propose a complete (if not exhaustive) reading of each book, from beginning through middle to end.

This is all again in preparation for my analysis of Peter and Wendy (1911/2011), where I employ the whole theoretical and methodological approach that I develop in the first part of my study and illustrate with all these examples to look in detail at Barrie’s text and show how the transit between worlds, and the manner in which Neverland becomes increasingly real as the story progresses, invite the reader to accept as true the fantastic elements of the story, while proposing a complex ethical and metafictional reflection on the relation between reality and fantasy. The idea, once more, is to not only demonstrate how the approach can be productively employed to analyze in depth a single text, but also propose a new reading and revaluation of the book as a significant and narratively complex work of children’s fantasy. 24

As mentioned above, while the story of Peter Pan, from the original play to the novel, has widely been considered a classic of children’s literature, it has rarely been studied as a fantastic text proper. Most analyses have focused instead on its historical and cultural significance, its connection with Barrie’s personal biography, or the thematic elements of the story alone. Mendlesohn herself significantly jumps, in her chronological overview of the portal-quest fantasy, from Barrie’s immediate predecessors, like George

MacDonald and Lewis Carroll, to the work of Lewis and Tolkien. While she is not trying to make a comprehensive history of the form, her omission is particularly significant considering how the story not only features a clear portal-quest structure, but it is also one of the first fantasies to focus on the real-world narrative frame where the characters’ adventure begins, before moving to the magical island of Neverland.

Unlike the play, with which it is structure and theme-wise quite similar, the novel is also interesting for the manner in which Barrie seems to break the conventions of portal-quest fantasy by repeatedly calling attention to the telling and the interaction between narrator and narratee at the extradiegetic level, effectively reminding the audience that we are reading is just a story, even if the events actually happened (or are happening simultaneously with the telling). As my analysis seeks to show, the result is a fascinatingly complex and self-reflective narrative work, where we are invited to accept the events and the imaginary world as true, while being aware of the fantastic and ultimately fictional nature of the story, making explicit how the text as a whole reflects on the relation between reality and fantasy.

Last but not least, Peter and Wendy provides a great example of how the portal- quest fantasy is not as ethically and interpretatively closed as Mendlesohn deems it to be.

In addition to forcing both characters and readers to compare the distinctly prosaic, bourgeois and adult-controlled space of London with the adventurous, magical and childlike world that is Neverland, Barrie’s novel is particularly interesting for the manner in which it resists fixed interpretations. As my analysis finally seeks to show the text makes an argument for both going back home, growing up, and having a family, and staying young forever like Peter, emphasizing how while the children are initially happy to return to the real world, and Peter seems to be left alone and heartbroken, those who grow up (and grow old) also lose their ability to fly, imagine, and tell stories, while Peter himself keeps having fun and living as this eternal symbol of childhood, imagination, and the paradoxical and alluring nature of fantasy.

Part 1. Audiences, Progression and the Rhetoric of the Portal-Quest Fantasy

Despite the long history and popularity of the genre, among both children and older readers, fantasy fiction has often been neglected, even dismissed, by literary critics and scholars. As Lucy Armitt points out in Theorising the Fantastic (1996), though the word “fantasy” can have positive connotations in everyday speech, when we move to a literary context it is usually associated with self-rewarding escapism and formula fiction, rather than “serious” literature (p. 1). In addition to the questionable assumption that fantasy is necessarily intended for children and completely dependent on the credulity and naïveté of the reader, the genre is also condemned for its lack of thematic development, its reliance on stock characters and situations, and its use of traditional and, according to some critics, outmoded narrative devices.

This type of critical attitude towards fantasy can be appreciated early on in

Edmund Wilson’s often-quoted review of The Lord of the Rings: “Oo, Those Awful

Orcs!” (1956). Surprised by the enthusiastic responses that the novel had received in

Great Britain, Wilson famously questioned how “grown-up” readers like W. H. Auden,

C. S. Lewis and Richard Hughes could admire a work that he ultimately considered a

“children’s book that has somehow got out of hand” (p. 312). Among the many “literary inadequacies” that Wilson found in The Lord of the Rings were the “melodramatic” and

27 simplistic confrontation between good and evil, the absence of characters with real and imposing personalities (including the wizard “Gandalph” [sic]), and Tolkien’s lack of

“narrative skill” and “instinct for literary form” (p. 313).2

It is hardly surprising in this context that fantasy authors and critics have often found it necessary to defend the literary qualities of the genre. As I explain in the introduction, most of these defenses respond to the accusation that fantasy is an escapist and frivolous form of literature, from Tolkien’s (1947/1966) and C. S. Lewis’

(1952/1982) early reflections on the purpose and value of fairy-stories to a book like Ann

Swinfen’s In Defence of Fantasy (1984) where she emphasizes, among other things, how while fantasy effectively takes us to another world, it still explores the same essential issues as any other form of literature, including realistic fiction: “Indeed the fundamental purpose of serious fantasy is to comment upon the real world and to explore moral, philosophical and other dilemmas posted by it” (p. 231).

The question of literary technique is more complicated. While other forms of antirealistic literature have received much critical attention after the publication of

Tzvetan Todorov’s structural analysis of the fantastic (1970/1975), few studies have paid

2 The case of The Lord of the Rings is particularly significant since the majority of authors and critics consider Tolkien’s novel the most representative and influential example of the genre. According to Brian

Attebery (1992), while Tolkien might not be the first or even the most imaginative author to write this type of fiction, it is finally through his work that modern fantasy becomes a recognizable genre: “Tolkien’s form of fantasy, for readers in English, is our mental template (…). One way to characterize the genre of fantasy is the set of texts that in some way or other resemble The Lord of the Rings” (p. 14).

28 serious consideration to the particular kind of imaginative fiction that authors like George

MacDonald and E. R. Eddison had been writing since the late 19th Century.3 Commonly situated within Todorov’s broader category of the marvelous, modern fantasy has often been dismissed for its reliance on fairy-tale structures and characters—which results in the apparent lack of characterization and motivation for the action that Wilson mentions in his review—and its use of an authoritative narrative voice that effectively restricts the possibility of alternative and more complex readings.

According to Brian Attebery (1992), the first critics of The Lord of the Rings struggled to affirm the literary excellence of the novel, because it ultimately challenged most modernist expectations about fiction and narrative form (pp.18-19). Though the story of Frodo’s quest and the War of the Ring was engaging and exciting, and Tolkien succeeded in creating an autonomous and suggestive fantasy world, there was little use throughout the novel of the particular narrative techniques that could be found in the works of Henry James or James Joyce, and were particularly appreciated by critics and literary scholars. As Attebery also points out, however, this does not mean that modern fantasy lacks literary technique or conscious deployment of multiple narrative devices in order to achieve its rhetorical purposes.

It must not be assumed that Tolkien was unaware of the things he was doing, that

he achieved all his effects by accident or deviated from novelistic conventions

3 I use the umbrella terms antirealistic and imaginative literature to refer to all forms of fiction whose content contradicts in a fundamental way what we consider possible in reality, including both traditional forms (like fairy tales, legends and myths) and modern genres (like horror, science fiction and fantasy).

without knowing the alternatives. On the contrary, Tolkien and other writers of

fantasy have been, if anything, more conscious of the fundamental operations of

narrative than are the critics who accept as absolutes such concepts as plot,

character, point of view, and the separation of text and world. (p. 35)

While there are many derivative and poorly written works of fantasy (just like in any other form of literature intended for children or for adults), authors like Lewis

Carroll, J. R. R. Tolkien and Diana Wynne Jones, among many others, have clearly demonstrated the aesthetic and expressive possibilities of the genre, going beyond simple formula fiction and self-rewarding escapism, and receiving both popular and (more recently) critical acclaim. In order to really appreciate and understand this type of imaginative fiction, however, it is necessary to look at the genre on its own terms, recognizing not only the conventions and narrative strategies of fantasy, but also the manner in which the presence of the fantastic affects the textual design of each work and the reader’s ongoing experience with them.

As I explain in the introduction, this first part of my dissertation proposes an alternative theoretical and, in many ways, methodological approach to fantasy and the question of the transit between worlds characteristic of the portal-quest fantasy in particular, using some of the key concepts or principles of rhetorical narrative theory. In order to establish early on a working definition of fantasy, as well as situate my study in relation to previous works on the genre, the first section discusses in detail several theoretical definitions of fantasy, emphasizing how, in addition to inviting readers into a world that is essentially different from our own, it also seeks to present that world in a 30 consistent and convincing manner. It then proceeds to explain how Peter Rabinowitz’s

(1977) distinction between authorial and narrative audience can be effectively used to both define the genre in terms of the distance between the two and understand the reader’s multileveled experience with the fantastic.

The second section introduces Farrah Mendlesohn’s taxonomy of fantasy (2002;

2005; 2008) and compares it to other categorizations of the genre, before focusing specifically on her description and analysis of the portal-quest fantasy: How the reader follows the protagonists as they move from a familiar and recognizable setting into direct contact with the fantastic, and the consequences that this has for the author’s linguistic and narrative choices. While this section seeks to show how Mendlesohn’s characterization of the portal-quest fantasy provides a particularly productive way to approach and understand this type of texts, it also highlights how her focus on the closed nature of the narrative ultimately leads her to dismiss the portal-quest fantasy as a didactic and less evocative form of fantasy.

In response to this, the last section purposely moves away from Mendlesohn’s focus on the narrator, and suggests looking instead at the transit between worlds itself, using James Phelan’s (1989) concept of narrative progression as an alternative and broader way to think about plot. By emphasizing the connection between the events of the story and the other components of the narrative, and incorporating the ongoing experience and judgments of the audience—what Phelan calls the textual and readerly dynamics respectively—it finally seek to show how the protagonists’ journey from one world to another defines both the rhetorical design of the text and the effect it has on the 31 audience, inviting the reader into the fictional world, while suggesting a more complex interpretation of the protagonists’ and the reader’s experience.

1.1. From Fairy-Stories to Modern Fantasy

In 1939, merely two years after the publication of his first fantasy novel, The

Hobbit, J. R. R. Tolkien was invited to give the Andrew Lang Lecture at the University of

St. Andrews in Scotland. Later published under the title “On Fairy-Stories” (1947/1966), the lecture is a wide-ranged, yet somewhat fragmentary and very personal, reflection on a broad category of fiction that includes traditional fairy tales, legends and myths, as well as other imaginative works that today would be classified as modern fantasy. While

Tolkien never mentions explicitly The Hobbit or The Lord of the Rings, which he was starting to write at the time, the lecture has often been regarded as a significant theoretical reflection on Tolkien’s own project as an author, as well as one of the founding pieces of fantasy criticism in general.4

As the term fairy-story suggests, this type of narratives is usually defined by its distinct subject matter. For Tolkien (1947/1966), however, considering only stories that actually contain faeries not only narrows the definition too much, but ultimately fails to grasp how the genre is not really about faeries, dragons or any of the many magical

4 In their introduction to the critical edition of the text (2008), Verlyn Flieger and Douglas A. Anderson point out how the lecture can also be seen as a juncture point between The Hobbit and The Lord of the

Rings that reveals Tolkien’s development as an author: “It marked the transition between his two best- known works, but it also functioned as the bridge connecting them, facilitating the perceptible improvement in tone and treatment from one to the other” (pp. 15-19).

32 creatures that often appear in these type of texts, but the world in which those creatures exist: “The definition of a fairy-story (…) does not, then, depend on any definition or historical account of elf or fairy, but upon the nature of Faërie: the Perilous Realm itself, and the air that blows in that country” (p. 38). Whatever that world might be, and as

Tolkien suggests, a clear definition is impossible, it is a world that is inherently different from the world of the reader.

The genre includes, in this sense, a variety of different stories: from Tolkien’s own favorites like Beowulf and the legends of King Arthur to traditional fairy tales like

Puss in Boots and The Black Bull of Norroway, among many others. There are, however, a few important restrictions: First of all, the fantastic elements of the story must be “taken seriously, neither laughed at nor explained away” (Tolkien, 1947/1966, p. 39). A book like Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland is excluded, for example, since it depends on the machinery of dream to explain the fantastic elements of the story. Other types of texts are excluded as well, in particular traveler’s tales and beast-fables, as they either fail to situate the fantastic in a different world altogether or use it as a formal device and not as a central feature of the story.

The key to Tolkien’s (1947/1966) reflection is the idea of what he calls Fantasy, which for him refers not to the literary genre, but to one of the essential qualities of a successful fairy-story.5 Contrary to the common perception that children (and readers in

5 In order to differentiate between the two, I keep to Tolkien’s use of the upper case when referring to this quality, and employ the lower case for the literary genre.

33 general) are attracted to this type of literature because they are unable to distinguish between what is real and what is only imaginary, Tolkien points out how the enjoyment of fairy-stories depends not on the belief that they can actually happen in real life, but on the basic human desire for Fantasy, understood as the “the making or glimpsing of Other- worlds” (p. 64). He illustrates this idea with his own childhood desire for dragons: How he wanted to read about them precisely because he never expected (or wished) to find them intruding into his everyday world.

While the writer of fairy-stories certainly aspires for the artistic illusion to be as powerful as possible—approaching what Tolkien (1947/1966) calls the elvish craft of

Enchantment (p. 73)—the effect and appeal of the genre ultimately depend, at least in part, on the fact that these stories challenge our expectations and beliefs about reality, awakening and fulfilling what we would otherwise consider impossible desires. As

Tolkien explains, Fantasy is not incompatible with reason, or the basic human need and capacity to perceive what we call facts, but actually builds upon these, in the same way that Lewis Carroll’s nonsense is based on logic: “For Creative Fantasy is founded upon the recognition that things are so in the world as it appears under the sun; on a recognition of fact, but not a slavery to it” (p. 75).6

6 According to Verlyn Flieger (1999/2012), the key word here is “recognition,” as it places emphasis on the observer instead of any particular (and contestable) notion of external “reality.” In fact, in order for the work to be intelligible, the reader needs to be able to “recognize” at least some elements of the story, as well as the underlying truth or perceived reality that the author is trying to convey (pp. 5-7).

What Tolkien is finally doing is moving away from the Romantic distinction between Imagination and Fantasy, prevailing during most of the 19th Century. According to Stephen Prickett (1979), while Imagination was often seen, following Coleridge, as the supreme creative power of the artist; Fantasy was considered akin to dreams, reverie and madness: “[I]t was delightful, alluring, compulsive, disturbing, nightmare and hag- ridden” (p. 6). For the author of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, however,

Imagination is just the first step in the creative process that leads to Fantasy. It is only through Art that the fictional world of the fairy-story is given what Tolkien (1947/1966) calls the “inner consistency of reality,” necessary to command the belief of the reader and evoke the appropriate effect on the audience.

For my present purpose I require a word which shall embrace both the Sub-

creative Art in itself and a quality of strangeness and wonder in the Expression,

derived from the Image: a quality essential to fairy-story. I propose, therefore, to

arrogate to myself the powers of Humpty-Dumpty, and to use Fantasy for this

purpose: in a sense, that is, which combines with its older and higher use as an

equivalent of Imagination the derived notions of “unreality” (that is, of unlikeness

to the Primary World), of freedom from the domination of observed “fact,” in

short of the fantastic. (pp. 68-69)

Fairy stories are defined, in this sense, not only by their distinctive materials

(dragons, faeries, etc.), but by the way in which those materials are presented: How the author must convince the reader that these creatures are both possible and credible within their own fictional world. At the heart of this notion is the concept of Sub-creation, 35 perhaps Tolkien’s more significant contribution to the theoretical study of fantasy.

According to Tolkien (1947/1966), when a reader is successfully invited to believe in the events and characters of a good fairy-story, what the author has really done is to become a sub-creator: “He makes a Secondary World which your mind can enter. Inside it, what he relates is ‘true’: it accords with the laws of that world. You therefore believe it, while you are, as it were, inside” (p. 60).

Tolkien (1947/1966) contrasts this “enchanted state” or Secondary Belief with the prevailing idea that the audience state of mind when reading this type of fiction can be described as a “willing suspension of disbelief.”7 This formulation, however, does not convey the type of relationship between the reader and the fictional world of the story that Tolkien has in mind: “The moment disbelief arises, the spell is broken; the magic, or rather art, has failed. You are then out in the Primary World again, looking at the little abortive Secondary World from outside” (p. 60). The creation of the fictional world and the manner in which that world is presented are in this sense fundamental to command

7 The expression comes from Coleridge’s Biographia Literaria (1817/2000), where he discusses his contribution to the Lyrical Ballads in the following terms: “My endeavours should be directed to persons and characters supernatural, or at least romantic; yet so as to transfer from our inward nature a human interest and a semblance of truth sufficient to procure for these shadows of imagination that willing suspension of disbelief for the moment, which constitutes poetic fate” (p. 314).

36 the belief of the reader, who must be completely immersed in that world to get the full experience and effect of the text.8

This idea is extensively illustrated in Tolkien’s own work as a fantasist, from The

Hobbit to The Silmarillion. Not only are the settings, characters and events described in detail, but we also get a lot of information about the different languages, history and landscape of Middle Earth (and Arda in general), so the fictional world itself seems to have the “inner consistency of reality.” As W. R. Irwin (1976) points out in his analysis of The Lord of the Rings, the abundance of information in the novel is not just an exercise of ingenuity on Tolkien’s part, but actually responds to specific narrative purposes:

Highlighting the scale and significance of the conflict, on one level, while contributing to create the illusion that the fantasy world extends beyond the limits of the story, becoming an autonomous reality (p. 161).9

8 At the same time, however, the reader should also be aware of the distinction between the Primary and

Secondary Worlds in order for the story to be fantastic. As I try to show at the end of this section, this apparent paradox can be resolved by introducing the distinction between the authorial and the narrative audience, and highlighting how the reader is simultaneously “inside” and “outside” the Secondary World.

9 Interestingly enough, Tolkien’s theoretical distinction between Primary and Secondary Worlds has later been used by both W. H. Auden and Michael Benton to articulate their own approaches to fiction and the experience of fiction in general. While for Auden (1968) the distinction serves to differentiate between the basic human desire to “know the truth” about the “given world outside ourselves” and the desire to create and experience our own imaginary worlds, and how they are (or should be) present in different proportions in all literary works (pp. 49-52); Benton (1979) uses the idea of the secondary world to refer to the imaginary construct that young readers in particular create as they experience a given text, and is defined in

While the need to convince the reader to enter the fictional world and accept what happens there as true is not exclusive of fantasy or fairy-stories, it is certainly a more difficult task to accomplish when the story deals with elves or wizards, or any other creature or event that we would never expect to find in the real world. According to

Tolkien (1947/1966), anybody can say “the green sun”—or talk about goblins, faeries or talking animals, for that matter—but to convince someone that a “green sun” is actually possible in an alternative world requires particular skill, labor and thought: “Few attempt such difficult tasks. But when they are attempted and in any degree accomplished then we have a rare achievement of Art: indeed narrative art, story-making in its primary and most potent mode” (p. 70).

Towards a definition. While Tolkien’s essay sheds light on what we now call modern fantasy, he is still talking about a broader category of fiction that includes not only traditional fairy tales, but also legends, romances and myths. Though it is possible to see some sort of continuity between these earlier examples of fantastic literature and the work of authors like MacDonald, Tolkien and Lewis, there are also significant differences in the way they are written (if they are written at all) and the way they are read. The very notion of what is real and what is essentially imaginary has changed significantly over time. As C. W. Sullivan (1992) points out: “[I]t is doubtful that the people listening to the Beowulf poet would have said ‘Impossible!’ the way modern readers of those poems would” (pp. 99-100). terms of involvement or “psychic distance,” the interplay between the conscious and the unconscious or

“psychic level,” and the way the “psychic process” develops in time (pp. 76-78).

The same is true of the various narrative techniques that the different authors employ in order to give their stories the “inner consistency of reality,” whatever their notion of this might be. According to Attebery (1980), it is possible to see how the genre becomes more and more elaborate as we move from the early oral tradition to the literary rewritings of Perrault, Grimm and Lang, until we finally reach the point where authors start to adopt novelistic conventions (pp. 4-12). When most critics talk about “fantasy” they refer, in fact, to a very specific kind of imaginative literature, written mostly after the late 1850’s, that responds to a modern distinction between the natural and the supernatural, as well as the literary conventions of the realistic novel (see Irwin, 1976, pp. ix-xi; Sullivan, 1992, pp. 97-100; Waggoner, 1978, p. 24).

One of the first critics to use the term modern fantasy and propose a formal definition of the genre was perhaps C. N. Manlove in his now classic work Modern

Fantasy. Five Studies (1975). The genre is initially defined in Manlove’s book as “A fiction evoking wonder and containing a substantial and irreducible element of the supernatural with which the mortal characters in the story or the readers become at least partially acquainted” (p. 1). While Manlove ultimately argues that The Lord of the Rings lacks the “inner consistency of reality” and therefore fails as a successful fantasy, his definition of the genre owes much to Tolkien’s theoretical reflection, starting with the notion that fantasy must include some form of impossible or supernatural element that evokes a feeling of wonder on the reader.

For Manlove (1975) the radical distinction between the world of the story and the world of the reader is fundamental to differentiate the genre from other forms of anti- 39 realistic literature, in particular science fiction. Though books like Frank Herbert’s Dune or Asimov’s Foundation take the reader to strange and far-away worlds (both in space and time), according to Manlove these are still “possible worlds in that they are set in our universe and describe the sorts of events and civilizations that conceivably could exist, whether now or in the future” (p. 3). On the other hand, when a truly impossible or supernatural event is introduced into what otherwise seems to be the real world, as in

Edith Nesbit Five Children and It, the fictional world is so radically transformed that we are dealing with an example of fantasy.

The second key element in Manlove’s (1975) definition of the genre is the idea that modern fantasy seeks to evoke a distinctive feeling of wonder on the reader: “By wonder is meant anything from crude astonishment at the marvelous, to a sense of

‘meaning-in-the-mysterious’ or even the numinous” (p. 7). While Tolkien mentions in his essay the qualities of strangeness and wonder associated with the fantastic, Manlove takes one step further and shows how authors like C. S. Lewis, Mervyn Peake and

Tolkien himself intentionally direct the reader toward the contemplation of the fantastic that ultimately produces these feelings. The attention of the reader is, in this sense, not only on the characters and the action, as in most realistic genres, but on the fantasy world itself, and how it differs from the real world.

Though Manlove’s (1975) definition of fantasy emphasizes the distance between the world of the reader and the world of the story, it also highlights how readers and characters eventually become at least partly familiar with the fantastic. This familiarity contrasts in particular with the manner in which supernatural creatures and events are 40 presented in traditional horror or supernatural stories, where the fantastic is left entirely alien, in order to produce the desired effect of shock on the reader (p. 9). Consider the case of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe: While both the characters and the reader are initially surprised when the story first moves to Narnia, they become increasingly knowledgeable and capable as they explore the world around them, until they finally defeat the Witch, and become kings and queens themselves.

An additional distinction is probably needed here between fantasy and what

Tzvetan Todorov (1970/1975) calls the fantastic. For Todorov, the fantastic is a distinctive literary genre characterized by the intrusion of an apparently supernatural event in an otherwise realistic narrative, forcing the reader (and often the characters themselves) to hesitate between a natural and a supernatural explanation: “The fantastic occupies the duration of the uncertainty. Once we choose one answer or the other, we leave the fantastic for a neighboring genre, the uncanny or the marvelous” (p. 25). While most works of modern fantasy invite the reader to question the relationship between reality and fantasy, any hesitation is finally resolved in terms of the supernatural elements that ultimately define the genre.10

In this order of ideas, most examples of modern fantasy would fall within the broader category of the marvelous, a genre that also includes traditional fairy tales and

10 According to Attebery (1992), part of the problem comes from the “diverging meanings of the word fantastic in French and English. ‘La Litterature fantastique’ is an entirely different genre, confined almost exclusively to the nineteenth century and represented in English by such texts as Henry James’ ‘The Turn of the Screw’” (p. 20).

41 other forms of antirealistic literature, including science fiction. According to Todorov

(1970/1975), “the marvelous implies that we are plunged into a world whose laws are totally different from what they are in our own and in consequence that the supernatural events which occur are in no way disturbing” (pp. 171-172). This certainly seems to fit, at least in part, with the ideas of Tolkien and Manlove. However, Todorov does not pay much attention to the particular manner in which the supernatural elements are presented or given the “inner consistency of reality” in this type of fiction, or the effects that presenting a fantasy world in this way has on the reader.

Perhaps the most systematic definition of fantasy to come after Tolkien can be found in W. R. Irwin’s book The Game of the Impossible (1976).11 Instead of focusing on content or subject matter like Manlove does, Irwin points out from the start how the distinguishing feature of the genre is rather the specific manner in which that content is presented in order to secure the belief of the reader: “The material must be cast into a single, continuous narrative of the impossible that persuades the reader, giving his willingness to be persuaded, to grant it his credence in a spirit of intellectual play” (p.

89). While this formulation has a lot in common with Tolkien’s notions of sub-creation

11 As Mendlesohn (2008) points out, most recent studies—including Attebery’s The Fantasy Tradition in

American Literature (1980) and Strategies of Fantasy (1992)—have tended to move away from strict definitions of fantasy, accepting as a “viable ‘fuzzy set’” (the term itself comes from Attebery) a variety of critical approaches and choosing among them “according to the area of fantasy fiction, or the ideological filter, in which they are interested” (p. xiii).

42 and Secondary Belief, it focuses on the persuasive quality of the genre and the distinctive kind of participation that is expected from the reader.

For Irwin (1976), fantasy is ultimately defined as a distinguishable mode of fiction characterized by the requirements and devices of rhetoric: “Though artistry is liberally deployed in fantasy, the dominant method is from rhetoric. This determines the nature of the illusion, the conduct of the narrative itself, and the style” (p. 58). By

“rhetoric” Irwin is not only referring here to the internal narrative resources that authors in general employ to allow their audience to envision the fictional world of the story—the type of rhetoric that Wayne Booth in particular recognizes in non-didactic fiction—but to the manner in which fantasy authors use those resources for a very specific purpose:

“[T]o persuade the reader through narrative that an invention contrary to known or presumed fact is existentially valid” (p. 60).

While most fantasies go beyond this general purpose and invite both mimetic engagement and thematic reflection by the reader, just like any other form of fiction, what Irwin (1976) is pointing out here is how all other effects depend on the author’s ability to secure the intellectual consent of the audience: “Likely mental acceptance and emotional response operate concurrently, and interpretation may be little, if any, behind them. But I believe it a distinctive, perhaps unique, characteristic of fantasy that mental conviction is indispensable to any other effect” (p. 86). In this order of ideas, the text is finally controlled by a single proposition or understanding—the existence of an alternative world or the introduction of a fantastic element in an otherwise realistic setting—from which all other rhetorical moves are derived. 43

Based on this basic conception of fantasy, Irwin (1976) pays significant attention to the different rhetorical strategies characteristic of the genre, from the manner in which the fantastic enters the text to the general sobriety of style that can be appreciated in most fantasy novels. The author must choose, for example, if the supernatural elements are implicitly acknowledged from the start or introduced later on, and how this can be accomplished. The same supernatural elements that define the genre must not only contravene the accepted norm, but also engage the interest and attention of the reader. As

Irwin points out: “A fantasist chooses to invent a narrative embodying this or that impossibility, and in this choice, if he is prudent, he will be governed by a discrimination between potential advantages and disadvantages” (p. 63).

Once the audience’s belief has been secured, the author needs to employ additional narrative resources to sustain the illusion. While other forms of fiction, including some fantastic and antirealistic narratives, admit extreme experimentation and intentional distortions of language, most authors of fantasy seem to keep a distinctive straightforward and objective style that contrasts with the bizarre occurrences they are describing. The same clarity and objectivity can be appreciated as well in the manner in which the setting, characters and events are presented. As Irwin (1976) explains, “What happens must be clear, because it could not happen. That is only an application of the principle of presentational realism. That mistiness or uncertainty as to fact which other writers sometimes use to advantage rarely occurs in fantasy” (p. 72).

All these rhetorical moves serve, again, to sustain the central denial of fact that the reader is ultimately required to accept. Irwin (1976) uses the idea of play, taken 44 mostly from the theoretical work of Dutch historian Johan Huizinga, to describe the distinctive kind of credence that is expected from the audience: “The willful entering of a nonserious activity, as Huizinga described it, is exactly what a fantasy invites the reader to do” (p. 66). What this means is that readers are free to engage in the literary game that the fantasy text is proposing, but they must abide by its rules, and accept the supernatural element of the story as true, for as long as they decide to play. The audience’s belief is ultimately “playful,” according to Irwin, because it is never expected to be permanent or taken seriously beyond the game itself.

Though this applies as well to other forms of fiction, the case of fantasy is particularly interesting for the manner in which readers are not only constantly aware that what they are reading is factually impossible, in a way that most realistic fiction is not, but are also expected to put both worlds side by side and reflect on the relationship between reality and fantasy. As Irwin (1976) puts it, while we are still invited to engage with the story, and have certain expectations, hopes and fears about the fate of the characters, we are also expected to maintain what he calls a “sense of intellectual alienation as a means of reflecting on the displaced real,” emphasizing how “until the reader has used the story for some kind of critique of what it opposes, the experience that the fantasy enables is incomplete” (p. 76).

Authorial and narrative audiences. As all these theories of fantasy suggest, the key element to understand the genre, and how it is different from other forms of fiction, is the distinctive relationship between the audience and the world of the story: How readers ultimately engage with a world that is essentially different from their own. There are, of 45 course, multiple ways to understand this relationship, from Tolkien’s notion of Secondary

Belief to Irwin’s formulation of how readers must temporarily assent to the construct without abandoning the convention it opposes. However, I want to suggest here that one of the most effective ways to examine the way readers relate to the world of the story is by attending to the theoretical distinction between the authorial and narrative audiences first developed by Peter Rabinowitz in his 1977 article “Truth in Fiction: A

Reexamination of Audiences.”

For Rabinowitz, the nature of all fictional narratives implies an aesthetic experience that exists on more than one level. On the one hand, the events of the story must be treated as true in order to get the emotional payoff and engagement that most authors expect from the reader; on the other hand, however, the reader must be conscious that what he is reading is not a real report and the characters and events of the story are only fictional creations. According to Rabinowitz (1977), “in the proper reading of a novel, then, events must be treated as both ‘true’ and ‘untrue’ at the same time” (p. 125).

While this might be especially clear in fantasy and other forms of antirealistic fiction, where not only the events and the characters, but the fictional world itself is explicitly invented, it applies to realistic fiction as well.

In order to explain this duality, Rabinowitz (1977) proposes that there are several audiences involved in the aesthetic experience of the text. First of all is the actual audience, the “flesh-and-blood” people who buy, read and sometimes analyze the book, over which the author has no effective control at all. However, as Rabinowitz points out, an author “cannot write without making certain assumptions about his reader’s beliefs, 46 knowledge, and familiarity with conventions” (p. 126). This hypothetical version of the reader, based on the author’s own knowledge and expectations about his actual audience, is called the authorial audience and not only determines the particular rhetorical choices that the author makes as he writes, but also suggests a position for the actual reader to assume in relation to the text. Since the text is ultimately designed with the authorial audience in mind, the actual audience must do its best to approach this hypothetical version of the reader, in order to get the experience and understanding that the author originally intended. 12

In addition to joining the authorial audience of the work, the reader needs to join

(or pretend to join) as well what Rabinowitz (1977) calls the narrative audience: An imaginary audience within the world of the book to which the narrator (and not the author) is telling the story. For this narrative audience, the events, characters and settings described in the book are real, no matter what the authorial and actual audience believe, beliefs of which the narrative audience is of course unaware. As Rabinowitz points out,

“If we fail to pretend to be members of the narrative audience, or if we misapprehend the beliefs of that audience, we are apt to make invalid, even perverse, interpretations” (p.

12 Consider, for example, how we must make an extra effort to adopt the world view of the 19th century original audience in order to understand some classic children’s books like Little Women or The Water-

Babies.

129). This, again, is especially true for fantasy where the rules of the fictional world contradict the experience and expectations of the authorial audience.13

While there is always a basic difference between the authorial and narrative audience in terms of whether or not they take the story as real, it is possible to see how the distance between the two audiences fluctuates according to the specific work we are reading and what we are required to accept as true in order to join the narrative audience.

Based on this observation, Rabinowitz (1977) proposes a classification of narrative fiction determined by the distance between the authorial and narrative audiences (p. 131).

At one end of the spectrum we would have what we call realistic literature, where the distance between the two audiences is minimal; at the other end, we would have all manner of antirealistic fiction, starting with Todorov’s fantastic narratives and moving to science fiction, horror stories, and finally fantasy.

This classification is further developed in Before Reading: Narrative Conventions and the Politics of Interpretation (1987/1998), where Rabinowitz explains how the differences between the authorial and narrative audience must be clearly marked in the text, in order for us to know how to read and interpret the story: “To use a comparison from music, realism is like the basic tempo from which nonrealism departs as a rubato; all fiction is at heart realistic except insofar as it signals us to respond in some other

13 In addition to these three basic audiences, Phelan and Rabinowitz (2012) find it useful to distinguish in some texts between the narrative audience, as a role that the reader pretends to assume in order to get the full effect of the text, and the specific character or audience, within the text itself, that the narrator is explicitly addressing: What we usually call the narratee (p. 6-8).

48 fashion” (p. 102). This not only highlights how there is always some “overlap” between both audiences, and a certain continuity between realistic and antirealistic fiction, but also how the latter explicitly challenges most modern readers’ expectations about fiction, requiring a different way of reading.

Rabinowitz’s (1977) approach is useful for the study of fantasy because it clearly distinguishes between realism, understood in terms of the distance between the authorial and narrative audience, and the manner in which authors employ the different narrative devices at their disposal to bridge the resulting gap between the two: “The novel is more or less convincing, depending on how skillfully the novelist navigates us across that distance, and how likely we are to be standing on the dock—in the authorial audience— when the trip begins” (p. 133). Though Rabinowitz does not address the rhetorical strategies of fantasy, this distinction ultimately highlights how the relationship between the reader (meaning here the authorial audience) and the fantasy world of the story becomes the central narrative problem of the genre.

In antirealistic, or fantastic, novels (Alice in Wonderland, for example), the

narrative audience is asked to take on a great deal more—beliefs which, like the

belief in the White Rabbit, do moreover contradict the very beliefs and

experiences of the authorial audience. Obviously, the wider the gap—the more

unusual or outrageous the beliefs that the narrative audience is required to take

on—the greater the effort required to bridge it. Thus, we become more conscious

that the novel is double leveled and that we must employ “pretense” to become

involved in reading it. This, in turn, increases our awareness of the novel as art,

and tends to diminish our direct emotional involvement in it. (pp. 131-132)

While the idea that it is harder to command the belief of the reader in texts that include some fantastic or supernatural element is already present in both Tolkien’s lecture and Irwin’s rhetorical analysis, the theoretical distinction between authorial and narrative audience allows us to understand better the reader’s multileveled experience with fantasy, how readers engage with the text and, at least on some level, why we read this type of literature at all. Though Rabinowitz (1977) explicitly highlights how the difficulty in bridging the gap reduces the reader’s emotional involvement with the story, as well as the work’s overall “didactic power” (p. 132-133), this does not mean that readers are indifferent to whatever is going on with the characters or that fantasy has nothing to say about our everyday experience of reality.

In order to understand the issue of emotional involvement, it is important to remember that part of the reader’s commitment in joining the authorial audience is actually being willing to assume the position of the narrative audience as well. According to Rabinowitz (1977), if we fail to pretend that the characters and events of the story are real, allowing the possibility for emotional engagement, then we are not reading narrative fiction properly: “Anyone who argues that Holmes is simply a fiction, and thus refuses to fear for his safety as he battles Moriarty, is missing the point of the whole experience” (p.

125). While this might be more difficult to do in antirealistic fiction, where we are dealing with impossible or supernatural events and characters, we still have to pretend that these are real in order to get the full effect of the text. 50

Once we join the narrative audience and move into the fictional world of the story—the idea of crossing a portal or threshold works here particularly well—we are as emotionally involved with the characters as in any other form of fiction. Most readers of the Harry Potter series, for example, are emotionally shocked when Albus Dumbledore dies at the end of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, just as they are moved throughout the series by Ron and Hermione’s loyalty, or inspired by Harry’s own courage and resolve. It does not matter that the world where the events take place is essentially different from our own, or even that the characters themselves are witches and wizards

(not to mention elves or centaurs) rather than ordinary humans: Once we accept their existence, and assume the position of the narrative audience, there is no functional difference between realistic fiction and fantasy.

The distinction between both genres only becomes apparent when we move back to the level of the authorial audience and recognize how the story challenges our expectations and beliefs about reality. As Irwin (1976) points out, what the reader considers impossible or fantastic ultimately depends on an intuitive and social consensus about the world of nonliterary experience, and it is precisely against this idea or sense of reality that the author of fantasy is playing (pp. 60-63). While knowing that the events of the story could never happen in real life might reduce the authorial audience’s connection with the characters and the story as a whole, it also provides an additional emotional payoff: The feeling of awe, strangeness and wonder associated with the contemplation of impossible or supernatural worlds and events.

One of the main reasons we read fantasy at all is precisely because it takes us away from the world of everyday experience and what we consider possible or impossible in that world, providing a particular kind of intellectual and emotional gratification. It is not casual at all that Tolkien (1947/1966) talks about the desire and inherent human capacity to conceive, create, and contemplate other worlds when he talks about the origins and enjoyment of fairy-stories (pp. 63-70). As most readers of the Harry

Potter series can attest, part of the pleasure we get from this type of books comes, at least in part, from imagining a world in which all manner of strange creatures exist, where anyone with the talent (and a functioning wand) can become a great wizard, and where it is possible to fly around on broomsticks.

Once again, the key to understand the reader’s experience with fantasy is to consider both levels simultaneously: How readers must be completely engaged with the events of story and at the same time aware that these could never happen in real life. As

Rabinowitz (1977) explains, in relation to any form of representational art, including fiction, “the aesthetic experience of such works exists on two levels at once. We can treat the work neither as what it is nor as what it appears to be; we must be aware simultaneously of both aspects” (p. 125). It is precisely in this sense that the distinction between authorial and narrative audience provides an effective theoretical tool to understand the genre and the reader’s engagement with fantasy, in a way that traditional understandings of the reader’s experience with fiction cannot.

While the question of “didactic power” deals also with the relationship between the different audiences involved, it focuses more on how readers interpret and evaluate 52 the text after they finish the book. According to Rabinowitz (1977), “[i]t would seem that the greater the distance between authorial and narrative audience (the less realistic the novel in our new definition), the less impact a moral lesson learned by the narrative audience is likely to have on the authorial audience” (p. 132). Though he is not saying at all that there are no lessons or didactic purpose in fantasy, he does question if what we learn as we are reading will “stick” once we move back to the position of the authorial and finally the actual audience, and recognize that the events of the story are not only fictional, but also could never happen in real life.

As Ann Swinfen (1984) points out, bringing us back to some of the issues discussed at length in the introduction about the value and perceived escapist nature of fantasy, there is an extended critical prejudice towards fantasy based on the idea that realistic fiction is somehow “more profound” and more immediately concerned with the issues and ethical questions that are significant for the reader (pp. 10-11). Of course, since the authorial and narrative audiences are closer together in this type of fiction, it is easier for the readers to make connections between what is going on in the book and their own experience, problems and moral values. However, it is important to remember that even if the story is situated in a different world altogether, the author is always writing with the authorial audience in mind.

The implication, of course, is that the story must be, at least on some level, not only relatable and understandable for the reader, but also significant and relevant as well.

It does not matter if the connection is not as immediate or direct as what we have in realistic fiction, fantasy still asks the audience to reflect—in a much more self-conscious 53 manner—on the significance and meaning of the story. As Brian Attebery (1992) points out, “[r]ather than leaving us in a solipsistic void, fantasy invites us to recreate what it has denied. As soon as it is announced that the world we are reading about bears no relation to our world, we begin to make connections” (p. 67). From this perspective, the reader is actually required to take an even more active and thoughtful role in reconstructing and interpreting the text than in other types of fiction.

There are even certain topics and ideas that fantasy can address and reflect upon in a way that realistic fiction cannot, or at least not as effectively. As Kiefer (2010) points out, highlighting how a book like Ursula Le Guin’s A Wizard of Earthsea addresses the issue of responsibility and confronting one’s own mistakes: “In a book of realism, such theme might appear to be a thinly disguised religious lesson; in fantasy it becomes an exciting quest for identity and self-knowledge” (p. 286). Perhaps more important yet, as I mention in the introduction, by taking us to another world and putting things in a different context, fantasy not only provides some distance and perspective, renewing our perception of the real world, but also invites us to consider alternative ideas, approaches and solutions to the problems of everyday life.

1.2. Mendlesohn’s Taxonomy

While all fantasy fiction invites readers to accept as true a premise (or premises) that explicitly contradict their experience of reality, emphasizing the distance between the authorial and narrative audiences, there is still a remarkable variety within the genre:

From a lighthearted book like E. Nesbit’s Five Children and It, where the protagonists have to deal with the presence of a wish-granting fairy in an otherwise realistic setting, to 54 a series of novels like Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials, where the characters travel through various parallel universes and become part of a vast cosmological conflict with profound philosophical and anti-religious resonances. Just as there are different genres or subgenres within the broader category of what we call realistic fiction, multiple critics have proposed their own taxonomy of fantasy.

Perhaps the most extended and popular classification of the genre distinguishes between High and Low fantasy. On its most basic formulation, High fantasy refers to those narratives taking place in an alternative world, essentially different from the world of the reader, but presented as having the inner consistency of reality, like Narnia,

Prydain or Middle Earth. Conversely, Low fantasy is set on what appears to be the real world (often contemporary to both the author and the authorial audience), except for the introduction of some fantastic or supernatural element. According to Peter Hunt (2001),

“the most fundamental difference might seem to be between fantasy set in ‘this’ world, where there is a tension between the ‘normal’ and the fantastic elements, and ‘other’ worlds in which the fantastic is the norm” (p. 11).

The term High fantasy, however, has come to be associated with a very particular form of “other world” fantasy. Commonly set in medieval or pseudo medieval settings, most examples of High fantasy borrow heavily from traditional legends, romances and myth, while following very closely the distinctive structure of the märchen (Sullivan,

2004, pp. 437-439). Though the protagonists are not necessarily heroic or even familiar with the fantasy world around them, they often become involved in dangerous quests and large-scale conflicts that give these fantasies a more serious and epic tone. As Brian 55

Attebery (1980) points out, both the structure of the plot and the nature of the fantasy world itself further support a clearly ordered and moral view of the world that becomes also characteristic of this type of fantasy.

High fantasy establishes a sphere of significance, in which the actions of hero and

inhuman, helper and villain, reflect a coherent and extractable order. Characters

are not merely individuals but upholders of moral and intellectual standards. In

most fantasies there is a strong polarization of good and evil, so that the hero’s

quest concerns not only his own coming of age but also the fate of the kingdom.

Acts in fantasy are always meaningful, because everything connects with, or

signifies, everything else. (pp. 13-14)

While the category includes some of the most recognizable and influential works of fantasy—from The Lord of the Rings to the Harry Potter series—the distinction between High and Low fantasy is not as comprehensive as it seems. Mervyn Peake’s

Gormenghast trilogy, for example, is particularly difficult to situate: The books certainly create an autonomous fantasy world, as suggestive and complex as Middle Earth, but do not follow the traditional structure of the quest, or share the serious tone and clear-cut morality of Tolkien’s novels. On the other end of the spectrum, there is a variety of books that might be classified as Low fantasy, since they are set in what appear to be the “real world”, but have little in common with each other, from animal fantasies like Watership

Down to horror stories like Dracula.

Even if we focus exclusively on setting, many fantasy novels do not fit neatly in either category. In addition to the many stories where the protagonists actually move 56 from one world to another, there are books like Nancy Bond’s A String in the Harp and

Diana Wynne Jones’ Fire and Hemlock, where the fantastic and the real world seem to exist in parallel, forcing the characters and the reader to deal with both realities at once.

According to Ann Swinfen (1984), this type of fantasy books, as well as most time-shift fantasies like The Children of Green Knowe and Tom Midnight’s Garden, belong “to an intermediate area of imaginative experience, where an often precarious balance must be maintained between two distinct worlds, and where awareness of one world is constantly coloured by awareness of the other” (p. 44).

Some authors like Ruth Nadelman Lynn (1995) and Barbara Kiefer (2010) include High fantasy in their extensive reviews of fantasy literature for children, but situate it among several other categories defined by content and tone rather than setting alone. Kiefer distinguishes, for example, between stories where the characters have (or get access to) magical powers, books dealing with the occult and the supernatural, and stories set in imaginary realms that lack the seriousness and complexity of High fantasy, among many others. Since both authors are essentially concerned with children’s literature, they also pay particular attention to certain types of fantasy books commonly intended for younger audiences like animal fantasies, eccentric characters and preposterous situations, and toys and dolls coming alive.

As W. R. Irwin points out in The Game of the Impossible (1976), given the inherent possibilities of genre, it is difficult to propose an all-encompassing taxonomy:

“Fantasy resists tidy classification. Working independently, the writers have had diverse interests, capabilities, purposes, and knowledge, and their productions are accordingly 57 diverse” (p. 99). This does not stop him, however, from organizing his study around five different categories based on the essential invention or proposition contrary to fact that defines the nature of the fantastic: Metamorphosis or personal changes; incredible societies; unorthodox notions of innocence; literary parody, extension or adaptation; and finally the supernatural itself (which includes in turn: supernatural visitors, total mythologies, and theological romances).

There are still many other ways to classify or categorize the genre, and some go in more detail than others. Diana Waggoner (1978), for example, distinguishes between mythic, faerie and ghost fantasy, depending on the nature of the supernatural being that intrudes into the real world; as well as different types of time travel and stories where the characters move from one world to another, according to their means, purposes and consequences. She also proposes a broader classification of fantasy based on the mood of the story, including Mythopoeic, Heroic, Adventurous, Ironic, Comic, Nostalgic,

Sentimental and Horrific fantasies. A book like Five Children and It, for example, can be classified as a “comic fantasy” given its humorous tone (p. 52), but it is also a “faerie fantasy” where the magic “operates in the natural present” (p. 100).

While all these categorizations suggest significant similarities and differences among fantasy books in terms of content, theme and mood, highlighting the variety and possibilities of the genre, they ultimately pay little attention to the rhetorical strategies of fantasy. As Farrah Mendlesohn (2008) points out, looking at the critical history of the genre, “there is relatively little comparative criticism beyond the study of metaphorical and thematic elements. There is almost nothing dealing with the language of the fantastic 58 that goes beyond aesthetic preference” (p. xiii). Though critics like Irwin and Attebery certainly engage in this type of comparative language-oriented criticism, they are more concerned with finding commonalities and differentiate the genre from other forms of fiction than proposing a functional taxonomy.

According to Mendlesohn, however, it is not only possible to distinguish between several categories of fantasy based on the specific narrative and rhetorical strategies that the authors themselves employ, but the stylistic requirements of each category are recognizably distinct. First developed in article form in 2002, and extensively applied and revised in her later books Diana Wynne Jones: Children’s Literature and the Fantastic

Tradition (2005) and Rhetorics of Fantasy (2008), her taxonomy effectively moves away from traditional approaches to the genre, and focuses instead on how the text becomes fantasy—how the fantastic elements are introduced, explored or taken for granted within the fictional world of the story—where is the reader required to stand in relation to the fantastic, and how this is all connected with the author’s linguistic and narrative choices, as well as the consequences it has for the ideological positioning of the audience.

Based on these criteria, Mendlesohn (2008) recognizes four basic categories: The portal-quest, the immersive, the intrusive and the liminal fantasy.

In the portal-quest we are invited through into the fantastic; in the intrusion

fantasy, the fantastic enters the fictional world; in the liminal fantasy, the magic

hovers in the corner of our eye; while in the immersive fantasy we are allowed no

escape. Each category has as profound an influence on the rhetorical structures of

the fantastic as does its taproot text or genre. (pp. xiv-xv) 59

Though the model is more or less compatible with the basic distinction between

High and Low fantasy—as the intrusive and the liminal fantasy are often set in what appears to be the real world, while the immersive and the portal-quest invite the reader to a different world altogether—Mendlesohn’s categorization focuses on the relationship between the reader, the characters and the fantastic, rather than just the setting and content of the story. In the intrusion fantasy, for example, the fantastic disrupts the established order of the world, forcing the characters (and the reader) to negotiate or defeat the intrusion. While we are supposed to be aware that something odd is going on, and ultimately accept the presence of the fantastic, we are never expected to get accustomed to it, preserving a constant sense of amazement.

The tension between what the characters know (and ignore) and what they only intuit, and the gradual and increasing manifestation of the fantastic, have significant consequences for the manner in which this type of texts is written. As Mendlesohn (2008) points out, “the rhythm of the intrusion fantasy is a cycle of suspension and release, latency and escalation, hesitation and remorselessness” (p. 115). While the descriptive style of the category is somewhat similar to the style of the portal-quest fantasy, it often leaves the impression that there is something else in the shadows that we are not able to see or understand. At the same time, there is a constant introduction of new elements (or an increase in the effects and scale of the intrusion) in order to sustain the feelings of awe, surprise and horror characteristic of the category.

The effect is completely different from what we get, for example, in the immersive fantasy, where the amazement and wonder characteristic of the intrusion and 60 the portal-quest fantasy respectively are replaced by a feeling of ennui or normality. As

Mendlesohn (2008) explains: “The immersive fantasy must take no quarter: it must assume that the reader is as much a part of the world as are those being read about” (p.

59). There are no concessions or explanations for the reader, who must assume the position of the narrative audience from the start, without explicit indications from the author on how that fictional world might work. The language, in this sense, is not much different from what we find in most contemporary realistic fiction, describing in a matter- of-fact way what would otherwise be extraordinary for the authorial audience.

This is also different from what happens with the liminal fantasy, where the status of the fantastic is never fully clear: Either we are never sure if the fantastic elements are indeed there or not—a technique that Mendlesohn (2005) calls equipoise and defines as

“that moment of balance between the mimesis and the fantastic” (p. 136)—or what is clearly fantastic within the world of the story is never properly acknowledged by the protagonists—what she calls in turn irony and effectively “estranges the reader from the fantastic as understood by the protagonist” (p. 136). Despite being the hardest to achieve,

Mendlesohn (2008) finally sees the liminal fantasy as the “most fantastical” of all the categories, considering how it ultimately depends on the understanding and subversion of the conventions of the genre (pp. 244-245).

The portal-quest fantasy. Of all Mendlesohn’s (2008) categories, the one more closely associated with children’s literature is the portal-quest fantasy, defined in its most basic formulation as a story in which the reader follows the protagonist from a familiar and recognizable setting, through some form of portal or transitional experience, into 61 direct contact with the fantastic (p. 1). Many of the most popular and influential fantasy books for children certainly fall into this category, from early classics like Alice’s

Adventures in Wonderland and L. Frank Baum’s Oz books to a recent publishing phenomenon like Harry Potter, which incidentally starts as an intrusion fantasy (both tonally and structure-wise), but then takes us little by little into the hidden magical world where the rest of the adventure takes place.

Perhaps the best example, however, is C. S. Lewis’ The Lion, the Witch and the

Wardrobe, a book that Mendlesohn (2008) identifies several times as the “classic” or

“archetypal” portal fantasy, emphasizing how the novel is “more visibly aware” than other texts of the “juxtaposition of its two worlds” (pp. xix, 1, 17, 30-31).14 Unlike what happens in Harry Potter, for example, where the real world and the fantastic overlap— suggesting we are from the start in an alternate reality, where magic and wizards exist, even if most regular people or “muggles” are unaware of their existence—the moment

Lucy steps through the wardrobe at the beginning of Lewis’ novel and suddenly finds herself outdoors, in the midst of this wonderful winter landscape, it becomes clear how she is moving into different world altogether.

14 As explained in the introduction, while most of the books I mention in this section are part of longer series, where each volume begins and ends with the characters moving between worlds, I focus primarily on the first entry in each case, where the effect of the transit is more dramatic and central to the progression of the narrative.

Something cold and soft was falling on her. A moment later she found that she

was standing in the middle of a wood at night-time with snow under her feet and

snowflakes falling through the air.

Lucy felt a little frightened, but she felt very inquisitive and excited as

well. She looked back over her shoulder and there, between the dark tree-trunks,

she could still see the open doorway of the wardrobe and even catch a glimpse of

the empty room from which she had set out. (Lewis, 1950/2002, p. 7)

The wardrobe functions very explicitly as a threshold or doorway between worlds.

On one side, we have what seems to be the real world: London, the air-raids, the

Professor’s house, Mrs. Macready—a world that Lewis’ authorial audience would have been easily able to recognize. On the other side, we have this distinct fantasy setting, a place as strange and marvelous for Lucy, and later her brothers and her sister, as it is in one way or another for the reader. Not only is the forest itself a surprising sight, that contrasts with the enclosed space of the house, but soon enough a “strange person” appears, with goat’s hoofs instead of feet and a pair of horns on his head—“a Faun,” the narrator explains—announcing how Narnia is full of strange and magical creatures, from dryads and talking beasts to Aslan himself.15

15 The scene has a lot in common with the beginning of George MacDonald’s Phantastes, one of the first books to portray this type of transit between worlds and a favorite of Lewis’ himself. In the story, the hero,

Anados, wakes up to find his room—a distinctly Victorian space that, as Marion Lochhead (1977) points out, “MacDonald’s original readers would have known, including any children who looked into the book”

(p. 2)—transformed into woodland glade crossed by a stream that leads, in turn, to Fairy Land.

Even when the characters are not technically moving between worlds, as it happens in most traditional quest fantasies, we still have the same type of transitional narrative. As Mendlesohn (2002) remarks—highlighting how a book like The Lord of the

Rings, for example, ultimately falls into this category—despite being situated from the start in another world, the quest protagonist “still goes from a mundane life, in which the fantastic, if he or she is aware of it, is very distant and unknown (or at least unavailable to the protagonist) into direct contact with the fantastic” (p. 714). Though there might not be an ontological difference between one space and the other, the trajectory and resulting experience of the protagonist (through whose perspective we approach and ultimately learn about that world) is still quite similar.

This is, again, particularly common in children’s books, where the characters are often children themselves, who are leaving their home or village for the first time.

Consider what happens with Taran, the protagonist of Lloyd Alexander’s The Book of

Three (1964/2006). While he has lived all his life on Prydain, once he chases Hen Wen into the forest, “farther than he had ever dared venture” (the language here is already significant), it is clear how he has moved into a different space, emphasized by the narrator’s description of the landscape and the emotional effect it has on him: “In the meadow Taran had been flushed and perspiring. Now he shivered in the silence of oaks and elms. (…) A damp green scent filled the air. No bird called; no squirrel chattered.

The forest seemed to be holding its breath” (pp. 14-15).16

16 The scene, of course, leads to the spectacular and terrifying appearance of the Horned King, introducing early on the main villain of the story and, in doing so, setting up the quest, while highlighting how Taran

Though Mendlesohn (2008) still distinguishes between pure portal and pure quest fantasies in order to highlight certain elements that are more prevalent in one or the other, she specifically includes them both within the same category, emphasizing how there is not only a significant overlap between the two—hardly surprising when we consider how most portal fantasies tend to be also quest narratives—but even when there is not, as in the case of the pure quest fantasy, they still “assume same two movements: transition and exploration,” which define in turn the way in which the fantastic is presented and thematized in this type of texts (pp. 1-2). Contrary to the immersive fantasy, where the plot can take different forms (as long as we are situated from the start in direct contact with the fantastic, which is therefore accepted as normal), these two movements are key to understand how the portal-quest fantasy works.

Since the characters are, again, entering an unknown space, if it is not a different world altogether, the transition is naturally followed by a process of exploration and learning, as they not only get to see more of that world and the strange creatures that live there, but also start to engage and interact directly with the fantastic. Though this might not require further traveling, as it happens, for example, in Harry Potter, where most of the action takes place at Hogwarts (at least until the last book in the series), it is fairly common for this process to involve some form of journey; from Alice traveling across the

has entered a much more dangerous world than the bucolic and safe space of Caer Dallben: “Astride the foam-spattered animal rode a monstrous figure. A crimson cloak flamed from his naked shoulders. Crimson stained his gigantic arms. Horror-stricken, Taran saw not the head of a man but the antlered head of a stag.

(…) The Horned King!” (Alexander, 1964/2006, p. 15).

65 chessboard that is Carroll’s looking-glass world, and describing “what she finds there,” to a book like The Lord of the Rings, where the quest to destroy the evil lord Sauron takes the characters on a thousand-mile (three-volume long) excursion through the varied landscapes and kingdoms of Middle-earth.

The idea of the journey is, of course, a key component of the quest narrative. As mentioned above, while not all portal fantasies are quests, they more often than not

“contain the journey and the goal” that define this type of stories (Mendlesohn, 2008, pp.

1-3). The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe provides again a great example. While the beginning of the book is mainly focused on the discovery that the wardrobe is a threshold between worlds, with everything that implies, it does not take long for Lucy and then the rest of the children to find out that, in order to save Edmund from the Witch, with whom he has been conspiring from the start, and restore the fantasy world to its former glory, they must reach the Stone Table, and later Cair Paravel, and become kings and queens of

Narnia, as foretold in an ancient prophecy.

Down at Cair Paravel—that’s the castle on the seacoast down at the mouth of this

river which ought to be the capital of the whole country if all was as it shall be—

down at Cair Paravel there are four thrones and it’s a saying in Narnia time out of

mind that when two Sons of Adam and two Daughters of Eve sit in those four

thrones, then it will be the end not only of the White Witch’s reign but her life.

(Lewis, 1950/2002, p. 89)

In addition to highlighting the idea of destiny and reward that underlines the characters’ journey—a feature that comes directly from the epic, fairy tales and medieval 66 romances from which the portal-quest fantasy also inherits a sense of linearity and unity of action—the passage is particularly interesting for the manner in which it emphasizes the spatial dimension of the quest, how part of the characters’ mission is to reach a specific place, forcing them to travel across Narnia and face the challenges and difficulties they will find along the way. What Joseph Campbell (1949/2008) calls, using again a spatial metaphor, the Road of Trials: A “favorite phase of the myth adventure,” where the hero enters a “dream landscape” and faces a serious of “difficult tasks” in order to prove his worth and skills (pp. 81-82).

While the characters might not be looking to explore and learn about the fantasy world per se, they ultimately embark on (and, in doing so, provide the audience with) what Mendlesohn (2008) mockingly describes, following Diana Wynne Jones, as a

“guided tour of the landscapes,” where we get to visit every place and see every culture and creature that makes part of the fictional world (p. xix). This not only allows the author to show how enormous and varied that world is, reinforcing the illusion that we are dealing with an autonomous and fully realized setting, but also constantly renew our sense of wonder, as we are continuously presented with new vistas, details and situations that we would never expect to find in real life, and are often stranger and more fantastic than the last, preventing the accretion of comfort.

It is not casual at all that most portal-quest fantasies include a map (or maps) of the fictional world where we can see all the different places that the characters will visit or talk about on their journey; from the simple, almost cartoonish map of Prydain at the beginning of The Book of Three to the much more elaborate and cartographically sound 67 maps of Middle-earth that accompany Tolkien’s work and can be said to have started the trend (see Ekman, 2013, pp. 14-15). These maps serve at the same time as a guiding tool for the reader, who can follow the characters’ progress (sometimes quite literally) and get some sense of where everything is taking place, and a sign of the importance of the setting, how (much like the Pevensie children) we are invited to enter and explore that world, which becomes almost a character in the story.

According to Mendlesohn (2008), both portal and quest fantasies ultimately employ a similar narrative strategy, where they “[deny] the taken for granted and position[] both protagonist and reader as naïve,” proceeding then to present and explain the fantasy world “through the explanations offered to the protagonist” (pp. 2; 31).

Unlike the immersive fantasy, where everyone is assumed from the start to be part of the fictional world of the story, and therefore require no “guided tour” or explanation about the strange things that happen there (which are, again, perceived as normal), the portal- quest fantasy invites us to follow a distinctly inexperienced set of characters as they travel through and learn more about a world that is as strange and wonderful for them as it is, in one way or another, for the reader.

While most narrative works (of any genre) invite us to follow one character or another, and consider their perspective and understanding of the events, the relation between the protagonist and the reader is fundamental in texts like The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe and The Book or Three, where the characters mediate more explicitly our experience with the fictional world. As Mendlesohn (2008) explains, “one of the defining features of the portal-quest fantasy is that we ride with the point of view of the 68 character who describes fantasyland and the adventure for the reader, as if we are both with her and yet external to the fantasy world” (p. 8). Not only are we dependent on the protagonist to know what is going on, but it is also through him or her that the fantasy world is presented and explained for the audience.

This double positioning of the reader as “companion-audience” is very clear, for example, in the first half of Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone (Rowling,

1997/2010). On the one hand, we follow the protagonist as he finally learns what happened to his parents, meets Hagrid and other important characters and prepares to go to school. At the same time, we take a guided tour of the magical world, from the Leaky

Cauldron to Hogwarts and everything in between; we learn about sports (“Like football in the Muggle world – everyone follows Quidditch” (p. 61)), currency exchange

(“Seventeen Sickles to a Galleon and twenty-nine Knuts to a Sickle” (p. 58)), and even magical trading cards (“Harry stared as Dumbledore sidled back into the picture in his card and gave him a small smile” (p. 77)).

The most visible consequence of this for the language of the portal-quest fantasy is the abundance of descriptive passages. Contrary to the immersive fantasy where the fictional world is constructed (or re-constructed) through allusions and hints, the language of the portal-quest fantasy is “intensely descriptive and exploratory rather than assumptive” (Mendlesohn, 2008, p. xix). Though we still see the world through the eyes of the protagonist, the focus is on the fantasy world itself, which is described in almost anthropological detail. A technique that Mendlesohn (2005) compares, with the way some Pre-Raphaelite paintings retain the mathematics of perspective, while rendering 69 each part of a landscape or scene with the same intricate detail, distorting the way the eye naturally focuses on certain elements over others (pp. 83-84).

While this type of descriptive language is easier to sustain when the characters are actually moving between worlds—and their ignorance, curiosity and wonder are to be expected—it is also a prominent feature in most quest fantasies. One of the best examples to this day is still Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings (1954-1955/2004), where the protagonists’ long journey is punctuated by rich descriptions of the landscapes, peoples and cultures of Middle Earth. Consider the scene where Gandalf and Pippin ride into

Gondor at the beginning of the third volume. Even before the hobbit wakes up and sees

Minas Tirith for the first time, we get a detailed description of the whole kingdom, from the fertile fields of the Pelennor, where the characters are actually moving through, to the regions on the other side of the White Mountains.

The townlands were rich, with wide tilth and many orchards, and homesteads

there were with oast and garner, fold and byre, and many rills rippling through the

green from the highlands down to Anduin. Yet the heardsmen and husbandmen

that dwelt there were not many, and the most part of the people of Gondor lived in

the seven circles of the city, or in the high vales of the mountain-borders in

Lossarnach, or further south in fair Lebennin with its five swift streams. There

dwelt a hardy folk between the mountains and the sea. (p. 750)

Though we are technically following the characters on their journey and we finally see the city through Pippin’s eyes to great dramatic effect, the passage is clearly intended to present and explain the fictional world directly to the reader. By giving us all 70 these details about Gondor and its people, Tolkien is not only situating the action in preparation for what is to come later on in the novel, but also creating the illusion that the fictional world has its own history and economic geography. The effect is further emphasized by the extensive appendixes included at the end of the book (and explicitly intended for the reader), where he traces the history and genealogy of the different kingdoms and royal houses, comments on the calendar of Middle-earth, and discusses in depth his invented alphabets and languages.17

All this contributes, once more, to the overall process of exploration and learning that defines not just the characters’, but the reader’s experience as well. As Mendlesohn

(2008) points out, emphasizing the difference between the intrusion and the portal-quest fantasy, while the two start from a similar position, where the fantastic is seen as strange and contrasted with a more or less mundane reality, the portal-quest fantasy “allows and relies upon both protagonist and reader gaining experience” (p. xix). Unlike the intrusion fantasy where the character is never expected to grow at ease, much less accustomed to the fantastic, preserving a constant sense of amazement, the portal-quest fantasy always

17 The same kind of explicative device can more recently be appreciated in a work like J. M. Cornish’s novel Foundling (2006/2007), first entry in the award-winning Monster Blood Tattoo series, where the story itself is followed by a lengthy “Explicarium” or “glossary of terms & explanations including appendices,” supposedly based, among other sources, on the same almanac or reference book that the protagonist consults throughout his journeys, and covers everything from the history of the Half Continent to the different moves of harundo or stick fighting (pp. 313-434).

71 leads us to the point where the character “knows his or her world enough to change it and to enter into that world’s destiny” (p. xix).

As a series such as Harry Potter highlights, this is particularly clear in children’s books where the protagonist is in the process of growing up and becoming his or hers own person. Though it will take the whole series for Harry to come of age and leave

Hogwarts for good, by the end of the first book he not only passes his exams, despite the fact that we rarely see him studying—“To their great surprise, both he and Ron passed with good marks; Hermione, of course, came top of the year” (Rowling, 1997/2010, p.

222)—but has also grown more confident and capable, to the point where he can assume his role as hero and confront Voldemort himself. As Hermione points out, when he is about to cross the flames that guard the Philosopher’s Stone, he might not be as book smart as her, but he is already a “great wizard” (p. 208).

Something similar happens to Taran at the end of The Book of Three. While he is initially more knowledgeable about Prydain than Harry is about the wizards’ world, as well as more eager to prove his worth and confront the Horned King head-on, despite

Dallben’s and Gwydion’s warnings; he not only discovers soon enough that being a hero is harder than he thought, and the implications of failing in his quest—“If he triumphs,

Arawn will have Prydain by the throat. I have seen with my own eyes what that means”

(Alexander, 1964/2006, p. 90)—but also comes to realize how he would never be able to succeed unless he has the support of his friends, revealing how he has grown more humble and self-aware than he was at beginning of the story: “‘At first,’ Taran went on,

‘I thought I would be able to reach Caer Dathyl by myself. I see now that I wouldn’t have got even this far without help’” (p. 107).

Though not all portal-quest characters are children, or become adults in the end, like the Pevensie siblings do in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, for example, it is not difficult to see why the form is particularly associated with children’s literature, a genre that, as Perry Nodelman (1996) puts it, deals more often than not with the process of growing up and “coming to terms with a world one does not understand—the world as defined and governed by grownups and not totally familiar or comprehensible to children” (p. 178). It is not casual at all that we see a lot of children in these stories assume what would otherwise be adult roles, from handling swords and wands, and facing dangerous, often older and more powerful opponents, to taking responsibilities that seem far beyond their age.

As Mendlesohn highlights in Diana Wynne Jones: Children’s Literature and the

Fantastic Tradition (2005), where she compares the trajectory of the characters with the structure of the Bildungsroman—“a form that is transition; from the world of childhood to the world of adults”—the portal-quest fantasy also shares with many children’s books the underlying theme of “moral growth” that defines the character’s journey: How the real reward of the quest is not a token or treasure, but a process of personal growth that leads to some form “redemption” or “admission to the kingdom” (pp. 80; 102). An impression that is further emphasized by the way journey and the world are both shaped by what Mendlesohn (2008) calls a “moralized cartography,” where the landscape itself

73 is associated with the morality of the place, and the completion of the quest often results in the restoration of the fantasy world (pp. 2-5).

Closing the narrative. While Mendlesohn’s characterization and analysis of the portal-quest fantasy certainly illuminates the way in which this type of text works, and highlights the importance of books like Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and The Lord of the Rings, she ultimately finds the rhetoric of the form inherently problematic. As she points out early on, when she emphasize how the fantasy world is explained to both the characters and, on a different level, the audience: “Even the most creative writers find it difficult in this form to avoid impressing upon the reader an authoritative interpretation of their world” (2008, p. xx). In opposition to the immersive fantasy in particular, where there can be a true argument and interrogation of the world, the portal-quest fantasy invites us to accept the fictional world as it is presented, reducing the possibility for alternative or contradictory interpretations.

According to Mendlesohn (2008), the very emphasis on the description of the landscape and the accumulation of insignificant details that we see in many of these books—from Tolkien’s early work to a series like Harry Potter—not only tend to flatten the world into “a series of descriptions made possible by the protagonists’ unfamiliarity with it,” making our knowledge and understanding of that world only superficial, but also implicitly assert the “narrative and descriptive competence of the protagonist,” on the one hand, and the reliability of the narrator, on the other, resulting in a type of text that demands the absolute belief of the reader (pp. 8-13). As Mendlesohn points out, highlighting how it is the “unquestionable purity of the tale” that sustains the portal-quest 74 fantasy: “Either the story is accepted in its entirety, or it is entirely vulnerable; there is no room for the delicacies of interpretation” (p. 7).

As mentioned early on, when I talked about the reception of fantasy literature in general, critical judgments like these are far from new. In her 1981 book Fantasy:

Literature of Subversion, Rosemary Jackson specifically highlights how this type of authoritative narration—associated primarily with what Todorov calls the marvelous— emphasizes the reliability of the narrative voice, reducing at the same time the reader’s participation and emotional involvement with the story: “The narrator is impersonal and has become an authoritative, knowing voice. (…) It has complete knowledge of completed events, its version of history is not questioned and the tale seems to deny the process of its own telling” (p. 33). Since Jackson is interested in how the genre subverts the expectations of the audience (in order to challenge the social order of the real world), she finds this type of narration particularly problematic.

While Jackson associates this narrative mode with traditional fairy tales and romances, for Mendlesohn (2008) the key taproot of the portal-quest fantasy is the 19th century club story: A tale or tales recounted orally among friends in a safe and secluded venue, where the storyteller is “uninterruptible and incontestable; and the narrative as it is downloaded is essentially closed” (p. 6). Like the audience in this type of stories, the protagonists and, on a different level, the reader are effectively isolated in the portal- quest fantasy from their usual frame of reference (be it the real world or the familiar and recognizable space where most quest fantasies begin) and situated in a context where

75 they cannot question what they are being told, encouraging the type of authoritative interpretation of the world described above.

According to Mendlesohn (2008), this club-story rhetoric is recreated on multiple levels. In addition to trusting the narrator and the interpretive position of the protagonist, from whose naïve and yet perceptive point of view we gain first access to the fantastic, there are other reliable sources within the fictional world itself that the author uses to describe and interpret that world for us, starting with the different guide figures that lead the characters (and the reader) on their journey. Consider how first Mr. Tumnus, then the beavers, explain the fantasy world to Lucy and the other children at the beginning of The

Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, from what Narnia itself is—“‘This is the land of

Narnia,’ said the Faun, ‘where we are now; all that lies between the lamp-post and the great castle of Cair Paravel on the eastern sea’” (Lewis, 1950/2002, p. 12)—to how

Aslan, not the White Queen, is the rightful ruler of the country.

“Who is Aslan?” asked Susan.

“Aslan?” said Mr. Beaver. “Why don’t you know? He is the King. He is

the Lord of the whole wood, but not often here, you understand. Never in my time

or my father’s time. But the word has reached us that he has come back. He is in

Narnia at this moment. He’ll settle the White Queen all right. It is he, not you, that

will save Mr. Tumnus.” (Lewis, 1950/2002, p. 85)

While the children are initially unsure whether or not to trust Mr. Beaver, once it is revealed that he is a friend of the faun—who, despite trying to kidnap Lucy early on,

76 has effectively sacrificed himself to save her—and starts telling them about Aslan’s coming, whose mere name evokes powerful feelings on the children, they not only follow him home—“No one except Edmund felt any difficulty about trusting the beaver now”

(Lewis, 1950/2002, p. 75)—but also accept everything he tells them about Narnia, their own role in the ancient prophecies, and how their only chance to save Mr. Tumnus (and

Edmund, who, as they find out, has been conspiring with the Queen) is to get Aslan’s help as soon as possible: “And so you shall. Word has been sent that you are to meet him, tomorrow if you can, at the Stone Table” (p. 87).

The reader is, of course, invited to share their judgment and trust the beavers (Mr.

Tumnus, and even Aslan himself) to serve as both reliable guides and spokespersons for the author, with everything that implies for the way we understand (or are invited to understand) the world and therefore judge the different characters, as well as the quest and the story as a whole. As Mendlesohn (2008) explains, the character-guide effectively takes over the role of the narrator, delivering the same kind of authoritative interpretation of the world, while reducing the possibilities of alternate readings: “These narratives are interruptible, unquestionable, and delivered absolutely in the mode of the club discourse: the travelers group around the narrator and listen to his (less commonly her) description of great events or political structures” (pp. 13-14).

Though this is easier to sustain in a pure portal fantasy, where the protagonists’ ignorance and therefore reliance on the guide is to be expected, it is also common in the quest narrative. Consider how Dallben explains to Taran, at the beginning of The Book of

Three, the whole history and political situation of Prydain, despite the fact that he should 77 be at least partially familiar with it: “‘As I have explained to you before,’ Dallben went on, ‘—and you have very likely forgotten—Prydain is a land of many cantrevs—of small kingdoms—and many kings’” (Alexander, 1964/2006, p. 6). The same thing happens later on when he encounters prince Gwydion in the forest and he explains to him how

Arawn is using the Horned King and his men to extend his influence beyond the Land of the Dead, where the evil lord reigns unchallenged.

“Arawn does not long abandon Annuvin,” Gwydion continued, “but his hand

reaches everywhere. There are chieftains whose lust for power goads them like a

sword point. (…) Arawn’s corruption burns every human feeling from their hearts

and they become his liege men, serving him beyond the borders of Annuvin and

bound to him forever”

“And the Horned King…?”

Gwydion nodded. “Yes. I know beyond question that he has sworn his

allegiance to Arawn.” (Alexander, 1964/2006, p. 19)

As Mendlesohn (2008) highlights, looking at both The Lion, the Witch and the

Wardrobe and The Lord of the Rings—another quest fantasy where we have a clear character-guide, the wizard Gandalf: An almost archetypal figure whose influence can be felt all the way from Dallben himself to J. K. Rowling’s Dumbledore—these passages are usually delivered in a particularly formal tone that “distance not just us, but [the protagonists], and reminds us that this is not their world either. And because it is not their world, they are reliant on what they are told” (p. 32). This is, again, particularly clear in

78 children’s books where the character-guide is usually an older person (or creature) that is explicitly teaching or mentoring a young protagonist, and therefore employs a more serious and, in many ways, authoritative tone.

In addition to the characters themselves being reliable, most stories, legends and, of course, prophecies are to be trusted as well: From the “old rhymes” that announce the coming of Aslan and the defeat of the White Queen at the beginning of The Lion, the

Witch and the Wardrobe—“Wrong will be right, when Aslan comes in sight,/ At the sound of his roar, sorrows will be no more” (Lewis, 1950/2002, p. 75)—to the multiple tales, songs and poems that fill The Lord of the Rings and serve to simultaneously establish and explain the ancient past of Middle-earth to both the hobbits and, on a different level, the reader, while also legitimizing the quest itself, including the opening poem about the rings of power, and the danger that the One Ring represents: “One Ring to rule them all, One Ring to find them,/ One Ring to bring them all and in the darkness bind them” (Tolkien, 1954-1955/2004, pp. v; 50).

The same is true, of course, about most written records and books that the characters find along the way. The best example, perhaps, is the Harry Potter series.

While there are a few clearly marked exceptions, like Rita Skeeter’s articles or Gilderoy

Lockhart’s false memoirs, books are constantly used by the protagonists (particularly

Hermione) as reliable sources of information, starting with the first entry in the series where, after an arduous search in the library, it is the “enormous old book” that Hermione has gotten out weeks before for a “bit of light reading” that provides the final key to resolve the mystery of Nicholas Flamel: “[Hermione] started flicking frantically through 79 the pages, muttering to herself. (…) At least she found what she was looking for. (…)

‘Nicholas Flamel,’ she whispered dramatically, is the only known maker of the

Philosopher’s Stone” (Rowling, 1997/2010, p.161).18

The very existence of all these sources within the fantasy world itself becomes a feature of realism: Not only does it create the impression that the fictional world has its own oral and literary traditions, reinforcing the illusion that we are dealing with an autonomous and fully realized world, but can even lend credibility (in a weird tautological manner) to the author’s own narrative. Consider how the fictional Red Book of Westmarch is presented as Tolkien’s original source at the beginning of The Lord of the Rings (1954-1955/2004, pp. 1, 14-16) or how it is revealed at the end of The High

King, the last entry in Alexander’s Prydain series, that Dallben’s magical book, significantly titled The Book of Three, is actually a prophetic account of Taran’s adventures and rise to power (1968/2006, pp. 239-244).

According to Mendelsohn (2008), all this is finally supported by a scholastic view of history that has important ideological and epistemological consequences: “In the quest and portal fantasies, history is inarguable, it is ‘the past.’ In making the past ‘storyable,’

18 Books also play a key role in The Chamber of Secrets, where Hermione uses Phineas Bourne’s Moste

Potente Potions, which she gets form the Restricted Section of the Library, to create the Polyjuice Potion;

Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, where Harry gets the clue on how to use the Gillyweed to breathe underwater from Hadrian Whittle’s herbology guide; and, of course, Harry Potter and the Deathly

Hallows, where The Tales of Beedle the Bard, a supposedly mere children’s book, holds the key to understand what the Deathly Hallows themselves are.

80 the rhetorical demands of the portal-quest fantasy deny the notion of ‘history as argument’ which is pervasive among modern historians” (p. 14). Not only is the history of the fictional world, as provided by all these sources, essentially fixed and therefore unquestionable, but the world itself seems to be also locked in the past, guaranteeing that the interpretation provided will always be valid. While the protagonists themselves change and evolve as the story progresses, the fantasy world usually stays the same or is restored by the end to a former state of glory.

The objective, again, is to validate the quest itself, which relies, in one way or another, on a clearly defined moral universe. It is not casual at all that most of these books begin by establishing beyond doubt the evil nature of the villain and therefore the need to stop him; from Gandalf telling Frodo at the beginning of The Lord of the Rings, how “the Enemy”—the epithet is already telling—has risen again in Mordor, and needs only the One Ring to “beat down all resistance, break the last defences, and cover all the lands in a second darkness” (Tolkien, 1954-1955/2004, p. 51) to Hagrid telling Harry about Voldemort at the beginning of Rowling’s series—another villain whose name cannot be said aloud and will try to conquer the world a second time, emphasizing the recursive and self-fulfilling nature of history.

“Anyway, this – this wizard, about twenty years ago now, started lookin’ fer

followers. Got ’em, too – some were afraid, some just wanted a bit o’ his power,

’cause he was getting’ himself power, all right. Dark days, Harry. Didn’t know

who ter trust, didn’t dare get friendly with strange wizards or witches … terrible

things happened. He was takin’ over. ’Course, some stood up to him – an’ he

killed ’em. Horribly.” (Rowling, 1997/2010, p. 45)

While Hagrid’s language is completely different from Gandalf’s (as well as most character-guides, for that matter, who usually employ a more formal tone) the passage makes very clear, for both Harry and, on a different level, the reader, how Voldemort

(pretty much like Sauron) is not just the main antagonist of the story, but an utterly, almost paradigmatically evil figure; an impression that is reiterated several times throughout the series, whenever the characters or the narrator talk about him, leaving little space for us to think otherwise. According to Mendlesohn (2005), the whole descriptive structure of the portal-quest fantasy is finally very political, “its apparent neutrality discourages questions and encourages belief in a monosemic understanding of the world and the nature of good and evil” (p. 87).

This is further highlighted by the manner in which the characters themselves are expected to accept their own role (or destiny) as heroes, which implies in turn following the advice and embracing the interpretation of the world provided by the different character-guides or reliable sources that they find along the way. As Mendlesohn (2008) points out, emphasizing the similarity between the protagonist of The Pilgrim’s

Progress—a text she sees as one of the first examples and taproots of the form—and the predestined hero of the modern quest fantasy: The character often succeeds (or fails) not just by his skill or virtue, but also by his ability “to stay on the straight and narrow path, to follow the words of prophecy and the delivered interpretation—in effect (…) to maintain his own position-as-reader” (p. 15). 82

While Mendlesohn’s taxonomy is based on the idea that each category of fantasy has its own stylistic and rhetorical needs that must be grasped by the author if the story is to be successfully presented, she ultimately finds all this inherently problematic. As she explains in Diana Wynne Jones: Children’s Literature and the Fantastic Tradition

(2005), where she highlights how the British author subverts and, in doing so, reveals how the portal-quest fantasy depends on the narrator and the character-guides being reliable, with everything that implies for the way we are invited to approach and explore the fantasy world, as well as judge the events of the story: “Despite the significant intellectual content of many portal-quest fantasies, it is hard to escape the feeling that this situation is infantilizing [emphasis added], requiring the readers to abandon their own moral understanding at the portal” (p. 90).

Though she, again, recognizes the interest and historical importance of texts like

George MacDonald’s Lilith or Baum’s The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, and highlights how authors like Tolkien and Lewis avoid many of the pitfalls of the form—which she find particularly prevalent in the many “romance writers” that followed the success The Lord of the Rings (see Mendlsohn, 2008, pp. 38-47)—she does not hide her preference for the immersive and especially the liminal fantasy which she considers the “most interesting”

(p. xxiv) and “purest form” of the fantastic (p. 245), emphasizing how, while the portal- quest fantasy “requires the closed view of the club narrative, the success of the liminal fantasy consists of, or invites, the reader to accept truth behind multiple and competing narratives while refusing to explain which truth is we discover,” which she finds much more ethically and aesthetically satisfying (p. 240).

As my dissertation seeks to show, however, rather than simply impose an authoritative interpretation of the fictional world, what is interesting about the portal- quest fantasy is the manner in which the character’s transit between worlds is used to bring the reader into the world of the story and present that world for us in a way that we are more likely to assume the position of the narrative audience and accept the fantastic elements of the story as true, which comprises again the main rhetorical problem of the genre. Furthermore, while we might not question the reliability of the narrator, the character-guides, or the other authoritative sources within the text, the fact that we are dealing with two completely different worlds and, therefore, two different sets of values and beliefs, invites a more complex and suggestive interpretation than Mendlesohn suggests in her analysis and evaluation of the form.

In order to appreciate this, I suggest in the following section an alternative approach to the portal-quest fantasy that moves away from Mendlesohn’s emphasis on the narrator and the closed nature of the narrative, and focuses instead on the process of transition, exploration and finally return to the real world, and how it defines both the rhetorical design of the text and the reader’s experience with it. My purpose is not to challenge Mendlesohn’s taxonomy in general—which I find particularly useful to approach this type of texts—but rather to complement her analysis of the portal-quest fantasy in particular, and suggest a revaluation of the form, while laying out the theoretical and methodological bases for my own study of Peter and Wendy as a significant (and overlooked) example of this.

1.3. An Alternative Approach

While Mendlesohn never claims that portal-quest fantasy writers lack “narrative skill” or “instinct for literary form”—like Edmund Wilson (1956) does in his review of

The Lord of the Rings (p. 313)—and goes, in fact, a long way towards showing the rhetorical and narrative complexity of fantasy, as well as developing a theoretical and critical framework that accounts for the particularities and diversity of the genre, including the portal-quest fantasy itself; her final evaluation and at least partial dismissal of the form responds in many ways to the same critical prejudices that made so difficult not just for Wilson, but for many early fantasy theorists to appreciate and defend a work like Tolkien’s that relied on an authoritative narrator and followed the restrictive structure and moral clarity of the traditional quest story.

As Attebery (1992) points out, looking at the early reception of the novel, critics at the time widely subscribed to a very specific idea of literary value that favored linguistic innovation, realistic representation of life and characters over plot, and certain types of ethical and interpretive complexity—features that were all conspicuously absent from Tolkien’s text. Even critics like Roger Sale and Burton Raffel, who were part of the first generation of scholars to recognize the importance of The Lord of the Rings, were often forced to either highlight isolated elements that “conformed to standard literary theory,” even if they were not “characteristic of Tolkien’s story as a whole,” or recognize outright how, for all its evocative power, the book was finally not “literature,” at least according to the prevailing definition (pp. 18-19).

This goes all the way back to the late 19th century when authors and critics started to react against the kind of direct and authoritative rhetoric found in both earlier realistic works and traditional narrative forms like epic, romances and fairy tales, many of which have already been abandoned to the child reader. According to Wayne Booth (1983):

“Since Flaubert, many authors and critics have been convinced that ‘objective’ or

‘impersonal’ or ‘dramatic’ modes of narration are naturally superior to any mode that allows for direct appearances by the author or his reliable spokesman” (p. 8). In addition to abstaining from reliable authorial commentary—often oversimplified in terms of

“showing” rather than “telling”—the events of the story should seem to occur out of their own necessity and reflect the chaos and complexity of real life, providing questions rather than answers and avoiding clear-cut moral schemes.

While Mendlesohn’s approach is, of course, informed by more recent reflections on fantasy, as well as narrative theory in general, it is hard not to see some of these notions when se compares, for example, the portal-quest and the immersive fantasy.

According to Mendlesohn (2005), the immersive fantasy not only avoids the extensive explanations and authorial commentary characteristic of portal-quest, requiring the author to “show rather than tell,” and can “hold any type of plot,” while the portal-quest rarely deviates from the “trajectory of a goal sought out and a world saved,” but also encourages both characters and readers to question what they are being told about the fictional world, the characters, and ultimately the story as a whole: “The reader will constantly ask,

‘Why?’ and ‘What is that?’ and ‘What does that mean?’ The result can be something much more open than the portal fantasy” (pp. 101-113).

As Booth also explains in The Rhetoric of Fiction (1983), however, these are not universal criteria of literary value. To begin with, no matter how authors try to hide their presence, creating the illusion of unmediated reality, their same narrative choices reveal both an ordering hand behind the text and implicit ethical and aesthetical judgements.

Furthermore, in order for the story to be intelligible, it must include “the amount of telling necessary not only to make us aware of the value system which gives it its meaning but, more important, to make us willing to accept that value system, at least temporarily” (p. 112). From this perspective, the use of reliable authorial commentary, or any similar narrative device, ultimately depends on the particular requirements of the work and the specific rhetorical purposes of the author.

If an author wishes to take me on a long quest for the truth and finally present it to

me, I will feel the quest as a boring triviality unless he gives me unambiguous

signs of what quest I am on and the fact that I found my goal when I get there; his

private conviction that the question, the goal and the importance are clear, or that

clarity is unimportant, will not be sufficient. For his purposes a direct authorial

comment, destroying the illusion that the story is telling itself, may be what will

serve his desired effect rather than kill it. (Booth, 1983, p. 136)

Consider how our experience and interpretation of The Lion, the Witch and the

Wardrobe or The Book of Three would change if we didn’t believe what we are told about the White Witch and the Horned King, for example, or the righteousness and importance of the protagonists’ quest. While proposing an authoritative interpretation of the fictional world might “destroy the illusion that the story is telling itself” and reduce 87 the complexity of the text in certain aspects, it also highlights the dramatic effect that the authors are probably looking for, as well as the overall meaning of the text. The kind of ethical and narrative complexity that we appreciate in other types of works, would ultimately feel out of place in texts like these, where moral clarity and some form of resolution (if not an outright happy ending) is expected.

According to W. H Auden (1968), one of the advantages of creating fictional or secondary worlds in general is, in fact, the possibility to deal with the problem of good and evil in a simplified and comprehensible manner. He significantly uses the fairy tale as an example and how, “instead of encountering as we do in the primary world, human beings who are potentially good and evil, every one we meet is either good or evil and, except when under a spell, we cannot mistake one for the other” (p. 52). This not only makes it easier and quicker to establish who the characters are early on, but also (when properly done) increases our desire for them to succeed (or fail) and therefore our engagement with the story; not to mention how it would be immensely reassuring to have this type of moral clarity in the real world.

As most readers of fairy tales, fantasy, and most forms of popular literature can attest, there is a distinct ethical, emotional and ultimately aesthetic satisfaction in seeing a good character come out victorious, while the villain or villains are punished. According to Tolkien (1947/1966), who calls this the Consolation of the Happy Ending, and associates it in particular with the sudden and joyous turn of events (or eucatastrophe) where the hero is delivered from an impending doom: It is the mark of a “good fairy- story, of the higher or more complete kind,” that no matter how terrible or fantastic are 88 the adventures, the moment the “turn” comes it provides the reader with “a catch of breath, a beat and lifting of the heart near to (or indeed accompanied by) tears, as keen as that given by any form of literary art” (pp. 85-86).

As Attebery (1992) finally points out, looking once more at The Lord of the Rings as the defining archetype of the genre, while this type of moral clarity and structural completeness might seem unrealistic, “as a deliberate choice of form in a manifestly unreal setting, it says more about the ways we seek for order than about our expectations of finding it in the real world” (p. 15). It must not be assumed, in this sense, that fantasy authors like Tolkien, Lewis or Alexander, are writing the way they do out of naïveté or, again, “lack of narrative skill”: Not only is their project inscribed in a long literary tradition, and responds to very specific and legitimate rhetorical purposes, but by abandoning both realism and modernist conventions, it invites us to question, among other things, “how narrative is organized, what its building blocks are, and how it relates to the world of extraliterary experience” (p. 19).

One of the main consequences of focusing on the language and the reliability of the narrator is, precisely, that other components of the narrative are often disregarded, in particular those associated with the plot or sequence of events.19 According to Booth

(1983), even critical studies that seem to be attending to his own rhetorical method tend to jump to “questions of point of view, ‘reliability of narration,’ or other technical

19 I use the term plot here in a broad sense to encompass both the events of the story themselves and the way they are selected, organized and presented by the author.

89 manipulations while the necessary struggle to understand how a given narrative line is made to work—and towards what purpose [emphasis in the original]—is neglected” (p.

436). This is further associated with the idea that the reader’s mimetic engagement with the plot is completely separated from any thematic or synthetic consideration of the text, and represents an inferior, or less competent, form of reading.

While Mendlesohn does consider certain structural elements of the plot when she looks at the portal-quest and intrusion fantasies, she is also trying to move away from other theoretical definitions and categorizations of the genre by focusing on the language of each category. As she explicitly points in “Towards a Taxonomy of Fantasy” (2002),

“most critics, by focusing on plot and character, in effect negate the power of language to shape the internal structures of the fantastic, even while they acknowledge that the language is crucial to the modes” (p. 170). In doing so, however, she not only favors certain categories and texts over others, but also tends to overlook the importance of the storyline itself, how it is the transit between worlds that determines (at least in part) both the language and effect of the portal-quest fantasy.

As Booth (1983) significantly points out, going all the way back to Aristotle’s

Poetics, “the author’s single most important creative act is to invent what Aristotle calls the ‘synthesis of incidents,’ the ‘plot’ in the sense of the plotted narrative line” (p. 436).

From this perspective, the decision to take the characters from a familiar and recognizable setting into direct contact with the fantastic not only responds to specific authorial intentions, and defines our experience with the text, but is also fundamental to understand and ultimately judge the work. Though we might not find the kind of 90 linguistic subtlety that Mendlesohn appreciates in other forms of fantasy, this does not mean that texts like The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe or The Book of Three are not rhetorically interesting or aesthetically valuable.

This is not to say, of course, that language in general is not important, but rather to emphasize how, in addition to each type of fantasy having its own stylistic needs, as

Mendlesohn herself recognizes, the relative importance of what we usually call literary language, as both rhetorical device and source of aesthetic value, varies from text to text.

While some works are particularly remarkable for the way they use language to convey nuance and complexity, there are other works that rely more on the construction and handling of character and plot. In order to really appreciate this, however, it is not enough to consider just the sequence of events, how the characters move from one world to the other and then come back, but also how this affect the ongoing experience of the reader as we move from beginning to middle through end.

As the following section seeks to show, James Phelan’s concept of narrative progression becomes particularly useful for this purpose, as it expands the basic notion of plot to incorporate not only what he calls narratorial dynamics (including issues like the reliability of the narrator and the relation between narrator and narratee), but the reader’s experience and judgements as well. My idea, once more, is to complement Mendlesohn’s analysis of the portal-quest fantasy, highlighting how the process of transition, exploration and return allows both author and reader to negotiate the distance between the authorial and narrative audience, while proposing a reflection on the implications,

91 desirability and significance of the protagonist’s journey between worlds, as well as the reader’s own experience with the fantastic.

Narrative progression. As Phelan explains in Reading People, Reading Plots

(1989), the concept of narrative progression goes beyond traditional notions of plot by moving from a static idea of structure or textual sequence of events into a dynamic conception of narrative that considers the reader’s experience as well: “Progression, as I use the term, refers to a narrative as a dynamic event, one that must move, in both is telling and its reception, through time” (p. 15). Following the principles of rhetorical narrative theory, the focus of attention moves to the reader’s ongoing experience with the narrative as it develops in time—our interest, expectations and ethical and aesthetical judgments—in relation to the dynamics of the text itself and the manner in which the author prompts and guides these responses.

According to Peter Brooks (1984), whose definition of plot coincides in many ways with Phelan’s notion of progression, most formalist and structuralist critics consider the plot in terms of either paradigmatic structures or sequences of events, failing to account for the movement and dynamics of narrative as experienced by the reader. While he recognizes the value of this type of critical approaches, he argues that they ultimately

“cannot deal with the dynamics of the texts as actualized in the reading process” and proposes instead a more encompassing notion of plot that accounts for both the temporal quality of the narrative and the experience of the reader, informed by a psychoanalytical perspective that engages the “dynamic of memory and the history of desire as they work to shape the recovery of meaning within time” (pp. 35-36). 92

As Phelan (1989) points out, however, Brooks’ model ends up describing the experience of reading as a sequence of drives and responses that corresponds to the structure of the plot: “To give an account of reading for the plot is to give an account of the structure of the plot. In this respect, Brooks is working with a model of a single layered text” (pp. 114-115). The concept of narrative progression, on the other hand, refers to the synthesis of two continuous and simultaneous processes, what Phelan calls textual dynamics—the principles that guide the text’s movement from beginning to middle to end, in order to affect the reader in specific ways—and what he calls readerly dynamics—the ongoing engagement and judgments of the readers as they follow and are affected in turn by the text (Phelan and Rabinowitz, 2012, p. 6).

In this order of ideas, the concept of narrative progression specifically expands the traditional understanding of plot by including within the narrative’s shape the ongoing and cumulative responses of the audience and how they are codified and guided by the text (Phelan and Rabinowitz, 2012, p. 58). Where general understandings of plot usually pay attention to the events of the story and the manner in which they follow each other according to different principles of order or causality, the concept of narrative progression attends to the connections between the textual dynamics and the effects they have on the reader. From this perspective, the reader’s engagement, judgment and responses are not only seen as the final result of the plot’s movement from beginning to middle to end, but an essential part of the work’s progression.20

20 According to Phelan and Rabinowitz (2012), the relation can work both ways: In addition to the plot dynamics of the work “having a significant influence on the audience’s response,” the author’s own interest

This is related, once again, to the rhetorical conception of narrative as a multileveled communication between the author and the audience that emphasizes the experience of the reader. According to Phelan (2007), readers not only observe the characters and events of the story, but also pass judgment on them according to that observation. The narrativity of a text therefore depends not only on the textual progression, but also on the ongoing judgments of the audience and how they affect the reader’s engagement with the work. Since our experience of the story involves both the conflicts and events that keep the text moving forward and the sequence of judgements made by the audience, the latter is at least as fundamental to a text’s “degree of narrativity” as the set involving the characters (p. 9).21

The other essential difference between the concept of narrative progression and most traditional understandings of plot has to do with the definition of textual dynamics.

According to Phelan and Rabinowitz (2012), the textual dynamics of a work include not only the events of the story and the manner in which they are arranged and connected with each other (plot dynamics), but also the ongoing relationship between the audience, the narrator and the author, as the latter employs different narrative resources (narratorial

in guiding those same responses can have in turn “significant influence on the construction of the plot dynamics” (p. 58).

21 Phelan (2007) further identifies three basic types of judgments that readers can make in relation to the characters and the text: “interpretive judgments about the nature of actions or other elements of narrative, ethical judgments about the moral value of the characters and actions, and aesthetic judgments about the artistic quality of the narrative and its parts” (p. 9).

94 dynamics). Although Phelan would later question the explanatory power of the distinction between story and discourse, plot dynamics basically deal with elements traditionally associated with the story, while narratorial dynamics focus on the discourse, including, among other issues, the reliability of the narrator (p. 59).

While all components of the narrative have consequences for the progression of the work, Phelan’s (1989) approach highlights how the forward movement of the text depends on the introduction, complication and resolution of what he calls instabilities and tensions, which generate and sustain the interest of the reader (p. 15). Instabilities refer here to any conflicts between the characters, or resulting from their situations and their actions, and are therefore associated with plot dynamics. Tensions, on the other hand, are part of the narratorial dynamics of the work, and arise from the disparity of knowledge or values between the author, the narrator and their audiences. Both instabilities and tensions are to be considered not only by themselves and in relation to each other, but as part of the overall development of the narrative.

This expanded understanding of textual dynamics ultimately challenges the long standing notion that the study of plot is somehow separated from the other (more significant) components of the narrative. As R. S. Crane (1952/1968) points out, in his seminal study on the plot of Tom Jones, the analysis of the plot has often been so detached from the consideration of elements like character and narrative technique that these “invariably proceed[] without further reference to it” (p. 304). While Crane himself has a much broader definition of plot, as the ultimate end and organizing principle of the work, the concept of narrative progression goes one step farther and considers not only 95 the relationship between plot and narratorial dynamics, but also the manner in which both affect the ongoing experience of the reader.

The progression of the narrative comprises, in this sense, three simultaneous and interconnected trajectories: the plot or sequence of events; the evolving relationship between the audience, the narrator and author, as the latter employs different narrative resources; and the resulting responses and experience of the reader. As Phelan and

Rabinowitz (2012) explain, this implies a different way of thinking about the organizing principles of the narrative, “one grounded in the link between the logic of the text’s movement from beginning to middle through ending (what we call textual dynamics) and the audience’s temporal experience (readerly dynamics) of that movement” (p. 58). The resulting rhetorical model to analyze the progression of the narrative can be summarized in the following chart.

Beginning Middle Ending

Exposition Exposition Exposition/Closure

Launch Voyage Arrival

Initiation Interaction Farewell

Entrance Intermediate Configuration Completion/Coherence

Table 1: Beginnings, Middles and Endings

As Brooks (1984) and Crane (1952/1968) suggest, traditional understandings and analyses of plot have focused on the first two levels of the chart, which correspond more or less with what Phelan calls plot dynamics. These basically involve the presentation of new information about events, characters and settings as the story progresses (exposition, closure), and the introduction, complication and resolution of instabilities and tensions

(launch, voyage, arrival). Phelan’s model, however, incorporates as well the developing relations and interactions between the author, the narrator and the audience (initiation, interaction and farewell), which correspond entirely to the narratorial dynamics; and the ongoing responses and judgments of the reader or readerly dynamics (entrance, intermediate configuration and completion/coherence).

According to this model, the initial exposition would include the introductory information about the story and all the materials that comes before the beginning proper, including the title page, illustrations, notices and epigraphs, among other elements. This information would immediately precede or follow what Phelan (2007) calls the launch, where the first global instabilities and tensions are revealed, marking the transit from beginning to middle: “The launch may come early or may come late, but I set the boundary at the first global instability or tension because until then a narrative has not established a clear direction” (p. 18). On the level of the narratorial dynamics (initiation), the beginning is also marked by the initial transactions between author, narrator and the authorial and narrative audiences.

All these elements correspond to the broad category of textual dynamics and are necessarily accompanied by the reader’s initial reactions and hypotheses about the text; what Phelan (2007) calls the entrance. Not only do the initial instabilities and tensions generate the interest of the reader, but also situate the authorial audience in relation to the author, the narrator and the events, influencing its understanding of the story.

Furthermore, it is in this stage that readers formulate their initial judgments about the characters, the narrator and even the type of book that they are reading: “these judgments influence what is arguably the most important element of the entrance: the authorial audience’s hypothesis, implicit or explicit, about the direction and purpose of the whole narrative, what I will call its configuration” (p. 19).

If the beginning defines on multiple levels the direction of the narrative, the middle develops and complicates the textual dynamics and the ongoing responses of the reader. Once again, there is usually new information (exposition), introduction of new tensions and instabilities or complication of the existing ones (voyage), as well as an ongoing relationship between the audience, the narrator and the author (interaction), as

Phelan (2007) points out, “these exchanges have significant effects on our developing responses to the characters and events as well as to our ongoing relationship with the narrator and implied author” (p. 20). Finally, as the textual dynamics develop, readers will necessarily revise their initial judgments, either confirming their hypothesis or suggesting a new one (intermediate configuration).

According to Phelan (2007), the final exposition or closure usually introduces some sign that the narrative is coming to an end and may include paratextual material like 98 epilogues and appendixes. The ending also comprises the final interactions between author, narrator and the different audiences involved (farewell) and, of course, the partial or complete resolution of the global instabilities and tensions (arrival). While Phelan does not privilege the ending over the rest of the narrative, like Brooks does (see Phelan,

1989, pp. 111-114), he highlights how the readerly dynamics at this point

(completion/coherence) include the reader’s final responses and judgments in relation to not just the ending but the whole narrative progression, in particular the overall evaluation of the work’s ethical and aesthetical qualities.

While the model does not pretend to be predictive or prescriptive, it allows us to see how the different components of the narrative—plot, narratorial and readerly dynamics—come together and develop in time as we move from beginning to middle through end. As Phelan and Rabinowitz (2012) point out, when they list the basic postulates of their rhetorical approach “coming to understand the principles that underlie its progression from a particular starting point to a particular ending point provides an excellent way to understand a narrative’s design and its purposes” (p. 6). From this perspective, the protagonist’s transit between worlds characteristic of the portal-quest fantasy becomes one of the key elements to understand both the rhetorical design of this type of texts and the effect it has on the reader.

“There and back again.” Though Mendlesohn’s (2008) definition and analysis of the portal-quest fantasy considers some structural elements of the plot—how the characters move from a familiar and recognizable setting into direct contact with the fantastic, as well as how the reader is invited to assume the position of companion- 99 audience, “tied to the protagonist, and dependent upon the protagonist for explanation and decoding” (p. 1)—she focuses almost exclusively on the consequences these elements have for the language and narratorial dynamics of the form, in particular how it imposes upon the reader an authoritative interpretation of the fictional world. She does not pay much attention to the process of transition and exploration itself, what are some of the main instabilities and tensions associated with it, and how all this finally affects our ongoing experience and engagement with the fantastic.

As the previous discussion suggests, it is by looking at the moment by moment progression of the narrative that we can see how the decision to take the characters from one world to another (instead of choosing any other possible structure or storyline), responds to specific authorial intentions and has significant effects on both the design of the text and the audience’s experience with it. I therefore intend here to adopt (and adapt)

Phelan’s descriptive model and look at the beginning, middle and ending of portal-quest fantasy, attending in particular to the connection between plot and readerly dynamics. My purpose, once more, is to propose an alternative approach to the form that not only takes into account the effect that the transit between worlds has for the overall progression of the narrative, but also invites a different reading and revaluation of form, as well as the different texts I use as examples, establishing the theoretical and methodological framework for my analysis of Peter and Wendy. 22

22 Since I only seek to provide here a basic overview of the progression of the portal-quest fantasy, and not a detailed analysis of any specific work, my description will focus mostly on the textual dynamics, which are easier to describe in general terms. I will try, however, to move to the readerly dynamics as much as

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Beginning/Transition. The protagonists’ transit from one world to another marks a crucial point in the progression of the portal-quest fantasy. Corresponding more or less with what Phelan (2007) calls the launch, it introduces the main global instabilities and tensions, as both characters and readers start to deal with a world that is clearly not their own, effectively dividing the beginning and middle of the narrative. Furthermore, it is only until this point that we are able to identify the text as a portal-quest fantasy. This is particularly clear, for example, in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (Lewis,

1950/2002) when Lucy recognizes how the latter works as a portal between worlds:

“It’s—it’s a magic wardrobe. There’s a wood inside it, and it’s snowing, and there’s a

Faun and a Witch and it’s called Narnia; come and see” (p. 26).23

While Mendlesohn’s (2008) analysis focuses mostly on what happens once the transit is complete—how we enter the fantasy world from a defined point of entry and assume a position of companion-audience, as the fantasy world is explored by and explained to the protagonist (p. 1)—this is not the beginning of the narrative. As

Mendlesohn’s own definition highlights, the protagonists always move from a familiar and recognizable setting into an unknown place. Though the main adventure might only start later on, there are always some interactions between the characters and their initial

possible, in order to highlight the connection between the two, in particular the evolving relationship between the authorial and the narrative audience.

23 The passage is particularly suggestive for the manner in which Lucy not only points out how the wardrobe is indeed magical, and leads into another world, but also invites her siblings (and, on a different level, the reader) to cross the portal and share her enthusiasm about the whole ordeal.

101 setting, which not only help understand who they are, introduce certain themes that will reappear later on, and lead the protagonists to actually cross the portal, leaving their world behind, but also stablish the frame of reference and ethical rules that define both the characters’ and the readers’ experience with the fantastic.

Consider how The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (Lewis, 1950/2002) begins with the Pevensie children arriving to the Professor’s house in what otherwise seems to be the real world. Not only is there a mention to a specific historical context that Lewis’ postwar authorial audience would had been immediately able to recognize—“they were sent away from London during the war because of the air-raids” (p. 1)—but also the manner in which the children themselves behave, from the way they are eager to explore the grounds and later play hide-and-seek to how they argue and fight with each other, introducing the main conflict or instability between Edmund and the rest of the children, invites us to sympathize, even identify with them: “‘Oh, come off it!’ said Edmund, who was tired and pretending not to be tired, which always made him bad-tempered. ‘Don’t go on talking like that (…) Trying to talk like Mother’” (p. 2).

Though there is a significant thematic and ethical overlap between the real world and Narnia, allowing both characters and readers to interpret and judge, among other things, what happens with Edmund and the White Witch, as well as how the adventure as a whole finally relates to their everyday experience and personal conflicts (and therefore our own as well); the beginning also foregrounds certain values and expectations about reality that would later contrast with what the characters find once they cross the portal, including not only the belief that there is no magic wardrobe—“it’s just an ordinary 102 wardrobe; look! there’s the back of it” (Lewis, 1950/2002, p. 26)—but also how children, for example, are expected to be kept away from danger and behave a certain way: “[Mrs.

Macready] had said to Susan and Peter almost the first morning (along with a good many instructions), ‘And please remember you´re to keep out of the way whenever I’m taking a party over the house’” (p. 56).

Even when we are situated from the start in the fantasy world—The Book of Three

(Alexander, 1964/2006) provides again a great example—the initial setting is usually as mundane and ordinary as it can be, as Taran loudly complaints when Dallben scolds him for dreaming about becoming a hero, instead of focusing on his work: “‘For the time being!’ Taran burst out. ‘I think it always be for the time being, and it will be vegetables and horseshoes all my life!’” (p. 8). This not only highlights how, like most children and teenagers, Taran finds everyday chores and adults’ calls for patience frustrating, but also how he has lived in isolation at Caer Dallben for most of his life, making him a stranger in his own world, while introducing at the same time the whole discussion on the value of heroism and adventure that permeates the entire series and becomes an important part of our engagement with the thematic component of the narrative.

Though the connection is not as immediate as what we have in Lewis’ novel, the authorial audience still expected to recognize this initial setting, and the kind of quiet life and values that Coll and Dallben endorse and contrast with not just Taran’s but the reader’s expectations about the story and the fantasy world in general—how, much like the young pig-keeper, we are hoping for an heroic tale full of swordfights and strange creatures that we would never expect to find in real life. While it does not take long for 103

Taran to leave his home behind and find himself in the middle of an extraordinary and dangerous adventure, these early scenes have significant consequences for both what happens later on (how Taran is first excited and later disenchanted once he realizes that things are much more difficult and serious than he first thought) and the way we are invited to approach and ultimately interpret the story.

One of the main advantages of beginning the story in a familiar and recognizable setting and then moving little by little into direct contact with the fantastic is, precisely, how it can help readers to navigate the distance between the authorial and narrative audiences’ positions characteristic of the genre as a whole, and accept the fantastic elements of the story as they are gradually introduced later on. Contrary to the immersive fantasy in particular where right from the start there is this ontological and cognitive gap between the authorial and narrative audience (which, as part of the fantasy world itself, is expected to be already familiar with, even used to the fantastic); the portal-quest fantasy requires readers to accept initially very little—or, at least, a lot less—that contradicts our experience and beliefs about reality, making easier for us to bridge the gap and engage both mimetically and thematically with the story.

Consider what happens, for example, at the beginning of J. K. Rowling’s Harry

Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone (1997/2010). Though there are a few extraordinary events early on, starting with the peculiar cat that seem to be reading the street sign on the corner of Privet Drive—“no, looking at the sign; cats couldn’t read maps or signs” (p.

8)—most readers have no problem accepting the existence of Little Whinging, the

Dursleys or Harry himself, whose unfortunate situation is clearly intended to generate 104 feelings of sympathy and indignation on the audience: “He wore round glasses held together with a lot of Sellotape because of all the times Dudley had punched him on the nose” (p. 20). There is almost no difference, either ontologically or ethically, between the authorial and narrative audiences’ positions, requiring no extra effort to assume (or pretend to assume) the position of the latter.

Even in a book completely set in the fantasy world from the start, like Tolkien’s

The Lord of the Rings (1954-1955/2004), it is possible to see the same dynamic. Though we start with hobbits instead of human beings (which appear later on in the story), it is relatively easy for the reader to join the narrative audience and accept the existence of the

Shire, with its “well-ordered and well-farmed countryside,” clearly reminiscent of the

English landscape, and its peaceful, prosaic, and anachronically bourgeois inhabitants, who have significantly “never (…) studied magic of any kind” and are explicitly presented as our ancient relatives, “far nearer to us than Elves, or even Dwarves,” inviting us to identify with them and approach the fantasy world, and ultimately the story as a whole, through their perspective (pp. 1-2).

While things get, of course, weirder and weirder as Harry and the hobbits move into direct contact with the fantastic, the reader has already assumed the position of the narrative audience and accepted both that initial setting and the characters themselves as real, so it is easier to accept what comes next. Not only is the fantasy world made more real by its connection with the real world or, in the case of Tolkien, the Shire—if one is real, then the other is real as well—but also, by inviting us to approach the fantastic through the familiar (in many ways, real-world) experience and perspective of the 105 protagonist, the author is able to address and negotiate within the text itself the difference between reality and fantasy, acknowledging the incredulity of the reader, while taking us little by little to the point where (much like the characters themselves) we are willing to accept as true the fantastic elements of the story.

Consider how a character like Harry Potter, despite being initially pretty sure that there is no such thing as magic (which makes us, again, identify with him and trust his judgement about what is real and what is not within the fictional world of the story) starts to change his mind and accepts there is a whole magical world hidden beneath the streets of London, of which most normal people (including the reader) is unaware: “Could there really be piles of wizard gold buried beneath them? Were there really shops that sold spell books and broomstick? (…) even though everything Hagrid had told him so far was unbelievable, Harry couldn’t help trusting him” (Rowling, 1997/2010, p. 53). In addition to anchoring the fantastic in what seems to be the real world (or a fictional version of it), and providing a familiar point of entry (and point of view) for the reader, the passage almost makes a case on why we too should trust Hagrid, and follow both him and Harry as they literally guide us into that other world.

The very manner in which the fantasy world is described, often explicitly explained, for both the characters and, on a different level, the reader, that Mendlesohn finds so problematic, contributes in no small part to the whole process: From the way

Hagrid points out, among other things, how the Ministry of Magic’s main function is to

“keep it from Muggles that there’s still witches an’ wizards up an’ down the country”

(Rowling, 1997/2010, p. 51), explaining within the context of the story why Harry has 106 never heard about their world, while introducing the reader little by little to the political organization of the magic community, to the way Gandalf tells Frodo, at the beginning of

The Lord of the Rings, everything he knows about Sauron, a name that hobbits have only heard in legends, but of course turns out to be quite real and a considerable threat to them all, leading Frodo and his friends to take on the quest.

The rumors that you have heard are true: he has indeed arisen again and left his

hold in Mirkwood and returned to his ancient fastness in the Dark Tower of

Mordor. That name even you hobbits have heard of, like a shadow on the borders

of old stories. Always after a defeat and a respite, the Shadow takes another shape

and grows again. (Tolkien, 1954-1955/2004, p. 51)

Though this situates us, again, as relatively naïve and inexperienced, most portal- quest fantasies emphasize how, despite their obvious differences, there is a significant ethical and thematic continuity between the world where the story begins (and, therefore, the real world) and the fantastic, allowing both the characters, on a different level, the reader, to understand and judge what is going on, while highlighting at the same time how the experience of the fantastic itself relates to and comments upon reality. Consider how Harry and the hobbits not only decide to get involved and risk their lives to defeat

Voldemort and Sauron—a decision most readers would judge ethically sound, even admirable—but also constantly prove and are explicitly rewarded for their “real-world” moral qualities, from Harry standing up to Malfoy at the beginning of Rowling’s novel to

107 how it is Bilbo’s and Frodo’s decision to spare Gollum, instead of killing him, that ultimately allows them to complete the quest.24

The other key effect of moving from a familiar and recognizable setting into direct contact with the fantastic, and inviting us to approach that world through the perspective and experience of the protagonist, particularly at the beginning of the text, is to increase our sense of estrangement and wonder. As Mendlesohn (2008) points out,

“the otherworld of the portal fantasy relies on the contrast with the frame world, on the world from which we begin the adventure” (p. 21). Though there might be something intrinsically fantastic about having a cup of tea with a faun and hear him tell about the

Nymphs and the Dryads, as it happens in chapter two of The Lion, the Witch and the

Wardrobe, the experience becomes even more extra-ordinary (the term results here particularly appropriate) when compared with boring, ordinary setting represented by the

Professor’s house, where Lucy’s journey begins.

And really it was a wonderful tea. There was a nice brown egg, lightly boiled, for

each of them, and then sardines on toast, and then buttered toast, and then toast

with honey, and then a sugar-topped caked. And when Lucy was tired of eating,

24 The case of The Lord of the Rings (Tolkien, 1954-1955/2004) is particularly interesting for the manner in which is the hobbits—the more relatable, but also least traditionally heroic of all races—who are, precisely because of their lack of power and ambition, able to both resist the Ring and go unnoticed enough to reach the land of Mordor and destroy it. As Elrond remarks from the start: “This quest may be attempted by the weak with as much hope as the strong. Yet such is oft the course of deeds that move the wheels of the world: small hands do them because they must, while the eyes of the great are elsewhere” (p. 269).

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the Faun began to talk. He had wonderful tales to tell of life in the forest. (…)

And the tune he played made Lucy want to cry and laugh and dance and go to

sleep at the same time. (Lewis, 1950/2002, pp. 16-17)

In opposition again to the immersive fantasy, where both the characters and the narrative audience are expected to be already familiar with and therefore hardly surprised by the fantastic (which would be only fantastic for the authorial and ultimately actual audiences), the portal-quest fantasy makes explicit how we are moving into a different world altogether. This is particularly clear in a text like Lewis’ novel (1950/2002) where the narrator himself sometimes comments on the difference between the real world and the fantastic: “That is how beavers talk when they are excited; I mean, in Narnia—in our world they usually don’t talk at all” (p. 115). In addition to increasing our own sense of estrangement and wonder, this highlights once more how part of the interest of the story lies on the experience of the fantastic itself—how the characters ultimately deal with and eventually come to terms with a world that is not their own.

Even when the protagonists are not technically moving between worlds, as it happens, for example, in The Book Three (Alexander, 1964/2006) we can still see the same dynamic: From the way Taran can hardly hide his enthusiasm when he finally meets prince Gwydion and he agrees to take him along, or how he is almost transfixed when he hears the Children of Evening’s song in the underground court of the fairy king—“The harmonies penetrated even the walls of heavy stone. Taran had never in his life heard such a beautiful singing. He listened enchanted, forgetting, for the moment, all but the soaring melody” (p. 139)—to the way he starts to realize that being a hero is 109 much more complicated, uncomfortable and dangerous than he first thought, and begins to look back fondly at his prosaic, but peaceful life back home: “The weeding and hoeing he had so despised at Caer Dallben now seemed, as he thought of his past journey and the journey yet to come, infinitely pleasant” (p. 118).

This only becomes apparent, of course, once we move from the beginning to the middle of the narrative, emphasizing once more the idea of progression. Though

Mendlesohn again tends to focus on what happens once the characters cross the portal and engage directly with the fantastic, these early scenes are key to understand how the transit between worlds itself affects both the textual construction and overall experience of the reader, allowing the author, on the one hand, to bring the reader into the fantasy world where the adventure takes place, and invite us to assume (or pretend to assume) the position of the narrative audience; while highlighting, on the other hand, the fantastic nature of the story, increasing our sense of estrangement and wonder, as well as finally inviting us to reflect on the relation between reality and fantasy as both portrayed in the story and ultimately experienced by the reader.

Middle/Exploration. If the completion of the transit between worlds marks the boundary between the beginning and middle of the narrative, the latter focuses on the adventures that the characters have once they cross the portal and explore, in one way or another, their new setting. From the crazy encounters and situations in a book like Alice’s

Adventures in Wonderland or The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, where each episode works almost independently from each other (see Mendlesohn, 2008, p. 29), to the hobbits’ epic journey in The Lord of the Rings, as the unlikely heroes leave the comfort and security of 110 the Shire (an already fantastic, yet recognizable space) and embark on a dangerous mission that will take them halfway across the world, through the vast landscapes and complex political conflicts of Middle Earth.

In terms of plot dynamics, the transit between worlds usually coincides with the introduction of a major global instability, specific to the fantasy world that forces the protagonists to interact with their new setting, and eventually sends them on their way.

Though there are always some early conflicts between characters, and the characters and their original setting that inform, among other things, their decision to cross the portal— from escaping the boring routine of Caer Dallben, as Taran hopes to do in The Book of

Three, to Harry Potter’s desire to have a real and loving family—most portal-quest fantasies, as the term already suggests, are structured around the completion of a mission or quest that requires the participation of the protagonists, and has important consequences for the fantasy world itself.25

Consider how the Pevensie children become involved in the fight against the

White Witch as soon as they find out that she has imprisoned Mr. Tumnus for the distinctly fantastic crime of “fraternizing with Humans,” specifically Lucy: “It is all on my account that the poor Faun has got into this trouble. He hid me from the Witch and showed me the way back. (…) We simply must try to rescue him” (Lewis, 1950/2002, p.

25 According to Mendlesohn (2008), the portal-quest fantasy usually begins with a false sense of stability that is revealed to be the “stability of a thinned land” and end with some form of “restoration,” emphasized by the way they “associate the king with the well-being of the land, and the condition of the land with the morality of the place” (p. 3).

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65). While they initially decide to stay and help Mr. Tumnus out of a sense of responsibility, and later to save their brother, suggesting again how there is an ethical continuity between one world and the other, they soon find out that there is also an ancient prophecy in place and the destiny of Narnia hangs in the balance, emphasizing the idea of moral order that ultimately sustains the quest, while raising the stakes for both the characters and, on a different level, the reader.

Though the concept of narrative progression goes specifically beyond the formalist notion of structure, focusing instead on the manner in which the narrative develops in time, as well as the ongoing experience of the audience, the fact that we are dealing with a quest narrative, inspired by fairy tales and heroic romances, implies that most of these texts tend to follow a very defined structure. As Attebery points out in

Strategies of Fantasy (1992), when he lists the defining features of the genre exemplified by The Lord of the Rings, most modern fantasy “conforms to the morphology described by Vladimir Propp: a round trip journey to the marvelous, complete with testing of the hero, crossing the threshold, supernatural assistance, confrontation, flight, and establishment of a new order at home” (p. 15).

This kind of structure is clearly visible, for example, in The Book of Three: From the initial departure and crossing of the threshold to the final confrontation with the villain, and the heroes’ return home. Once Taran leaves Caer Dallben and moves into the wide world beyond, what follows is a series of adventures and encounters that fulfill what

Propp (1928/1968) identifies in his morphology as the first function of the donor, where

“the hero is tested, interrogated, attacked, etc., which prepares the way for his receiving 112 either a magical agent or helper” (p. 39). Though Taran does not technically get any magical gifts, and the only one he gets (the sword Dyrnwyn) he cannot use, most of the episodes in the book lead him to get a new ally (Gurgi, Eilonwy, Flewddur, Doli), that will eventually help him on his journey.

Using Joseph Campbell’s The Hero with a Thousand Faces instead of Propp’s model, Julia Boll (2013) highlights, in a similar fashion, how not only Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, but also each of Rowling’s subsequent books, as well as the series as a whole, follow what Campbell calls the monomyth or hero’s journey. From the way Harry is literally marked as an archetypical hero early on, when Voldemort tries to kill him—“a prophecy was made about him and was chosen by his future opponent” (p.

85)—to the way he follows a series of tests similar to Taran’s, where he acquires the magical tools, knowledge and allies that he will need to defeat the Dark Lord: “Harry’s formative years at Hogwarts can be seen as the trials on his journey, since the school is a place of tests in every sense of the word” (p. 96).

This does not mean, however, that the portal-quest fantasy is a mere reenactment of the fairy tale or the heroic romance. According to Mendlesohn (2008), one of the problems with this type of structure is that the characters are often reduced to mere actants rather than actors—the terms come from Greimas’ Structural Semantics—limited to fulfill a specific narrative function, rather than asserting themselves as realistic, if fictional individuals (p. 7). This impression is further emphasized by the idea of moral expectation and reward that underlies and sustains the quest, how the hero “succeeds or fails to the extent he listens to those wiser or more knowledgeable than him” and stays 113 true to a “straight and narrow path,” making the narrative “less an argument with the universe than a sermon on the way things should be” (pp. 4-5).

While this is partly true, as most portal-quest fantasy characters eventually embrace their heroic role, and follow a very specific, often literally predetermined path, they are not traditional heroes; as Taran himself confesses to Eilonwy, when she asks him if he is a lord, a warrior, or a war-leader: “‘I am an Assistant Pig-Keeper’, Taran said. He bit his lip as soon as the words came out; then, to excuse his loose tongue, told himself it could do no harm for the girl to know that much” (Alexander, 1964/2006, p. 51). Though he wants to be a hero like prince Gwydion, and plays an important, if unintended part in the Horned King’s defeat, the book is more about how he struggles with his own heroic expectations, than it is about those expectations coming true, inviting us to see the quest itself from a different perspective altogether.26

The same can be said, in general lines, about the Pevensie children and Harry

Potter, with the added component that they actually come from world where they would never be expected to go on a quest or assume the role of what, for them, would also be a fairy-tale hero: “[Harry] felt quite sure there had been a horrible mistake. A wizard?

26 Of course, things change as the series progresses and Taran is revealed to be, in traditional fairy-tale fashion, the rightful king of Prydain. However, this not only happens in the last volume of the series (The

High King), after Taran has become knowledgeable and mature enough to assume the role, but, even then, he is still does not see himself as a hero: “‘Once I hoped for a glorious destiny,’ Taran went on, smiling at his own memory. ‘That dream has vanished with my childhood; and though a pleasant dream it was fit only for a child. I am well-content as an Assistant Pig-Keeper’” (Alexander, 1968/2006, p. 238).

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Him? (…) If he’d once defeated the greatest sorcerer in the world, how come Dudley had always been able to kick him around like a football?” (Rowling, 1997/2010, p. 47). The very fact that they are all children, assuming what would otherwise be adult roles, from handling swords, wands, and other dangerous items to risking their lives to defeat an adult (or at least adult-looking) villain, emphasizes both the contrast between worlds and the challenge that this represents for the characters.27

As Attebery points out in Strategies of Fantasy (1992), what the genre actually does, rather than reduce the characters to mere actants, is combine both fairy-tale and novelistic or actor-based modes of characterization, emphasizing how “the more realistic the discourse of the actor, the more strongly we identify with his shock or pleasure at finding himself transformed into actant” (p. 86). While a character like Frodo from The

Lord of the Rings, for example, might perform the role of the hero, he also possesses all these qualities and defects that define him independently of his function, and make him both more real and relatable for the reader: “We know his habits, likes, dislikes, kindness, occasional pettiness, courage, laziness: a whole set of novelistic traits, most of which will need to be pared away (…) if he is to become the Hero” (p. 72).

27 Even at Hogwarts, where students are exposed on an almost daily bases to all manner of dangerous situations, it is clear how Harry and his friend are not supposed to be fighting Voldemort; as Molly

Weasley reminds both Harry and Sirius Black, at the beginning of Harry Potter and the Order of the

Phoenix (2003), when she highlights how, despite all his accomplishments, Harry is still not ready to join the fight: “You are still at school and adults responsible for you should not forget it!” (p. 89).

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Part of the appeal of the genre comes precisely from seeing a character that is both similar to us and described in a realistic or modern manner accomplish the type of feats that we would usually expect from a traditional hero. From Frodo offering to take the

Ring to Mordor when no one else volunteers—“‘I will take the Ring,’ he said, ‘though I do not know the way’” (Tolkien, 1954-1955/2004, p. 270)—to Peter fighting and killing the Wolf in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, and in doing so “winning his spurs,” despite being just as scared, and in many ways conflicted about killing, as most readers would be in a similar situation: “[I]ndeed, he felt he was going to be sick. But that made no difference to what he had to do. He rushed straight up to the monster and aimed a slash of his sword at its side” (Lewis, 1950/2002, p. 144).

While this again makes it easier for the reader to identify with the characters and accept the story as a whole, it not only makes the quest itself more challenging (and therefore more exciting), but also much more ethically and thematically complex.

Though there is still a sense of destiny and moral order—we never doubt, even for a moment, that Sauron and the White Witch are evil, and therefore need to be defeated— the fact that the characters are not mere actants but actors, who are often confronted with situations and ethical questions that they have never encountered before (or would have expected to encounter back home), including what it means to be hero, introduces an additional dimension to the story, ultimately inviting us to reflect on the nature of the quest itself, as well as the traditional quest narrative.

Even a character like Taran, who has been dreaming of wielding a sword and proving his worth from the start, soon finds out that things are a more complicated than 116 he initially imagined. From realizing how in order to save Prydain, and make amends for

Gwydion’s death, for which he feels partially responsible, he must give up his own quest—“With his companion surely dead, should he now try to make his way to Caer

Dathyl? What, then, would become of Hen Wen? (…) He turned restlessly finding no answer” (Alexander, 1964/2006, p. 83)—to deciding whether or not to kill the wounded gwythaint, as both Doli and Fflewddur Fflam recommend: “Go ahead. Pick the vicious little thing. Give it a drink. Pat its head. (…) As soon as it’s got strength enough, the first thing it’ll do is slice you to bits” (p. 155).28

Unlike traditional heroes, most portal-quest characters further have to deal with a variety of personal issues that that not only affect the manner in which they assume (or struggle to assume) their heroic role, but also highlight how there are other instabilities at play that intertwine with and complicate the quest. From Taran’s early frustration with

Coll and Dallben, and later love-hate relationship with Eilonwy in The Book of Three, to a text like Harry Potter and the Philosopher Stone where most episodes are essentially focused on Harry’s extraordinary and, at the same time, distinctly mundane and

28 A similar ethical dilemma takes place in both The Lord of the Rings (Tolkien, 1954-1955/2004), where the question of whether or not Gollum deserves to die appears several times throughout the novel—

“Deserves it! I daresay he does. Many that live deserve death. And some that die deserve life. Can you give it back? Then do not be too eager to deal out death and judgment” (pp. 59, 615)—and Harry Potter and the

Prisoner of Azkaban (Rowling, 1999), where Harry decides to save Peter Pettigrew, despite the fact that it was him who revealed his parents whereabouts to the Dark Lord: “‘Harry, this piece of vermin is the reason you have no parents,’ Black Snarled. (…) ‘I know,’ Harry panted. ‘We’ll take him up to the castle. We’ll hand him over to the dementors.… He can go to Azkaban… but don’t kill him’” (p. 375).

117 recognizable school experience at Hogwarts: How he deals with classes, homework and sports, how he makes friends (and enemies) among his classmates and teachers, and ultimately finds a place where he truly belongs.

Perhaps it was because he was now so busy, what with Quidditch practice three

evenings a week on top of all his homework, but Harry could hardly believe it

when he realized that he’d already been at Hogwarts two months. The castle felt

more like home than Privet Drive had ever done. His lessons, too, were becoming

more and more interesting now that they had mastered the basics. (Rowling,

1997/2010. p. 126)

While defeating Voldemort becomes more and more important as the book (and the series in general) progresses, these episodes not only serve to make the story more accessible and relatable for the reader, but are also fundamental to complete the quest. In addition to allowing Harry to acquire the skills, knowledge and allies that he will need to pass the vault’s magical trials and get to the Philosopher’s Stone before Quirrell—from casting spells and learning how to fly on a broomstick to having someone by his side who is able to play chess or solve magical riddles—it is by standing up to Malfoy, coming to terms with his parents’ loss, and creating a new home and family at Hogwarts, among other things, that he not only probes himself early on, but also finds the confidence and courage to ultimately confront the Dark Lord.

This not only highlights, once more, how we are dealing with much more modern, complex, and less traditionally heroic characters, who, despite all odds, still manage to take the role of the hero, in no small measure thanks to their ordinary moral qualities and 118 everyday ethical choices—allowing us again to identify with them and imagine we could the same, if we were in a similar situation—but also emphasizes how no just the quest itself, but the experience of the fantastic as a whole relates to and comments on real life.

As Alexander himself highlights in the author’s note to The Black Cauldron (1965/2006), emphasizing how despite being an imaginary setting, Prydain is not too different form our own world: “The choices and decisions that face a frequently baffled Assistant Pig-

Keeper are no easier than the ones we ourselves must make. Even in a fantasy realm, growing up is accomplished not without cost” (p. vii).

The other key principle that contributes to move the narrative forward is the exploration and experience of the fantasy world itself. Contrary to the immersive fantasy, where both the characters and the narrative audience are assumed to be already familiar with, even used to the fantastic, encouraging us to read the text, at least on some level, as we would do a realistic narrative; the portal-quest fantasy deals specifically with the experience of traveling into another world and encountering creatures and situations

(including the quest itself) that neither characters nor readers would expect to exist or happen in real life, an experience that becomes central to the overall progression of the narrative. Consider how the Peter and Susan react at the beginning of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (Lewis, 1950/2002) once they realize that they are no longer in the

Professor’s house, but have crossed into another world.

“I’m sitting against a tree,” said Susan suddenly, “and look! It’s getting light—

over there.”

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“By jove, you’re right,” said Peter, “and look there—and there. It’s trees

all round. And this wet stuff is snow. Why, I do believe we’ve got into Lucy’s

wood after all.”

And now there was no mistaking it, and all four children stood blinking in

the daylight of a winter day. Behind them were coats hanging on pegs, in front of

them were snow-covered trees. (p. 60)

Much like Lucy’s early scene where she first goes through the wardrobe, the passage is particularly interesting for the manner in which it makes explicit at the level of story how the children are traveling through from a familiar and recognizable setting into direct contact with the fantastic, with everything that implies for the way we are invited to approach that world. Though it does not take long for them (and us) to learn about Mr.

Tumnus’ kidnapping and how they are actually destined to save Narnia, they are not only eager from the start to enter and literally explore that world—“‘We can pretend we are

Arctic explorers,’ said Lucy” (Lewis, 1950/2002, p. 61)—but even afterwards they are still constantly marveled by it, inviting us to share their curiosity and, most important yet, sense of wonder: “They walked on in silence drinking it all in (…) They had been just as surprised as Edmund when they saw the winter vanishing and the whole wood passing in a few hours or so from January to May” (pp. 135-136).

As Mendlesohn (2008) points out, looking at The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, and other early examples of the form, like Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and

George MacDonald’s Lilith, the fantasy world becomes almost a “primary character” in the story, emphasizing how it is often “the landscape and its effects, rather than an 120 adventure per se, that fascinates” (pp. 28-29). Though completing the quest might be the main practical concern that sends the characters on their way, forcing them, among other things, to explore and learn about that world in order to succeed on their mission; the story is as much about the strange places, creatures and situations that the characters find along the way, and are, again, as strange and wonderful for them as they are, in one way or another, for the reader, as it is about defeating the villain or reaching a specific destination like the Emerald City in Baum’s novel.

For a more recent example we can look at a text like Harry Potter and the

Philosopher Stone (Rowling, 1997/2010), particularly a scene like the one where Harry visits for first time Diagon Alley, after learning that he is a wizard. While the passage serves to introduce several characters and plot devices, including Professor Quirrell,

Draco Malfoy, and the mysterious package that Hagrid picks up at Gringotts, the focus is on the magical world itself and the effect it has on character: “Harry wished he had about eight more eyes. He turned his head in every direction as they walked up the street, trying to look at everything at once: the shops, the things outside them, the people doing their shopping” (p. 56). Beyond simply setting the stage where the story finally takes place, the scene is especially fascinating for what it tells us about wizards’ society and customs, and how different is their world compared to our own.

In one way or another, what the portal-quest fantasy does is recreate and, in doing so, emphasize and address within the text itself, the essential cognitive tension characteristic of most antirealistic narratives between the author/narrator, who knows everything there is to know about the fictional world and its inhabitants, and the authorial 121 audience, for whom that world is utterly strange. As Phelan (1989) explains in his analysis of George Orwell’s 1984, this difference in knowledge can serve to “propel us forward in the narrative,” as we try to get more information, and make sense of what is going on, in order to judge both the events and the characters within their own fictional context (p. 29). The result is a type of narrative where we are as interested in the events themselves, as we are in the discovery and contemplation of the explicitly fantastic setting where the story as a whole is taking place.

Even in a pure quest fantasy like The Lord of the Rings (Tolkien, 1954-

1955/2004), where the characters are not technically moving between worlds, we can still see the same focus on the world and the experience of the fantastic itself, from the deep halls of Moria, a space that the hobbits have only have heard about in legends and turns out to be more vast, dangerous, and ultimately startling than they ever envisioned it—

“The wildest imaginings that dark rumor had ever suggested to the hobbits fell altogether short of the actual dread and wonder of Moria” (p. 315)—to what is probably the most magical moment of the whole novel, when they reach the magical forest and elven kingdom of Lothlórien: “When his eyes were in turn uncovered, Frodo looked up and caught his breath. (…) ‘Behold! You are come to Cerin Amroth,’ said Haldir. ‘For this is the hearth of the ancient realm as it was long ago’” (p. 350).

According to Mendlesohn (2008), the problem with all this is that it not only

“flattens” the world into a mere “travelogue” or “guided tour of the landscapes,” where we get to visit every place and see every culture and creature that makes part of the fictional world (pp. xix; 8), but also requires the author to reaffirm both the “narrative 122 and descriptive competence of the protagonist,” through whose naïve and yet perceptive point of view we are invited to approach the fantastic, and the “authority and reliability of the narrator” and the different character-guides that the protagonists find along the way, and explain that world for them (and, of course, us), denying the possibility of alternate or contradictory readings (pp. 7-18). As she finally concludes, looking at Tolkien’s novel, this “insistence on a monosemic understanding of the world,” ultimately works against the very “illusion of reality” that the focus on the description of the land and the accumulation of detail “strives so hard to conjure” (p. 35).

This not only ignores, however—and this is one of the key points where I move away from Mendlesohn’s analysis—how the way the fantasy world is presented is both consistent with and effectively used to convey the experience of entering and exploring a strange new setting, contributing to the kind of progression and increased sense of estrangement and wonder that I describe above and found to be one of the most attractive and narratologically interesting features of the portal-quest fantasy as a whole; but also fails to acknowledge how, while we are invited to accept what we are told about the fantasy world and its inhabitants, the fact that the characters are moving from a familiar and recognizable setting, with its own expectations and beliefs, into another world, problematizes and invites us to reflect on what the experience itself entails, and the relation between reality and fantasy in general.

Consider how Susan reacts in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (Lewis,

1950/2002) when Lucy first tells her and her brothers about the White Witch and the danger she represents. While they are all initially very excited to find themselves in 123 another world, she immediately starts to have her doubts once she learns that they are facing an actual witch, who is, among other things, responsible for the never-ending winter that afflicts Narnia, and suggests it might be better to go back: “I mean, it doesn’t seem particularly safe here and it looks as if it won’t be much fun either. And it’s getting colder every minute, and we’ve brought nothing to eat. What about just going home?” (p.

65). Not only is she understandably concerned with their lack of food and shelter, but is also dealing with a creature (the witch only seems human) that she would never expect to find in real life, which makes her so much scarier.

In general, the fact that the characters are moving between worlds, effectively forces both characters and readers to compare one space or world with the other, and reflect on both their differences and similarities, ultimately questioning not only desirability of crossing to, exploring, and staying for good on the other side of the portal, but also coming back to the real world, and how the experience itself changes the way we see and deal with our everyday reality. Consider how a character like Harry Potter, for example, contrasts his first welcome banquet at Hogwarts, with his awful experience with the Dursleys, highlighting how the magical world is, at least for him, an escape (the term results here particularly appropriate) from an otherwise oppressive and in many ways depressive reality: “He had never seen so many things he liked to eat on one table (…).

The Dursleys had never exactly starved Harry, but he’d never been allowed to eat as much as he liked” (Rowling, 1997/2010, p. 92).

At the other end of the spectrum, we have a character like Taran, for whom the experience of the fantasy world, and particularly the heroic quest, turns out to be much 124 less exciting than what he imagined it back home at Caer Dallben, which in turn brings a new appreciation for the simple quiet life he had before—an impression that is especially poignant in the scene where he is lamenting the apparent death prince Gwydion and how is now up to him and his friends to complete the quest: “Taran’s head spun. (…)

Everything had ceased to be simple. He yearned for the peacefulness of Caer Dallben, yearned even to weed the vegetable gardens and make horseshoes” (Alexander,

1964/2006, p. 83).29 Though we are still invited to accept what we are told about the fantasy world and its inhabitants, as well as the moral order that sustains the quest itself, the text also subverts our expectations, inviting us to question once more the desirability, value, and ultimately meaning of the journey.

As I explain in more detail in the next section, when I look at the ending of the narrative, the result is a much more ethically complex and interpretively open kind of fantasy than what Mendlesohn suggests in her analysis: From the way most characters are forced to choose between one world and the other, and deal with the implications of such decision, to how the form as a whole finally invites us to reflect on our own experience as readers, the relation between reality and fantasy, and the value of fantasy fiction as a

29 The scene is remarkably similar to what happens to Frodo in The Lord of the Rings (Tolkien, 1954-

1955/2004) when he starts thinking about Bilbo, during the company perilous journey through Moria:

“[N]ow his thoughts had been carried away from the dark Mines, to Rivendell, to Bilbo, and to Bag End in the days while Bilbo was still there. He wished with all his heart that he was back there, and in those days, mowing the lawn, or pottering among the flowers, and that he had never heard of Moria, or mithril – or the

Ring” (p. 318).

125 whole. In order to appreciate this, however, we need to move again beyond the issue of language and reliability of the narrator, and consider the full progression of the narrative, how we are invited to enter and explore the fantasy world, the effect that the transit between worlds has on both the character’s and the readers’ experience with the fantastic, and where the author is finally taking us with all this.

Ending/Return. According to Mendlesohn (2008), there are two basic movements in the portal-quest fantasy: Transition and exploration. The characters first move from one world to another and then proceed to explore that world until they are confident, capable and knowledgeable enough to “negotiate with the world via the personal manipulation of the fantastic realm” (p. 2). While Mendlesohn pays a lot of attention to the process—how the characters (and the reader) gain experience and the fantasy world is rendered increasingly familiar as the story progresses—she barely mentions what happens in the end: How the characters actually negotiate with the fantasy world and, more important yet, how they look back (or return) to the world where the story begins, and what this means for the progression of the portal-quest fantasy.

Like most fairy tales and traditional quest narratives, the boundary between the middle and the ending of the narrative is usually marked by the protagonists reaching their intended destination and a final confrontation with the villain: The Pevensie children confront the White Witch and ultimately get to Cair Paravel, Taran and his friends reach

Caer Dathyl just in time to help defeat the Horned King, and Harry Potter gets the

Philosopher Stone before Voldemort/Quirrell can get it. In all cases it is clear how the arrival/confrontation marks not only the end of the quest, but also the climactic moment 126 of the narrative, where the characters finally prove their worth as heroes: “There stood

Peter and Edmund and all the rest of Aslan’s army fighting desperately against the crowd of horrible creatures whom [Lucy] had seen last night; only now, in the daylight, they looked even stranger and more evil” (Lewis, 1950/2002, p. 193).30

While for Mendlesohn (2008) the very idea of the quest and the final confrontation with the villain, emphasizes the authoritative interpretation of the world that she finds so problematic in this type of texts—how the character are encouraged to and ultimately rewarded for following their intended path and, despite all odds, keep going, in order to finally restore the world to a previous state of splendor (pp. 3-16)—this is not only consistent with and supports the type of progression and dramatic effect that the author and, in many ways, the audience as well is looking for, since the quest is first announced at the beginning of the story; but also, as mentioned above, the fact that the characters themselves are not traditional heroes, and are dealing with both their own personal issues and the effect of the transit between worlds, introduces an additional twist and thematic dimension to the whole ending.

30 This is, of course, replicated in the case of all three series at the end of most entries, and again in the last book, where the characters have to defeat the villain once more, this time definitively: From Taran finally killing the Death-Lord Arawn with the magical sword Dyrnwyn at the end of The High King (Alexander,

1968/2006) to Harry Potter first sacrificing himself and then defeating Voldemort in their last duel at the end of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (Rowling, 2007), not to mention Lewis’ appropriately titled

The Last Battle (1956/2005).

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Despite all protagonists showing remarkable courage and determination as they finally get to confront the villain, assuming, again, the traditional role of the hero, it is worth noticing how they are not the ones to ultimately defeat it (at least not in the first entries of the series). Though, Harry certainly tricks and hurts Voldemort/Quirrell and stops him/them from getting the Philosopher’s Stone, and Peter and Edmund manage to fight the White Witch and destroy her wand, it is Dumbledore and Aslan who effectively vanquish the villain and save the children themselves. As Taran explicitly recognizes at the end of The Book of Three, when Dallben asks him how it feels to be a hero, he does not deserve any praise: “It was Gwydion who destroyed the Horned King, and Hen Wen helped him do it. But Gurgi, not I, found her. (…) As for me, what I mostly did was make mistakes” (Alexander, 1964/2006, p. 185).

Though this might have something to do with the fact that these are all children’s books, and it might be inappropriate for the characters to actually kill the villain, not to mention how the author needs to leave the door open for future and more definitive confrontations later on, it also has to do with the fact that these are not traditional narratives, and the protagonists are not traditional heroes. As my analysis of the middle/exploration highlights, one of the key problems for the characters, as they move from one world to another, is precisely how to deal with a notion of heroism that is finally alien to them. Even in an adult novel like The Lord of the Rings (Tolkien, 1954-

1955/2004), where we are situated from the start in the fantasy world, the protagonists still struggle with this: “And here he was a little Halfling from the Shire, a simple hobbit

128 of the quiet countryside, expected to find a way where the great ones could not go, or dared not go. It was an evil fate” (p. 644).

This does not mean, however, that the protagonists fail on their quest or do not achieve anything significant, but rather highlights how they ultimately succeed but in a different manner, which has again important consequences for both plot and readerly dynamics. Consider how Dallben highlights Taran’s accomplishments when his apprentice tells him that it was his friends and not him who defeated the Horned King: “It was you who held the companions together and led them. (…) If you made mistakes, you recognize them. As I told you, there are times when the seeking counts more than the finding” (Alexander, 1964/2006, p. 185). The same can be said in many ways about

Harry Potter and how he bests Voldemort/Quirrell at the end of Harry Potter and the

Philosopher’s Stone thanks not so much through his own power or magical knowledge, but rather through sheer courage, the help he gets from his friends and, of course, the magical protection bestowed by his mother’s love.31

31 The “end-of-year feast” results particularly telling, from the way Harry gets fifty point for his “pure nerve and outstanding courage” to how the last ten points that give Gryffindor the House Cup are awarded to Neville Longbottom—a character that seems initially even less heroic than Harry but would play a significant role in Voldemort’s final defeat—for actually trying to prevent Harry and his friends from breaking the rules. As Dumbledore points out, highlighting how there are “all kinds of courage”: “It takes a great deal of bravery to sand up to our enemies, but just as much to stand to our friends” (Rowling,

1997/2010, p. 221).

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Both examples highlight, again, how the characters’ journey is not only about completing the quest, defeating the villain or reaching an appointed destination. As

Mendlesohn (2008) points out, when she explores the similarities between the modern portal-quest fantasy and Bunyan's Pilgrim’s Progress, the journey is often associated with personal and moral growth (pp. 4-5). Just like with any other significant ordeal, be it magical or not, the characters are necessarily transformed by and, particularly in the case of children’s literature, grow up and mature through their adventures and experience with the fantastic: Taran gets over himself and becomes wiser and more compassionate in the process; Harry finally finds a place where he belongs and a family of sorts with his friends and teachers at Hogwarts; and Edmund is finally redeemed for not just betraying his siblings and Aslan to the White Witch, but his overall nastiness and bad temper before the children had even crossed to Narnia.

When at last she was free to come back to Edmund she found him standing on his

feet and not only healed of his wounds but looking better than she had seen him

look—oh, for ages; in fact ever since his first term at that horrid school which was

where he had begun to go wrong. He had become his real old self again and could

look you in the face. (Lewis, 1950/2002, p. 197)

The effect is further highlighted by the way most portal-quest fantasies bring the characters and the reader back to the real world, emphasizing the connection between the two, while inviting us at the same time to reflect on the effect and purpose of the whole journey. Though the quest effectively ends with the defeat of the villain, and it is usually followed by some form of celebration and reward that highlights the accomplishments of 130 the heroes, as well as how the fantasy world has been restored to a previous state of order and splendor, this is not the last movement of the narrative. Like most children’s books where the character leave home to go on adventures, including not just fantasy but realistic fiction as well, the journey ends with a return home (or, at least, the possibility to return to home). As Perry Nodelman (2008) points out: “Viewed in terms of sequence

(…) there are not just two main components to the structure of the texts, but three: home and away, yes, but also ‘home again.’” (p. 65).

Considering how much attention she pays to the characters’ initial transit from a familiar and recognizable setting into direct contact with the fantastic, and the effect it has on both the form and positioning of the reader, it results a bit surprising that

Mendlesohn barely mentions this last movement, especially when we consider how, just like the initial transit between worlds, it forces us again to compare both spaces and what each of them represents, for both the characters and, on a different level, the reader. As

Sarah Gilead (1991) points out, looking in detail at the closure of several children’s fantasies, including Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, as well as Barrie’s own Peter and Wendy, “the return almost inevitably requires a reinterpretation (even a radical one) of the fantasy and may embody a metaliterary comment on the work’s cogency or purpose” (p. 278).

It is not casual at all that most portal-quest fantasies force the characters to choose, in one way or another, between the real world and the fantastic. Consider what happens with Taran at the end of The Book of Three (Alexander, 1964/2006), when

Gwydion finally asks him, after the Horned King has been defeated, what reward he can 131 give him for his help. Though Taran still wishes to be a hero, and all his companions get extraordinary presents from the prince—like the power of invisibility for Doli and the magic wallet for Gurgi, described as “one of the treasures of Prydain” (p. 181)—he significantly asks to go back home, recognizing how, despite the allure of the adventure and the fantasy world itself, he still misses the peaceful life and familiar landscapes of his childhood: “In spite of all that has befallen me, I have come to love the valleys and mountains of your northern lands. But my thoughts have turned more and more to Caer

Dallben. I long to be home” (pp. 181-182). 32

At the other end of the spectrum we have a text like The Lion, the Witch and the

Wardrobe itself (Lewis, 1950/2002), where the characters not only stay in Narnia reigning as kings and queens for several years, to the point where “if ever they remembered their life in this world it was only as one remembers a dream” (p. 201), but once they finally return to the professor’s house (more by accident than anything else, as they literally stumble into the wardrobe), they immediately start thinking about getting back to Narnia: “Yes, of course you’ll get back to Narnia again someday. Once a King in

Narnia, always a King in Narnia. But don’t go trying to use the same route twice. (…)

32 The scene is, once more, very similar to what happens at the end of The Lord of the Rings (Tolkien,

1954-1955/2004), when Frodo and Sam finally decide to leave Rivendell and return home to the Shire:

“Well, Mr. Frodo, we´ve been far and seen a deal, and yet I don’t think we’ve found a better place than this. There’s something of everything here, if you understand me: the Shire and the Golden Wood and

Gondor and king’s houses and inns and meadows and mountains all mixed. And yet, somehow, I feel we ought to be going soon. I am worried about my gaffer, to tell you the truth” (p. 986).

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It’ll happen when you’re not looking for it” (p. 206). While the return apparently suggests the precedence of the real world over the fantastic, emphasized by the fact that they go back to the exact moment they left, it leaves open the possibility of a new journey, which will, of course, take place in the next book in the series.

In addition to inviting us compare one world or setting with the other and, in doing so, reflect once more on desirability of crossing to, exploring, and staying for good

(or not) on the other side of the portal, suggesting, in one way or another, a metafictional reflection on the fantastic; the return also makes explicit how the experience of the fantastic itself, as both fictionally possible and, perhaps more important yet, purely literary, affects both the characters and, on a different level, the reader, emphasizing how while it certainly takes us into another world, it also bring us back and ultimately comments on reality. Despite the common accusations of escapism raised against children’s fantasy, the form ultimately reminds us how, as W. R. Irwin (1976) puts it, the experience of fantasy is essentially incomplete “until the reader has used the story for some kind of critique of what it opposes,” (p. 76).

The Book of Three (Alexander, 1964/2006), provides again a great example. In addition to having Taran return to Caer Dallben and reflect on his role in the adventure, the ending makes very clear how, now that he has come back, he sees the old farm from a different perspective altogether: “It is a curious feeling. I have returned to the chamber I slept in and found it smaller than I remember. The fields are beautiful, yet not quite as I recalled them” (p. 186). To which Dallben, of course, replies that it is not the farm house that has gotten smaller, but Taran himself who has grown up as a result of his journey and 133 experience with the fantastic. As Nodelman (2008) points out, emphasizing how the

“home” at the end of most children’s books is inevitably different from the one at the beginning of the story, “this difference represents a necessary acknowledgment of the inevitability of growth, particularly when child protagonists and child readers alike are invited to change their view of home” (p. 67).

Consider what happens with Harry at the very end of Harry Potter and the

Philosopher’s Stone (Rowling, 1997/2010), when he goes back to King’s Cross Station.

While the Dursleys are still basically their same awful selves—“It was uncle Vernon, still purpled-faced, still moustached, still looking furious at the nerve of Harry, carrying an owl in a cage in a station full of ordinary people. Behind him stood Aunt Petunia and

Dudley” (p. 223)—Harry himself is not the same person that he was before he left: Not only does he have friends (not to mention magical powers), but he is also more confident and able to deal with both his family and the everyday mundane life they represent thanks to his experience with the fantastic; as he points out when Hermione and Ron skeptically wish him a good holiday: “They were surprised at the grin that was spreading over his face. ‘They don’t know we’re not allowed to use magic at home. I’m going to have a lot of fun with Dudley this summer’” (p. 223).

The implication, of course, is that we too as readers can learn something and grow through our own experience with the text and, through it, the fantastic. While the transit between worlds might imply, as Mendlesohn points out, an authoritative interpretation of the world, which might reduce in some ways the participation of the reader, that is only part of the equation. As my analysis has shown, this not only contributes, once more, to 134 bring the reader into the world of the story, and increase our sense of estrangement and wonder, emphasizing the appeal and effect of the fantastic, but also, by focusing on how the protagonists and, on a different level, the reader, deal with that very experience, as the story itself progresses, and how that world is put in dialogue with the world where the story begins, it is possible to see how the form ultimately proposes a metafictional reflection on fantasy, how it works, and the significance and value that the genre as a whole can have for both young and older readers.

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Part 2. “Do You Believe in Fairies?”: Metafiction, Fantasy and Make-Believe in J.

M. Barrie’s Peter and Wendy

In her excellent history of children’s fantasy, Worlds Within (1988), Canadian critic and scholar Sheila Egoff highlights how J. M. Barrie created in Peter Pan and later

Peter and Wendy a complete fantasy world out of his own experience and relationship with children, influencing “both the spirit and content of fantasy for several generations”

(p. 88). It is somewhat surprising, in this sense, how few critical studies have addressed the manner in which Barrie’s 1911 novel works as a fantasy text. Though most critics recognize the fantastic elements in Peter and Wendy—from Peter’s eternal youth to the appearance of mermaids and faeries—they rarely look at how those elements are presented, how the different characters interact with them as the story progresses, or where is the reader invited to stand in relation to the fantastic.

As Peter Hollindale (1993) points out, in addition to the many biographical studies that connect Barrie’s personal life with his work, modern critics tend to analyze and evaluate both Peter Pan and Peter and Wendy in relation to the Edwardian values and ideas about children’s literature they portray (p. 25). While some authors find the idealization of childhood characteristic of the period, and the innocence and sentimentality associated with it, outdated and problematic (Green, 1981; Storr, 1992);

136 others highlight how Barrie created in Peter Pan an archetypal image of the child-hero that not only expressed “what children’s literature up to 1904 had been trying to say and do” (Carpenter, 1985, p. 180), but also has had an enduring influence in later books all the way to the Harry Potter series (Billone, 2004).

More than anything else, the story of Peter Pan has been read as a reflection on childhood and growing up. According to Catherine Lynch (1982), who significantly compares the play with Natalie Babbit’s 1975 award-winning novel Tuck Everlasting,

“Peter’s story (which is also Wendy’s story) allows the audience to consider the merits of staying forever young versus giving up childhood and accepting one’s adult responsibilities” (p. 107). From a similar perspective, William Blackburn highlights in

“Peter Pan and the Contemporary Adolescent Novel” (1982) how, while critics tend to read Barrie’s work as either a celebration of childhood or an argument against staying young forever, it is the conflict between the two that makes the novel such a relevant and meaningful reflection on these issues (pp. 48-52).

The problem with many of these approaches is that they pay little attention to the fantastic elements of the story beyond their thematic or metaphorical meaning: How both characters and readers are effectively dealing with events, creatures and places that they would never expect to find in real life. In his 1985 chapter “J. M. Barrie and Peter Pan:

‘That terrible masterpiece’”—the title, taken from Peter Llewelyn Davies’ famous remark about the play, is already telling—Humphrey Carpenter argues that, despite creating in

Neverland a more detailed and suggestive fantasy world than any of his contemporaries,

Barrie finally dismisses his creation as childish nonsense: “There is no question about it 137 being real. Unlike his predecessors who created Arcadias, Barrie is constantly stating that his dream-land is a dream” (pp. 185-186).

As my analysis of Peter and Wendy seeks to show, however, that “dream-land” becomes increasingly real as the story progresses, forcing both characters and readers to rethink and negotiate the relationship between reality and fantasy. From the moment Mrs.

Darling finds the skeleton leaves at the foot of the nursery’s window (Barrie, 1911/2011, pp. 22-23) to the fact that the children actually disappear from home, leaving their parents in distress for several days (pp. 167-171), there are multiple hints throughout the text that suggest that Wendy and her brothers are not dreaming. In fact, a good part of the effect of the book depends on the manner in which what should be only imaginary becomes real:

“Thus sharply did the terrified three learn the difference between an island of make- believe and the same island come true” (p. 62).

Like all portal-quest fantasies, the novel effectively invites both characters and readers into the fictional world of the story by moving from a familiar and recognizable setting into the dream-like fantasy space that is Neverland. This not only helps the reader to navigate the distance between the authorial and narrative audience—requiring us to accept initially very little that contradicts our experience of reality, and then mediating our encounter with the fantastic through the naïve and wide-eyed perspective of the protagonists—but also highlights how the question of reality and fantasy is at the heart of the text. From this perspective, the dilemma for Wendy and her brothers is not that different from what the characters have to face at the end of The Lion, the Witch and the

Wardrobe or even The Book of Three. 138

While going back to London certainly implies accepting the inevitability of growing up instead of staying young forever, it also means worrying about money instead of fighting pirates, losing the ability to fly (both literally and metaphorically), and not knowing any story to tell one’s children. According to critics like Lynette Hunter (1980) and Sarah Gilead (1991), who look at Peter Pan and Peter and Wendy respectively, there is a fundamental conflict in Barrie’s work between the alluring possibilities of fantasy— as fictional world, mental capacity and literary genre—and the need to go back to reality

(pp. 69-70; pp. 285-287). Just like we are invited to consider the real world advantages and costs of growing up, we are also encouraged to reflect, in both literal and literary sense, on the values and dangers of fantasy.

What really sets the novel apart from similar books like Lewis’ and Alexander’s, and probably explains why critics rarely treat it as a fantasy work, is the manner in which the text seems to subvert the conventions and narrative strategies of the genre. Not only is

Neverland described as an imaginary land made of fairy tales and childhood experiences—suggesting it is not a real place, the way Narnia and Prydain seem to be— but we are also constantly aware that what we are reading is a story, with everything that implies. As Hollindale (1993) points out, highlighting the difference between the play and the novel, there is a distinct authorial presence in Peter and Wendy interrupting the narrative with “a reminder of its fictive nature, as well as a detached, skeptical, mocking commentary on its own fictiveness” (p. 29).

While most fantasy authors tend to avoid this type of self-conscious narration, in order to sustain the illusion that fantasy world exists on its own, Barrie’s text 139 systematically calls attention to the relationship between narrator, narratee and the events of the story, which in turn comments upon the reader’s own relationship with the text.

According to Kathleen Blake (2009), Barrie’s narrator can be seen as a dramatization of what Captain Hook calls in the text “bad form,” refusing to play the game straight by staying “inside the frame so that its artificial limits do not impinge” (p. 174). Though this necessarily reduces our mimetic engagement with the story, it also reflects on how the novel invites us to navigate the distance between the authorial and narrative audience’s positions, and accept the fictional world as true.

What we ultimately have in Peter and Wendy is two opposite and simultaneous processes that highlight the complexity and sophistication of Barrie’s text. At the level of plot dynamics, we have a typical portal-quest structure, where the characters move from one world or plane of reality to another, mediating the reader’s experience with the fantastic and making it easier for us to assume the position of the narrative audience, while reflecting at the level of story on the relationship between reality and fantasy. At the level of narratorial dynamics, however, we have this weird authorial narrator who insistently calls attention to the telling, effectively taking us back to the position of the authorial audience, and proposing what is essentially a metafictional reflection on the whole process at the level of discourse.

With this distinction in mind, I have structured my analysis of the beginning, middle and ending of the novel in terms of these two levels, starting with the narratorial dynamics, and how they frame, mediate and comment on our experience with the text, before moving back to the plot dynamics and looking in detail at how the characters’ 140 transit between worlds affects and reflects upon the reader’s relationship with the fantastic. Though this implies some back and forth, and might suggest a disconnect between the two levels, I have also tried to keep a sense of sequence and temporal progression, often following Barrie’s own chapter divisions, while highlighting the connections between levels and the manner in which both narratorial and plot dynamics contribute to our overall experience and interpretation of the book.

2.1. Open Windows and Chinese Boxes: The Beginning of Peter and Wendy

Like all portal-quest fantasies, Barrie’s novel can be read as a framed narrative, where the chapters that take place in what seems to be the real world, at the beginning and ending of the book, effectively enclose and provide an ideological and ontological context, against which both characters and readers interpret the events that take place in

Neverland. As Brian Attebery (1992) points out, this type of framing device serves to

“establish a relationship between the fantasy world and our own while at the same time separating the two” (p. 66). Though our attention tends to focus on what happens once the children get into direct contact with the fantastic—from learning to fly to fighting

Captain Hook—the distinctive effect and thematic significance of the story depend on the juxtaposition of these two spaces.

One of the reasons that make Peter and Wendy such an interesting case study, and sets it apart from similar texts, is the manner in which this framing effect is replicated at the level of both narratorial and plot dynamics. At the level of narratorial dynamics, the conspicuous and self-aware presence of Barrie’s authorial narrator, and his constant appeals to the narratee, immediately call attention to the narrating instance and the 141 relationship between the adult storyteller and the child. By inviting us to identify with the narratee, and then gradually revealing the increasing presence of the fantastic, it also serves Barrie to navigate the distance between the authorial and the narrative audience, creating a tension around whether or not we are supposed to take the early signs that something strange is going on as true, which will finally be resolved once Peter appears in front of Mrs. Darling and later in front of Wendy.

The dichotomy between adults and children, and the way both react to the intrusive presence of the fantastic, is recreated again at the level of plot dynamics, where we move from Mr. and Mrs. Darling’s story, and the money-oriented, middle-class

Edwardian world they represent to Wendy and her brothers’ actual encounter with Peter, all the way in chapter three. Much like Mrs. Darling’s mind—described in the text as a one of those sets of “tiny boxes, one within the other, that come from the puzzling East”

(Barrie, 1911/2011, p. 13)—the beginning of Barrie’s novel is structured around a series of framed narratives that invite us little by little to accept the existence of the fantastic, while still being aware of the difference between Neverland, the world where the story begins and both these spaces and reality.

The telling and the world. “All children, except one, grow up” (Barrie,

1911/2011, p. 13). The opening line from Peter and Wendy immediately points out how we are dealing with a fantasy text that contradicts our experience of reality, while suggesting that the story still begins in what otherwise seems to be the real world.

Though it also highlights early on how the question of growing up is at the heart of the novel, the narrator’s statement is particularly interesting for the manner in which it 142 establishes within the text itself what W. R. Irwin (1976) calls the “fantastic invention”— there is a child somewhere who can stay young forever—and the “known or presumed fact” it subverts (p. 60)—emphasizing how both authorial and narrative audiences are expected to see this as a fantastic occurrence.

When Mrs. Darling asks Wendy a few lines later why she cannot stay young forever, it is clear how we are not supposed to taker her question literally, but to interpret it instead as a conventional and sentimental expression of wishful thinking, that ironically and tragically affirms, once again, the inevitability of growing up: “This was all that passed between them on the subject, but henceforth Wendy knew that she must grow up”

(Barrie, 1911/2011, p. 13). As the story progresses, however, both characters and readers are required to accept (or pretend to accept) more and more that contradicts their previous experience of reality, which allows us, on the one hand, to identify with Wendy and her family, while highlighting, on the other hand, the increasing distance between the authorial and narrative audiences’ beliefs.

Though this type of evolving relationship between the reader and the world of the story is characteristic of the portal-quest fantasy in general, it is further and explicitly mediated in Barrie’s novel by the “extradiegetic” interaction among narrator, narratee and fictional world. According to Gérard Genette (1972/1983) whose distinction between narrative levels results here particularly useful: “any event a narrative recounts is at a diegetic level immediately higher than the level at which the narrative act producing this narrative is placed” (italics in original, p. 228). While both narrator and narratee are still part of the same fictional universe as the characters, they are also “outside” of the main 143 narrative or diegesis, which makes them aware of the story as story, as well as their roles as storyteller and audience respectively.

This not only establishes an additional narrative frame that informs the way we experience and interpret the story, but also calls attention to how the narrator, on one level, and Barrie himself, on the other, negotiate the relationship between the different audiences and the world where the story begins, and then the transit between one world and the other. As Jacqueline Rose (1984/1993) highlights in her analysis of the opening lines of the novel (pp. 67-68), Barrie’s narrator significantly passes from talking about

“all children,” and how “they soon know that they will grow up,” to focus on Wendy’s experience alone, before finally inviting the narratee (and, through it, the authorial audience) to share his conclusion: “You always know after you are two. Two is the beginning of the end” (Barrie, 1911/2011, p. 13).

The distinctive use of the second person pronoun (instead of the more formal

“one”), not only establishes a conversational tone with the narratee, but also invites it to identify with Wendy, based on their shared childlike experience. The impression that the narratee is indeed a child is confirmed a few pages later when the narrator describes how

Mrs. Darling “tides up” her children’s minds—“If you could keep awake (but of course you can’t) you would see your own mother doing this” (Barrie, 1911/2011, p. 17)—and then how the Neverland of make-believe becomes too real, and a bit frightening, as it starts to get dark—“[W]hen you play at it by day with the chairs and table-cloth, it is not the least alarming, but in the two minutes before you go to sleep it becomes very nearly real. That is why there are night-lights” (p. 21). 144

Just like children are, within the fictional world of the story, the only ones who can cross the portal to Neverland, the childlike narratee is deemed more capable and willing to accept the existence of the fantastic, even if it is still surprised and frightened by it. As the narrator explicitly points out, when Wendy is telling her mother in the most

“casual way” about Peter’s nightly visits to the nursery, children are able to “have the strangest adventures without being troubled by them” (Barrie, 1911/2011, p. 22). This not only makes them the perfect audience for the story, but also highlights the difference between the childlike narratee and the adult, who (just like Mr. and Mrs. Darling) might find this type of experience more unsettling—a contrast that is further marked by the fact that the narrator himself is not a child.

From the manner in which he authoritatively declares that “all children” must grow up (without including himself) to the way he explains Mrs. Darling emotional response when she sees Wendy playing in the garden—“I suppose she must have looked rather delightful, for Mrs. Darling put her hand to her heart and cried, ‘Oh, why can’t you remain like this for ever!” (Barrie, 1911/2011, p. 13)—it is clear how we are dealing with an adult narrative voice. The very interpretation of Wendy’s fateful discovery as the

“beginning of the end” (already suggesting a parallel with the equally inevitable process of growing old, and eventually dying) reveals a more mature and somber perspective on what growing up entails: The perspective of someone who has already grew up and looks nostalgically on childhood.

According to Rose (1984/1993), who sees the explicit tension between the adult perspective and the child’s as one of the distinctive features of Barrie’s text: The narrator 145

“belongs on the edge of what he offers us as the trauma of growth – given three times over in the passage in a crescendo of insistence and anxiety” (p. 68). Like Wendy herself—who is, in one way or another, on the brink of adulthood (or at least adolescence), and is finally unable to return to Neverland once she grows up—the narrator simultaneously invites us to identify with the childlike narratee, and navigate the distance between both worlds, while reminding us how he himself is unable to do so anymore: “We too have been there, we can still hear the sound of the surf, though we shall land no more” (Barrie, 1911/2011, p. 21).

Though the interaction between the adult narrator and the child narratee is not uncommon in children’s books, the manner in which Barrie exposes not only the tension between the two, but also how this affects their experience and interpretation of the fantastic, immediately calls attention to the extradiegetic narrative frame and how it mediates our own relationship with the story. While we tend to identify with the narratee early on, and accept the narrator’s invitation to recognize the world where the story begins as our own (or a fictional version of our own), as the narratee is asked to accept more and more, we become increasingly aware of the difference between the authorial and narrative audiences’ beliefs, and the effort required to take the latter’s position and accept the existence of the fantastic.

Despite announcing from the opening line the existence of Peter, the narrator’s insistence that this is actually an exception to the rule, and the subsequent description of the world where the story begins, suggests that we are dealing with an otherwise realistic setting. Right from the start, the narratee is expected to recognize the Darling’s home as 146 a real, clearly situated place—“Of course they lived at 14, and until Wendy came her mother was the chief one” (Barrie, 1911/2011, p. 13)—an impression that is highlighted by the later reference to the nearby Kensington Gardens, a place that Barrie´s authorial audience should had been able to recognize all too well, emphasizing how the action initially takes place in a fictional version of London, and Edwardian England in general, with everything that implies.

While the novel does not give any more details about the house itself, the stage directions for the play jokingly situate it “at the top of a rather depressed street in

Bloomsbury,” close to Peter Mark Roget’s house (the real-life compiler of the

Thesaurus), and point out how the house has been repainted and expanded after the events of the story, ultimately inviting the audience to situate the Darling’s home anywhere they like: “[I]f you think it was your house you are very probably right”

(Barrie, 1928/2008, p. 87). Just as it happens in the novel, Barrie’s address to the audience has a twofold effect, simultaneously inviting us to engage with the play and the characters, and establishing a realistic frame of reference that informs the way we experience and interpret the story later on.

In opposition to other portal-quest fantasies like Alice’s Adventures in

Wonderland, where we barely get a glimpse of the “real” world before she falls down the rabbit-hole, or The Wind in the Willows, where the “Wide World” beyond feels at times more unreal than the idyllic landscape where most of the action takes place, Peter and

Wendy presents the reader with a much more elaborate and realistic version of the familiar and recognizable setting where the story begins. As Carpenter (1985) points out, 147

“the events of Peter Pan are framed by a ‘real’ world in which money has to be earned and family relationships can be extremely difficult” (p. 180), establishing not only a contrast with Neverland, but also commenting on Edwardian middle-class concerns and society, as well as child-parent dynamics.

Mr. Darling used to boast to Wendy that her mother not only loved him but

respected him. He was one of those deep ones who know about stocks and shares.

Of course no one really knows, but he quite seemed to know, and he often said

stocks were up and shares were down in a way that would have made any woman

respect him. (Barrie, 1911/2011, p. 14)

Beyond what this tells us about the characters themselves, the tone of the commentary highlights how the narratee (and on a different level the reader) is not just expected to recognize (if not necessarily understand) the reference to stocks and shares, but also catch the irony and criticism in the narrator’s opinion of Mr. Darling. While this also emphasizes the tension between adult and child, narrator and narratee, and in some cases the reader, it also establishes a clear connection between the world where the story begins and the world of extraliterary reality, upon which Barrie (through the narrator and the characters) is ultimately commenting. The relation between authorial and narrative audience is therefore here not that different from what we have in most realistic fiction, either for children or for adults.

As the story progresses, however, we start to notice some differences between the world where the story begins and our own, starting with how the Darlings, despite doing their best to be “exactly like their neighbors,” have hired a dog to be their children’s 148 nurse: “As they were poor, owing to the amount of milk the children drank, this nurse was a prim Newfoundland dog, called Nana, who had belonged to no one in particular until the Darling’s engaged her” (Barrie, 1911/2011, p. 16). Though the passage can be read as satire on Edwardian social customs, commenting on the family’s need to have a proper nurse, which happens to be a better caretaker than any human being, it is also, as

Catherine Storr (1992) points out, “sufficiently unusual to alert the audience to the promise of surprises to come” (p. 19).

What is interesting about the whole dog-nurse issue is that it is never really acknowledged by the narrator, the narratee or the characters as an impossible or supernatural event. The other nurses pretend to ignore Nana “as of an inferior social status to themselves,” but no one seems surprised when she walks the children to school or gives her opinion on the best medicines when they are sick: “She believed to her last day in old-fashioned remedies like rhubarb leaf, and made sounds of contempt over all this new-fangled talk about germs, and so on” (Barrie, 1911/2011, p. 16). Except for the fact that she is a Newfoundland dog, the passage actually provides a very realistic portrayal of Edwardian childhood, from the children playing in Kensington Gardens to

Michael wearing a pinafore instead of shirts.33

Where most portal-quest fantasies make a very clear distinction between the

“real” and the fantasy world, Barrie blurs the line between the two by introducing what

33 The only character that seems concerned about Nana is Mr. Darling, but he is ultimately more worried about what his neighbors might say about his family, and how Nana does not seem to admire him like he expects, than about her extraordinary human-like behavior.

149 should be a fantastic occurrence, but presenting it in such a way that we are not sure if it is indeed fantastic or not; a strategy that Mendlesohn (2008) associates primarily with the liminal fantasy (p. xxiii).34 Consider in particular the scene where Mrs. Darling “tidies up” her children’s minds, allowing the narrator to describe the fantastic landscape of

Neverland, and introduce Peter himself, while keeping their existence ambiguous, creating a tension around where are we supposed to stand and believe as part of the narrative audience that will only be resolved when Peter finally “intrudes” into the “real world” towards the end of the first chapter.

Mrs. Darling first heard of Peter when she was tidying up her children’s minds. It

is the nightly custom of every good mother after her children are asleep to

rummage in their minds and put things straight for next morning, repacking into

their proper places the many articles that have wandered during the day. If you

could keep awake (but of course you can’t) you would see your own mother doing

this, and you would find it very interesting to watch her. It is quite like tidying up

drawers. (Barrie, 1911/2011, p. 17)

Right from the start it is difficult to say for sure if the passage should be read entirely metaphorically, as the realistic context suggests, or if we are already moving

34 The key difference would be that while the liminal fantasy exists, according to Mendlesohn (2008), in the

“anxiety and the continued maintenance and irresolution of the fantastic” (italics in the original, p. xxiii),

Barrie uses this liminality, and the resulting disorientation of the reader to take us from the realistic setting described in the beginning to the moment when the fantastic is finally resolved, establishing how we are dealing with a clear portal-quest fantasy.

150 through into the fantastic and Mrs. Darling is literally sorting through her children’s minds. On the one hand, the way in which the scene is described is consistent with the idealization of motherhood and childhood characteristic of the Victorian and Edwardian

Eras. As Maria Tatar (2011) points out, Mrs. Darling not only tidies up her children’s minds like cleaning drawers, highlighting the connection between mind- and house- keeping, but also censors in one way or another what they think, as most parents and guardians did at the time, “concealing everything that does not conform to her standards of innocence and sweetness” (pp. 20-21).

On the other hand, we already know that there is something strange about the

Darling household, and suspect that Peter is eventually coming to the nursery, suggesting that the barriers between the imaginary and the real are not necessarily stable. This is further complicated by the manner in which the passage is focalized through Mrs.

Darling—an adult who has nevertheless a certain affinity with the fantastic—while the narratee is explicitly invited to identify with the children, who are unable to see what their mothers do while they are sleeping, and must therefore trust the narrator’s account, despite having privileged access to their own dreams. The result of all this back and forth is that it is very difficult to say for sure where are we invited to stand in relation to the fantastic or even if it is fantastic at all.

Though it is later referred to as a clearly defined fantasy space that the children immediately recognize when they get there, Neverland itself is initially described as a representation of every child’s mind: “I don’t know if you have ever seen a map of a person’s mind. Doctors sometimes draw maps of other parts of you, (…) but catch them 151 trying to draw a map of a child’s mind” (Barrie, 1911/2011, p. 19). While we later get to know a bit more about Wendy’s and her brother’s specific versions of the island, and how they differ, before Mrs. Darling finds the name “Peter” scrawled all over her children’s minds, both the direct address to the narratee and the whole idea of the map suggest that the description of Neverland might well be an elaborated metaphor by the narrator, that has nothing to do with the fantasy world.

There are zigzag lines on it, just like your temperature on a card, and these are

probably roads in the island; for the Neverland is always more or less an island,

with astonishing splashes of colour here and there, and coral reefs and rakish-

looking craft in the offing, and savages and lonely lairs, and gnomes who are

mostly tailors, and caves through which a river runs, and princes with six elder

brothers, and a hut fast going to decay, and one very small old lady with a hooked

nose. (Barrie, 1911/2011, p. 19).

To begin with, the fact that Neverland is “more or less” like an island is already significant. As Hunter (1980) points out, looking at the play in relation to other fantasy works: “Islands are important because it is insularity that removes the invented world from actuality” (p. 68). Not only does the island immediately suggest an exotic and faraway destination, a self-contained world with its own rules and customs, but it also establishes a dialogue with a long tradition of literary islands, from the legendary Tír na nÓg of Irish folklore to what are arguably the novel’s most significant literary influences:

R. M. Ballantyne’s The Coral Island, for which Barrie wrote a laudatory introduction in

152

1913, and Robert Louis Stevenson Treasure Island, explicitly referenced later on in relation to Captain Hook’s fearful reputation.

The various fairy-tale references throughout the passage work in a similar way.

Though the presence of gnomes, princes and witches suggest a fantasy world, they are described more as conventions than actual characters, emphasizing again the literary quality of that world. In her excellent analysis of how Peter Pan comments and reflects upon Treasure Island, and the Robinsonade genre in general, Kathleen Blake (2009) points out how Neverland is ultimately constructed from literary references and formulas that simultaneously appeal to and reveal the artificiality of this type of literature, as well as Barrie’s own text: “It isn’t that what happens in Neverland never happened before, never would, and never could. Just about everything that happens there has happened before—in books” (p. 168).

The island, however, is not just fantastic creatures and literary references. As the narrator significantly points out, there seems to be “another map showing through,” with all the people and situations that children have to deal with in real life, and inevitably appear as part of their dreams: “[F]irst day of school, religion, fathers, the round pond, needlework, murders, hangings, verbs that take the dative, chocolate pudding day, getting into braces, say ninety-nine, three-pence for pulling your tooth yourself, and so on”

(Barrie, 1911/2011, p. 19). The list is very suggestive of how Barrie imagined children’s lives and dreams to be (and therefore children’s fiction): Far less innocent and more complex than what most people think about when they think about the Edwardian Era and particularly Peter Pan. 153

According to Paul Fox (2007), Neverland is ultimately portrayed in the text as a

“liminal space” where the relationships between the fantastic and the real world (children and adults, fiction and reality) are constantly negotiated: “What Barrie is mapping in his

Neverland are fluid relationships between the real world of the Edwardian adult— overinscribed with imperial, impositional determinations—and the barrier-less world of the imaginary” (p. 255). Though she later explores how this allows Barrie to challenge specific ideas about childhood, family and even colonial relations, she also makes very clear how the novel resists both literal readings and reductive thematic interpretations, emphasizing the “liminality” of the text itself and how it illustrates the expressive and interpretive possibilities of fantasy.

As mentioned above, however, Peter and Wendy is not a liminal fantasy. Though

Barrie keeps the fantastic elements of the story ambiguous through most of the first chapter of the novel, the moment Peter appears in front of Mrs. Darling it is clear how we are supposed to take the scene literally as a distinctly fantastic occurrence: “If you or I or

Wendy had been there we should have seen that he was very much like Mrs. Darling’s kiss. He was a lovely boy, clad in skeleton leaves and the juices that ooze out of trees”

(Barrie, 1911/2011). While we are still invited to identify with the narratee, who identifies in turn with characters, as we move from the realistic trough the liminal to the explicitly fantastic we become more and more aware of the distance between the authorial and the narrative audience.

The fact that Wendy and the narratee would be apparently able to recognize the connection between Mrs. Darling and Peter, while she herself cannot, emphasizes once 154 more how adults have limited understanding of the fantastic, despite actually experiencing it—an impression that is confirmed just a few lines later when Peter jumps out the window and Mrs. Darling screams in fear, because she thinks he has jumped to his death: “She ran down into the street to look for his little body, but it was not there; and she looked up, and in the black night she could see nothing but what she thought was a shooting star” (Barrie, 1911/2011, p. 26). The effect of Mrs. Darling’s hesitation is ultimately ironic, since the reader already knows better, highlighting how by this point the existence of Peter is no longer in doubt.

The manner in which the fantastic becomes increasingly real, not only for the characters—who find to their surprise that it is possible, for example, to fly and stay young forever—but also for the reader—who interprets this as an actual possibility within the fictional universe of the story—is particularly clear in the transition between chapter

2 and chapter 3, when Peter enters the nursery a second time after the adults have left for their party, leaving the children alone. The scene begins once more with Mrs. Darling looking out the window, concerned that Peter might be back, and failing to see how the stars are actually looking at her: “They were crowding round the house, as if curious to see what was to take place there, but she did not notice this, nor that one or two of the smaller ones winked at her” (Barrie, 1911/2011, p. 34).

Though we get a lengthy explanation about how it is only the smaller stars who are still active and able to help Peter (despite the way he steals behind them and tries to blow them out), the languages is still very close to the liminal, making difficult to say for sure if they are actually alive or if it is just an elaborated metaphor by the narrator. The 155 same is true for the night-lights which start to fall asleep like little children as soon as

Peter comes close: “Wendy’s light blinked and gave such a yawn that the other two yawned also, and before they could close their mouths all the three went out” (Barrie,

1911/2011, p. 36). It is a gradual linguistic and visual move from the realistic through the liminal to the explicitly fantastic that culminates with the introduction of Tinker Bell herself, who illuminates the scene with a different light.

There was another light in the room now, a thousand times brighter than the night

lights, and in the time we have taken to say this, it has been in all the drawers in

the nursery, looking for Peter’s shadow, rummaged the wardrobe and turned every

pocket inside out. It was not really a light; it made this light by flashing about so

quickly, but when it came to rest for a second you saw it was a fairy, no longer

than your hand, but still growing. (Barrie, 1911/2011, p. 36)

The use of the second person pronoun highlights, once more, how the narratee

(and, on a different level, the reader) is expected to accept both the existence of fairies and the fact that they are able to intrude into the otherwise ordinary world of the Darling family. While Tolkien (1947/1966) later problematizes the association of fantasy and fairies, especially in the literary tradition of Shakespeare and Drayton that Barrie seems to be invoking (pp. 35-36), for most Victorian and Edwardian readers, fairies were almost synonymous with the fantastic. Though sometimes reduced to mere childish fancy, according to Maria Tatar (2011), “the cult of fairy lore served both as a form of protest against the rise of industrialism and worship of material wealth and as a nostalgic gesture toward the enchantments of rural life and childhood” (p. 37). 156

What is interesting about Barrie’s novel, in opposition to more traditional fairy stories, is the manner in which it makes explicit within the text how the narratee and, therefore, the reader are still supposed to take the existence of fairies as a fantastic occurrence, as the narrator makes very clear when he describes their language: “The loveliest tinkle as of golden bells answered him. (…) You ordinary children can never hear it, but if you were to hear it you would know that you had hear it once before”

(Barrie, 1911/2011, p. 38). In opposition to the immersive fantasy where the narrative audience is assumed to be familiar with the fantastic from the start, the narratee in Peter and Wendy is invited to accept more and more as the story progresses recreating both the characters’ and the reader’s experience.

Consider the scene where Wendy finally finds out that there is an actual fairy in the nursery. Though she is hardly surprised when she finds Peter crying in her room, highlighting how children are more willing to believe than their parents, her reaction when she learns about Tinker Bell is a mix of incredulity and wonder that recreates in one way or another the response that Barrie expects from the reader: “Wendy’s heart went flutter with a sudden thrill. (…) ‘Peter,’ she cried, clutching him, ‘you don’t mean to tell me that there is a fairy in this room!’” (Barrie, 1911/2011, p. 42). The connection is later emphasized by Peter’s lengthy explanation on how children no longer believe in fairies, which refers of course to the world of the story, but resonates with both the child narratee and finally Barrie’s authorial audience.

Like the opening line of the book, the passage simultaneously invites us to see the

“fantastic invention”—as W. R. Irwin (1976) calls it—and the “known or presumed fact” 157 it subverts (p. 60) and negotiate the relationship between the two. By addressing directly the narratee throughout the beginning of the novel, Barrie is not only able to guide us, as we navigate the distance between the authorial and the narrative audience characteristic of the fantasy genre—inviting us to identify with the narratee, and recognize the world where the story begins, before gradually revealing the increasing presence of the fantastic—but also calls attention to the whole process, the problematic relation between the adult storyteller and the child, and the relationship between reality and fantasy in general, which again lies at the heart of the story.

Mr. Darling, Mrs. Darling and Peter. Despite inviting us to assume a childlike perspective and highlighting how children have privileged access to the fantastic, the adventures of Wendy and her brothers are significantly framed, at the level of plot dynamics, by Mr. and Mrs. Darling’s story. In contrast to the play, where the first act begins with Wendy and her brothers going to bed and the adults leaving for their party, the first chapter of the novel provides an extended account of the family’s everyday life, in particular Mr. Darling’s mundane character and concerns—which allows Barrie to comment on Edwardian society and values in general—before focusing on Mrs. Darling’s experience with the fantastic, how she first hears about Peter, and then deals with his imminent intrusion into the real world.

Though both Mrs. Darling and Wendy are each in their own way a product of their historical and socioeconomic context, it is Mr. Darling who best represents the middle-class, money-oriented mentality against which the fantastic is ultimately set. As

Barrie (1928/2008) explains in the published version of the play, Mr. Darling is 158 essentially an everyman, a run-of-the-mill employee without any remarkable characteristic, beyond his own ordinariness: “In the city where he sits on a stool all day, as fixed as the postage stamp, he is so like the others on stools that you recognize him not by his face but by his stool” (p. 90). If Peter is this extraordinary boy, who is not only able to stay young forever, but also flies and fights pirates, without fear or remorse, Mr.

Darling seems to be his complete opposite.

Consider the manner in which he wins Mrs. Darling’s hand (a Romantic figure herself) by taking a cab instead of walking like all her other suitors: “The many gentlemen who had been boys when she was a girl discovered simultaneously that they loved her, and they all ran to her house to propose to her except Mr. Darling, who took a cab and nipped in first” (Barrie, 1911/2011, p. 13). While the fact that she accepts his proposal suggests that there is more to him than meets the eye, his practical but uninspiring behavior could not be more different from Peter’s gallant heroism when he rescues Tiger Lily from the pirates or sacrifices himself for Wendy when they are trapped on Marooner’s Rock: “She clung to him; she refused to go without him; but with a

‘Good-bye, Wendy,’ he pushed her from the rock” (p. 107).

In what is clearly a commentary on modern capitalistic mentality, Mr. Darling seems more concerned with money and bookkeeping than anything else. The first time we really see him interact with his wife, is when he sits by her side to calculate their expenses, and see if they can “keep” Wendy after she is born: “I can cut my coffee at the office, say ten shillings, making nine and six, with your eighteen and three makes three nine seven, with five naught naught in my cheque-book makes eight nine seven” (Barrie, 159

1911/2011, p. 15). While the narrator highlights how he is actually “very honourable” and “frightfully proud” of his daughter, the manner in which he itemizes the costs for every disease the child might get not only makes little sense, but also looks petty and insensitive compared to Mrs. Darling motherly behavior.

Barrie’s contemptuous view towards moneymaking in general, which he identifies as a distinctly adult matter, is expressed several times throughout the text; from the narrator’s ironic comment on how nobody really knows about stocks and shares to the manner in which the lost boys themselves become new versions of Mr. Darling in the end, losing their ability to fly in the process: “You may see the twins and Nibs and Curly any day going to an office, each carrying a little bag and an umbrella” (Barrie,

1911/2011, p. 181). Peter himself decides to escape home when he hears his parents talking about what he is going to be when he becomes a man (p. 42), and later rejects

Mrs. Darling offer to stay in the real world when he learns that he will have to go to school, and eventually an office (p. 177).

In addition to his concerns about money, Mr. Darling’s is constantly worried about what other people think, from his neighbors to his own family, revealing both the perceived importance of keeping one’s social status (a purely middle-class preoccupation), and his own insecurity and need for attention. When he wonders if his neighbors talk about Nana, and the fact that she is a dog instead of a human nurse, he is as worried about his “position in the city” (however insignificant that position might be), as he is about the way she does not seem to respect him, like he claims several times he deserves, forcing his wife to appease him: “‘I know she admires you tremendously, 160

George,’ Mrs. Darling would assure him, and then she would sign the children to be specially nice to father” (Barrie, 1911/2011, p. 17).

Mr. Darling’s anxieties are once again taken to an extreme the night the children disappear, to both comic and tragic effect, when he enters the nursery ranting about his tie and telling his wife what would happen if he is unable to tie it and they have to miss their dinner party: “[I]f I don’t go out to dinner to-night, I never go to the office again, and if I don’t go to office again, you and I starve, and our children will be flung to the streets” (Barrie, 1911/2011, p. 29). Not only does his tortuous train of thought and exaggerated reaction illustrate the problem with this type of mentality, and how it paradoxically loses sight of what really matters in life, but it also portrays Mr. Darling as a child himself, needing help to get properly dressed and begging for his wife’s and his children’s attention all the time.

As Maria Tatar (2011) explains, referring to the passage where Mr. Darling boasts to Wendy about how much her mother “respects” him, Barrie is ultimately inviting us to question the established image of the father (and adults in general) in Victorian and

Edwardian society, by turning him into this “comic figure who requires more attention and pampering than the children” (p. 14). According to John Griffith (1979), who significantly compares Mr. Darling with Captain Hook—the only other adult male with an important role in the story, traditionally played by the same actor in the stage version—they both represent the worst form of childish behavior: “Not only are they boys, but they are bad boys—cheaters and sulks who lack good form and who try, by unfair means, to steal attention and respect” (p. 33). 161

Consider the scene where Mr. Darling chides Michael for not taking his medicine, and then starts making excuses the moment Wendy brings his own bottle, intentionally

“misplaced” on top of the wardrobe: “‘[T]here is more in my glass than in Michael’s spoon.’ His proud heart was nearly bursting. ‘And it isn’t fair; I would say it though it were with my last breath; it isn’t fair’” (Barrie, 1911/2011, p. 32). While the language and tone are very similar to Michael’s when he cries that he is not going to bed, and threatens to love Nana no more if she forces him to take his bath, we feel little sympathy or consideration for Mr. Darling, who appears instead as pitiful and immature, not only to the audience, but to the children as well: “It was dreadful the way all three were looking at him, just as if they did not admire him” (p. 32).

It is a complete reversal of roles that ends with Mr. Darling himself being chided for pouring his medicine in Nana’s bowl, convinced that it will make a “splendid joke,” yet it turns up to be more cruel than funny. When Wendy runs to comfort the dog, his reaction is again that of a jealous child, complaining about how they seem to appreciate

Nana more than him, taking the whole situation out of proportion: “Coddle her! Nobody coddles me. Oh dear no! I am only the breadwinner, why should I be coddled, why, why, why!” (Barrie, 1911/2011, p. 33). Though he is aware that he is acting out of spite, blaming Nana for his own character failures, he finally asserts his authority, as both parent and husband, by taking the dog out of the nursery, despite the children’s objections and his wife’s concerns about Peter.

162

The children wept, and Nana ran to him beseechingly, but he waved back. He felt

he was a strong man again. “In vain, in vain,” he cried; “the proper place for you

is the yard, and there you go to be tied up this instant.”

“George, George,” Mrs. Darling whispered, “remember what I Told you

about that boy.”

Alas, he would not listen. (Barrie, 1911/2011, p. 33)

The whole episode with Nana serves multiple narrative purposes. In addition to developing Mr. Darling’s character, it makes him seem responsible for the children’s disappearance, introducing a minor instability that will lead to his self-imposed punishment and personal growth by the end of the book. While he is never really mean or abusive with Wendy and her brothers, his bad temper and unjust treatment of Nana provides a certain justification for the children’s decision to leave the adult-controlled world of London and follow Peter to Neverland. It furthermore clears the way for Peter himself to appear, as Nana has not only scared him away before, but is already perceiving that he is coming back to claim his shadow, highlighting how Mr. Darling’s anxiety about having a dog as a nurse is ultimately misplaced.

Now, Mrs. Darling is a different story altogether. While she is a woman of her time and shares (or at least understands) many of her husband’s concerns, she is described from the start in completely different terms: “Her romantic mind was like the tiny boxes, one within another, that come from the puzzling East, however many you discover there is always one more; and her sweet mocking mouth had one kiss that

163

Wendy could never get” (Barrie, 1911/2011, p. 13). The passage not only emphasizes how she has a much more rich and complex interior life than her husband, but also invokes the nineteenth-century fascination with the Orient, situating her as this mysterious and exotic character, even within the real world, who would therefore be more willing to accept the existence of the fantastic.

It also introduces the motif of the unattainable kiss at the corner of her mouth that neither Wendy nor Mr. Darling can get and is finally revealed to be for Peter, who takes it with him before leaving in the last chapter of the novel. According to Richard Rotert

(1990), the kiss becomes a symbol of Peter’s “enigmatic relation with the feminine” represented by both Mrs. Darling and Wendy, who repeatedly tries to kiss him throughout the novel, but ultimately never can (p. 116). While the book mainly focuses on the latter’s relation with Peter, it is not casual at all that it is Mrs. Darling not her husband (or even Wendy herself) who first encounters and interacts with him, establishing a clear connection between the two, emphasized by the way in which she is consistently described by the narrator—who is also significantly fascinated with her—as this beautiful, romantic, even seductive figure.

At the same time, she is clearly portrayed in the text as the perfect Edwardian mother. According to Martin Green (1981), who sees her as the ultimate incarnation of the kind of literary charm cultivated by Barrie and his contemporaries, Mrs. Darling “is purely and untouchably a mother, a priestess of childhood” (p. 21). Once she marries Mr.

Darling, she diligently keeps the house and the books until she starts replacing cauliflowers with drawings of faceless babies, and then when Wendy and her brothers 164 finally arrive, she insists on keeping them all, despite her husband’s concerns about money. Though Nana is technically in charge of the nursery, we repeatedly see Mrs.

Darling taking care of the children (and her childish husband) and finding delightful and sweet everything that has to do with them. 35

While the portrayal of Mrs. Darling as wife and mother might be problematic for modern readers and critics, she actually represents in the text the increasingly important spaces of home and family where the late Victorian writers turned to obtain, as

Humphrey Carpenter (1985) puts it, “the sense of security and stability which the outside world was not providing” (p. 19). In opposition to the broader social sphere that the novel significantly associates with her husband, the domestic life built around Mrs. Darling is described in ideal, even sentimental terms: From the manner in which she puts “her hand on her heart” when she sees Wendy playing in the garden, at the very beginning of the book, to the family’s last joyous “romp” before the children disappear, in which even Mr.

Darling takes part (Barrie, 1911/2011, p. 13-30).

35 In the introduction to the first act of the play, Barrie (1928/2008) even highlights how the nursery is actually a result of her workmanship, “she made it herself with nails in her mouth and a paste-pot in her hand,” while the coverlets on the beds were made out of her own “wedding-gown” (pp. 87-88), emphasizing both her willingness to sacrifice herself for the children and the way the Darling’s house is, in many ways, a self-made stage or make-believe setting—an impression reinforced by both Nana’s role as nurse and the revelation towards the end that they simply “pretend” to have a “drawing-room” in the house when in reality there is none (Barrie, 1911/2011, p. 176).

165

From this perspective, going away to Neverland is not just an escape from the real world—where children have to grow up and get a job, and become a bit like Mr.

Darling—but also implies leaving home and family behind, which makes the decision a lot more difficult and ethically complex. While this type of problem is not uncommon in most portal-quest fantasies (and many children’s books for that matter), Barrie explicitly juxtaposes the excitement of going away with Peter, who has no family or home of his own, with the love and security that the children have in the “real world.” As the narrator himself suggest when he points out how Peter’s appearance will disrupt the Darlings’ otherwise peaceful existence: “There never was a simpler happier family until the coming of Peter Pan” (Barrie, 1911/2011, p. 17).

One of the most interesting things about the opening chapter of novel is the manner in which it works as an intrusion fantasy, creating around Mrs. Darling’s first encounter with Peter the distinctive “cycle of suspension and release, latency and escalation, hesitation and remorselessness” associated with the form (Mendlesohn, 2008, p. 115). Like most intrusion fantasy protagonists, who have to deal with the disruptive presence of the fantastic into what otherwise seems to be the real world, Mrs. Darling struggles through most of the chapter with the idea that Peter might be more than just a dream or a story half-remembered from her own childhood: “She had believed in him at the time, but now she was married and full of sense she quite doubted whether there was any such person” (Barrie, 1911/2011, p. 22).36

36 The strategy is remarkably similar to what J. K. Rowling does at the beginning of Harry Potter and the

Philosopher’s Stone (1997/2010), where Harry’s story is preceded by Mr. Dursley’s unsettling experience

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Though the scene where she first hears about Peter is initially described in ambiguous and sentimental terms, making difficult to say for sure if the what she finds in her children’s minds should be taken literally or not at the level of plot dynamics, there is something disconcerting and frightening about Peter’s presence that immediately calls both Mrs. Darling’s and the reader’s attention, and suggests that something strange is actually going on: “She knew of no Peter, and yet he was here and there in John and

Michael’s minds, while Wendy’s began to be scrawled all over with him” (Barrie,

1911/2011, p. 21). Even as part of the children’s dreams and fantasies, there is no literary or real-life reference that would explain his presence, highlighting how he is literally

“intruding” into their minds, particularly and significantly Wendy’s.

It is only later on, when her daughter reminds her that he is in fact Peter Pan, that

Mrs. Darling starts remembering the stories she heard as a child: How Peter used to live with the fairies (a clear reference to The Little White Bird and Peter Pan in Kensington

Gardens) and was said to accompany the souls of dead children to the afterlife, “so they should not be frightened” (Barrie, 1911/2011, p. 22). While Peter is initially little more than a name scribbled over the children’s minds (emphasizing his own textual nature and how we are still between the literal and the metaphorical), there is something sinister and morbid about him. As Sarah Gilead (1991) points out, he arrives “like a dream of

with what is clearly fantastic intrusion into the real world: “It was on the corner of the street that he noticed the first sign of something peculiar – a cat reading a map. For a second, Mr. Dursley didn’t realise what he had seen – then he jerked his head around to look again” (p. 8).

167 immortality come true but also like a plague deadly to the children—like aging and death, he empties the nursery” (p. 286).

Mrs. Darling’s increasing sense of fear is further contrasted with Wendy’s casual explanations about Peter—how he is effectively “rather cocky,” as his name apparently suggests, and is able to stay young forever, making finally clear how he is the very same boy whose existence is announced at the beginning of the novel: “‘Oh no, he isn’t grown up,’ Wendy assured her confidently, ‘and he is just my size.’ She meant that he was her size in both mind and body; she didn’t know how she knew it, she just knew it” (Barrie,

1911/2011, p. 22). Though Mr. Darling dismisses the whole business, and blames Nana for putting such nonsense in the children’s minds, Wendy not only insists that he is real, but also reveals how he has actually been coming to the nursery, explaining the strange leaves that Mrs. Darling finds near the window.

Mrs. Darling examined them carefully; they were skeleton leaves, but she was

sure they did not come from any three that grew in England. She crawled about

the floor, peering at it with a candle for marks of a strange foot. (…) She let down

a tape from the window to the pavement, and it was a sheer drop of thirty feet,

without so much as a spout to climb.

Surely Wendy had been dreaming. (Barrie, 1911/2011, p. 23)

From the moment there is physical evidence of Peter’s presence in the nursery, it becomes clear for the reader how we are moving from the liminal (where is unclear whether we are dealing with the fantastic or not) to the intrusive (where the fantastic

168 effectively enters the fictional world). The very manner in which Mrs. Darling insists that

Wendy must had been dreaming, while searching for clues to confirm that Peter could not have possibly flown through the window, highlights how the presence of the fantastic is disruptive in relation to the world where the story begins, and must be in one way or another dealt with. All this contributes to create a sense of suspense and expectation that leads to the climactic appearance of Peter in front of Mrs. Darling, resolving in one way or another the question of the fantastic.

The episode is explicitly marked in the text as the beginning of the children’s adventures, highlighting how everything that comes before has been in preparation for that moment, and announcing how the focus is going to change from Mrs. Darling to the children themselves: “But Wendy had not been dreaming, as the very next night showed, the night on which the extraordinary adventures of these children may be said to have begun” (Barrie, 1911/2011, p. 23). In terms of narrative progression, the appearance of

Peter marks the boundary between the beginning and middle of the story—what Phelan

(2007) calls the “launch” (p. 18)—by establishing the main global instability: How the characters have to deal with this extraordinary being that intrudes into the real world and then takes the children to Neverland.

In one way or another, the scene recreates the whole chapter. We start again with

Mrs. Darling putting the children to bed, described in sentimental Edwardian fashion:

“All were looking so safe and cosy that she smiled at her fears now and sat down

169 tranquilly by the fire to sew” (Barrie, 1911/2011, p. 24).37 Though we are very much aware that something extraordinary is about to happen, the passage emphasizes the peacefulness and domesticity of the scene, from the night-lights barely illuminating the room to the manner in which Mrs. Darling herself starts to doze, arousing the narrator’s sentimentality: “Presently the sewing lay on Mrs. Darling lap. Then her head nodded, oh, so gracefully. She was asleep. Look at the four of them, Wendy and Michael over there,

John here, and Mrs. Darling by the fire” (p. 24).38

Just as it happens when we look at the children’s minds, Peter’s entrance is preceded by a vision of Mrs. Darling’s own dreams about Neverland. However, where the island is first described as a clearly imaginary space, Mrs. Darling’s dream is all about how the barriers between worlds have become increasingly unstable. Not only has the island “come too near” and a strange boy “broken through from it”—the language

37 According to Chris Routh (2001), sewing and stitching are consistently portrayed throughout the novel as the domestic chores par excellence, identifying both Mrs. Darling and later Wendy herself as ideal motherly figures (p. 61).

38 The scene will be later recreated in all its sentimentality towards the end of the book when the narrator invites us to spy again on Mrs. Darling, only to find her greatly diminished by the children’s disappearance from the nursery: “Look at her in the chair, where she has fallen sleep. The corner of her mouth, where one look first, is almost withered up” (Barrie, 1911/2011, p. 179). It also suggests a parallel with the image of

Peter peeking through the window, after the children’s return, “looking (…) at the one joy from which he must be forever barred” (p. 174), suggesting he might already be there, as he is in fact in the play where

Mrs. Darling is “startled to see a strange little face outside the window and a hand groping as if it wanted to come in” (Barrie, 1928/2008, p. 89).

170 used by the narrator is already telling—but the very “film that obscures the Neverland” has been ripped, allowing her children to peer through (Barrie, 1911/2011, p. 25).39 The passage simultaneously frames the appearance of Peter, suggesting that everything that follows is just a dream, and announces how he is actually intruding into the real world, inviting us to conclude just the opposite.

The dream itself would have been a trifle, but while she was dreaming the

window of the nursery blew open, and a boy did drop on the floor. He was

accompanied by a strange light (…) which darted about the room like a living

thing; and I think it must have been this light that wakened Mrs. Darling.

She started up with a cry, and saw the boy, and somehow she knew at once

that he was Peter Pan. (Barrie, 1911/2011, p. 25)

Though the moment has been announced from the beginning of the novel, it is hard not to share a feeling of wonder when Peter flies through the nursery’s window and very physically “drops on the floor” next to Mrs. Darling. In opposition to the play, where the first encounter between Mrs. Darling and Peter is only reported in the passing

(Barrie, 1928/2008, pp. 92-93), the novel makes it a point to show us how Peter first appears in front of her, an adult who has repeatedly doubted his existence throughout the chapter. We already know that it would had been impossible for him to reach the window

39 While Mrs. Darling is initially not alarmed by her dream, being able to recognize Peter from “the faces of many women who have no children,” there is something clearly ominous about the manner in which

Wendy, John and Michael look into the other world, announcing how they are going to leave with him a few pages later (Barrie, 1911/2011, p. 25).

171 any other way, we also know that human beings are unable to fly (both in the real world and in the fictional version of it portrayed in the novel), and yet Peter is there, proving that he is not simply a dream or a childish fantasy.

Curiously enough, Mrs. Darling immediately knows that the boy standing in front of her is Peter Pan (his eternal youth marked by the fact that he has all his first teeth), and for a moment we think she is not going to react, but then she screams, and Nana bursts into the room, forcing Peter to escape. While the episode clearly confirms that Peter does exist within the fictional universe of the story, an impression emphasized by the fact that we immediately jump several days later, to the point where the children have already disappeared from the nursery, Mrs. Darling is surprisingly reluctant to accept the existence of the fantastic, even when she finds out that Nana has snatched his shadow on his way out: “You may be sure Mrs. Darling examined the shadow carefully, but it was quite the ordinary kind” (Barrie, 1911/2011, p. 26).

While the very fact that she is holding Peter’s shadow in her hands, as if it was some sort of physical object, should be extraordinary enough, Mrs. Darling seems more concerned about whether or not to tell her husband about it, convinced that he would dismiss it as a consequence of having a dog as a nurse, and how hanging the shadow out the window might lower the “tone of the house,” emphasizing again their middle-class concerns.40 The effect is very similar to what we have at the beginning of the book, when

40 Mr. Darling’s own reaction is not too different, barely remarking how the shadow doesn’t look like anybody he knows, though “he does look a scoundrel” (Barrie, 1911/2011, p. 30). In the play, however, he

172 neither the narrator nor the characters seem to acknowledge how extraordinary it is that the Darlings have hired a dog as their nurse. This time around, however, the dissonance is even more marked as we are pretty sure by this point that Mrs. Darling should be more worried about the presence of the fantastic.

While Catherine Storr (1992) finds the whole incident with the shadow more effective in the play than the novel, and ultimately sees it as a wasted opportunity on

Barrie’s part to reflect on the relation between shadows and form (p. 20), the scene fulfills a clear narrative function. In addition to giving Peter a reason to go back to the nursery, the lack of reaction by Mrs. Darling, and her husband’s insistence that there is nothing to worry about, reminds us that we are still in a world where dreams are supposed to be just dreams and children cannot stay young forever. It further emphasizes how adults are particularly reluctant to accept the existence of the fantastic, highlighting the contrast with the children, who are not just willing, but excited to find out that fairies, for example, are real, and follow Peter to Neverland.

At the same time, the fact that Peter’s shadow is there—neatly rolled in one of the nursery’s drawers—alerts us that there the Darlings are not as ordinary as they seem, preparing us for what happens later on. By moving from the realistic to the liminal to the intrusive (and then following the structure and rhetoric of the portal-quest fantasy), Barrie not only creates a sense of suspense and expectation that invites us to keep reading, but

seems to acknowledge how the shadow might indeed be something special, or worth some money, and decides to take it to the British Museum for appraisal (Barrie, 1928/2008, p. 93).

173 effectively brings us into the world of the story, requiring us to accept initially very little that contradicts our experience of the real world, and then asking us to accept more and more, as the characters themselves move into direct contact with the fantastic, to the point where we are more willing to assume the position of the narrative audience and believe that both Peter and Neverland exist.

“Come Away, Come Away!” Despite everything that happens in the first two chapters of the novel, what Barrie is ultimately doing is setting the stage (almost literally) for the encounter between Peter and Wendy. Just like the final chapter of the book— which comes directly from When Wendy Grew Up (1957/2008) and serves as an epilogue for the whole story—the first chapter in particular works as an extended prologue, exploring what happened with the characters before the beginning of the original play.

Besides developing the world where the story begins, and introducing the fantastic early on, the focus on Mrs. Darling’s encounter with Peter establishes a contrast between the adults’ and the children’s experience, marked by a rhetorical and tonal switch from the intrusion to the portal-quest fantasy.

In order to make the transition, Barrie further divides the first act of the play into two different chapters, and presents the scene in which Mrs. Darling decides to take Nana away from the nursery as the adults’ recollection of the night the children disappeared, and how it is partly their fault that they did: “They sat thus night after night recalling that fatal Friday, till every detail of it was stamped on their brains and came through on the other side like the faces on a bad coinage” (Barrie, 1911/2011, p. 27). Interestingly enough, while Mr. Darling and Nana also blame Peter, Mrs. Darling is reluctant to 174 condemn him, highlighting again the difference between her and her husband, and the connection and sympathy she feels for the boy: “[T]here was something in the right-hand corner of her mouth that wanted her not to call Peter names” (p. 28).

The melancholic and guilt-ridden tone of their remembrance is immediately contrasted with the homely and lighthearted tone of the memory itself, as Michael enters the room on Nana’s back, just like he does at the beginning of the play: “‘I won’t go to bed,’ he had shouted, like one who still believed that he had the last word on the subject,

‘I won’t. (…) I tell you I won’t be bathed, I won’t, I won’t!” (Barrie, 1911/2011, p. 28).

The reader (like the audience in the theater) is clearly expected to recognize the daily ritual that takes place in most homes at the end of the day, and sympathize with the boy’s futile resistance to take his bath. At the same time, the fact that Nana is in charge of the children adds a comical tone to the whole ordeal, emphasizing the Darlings’ quirkiness, while announcing the presence of the fantastic.

The homeliness of the scene is further marked within the text by the manner in which Wendy and John are impersonating their parents on the occasion of their own birth, introducing the recurrent motifs of role-playing and make-believe. When John says that he and his wife do not want a third child, Michael significantly assumes his own role and complaints that nobody wants him, suggesting how the distinction between reality and make-believe is not necessarily clear for the children. While Mrs. Darling is quick to console him, the narrator highlights once more how the whole passage is just a memory and the children are now gone to the distress of their parents: “Such a little thing for Mr.

175 and Mrs. Darling and Nana to recall now, but not so little if that was to be Michael’s last night in the nursery” (Barrie, 1911/2011, p. 29).

As the story progresses, however, these reminders become more and more sparse, to the point where we are not sure if we are looking at a memory anymore; an impression confirmed by the fact that both Mr. and Mrs. Darling are unable to see how the stars themselves are looking at their house, and give Peter the sign to come in: “As soon as the door of 27 closed on Mr. and Mrs. Darling there was a commotion in the firmament, and the smallest of all stars in the Milky Way screamed out: (…) ‘Now, Peter!” (Barrie,

1911/2011, p. 35). The very sense of nostalgia and regret that permeates the whole scene is replaced by a sense of excitement and wonder, as we move from the adults’ remembrance of that night to the children’s actual experience and encounter with Peter, and how he convinces them to leave with him.

In opposition to the first two chapters, where Mrs. Darling struggles not only with the existence of the fantastic per se, but the increasing sense of hesitation and fear characteristic of the intrusion fantasy, Wendy seems to be more curious than scared when she first finds Peter crying in her room: “His sobs woke Wendy, and she sat up in the bed.

She was not alarmed to see a stranger crying on the nursery floor; she was only pleasantly interested” (Barrie, 1911/2011, p. 38). Though she is certainly surprised later on, when she finds that there is an actual fairy in her drawer, and can hardly hide her enthusiasm when Peter offers to teach her how to fly, she initially has no problem accepting his existence or intrusion into the real world, highlighting how children have a completely different relationship with the fantastic. 176

At the same time, she still plays very clearly the role of the portal-quest fantasy protagonist, asking questions about Peter and Neverland, struggling with the decision of coming with him or not, and in general recreating within the text itself the incredulity and wonder of the reader. As Peter Hollindale (1993) argues, in response to the idea that children find it difficult to identify with Peter; the audience has never been expected to identify with him, but rather the Darling children, especially Wendy, who serves as an intermediate figure between the reader and the fantastic: “Of course children want to grow up, but not quite yet. (…) The myth of eternal childhood innocence is incomplete without its counterpart and contradiction: You can afford to believe in Peter Pan only if you first believe in Wendy” (p. 26).

It is, after all, through Wendy’s experience and perspective, more than anybody else’s, that the reader is invited to access and interpret the fantasy world. While John and

Michael come as well, and play a small role in the story, it is she who first decides to go with Peter, and interacts with him the most throughout the book. As Sheila Egoff (1988) points out, highlighting Wendy’s importance in the novel, “the title Peter and Wendy is a more apt one than Peter Pan, for the book really belongs to Wendy; she is the only real person in it” (p. 91). Not only does she come from what seems to be the real world, like

Pevensie children or Harry Potter, but she also changes the most through her experience and interaction with the fantastic, until she is finally able and willing to grow up (which she effectively does by the end of the novel).

The distinctive relationship between the portal-quest fantasy protagonist and the fantastic is particularly clear in the scene where Wendy asks Peter about his life with the 177 fairies: “Wendy had lived such a home life that to know fairies struck her as quite delightful. She poured out questions about them, to his surprise, for they were rather a nuisance to him” (Barrie, 1911/2011, p. 42). Though Peter himself is perplexed by her reaction, highlighting how fairies are hardly extraordinary for him, the reader immediately connects with her, and shares her curiosity and wonder, as Peter assumes the role of the portal-quest fantasy guide and explains the origin of fairies, how they came to be from the first laugh of the first child, and their survival is somehow linked to children’s now dwindling belief in the fantastic.

“And so,” he went on good-naturally, “there ought to be one fairy for every boy

and girl.”

“Ought to be? Isn’t there?”

“No. You see children know such a lot now, they soon don’t believe in

fairies, and every time a child says, ‘I don’t believe in fairies,’ there is a fairy

somewhere that falls down dead.” (Barrie, 1911/2011, p. 42)

The passage not only helps develop the mythology of the fantasy world, but also establishes early on the complex relationship between the real and the fantastic, highlighting how fairies are essentially imaginary beings (dependent on children’s belief to exist), while affirming at the same time their physical existence (as Tinker Bell’s presence in the room makes abundantly clear). While Wendy is more than willing to believe, which immediately sets her apart from other children and paves the way for her to leave with Peter, the passage simultaneously calls attention to the reader’s own

178 willingness (or lack thereof) to assume the position of the narrative audience and accept the existence of fairies, a problem that will reappear later on, when Peter explicitly asks the audience to clap their hands if they believe.

In one way or another, the whole discussion between Peter and Wendy can be read as a metafictional invitation to the reader, who has probably said or thought before

“I don’t believe in fairies,” to identify with the children and then follow their progress as they move from the world where the story begins into direct contact with the fantastic.

One of the most interesting things about Barrie’s novel is precisely the manner in which the transit between worlds is not immediate or accidental, allowing Barrie to explore and reflect upon the whole relationship between reality and fantasy. In opposition to characters like Alice or Lucy Pevensie, who cross the portal almost unknowingly, suddenly finding themselves in another world, there is a long back-and-forth between

Peter and Wendy, before she finally decides to go with him.

From the moment Peter introduces himself, Wendy immediately remarks how

“Peter Pan” sounds rather short compared to the whole “Wendy Moira Angela Darling” of which she seems very proud (Barrie, 1911/2011, pp. 38-39). Beyond the mere difference in length, and the problem of status that seems associated with it, the remark ultimately calls attention to how Peter comes from a different world altogether. Though both names have clear mythological resonances, and the Darling surname effectively serves to describe Wendy’s family, the use of first, middle and last names is distinctly realistic, not to mention bourgeois, and immediately contrasts with the simpler epithet-

179 like names of most of Neverland’s inhabitants, from Tinker Bell and Captain Hook to

Slightly, Tootles and the rest of the lost boys.41

Something similar happens when Wendy asks Peter where he lives and he responds with one of the most famous quotes from the book: “Second to the right (…) and then straight on till morning” (Barrie, 1911/2011, p. 39).42 While Peter has never thought about it, Wendy points out how this does not sound like a real address—as number 14 where they live, or number 27 where Mr. and Mrs. Darling have gone for dinner—suggesting how Neverland lies in a completely different plane of reality: “‘I mean,’ Wendy said nicely, remembering that she was hostess, ‘is that what they put on the letters?’” (p. 39). The contrast in styles is already telling and is further highlighted

41 Peter’s own name has a certain descriptive quality about it, as Mrs. Darling points out when she highlights how his name has an “oddly cocky appearance” (Barrie, 1911/2011, p. 22). Though Peter is constantly changing roles and assuming different identities, he is also immediately recognizable as “Peter

Pan,” as his first encounters with Mrs. Darling, Wendy, and finally Jane demonstrate, highlighting how he becomes an almost mythical figure within the text itself (pp. 25; 39; 186).

42 While most people add the word “star” to Peter’s directions to Neverland (“Second star to the right, and straight on till morning”), this comes from Disney’s 1953 adaptation and is neither in the original play nor the novel; which highlights how the story has transcended its textual status. As Peter Hollindale (1993) points out, looking at the multiple adaptations of the story, from the many “lavishly illustrated” and simplified picture books that can still be found in most bookstores to a film like Steven Spielberg’s Hook, the story of Peter Pan has become in time a “popular myth” that has less and less “to do with Peter and

Wendy, the text that Barrie actually produced” (p. 27).

180 later on when we learn that Peter’s directions are entirely made up, and the only way to reach Neverland is if the island is actually looking for you.

While all this identifies Peter as a stranger, the real shock for Wendy finally comes when she learns that he has no mother, or any interest in having one: “He thought them very overrated persons. Wendy, however, felt at once that she was in the presence of a tragedy. (…) ‘O Peter, no wonder you were crying,’ she said, and got out of bed and ran to him” (p. 39). It is this, more than anything else, that sets Peter apart from all other children, and arouses Wendy’s compassion and interest in him, at least initially. Though

Peter himself dismisses the whole matter, and even brags about how he escaped from home the very day he was born to go and live with the fairies, it is clear how the conversation makes him uneasy and self-aware, emphasizing how out of place he is in the real world, and specifically the Darling’s household.

In one way or another, Peter is not that different from the protagonist of the portal-quest fantasy, only he is crossing the portal in the opposite direction. While he tries to appear confident and knowledgeable, it is remarked several times throughout the scene how he is actually quite ignorant about the real world, which results in some humorous misunderstandings: “She also said she would give him a kiss if he liked, but Peter did not know what she meant, and held out his hand expectantly” (Barrie, 1911/2011, p. 41).

Beyond the linguistic pun, the whole exchange of kisses and thimbles highlights how, despite their mutual sympathy, there is an important difference in the way Peter and

Wendy see each other, and what they expect from their relationship, that will become more and more problematic as the story progresses. 181

Though Wendy is still very much a child—content to play house with her brothers and lend her bracelet to Mrs. Darling, so she looks even prettier for her party—the feelings she clearly has for Peter are not entirely childlike, highlighting again how she is about to become a woman, with everything this implies in sexual terms. According to

Griffith (1979), there is a certain degree of eroticism in Peter and Wendy, but is always associated with the female characters, who therefore appear more mature, while Peter himself remains oblivious and childlike (p. 32).43 Even Tinker Bell herself realizes quickly enough that Wendy is interested in Peter in a different, more adult way, and pulls

Wendy’s hair when she is about to kiss him, revealing how she is also in love with Peter, which he again fails to see entirely.44

Despite the lighthearted tone of the scene, Peter’s inability to understand what is going on immediately warns the reader about him and how his eternal youth also prevents him from seeing Wendy as more than a motherly figure. As Hollindale (1993) points out,

“motherhood is the female role which interests Peter, but having long ago lost the real

43 The idea that children in general, but particularly young boys, are unable to love is already insinuated in

Barrie’s earlier novel Tommy and Grizel (1900), where a disenchanted Grizel points out, after marrying the childlike Tommy, how “despite all he had gone through, he was still a boy. And boys cannot love” (p. 466).

44 In one way or another, romantic love and sexual desire are portrayed in the book as the ultimate markers of adulthood. Right from the start, we see how Mr. Darling and his contemporaries become men the moment they “discover simultaneously” that they all love the same girl, the future Mrs. Darling, who is significantly described in the text by her “sweet mocking mouth” and the “one kiss” at the corner of her lips that not one is able to get, even her husband (Barrie, 1911/2011, p. 13).

182 thing, he reduces motherhood to a game of story-telling and searches for make-believe substitute mothers represented by Wendy” (pp. 28-29). He further explains how this not only makes him seem heartless and self-centered, like most children are at one point or another, but ultimately precludes him from forming any meaningful relationship with anybody, as he “constantly discards and forgets both people and events, caught forever in the successive oblivions of make-believe” (p. 29).45

While Wendy is certainly disappointed to learn that Peter has only come to the nursery to hear her mother’s stories—another metafictional hint that somehow inverts the relationship between the imaginary and the real—she pretty much assumes a motherly role through the whole scene: From helping him sew his shadow, and sparing his feelings when he seems upset, to scolding him when he starts bragging and crowing about how clever he is, instead of thanking her for her help. It is actually in part through this motherly role that Peter first lures her to come with him, slyly pointing out in the passing how lonely it is for the lost boys to be without female companionship, how there is nobody to mend their clothes, or tuck them in at night, or tell them any bedtime stories, like Mrs. Darling does for her children.

Though Peter is not interested in her in any romantic fashion, and the narrator explicitly points out how it is Wendy who first tries to tempt him with the promise of

45 This is physically emphasized in the 1928 version of the play by the way no other character is supposed to actually touch Peter, making him both more ethereal and isolated from the rest of the world: “You mustn’t touch me,” he says when Wendy tries to embrace him, after she learn he does not have a mother, and then he explains again: “No one must ever touch me” (Barrie, 1928/2008, p. 98).

183 more stories, the scene is still a scene of seduction, as Peter tries to convince the children

(and, on a different level, the reader) to leave the world where the story begins and move into direct contact with the fantastic: “Wendy, Wendy, when you are sleeping in your silly bed you might be flying about with me saying funny things to the stars” (Barrie,

1911/2011, p. 47). In addition to staying up all night (like Michael wants a few pages earlier) and adopting the lost boys (instead of playing house with John), Wendy can hardly hide her enthusiasm when Peter shrewdly mentions the mermaids, emphasizing once more the children’s fascination with the fantastic.

“And, Wendy, there are mermaids.”

“Mermaids! With tails?”

“Such long tails.”

“Oh,” cried Wendy, “to see a mermaid!”

He had become frightfully cunning. “Wendy,” he said, “how we should all

respect you.” (Barrie, 1911/2011, p. 47)

The passage highlights very clearly how the dynamic of their conversation changes, with Peter taking control and telling Wendy more and more about Neverland, while she practically stands in awe, recreating again the sense of wonder and excitement that Barrie in one way or another expects from the reader. What really convinces the children to go with Peter, however, and represents more than anything else the essence of the fantastic, is the possibility of flying. Though the audience has seen him fly several times, the moment Peter takes to the air in front of the children it is hard not to share their

184 childlike enthusiasm: “Instead of troubling to answer Peter flew round the room, taking the mantelpiece on the way. (…) ‘How topping!’ said John and Michael. (…) ‘How sweet!’ cried Wendy” (Barrie, 1911/2011, p. 49).46

As Jerry Griswold (2006) explains in Feeling Like a Kid: Childhood and

Children’s Literature, children in general have always been fascinated by flying, which explains the abundance of airborne heroes in children’s books, from Peter and Wendy to

Harry Potter. He further points out how “in childhood’s aerial literature, the solidity of the world is dissolved and we are offered, instead a universe of expanded possibility and remarkable plasticity” (p. 96). Just looking at Barrie’s novel it is possible to see how flying is consistently associated with the children’s capacity to imagine and believe in the fantastic: From the “lovely wonderful thoughts” they need to fly (Barrie, 1911/2011, p.

49) to the way they lose their ability to do so, once they come back to the real world and become adults themselves (pp. 178-181).47

46 Even Peter himself shares their excitement, highlighting how, despite being this extraordinary creature himself, he is still a child fascinated with the fantastic (and, of course, awfully full of himself): “‘Yes, I’m sweet, oh, I am sweet!’ said Peter, forgetting his manners again” (Barrie, 1911/2011, p. 49).

47 In the dedication to the printed version of the play, Barrie (1928/2008) actually points out how the reference to fairy dust as a necessary ingredient for flying was only added later on, after many children had

“gone home and tried it from their beds and needed surgical attention”, highlighting both the success of the play among young viewers and their desire to fly like Peter, while suggesting also a certain credulity on their part (p. 77).

185

If the chapter begins with Wendy pointing out how ignorant Peter is about the real world, the scene where he teaches the children how to fly completely inverts the roles, highlighting we are already moving from one world and way of thinking to another: “Not one of them could fly an inch, though even Michael was in words of two syllables, and

Peter did not know A from Z” (Barrie, 1911/2011, p. 50). The contrast between flying and learning one’s ABCs is particularly telling of what children are expected to do in the real world, going to school and preparing for adult life, and how Peter offers in one way or another an escape from that, emphasized by Michael’s childlike (and grammatically incorrect) expression of delight—“I flewed!” (p.51)—when he finally lets go and then flies across the room in front of Wendy and John.

The children’s increasing excitement to go with Peter, is contrasted again with their parents concern and fear, as the two perspectives converge towards the end of the chapter. Warned by Nana, who has escaped from the maid and run all the way to their dinner party at number 27, Mr. and Mrs. Darling quickly realize that “something terrible was happening in their nursery, and without a good-bye to their hostess they rushed into the street” (Barrie, 1911/2011, p. 49). Though the narrator assures the reader that the children will be alright in the end—simultaneously highlighting how the audience should be worried for the kids, while reminding us that everything is just story—there is a clear sense of suspense and expectation as we move back and forth from the adults’ perspective to the children’s.

Even Wendy and her brothers hesitate for a moment, but Peter reminds them of the mermaids and the pirates, and all the fun they will have in Neverland, and they 186 immediately agree to go with him: “Peter knew there was not a moment to lose. ‘Come,’ he cried imperiously, and soared out at once into the night followed by John and Michael and Wendy” (Barrie, 1911/2011, p. 52). The chapter effectively ends with one of the book’s most recognizable scenes, as the children fly through the open window, while the adults come running into the house. They arrive, of course, too late and find the nursery already empty—otherwise “there will be no story,” as the narrator points out (p. 52)— emphasizing how the children have actually disappeared, or better yet, crossed the portal, and effectively moved into the fantasy world.

2.2. “The Island Come True”: The Middle of Peter and Wendy

In opposition to most fantasy texts where the author seeks to create the illusion that the fantasy world “has been going on”—as C. S. Lewis (1937/1982) puts it—long before we “stumble into it” (p. 81), the children arrival to Neverland is marked by the manner in which the island literally “comes true,” affirming at the same time the existence of the fantastic, while suggesting it is not entirely real: “Feeling that Peter was in his way back, the Neverland had again woke into life. We ought to use the pluperfect and say wakened, but woke is better and was always used by Peter” (Barrie, 1911/2011, p. 64). Contrary to every convention of the genre, the passage not only highlights how the text is written (or told) in a distinctive childlike manner, but also invites us to wonder about the nature of the fantasy world.

Though the narrator certainly calls attention to himself and the relationship between the child narratee and the fantastic early on, his presence becomes more conspicuous and problematic as we move from the beginning to the middle of the book. 187

One the one hand, he explicitly invites the narratee (and therefore the reader) into the fantasy world, and asks us to spy on the characters as the events of the story take place, creating the illusion that we are actually there. On the other hand, however, he constantly reminds the narratee (and the reader) that we are not really on the island, emphasizing the difference between not just diegetic and extradiegetic levels, but the world where the story begins and the fantastic, increasing our awareness of the story as story, and the relation between reality and fantasy in general.

Moving to the plot dynamics, we can see how Wendy and her brothers themselves deal with the realization that Neverland is a far more dangerous place than they initially imagined: From the difficult journey between worlds to the central conflict between Peter and Captain Hook, who is not only this incredibly dreadful and ruthless villain, but also a complex and even tragic character. While this adds to the overall sense of excitement and wonder (particularly for Peter, who is completely oblivious of danger), and keeps the audience interested and reading, it also highlights how the fantastic becomes frightfully real as the story progresses, inviting both characters and readers to reflect on the difference between the world where the story begins and what happens once the children cross the portal, as well as the desirability of doing so.

At the same time, we have the scenes where Peter and Wendy pretend to be a family and have an ordinary life, recreating at the level of the story the theatricality of the

188 text itself.48 Though the final confrontation with the pirates marks the end of the children’s adventures in Neverland, what convinces them to go back home is the increasing awareness that the island is not the real world, that Peter will never grow up to be their father, or Wendy’s husband, and they might not be able to go back if they stay in the fantasy world too long. This leads in turn to the climactic scene where Peter asks all children who “might be dreaming of the Neverland” (Barrie, 1911/2011, p. 145) to prove that they believe in fairies, exposing the paradoxical nature of the fantastic for both the characters and the different audiences involved.

There, But Not Really. One of the most distinctive features of Peter and Wendy, in comparison to other portal-quest fantasies, is the manner in which Neverland is presented explicitly to the narratee, and ultimately the reader, exposing the synthetic components of the narrative, while still inviting us to engage mimetically with the story and accept that world as true.49 Though we see it first through the eyes of Wendy and her brothers—“Indeed a million golden arrows were pointing out the island to the children, all directed by their friend the sun” (Barrie, 1911/2011, p. 56)—they basically disappear

48 I use the term here as both artificial and theater-like. Not only is the novel an adaptation of an originally dramatic text (which was in turn inspired by a narrative work), but Barrie clearly plays on multiple levels with the conventions of drama, and the idea of acting and pretending.

49 I follow here Phelan and Rabinowitz (2012) who classify the reader’s responses and interest in the text in three broad categories, corresponding to particular components of the narrative: mimetic (which deals with the characters, events and story world as possible), thematic (concerning the ideational function of the text) and synthetic (which highlights the artificial nature of the narrative) (p. 7).

189

(along with Peter) at the beginning of chapter 5, leaving the narrator himself to assume the role of the portal-quest guide, and describe and explain that world for us, starting with the lost boys and where they come from.

The boys on the island vary, of course, in numbers, according as they get killed

and so on; and when they seem to be growing up, which is against the rules, Peter

thins them out; but at this time there were six of them, counting the twins as two.

Let us pretend to lie here among the sugar-cane and watch them as they steal by in

single line, each with his hand on his dagger. (Barrie, 1911/2011, pp. 64-65)

Beyond what it tells us about Neverland (including the fact that is not uncommon for the lost boys to be killed, highlighting the seriousness of the situation), the passage is particularly interesting for the manner in which the narratee is invited to join the narrator and move into the fantasy world, assuming an observer position very similar to that of the narrative audience, while the inhabitants of the island pass by and interact in front of them. Though the narrator points out how they are both pretending to be there (the term is already significant), the invitation to spy directly on the characters not only suggests that the fantasy world exists on its own, beyond the control of the narrator (and even the author), but also evokes a feeling of immediacy, not unlike the one we feel in the theater as we watch the events unfold on stage.

This impression is emphasized a few pages later, when the narrator is describing how the lost boys hear the pirates’ song from afar, and explains how neither he nor the narratee would had been able to hear them, only to find out that the boys have suddenly disappeared, forcing him to stop and ask where they are: “At once the lost boys—but 190 where are they? They are no longer there. Rabbits could not have disappeared more quickly” (Barrie, 1911/2011, p. 71). While this effectively calls attention to the telling (to the point where we “miss” the moment the lost boys go underground, because we are

“listening” to the narrator), it simultaneously reinforces the illusion that we are looking directly into the fantasy world, and the action is taking place in real time, increasing our emotional engagement with the story.

As Kathleen Blake (2009) points out, the effect is finally taken to an extreme during the climactic confrontation with the pirates, as the narrator explicitly asks readers to time by their own watches how long it takes for Peter and the lost boys to kill the quartermaster and throw his body overboard (again, a very violent and serious scene).

While the possibility of timing the events implies that the action is taking place in front of the audience—“you are there, your time is the characters’ time”—both the manner in which the narrator addresses the reader (for the first and only time in the novel) and the fact that we can “only time the telling (or the reading) of those events” effectively shatter the illusion, emphasizing the fundamental difference between the story and the narrative, as well as the artificiality of the device itself (p. 173).

The invitation, in this sense, is twofold. On the one hand, we are literally asked to engage mimetically with the story, assuming the position of the narrative audience and accepting the fantasy world as true. On the other hand, however, the very manner in which this is explicitly stated in the text, calling attention to the relationship between narrator, narratee and finally authorial audience, increases our awareness of the story as story, and the synthetic components of the narrative. Consider the passage where the 191 narrator contemplates warning Tootles about Tinker Bell’s mischievous plans for him— in what would be a clear instance of metalepsis or transgression of narrative levels

(Genette , 1972/1983, pp. 234-237)—only to explain how it is actually impossible to do so, as neither he nor the narratee are really on the island.

Poor kind Tootles, there is danger in the air for you to-night. Take care lest an

adventure is now offered you, which, if accepted, will plunge you in deepest woe.

Tootles, the fairy Tink, who is bent on mischief this night is looking for a tool,

and she thinks you the most easily tricked of the boys. ’Ware Tinker Bell.

Would that he could hear us, but we are not really on the island, and he

passes by, biting his knuckles. (Barrie, 1911/2011, p. 65)

Though the way Tootles is described and addressed by the narrator invites both the narratee and the reader to sympathize with the character, and take him as a real person, to the point where we share the narrator’s impulse to warn him before he gets into trouble; the explicit reminder that we are not there (the use of the first person plural serves here multiple purposes), not only highlights the difference between diegetic and extradiegetic levels—how the narratee is simply hearing (or reading) the narrator’s story, and is therefore unable to interact directly with the lost boys—but also resonates with the reader, who is in turn reading (or hearing) Barrie’s text, and becomes increasingly aware of the pretense involved in assuming the position of the narrative audience, and therefore the literary nature of the whole experience.

192

As Jacqueline Rose (1984/1993) points out—looking at the narrator’s earlier claim that he has been to Neverland before, but he can no longer get there—the question of narrative positioning further acquires an almost physical quality in the novel: “We can ask not only whether it is an adult or child who is speaking, but also from where they are speaking: on the island or off it, joining in the story or able to tell it solely because of their position outside” (p. 72).50 While the characters themselves are indeed able to travel between worlds, it is clear from the start how the narrating instance is taking place in the world where the story begins, which not only situates both narrator and narratee in a different world altogether, but makes the events of the story as fantastic for them as they are, in one way or another, for the reader.

The impression that we are not really witnessing the action is emphasized again a couple of chapters later, when the narrator interrupts his description of the children’s daily routine on the island and spends several pages trying to decide which of their adventures to tell next, highlighting how “to describe them all would require a book as large as an English-Latin, Latin-English Dictionary, and the most we can do is to give one as a specimen of an average hour on the island” (Barrie, 1911/2011, p. 93). Not only does the passage mark the difference between the time of the story and the time of the

50 This is particularly clear at the beginning of the chapter 5, when the narrator tries to adopt Peter’s childlike way of speaking, only to point out how he is using the wrong tense, when he says that the island

“had again woke into life” (Barrie, 1911/2011, p. 64). As Maria Tatar (2011) explains, despite his attempts to recapture childhood, the narrator is ultimately “condemned to the reflective style and self-conscious condition of adulthood,” which effectively situates him outside the island (p. 64).

193 narrative, how the telling is taking place after the events, allowing the narrator to select and edit parts of the story; but also invites us to focus on that moment, how he finally decides to “toss for it” and the Mermaid’s Lagoon is the winner.

While the fact that there are so many adventures of which we barely hear about in the text suggests that the fantasy world exists on its own, and apparently opens the narrative, it simultaneously highlights the difference between diegetic and extradiegetic levels, and how we can only access the event of the story through the narrator’s account.

There is even a moment when he starts to narrate the Battle at Slightly Gulch, reporting even the dialogue between the characters, and getting us excited about what happened, only to suddenly stop and point out how he has not yet decided if that is the adventure he is going to tell: “Perhaps a better one would be the night attack by the redskins on the house under the ground, when several of them stuck in the hollow trees and had to be pulled out like corks” (Barrie, 1911/2011, p. 93).51

Though the presence of the narrator is clear from the beginning of the novel,

Blake (2009) explains how he ultimately seems to assume two “conventional narrative stances that appear particularly artificial because they are contradictory” (p. 172). On the

51 As Tatar (2011) points out, despite referring to a made-up tribe in a distinctly fictional setting, it is difficult to excuse Barrie for his use of the racially offensive terms “redskin” and “Piccaninny”—a derivation of the Portuguese-based pidgin pequenino, associated with the seventeenth century slave trade

—which has led to the novel being accused of racial stereotyping (p. 69). While I keep both terms for coherence purposes (especially since we have no other way to refer to Barrie’s fictional tribe), I use them always in quotation marks, indicating that they are Barrie’s terms, not mine.

194 one hand, he insists that he has no control over the events and is simply reporting what is going on, implying that Peter and Neverland exist. This is particularly clear in the scene where the Never bird tries to talk to Peter (a distinctly fantastical motif), but he is unable to understand it, as the narrator regrettably recognizes (though he also writes down what the Never bird says): “In fanciful stories people can talk to birds freely, and I wish for the moment I could pretend that this were such a story, (…); but truth is best, and I want to tell only what really happened” (Barrie, 1911/2011, p. 111).

On the other hand, however, he not only appears to know more than he should about the island and the children’s adventures there (especially since he is barred from reaching its magic shores), and constantly reminds us of his presence as both editor and commentator, but also reveals how he is in fact able to alter the events, suggesting they are at least partly fictional. Just a few lines after he points out how neither he nor the narratee can warn Tootles about the impending danger he is in, he literally has Captain

Hook kill one of his own men—in a clear instance of what Genette (1972/1983) calls, quoting classic narratologists, author (or in this case narrator) metalepsis, where the storyteller “brings about the effects” he is telling us about (p. 234)—while paradoxically and ironically wondering if Peter can defeat such a dreadful villain.

“Let us now kill a pirate to show Hook’s method. Skylights will do. As they pass,

Skylights lurches clumsily against him, ruffling his lace collar; the hook shoots

forth, there is a tearing sound and one screech, then the body is kicked aside, and

the pirates pass on. He has not even taken the cigars from his mouth.

195

That is the terrible man against whom Peter Pan is pitted. Which will

win?” (Barrie, 1911/2011, p. 69).

Interestingly enough, the other scene where the narrator clearly intervenes in the story is Hook’s own death. Completely bested by Peter, the pirate Captain prepares to jump overboard, not knowing that the crocodile is waiting for him, for the narrator has

“purposely stopped the clock that this knowledge might be spared him: a little mark of respect from us at the end” (Barrie, 1911/2011, p. 164). The effect is again twofold: On the one hand, it calls attention to the narrator’s authorial role, and the difference between diegetic and extradiegetic levels (not to mention the narrator’s personal sympathy for the character); on the other hand, it raises questions about the nature of the fantasy world, in terms not only of whether is real or not for the characters, but whether we are supposed to treat it as an explicitly fictional world or not.52

There are actually plenty of hints in the text that suggest Neverland is a purely imaginary space, starting with how the island literally “comes true” at the beginning of chapter 5. In opposition to most fantasy texts, where authors seek to create the illusion that the fictional world exists on its own, and we are simply looking at a moment in a much longer and often complex history—think of The Lord of the Rings or even the

Harry Potter series—Neverland literally “wakes into life” the moment the protagonists cross the portal, and the narrator starts telling us about it, suggesting it is not an entirely

52 The ambiguity is emphasized by the way Barrie effectively moves right at the seams between mimetic and synthetic, allowing the narrator to stop the clock for Hook, while leaving the crocodile itself waiting to kill him, inviting us to wonder if he could change his fate (and the story) at all.

196 autonomous, and therefore entirely real world. This is even clearer in the play where the stage is gradually illuminated, illustrating in almost platonic fashion the way that

Neverland “comes true” with the arrival of Peter.53

The comparison between both versions of the story is particularly suggestive for the manner in which it reveals how the theatricality of the original play is not just preserved in the novel, but becomes a sort of metafictional marker. Contrary to what happens in most portal-quest fantasies, where the fantasy world is presented through the naïve and inexperienced perspective of the protagonists, as they literally travel through and explore that world, making plausible for the character-guides to explain what they ignore; Barrie flips this structure around and has the different characters and factions

“parade” in front of the narratee, while the narrator conveniently explains who is who and what they are doing: “Next come Nibs, the gay and debonair, followed by Slightly who cuts whistles out of the trees and dances ecstatically to his own tunes. Slightly is the most conceited of the boys” (Barrie, 1911/2011, p. 65).

While we immediately recognize the manner in which the characters go in and out of stage in the play as a dramatic convention, and therefore pay little attention to it, it

53 The stage note is particularly interesting for the manner in which not only not only focuses on the audience’s experience—“Then Peter’s star wakes up, and in the blink of it (…) you can make out masses of trees, and you think you see wild beasts stealing past to drink, though what you see is not the beasts themselves but only the shadows of them”—but also explicitly addresses the difficulty of moving from the real world into the fantastic and seeing the island for the first time: “This is because if you see the island bang (as Peter would say) the wonders of it might hurt your eyes” (Barrie, 1928/2008, p. 105).

197 strikes us as funny in the novel, where they literally go around in circles at exactly the same pace: “The lost boys were looking out for Peter, the pirates were out looking for the lost boys, the redskins were out looking for the pirates, and the beasts were looking for the redskins” (Barrie, 1911/2011, p. 64). In addition to announcing early on how time in

Neverland is essentially circular—an endless cycle of adventures where no event has real significance—the passage highlights how the characters themselves are performing or acting out in response to Peter’s childlike desire for excitement, recreating at the level of story the theatricality of the original play.

In his absence things are usually quiet on the island. The fairies take an hour

longer in the morning, the beasts attend to their young, the redskins feed heavily

for six days and nights, and when pirates and lost boys meet they merely bite their

thumbs at each other. But with the coming of Peter, who hates lethargy, they are

under way again: if you put your ear to the ground now you would hear the whole

island seething with life. (Barrie, 1911/2011, p. 64)

Despite inviting the narratee to confirm that the island is indeed “seething with life,” breaking again the boundaries between diegetic and extradiegetic levels by asking the narratee to put its “ear to the ground” and hear the characters moving; the fact that they would rather be doing something else, from taking care of their young to histrionically biting their thumbs at each other instead of fighting, and only start to move the minute Peter and the children come close (like it happens in the theater when the

198 curtain comes up) suggests that what happens in Neverland is not entirely real.54 An impression that is emphasized later on by the multiple instances in which the characters pretend to be someone else, including the battle at Slightly Gulch where the lost boys effectively switch sides with the “redskins.”

The very manner in which the different factions are described and chase each other around the island has a distinct literary quality; from the stereotypical portrayal of the “Piccaninnies,” taken directly from the adventures stories that Barrie read when he was child, to the way the pirates sing along as they march, announcing their presence to the lost boys: “We hear them before they are seen, and it is always the same dreadful song: (…) Avast belay, yo ho, heave to,/ A-pirating we go” (Barrie, 1911/2011, p. 66).

While we are still invited to take them seriously, as the children themselves do when the pirates for example shoot their cannon at them, we are also expected to recognize them as literary (or literary-like) characters, which in turn increases our awareness of the story as story and the synthetic components of the narrative.

As Blake (2009) finally explains, highlighting how Barrie simultaneously embraces and subverts the conventions of the adventure romance: “The formula adventures that make up Peter Pan are presented in a style insistently ‘like in a book.’

(…) Barrie’s content is the content of romance, but his style subverts romantic illusion”

(p. 172). Not only are we constantly aware of the narrative frame, and the manner in

54 According to Tatar (2011), the characters’ parade around the island can actually be read as a “therapeutic alternative to adventure, avoiding conflict through circular movement” (p. 65), highlighting how they are not really interested in fighting each other, and only do so for Peter’s sake.

199 which the text itself is constructed; but we are also reminded of the ontological difference between the world where the story begins (and the narrating instance is taking place) and the fantastic: how “we are not really on the island” because we are reading a fantasy story, as the narrator points out when he invites the narratee (and therefore the reader) to close their eyes and imagine that they are in Neverland.

If you shut your eyes and are a lucky one, you may see at times a shapeless pool

of lovely pale colours suspended in the darkness; then if you squeeze your eyes

tighter, the pool begins to take shape, and the colours become so vivid that with

another squeeze they must go on fire. But just before they go in fire you see the

lagoon. This is the nearest you ever get to it on the mainland, just one heavenly

moment, if there could be two moments you might see the surf and hear the

mermaids singing. (Barrie, 1911/2011, p. 95)

Beyond highlighting the difference between diegetic and extradiegetic levels, how the narratee can only pretend or imagine (in the broadest sense of the word) to witness the events that take place on the island; the passage goes one step further and explicitly points out how the fantasy world only exists—or is, at least, accessible to the narratee— through an exercise of imagination (in the stricter sense of picturing in one’s mind what we would never expect to find in reality). This applies as well for the reader, who becomes increasingly aware of the difference between Neverland, as both fantasy space and fictional setting, and the world of extraliterary reality: How we ourselves are invited to use our imagination and reach for that “heavenly moment,” even if we know all the while that our experience is purely literary. 200

To Kill Captain Hook. Given the manner in which the novel invites us to be aware of the synthetic components of the narrative, and the ambiguous nature of

Neverland itself, it is not difficult to see how critics tend to regard Peter and Wendy as a less “serious” imaginative work than say The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe or the

Harry Potter series. According to John Griffith (1979), while the novel ultimately reveals the psychological conflict between desire and fear at the heart of all fantasy, there are multiple details throughout the text that “emphasize how unserious, and therefore inconsequential, and therefore innocent, the events of the story are” (pp. 35-36). We might be dealing with pirates, fairies and duels to the death, but these are all make- believe and therefore entirely safe.

Though this is partially true, as it is for all fantasy texts, and represents one of the virtues of the genre, especially for young readers; what makes the book a work of fantasy, and keeps the reader emotionally and imaginatively engaged is the manner in which what is only make-believe in the beginning becomes increasingly real (and often deadly serious) to the surprise and concern of the characters. While Wendy and her brothers first view of the island has indeed a dream-like quality—starting with how they immediately recognize it from their dreams as a “familiar friend to whom they were returning home for the holidays” (Barrie, 1911/2011, p. 57)—as soon as the sun starts to set (the visual metaphor is already telling), they begin to realize the implications of actually being there, instead of simply imagining it.

In the old days at home the Neverland had always begun to look a little dark and

threatening by bedtime. Then unexplored patches arose and spread; black 201

shadows moved about in them; the roar of the beasts of prey was quite different

now, and above all, you lost the certainty that you will win. You were quite glad

that the night-lights were on. You even like Nana to say that this was just the

mantelpiece over here, and that the Neverland was all make-believe.

Of course the Neverland had been make-believe in those days; but it was

real now, and there were no night-lights, and it was getting darker every moment,

and where was Nana? (Barrie, 1911/2011, p. 57)

Not only does the passage mark the difference between reality, fantasy and make- believe at the level of story, how the children suddenly have to deal with all manner of creatures and situations that they would never expect to find before, and are now effectively real, but also invites the narratee (and therefore the reader) to identify with them, highlighting how their experience somehow mirrors, and on a different level reflects upon, the audience’s own experience with the fantastic. Like most portal-quest fantasies, the novel effectively invites us to consider what would happen if our childhood dreams and fantasies were no longer make-believe: How while being able to fly and fight pirates sounds exciting in theory (and fiction), especially for a child, it would probably be quite dangerous and scary if we actually had to do it.

Even before the children reach the island, there is something unsettling about their journey, from the manner in which they can no longer tell where they are, or how long have they been flying, and start to fear that they would not be able to go back home without Peter, to the way he forgets about them several times and even seems to enjoy when Michael falls asleep in midflight and plummets down the sea, allowing him to 202 swoop down and save him: “[I]t was lovely the way he did it; but he always waited till the last moment, and you felt it was his cleverness that interested him and not the saving of human life” (Barrie, 1911/2011, p. 54).55 Though they finally get to Neverland alright, the difficulties they face along the journey already announce how the fantasy world is not the ideal place that the children (and the reader) initially imagine.

This impression is emphasized a few pages later when they start their descent, and literally feel there is an incorporeal force that does not want them to land on the island:

“Nothing horrid was visible in the air, yet their progress had become slow and labored, exactly as if they were pushing their way through hostile forces” (Barrie, 1911/2011, p.

58). Though this leaves the nature of the danger ambiguous, and it seems like Peter is fighting ghosts, the effect on children is real enough, reinforcing their sense of dread. The same thing happens when Peter reveals that there is a pirate sleeping below and then offers to go down and kill him, to the skepticism of Wendy and her brothers, who have never fought or killed a pirate before, and are even more terrified to learn that Hook and his crew are looking for them: “Then indeed Michael began to cry, and even John could speak in gulps only, for they knew of Hook’s reputation” (p. 59).

55 Contrary to most portal-quest guides, Peter not only does a very poor job leading the children to

Neverland, starting with the fact that his instructions to get there are basically useless—“even birds, carrying maps and consulting them at windy corners, could not have sighted it with these instructions”

(Barrie, 1911/2011, p. 53)—but also later resents the fact that they knowing so much about island, preventing him from bragging and lording it over them.

203

In one way or another, Barrie’s emphasis on the dangerous and often violent nature of Neverland, and the children’s reaction to this, becomes a way of making the fantasy world itself feel more real, highlighting—as Wendy and her brothers are forced to learn when the pirates shoot their cannon at them—“the difference between an island of make believe and the same island come true” (Barrie, 1911/2011, p. 62). While the narrator reassures the narratee (and therefore the reader) that none of the children are hurt, the scene makes abundantly clear how the events are not as inconsequential as

Griffith deems them to be. As the narrator again points out, when he describes how the different factions chase each other around the island, the very fact that they are all keeping “a sharp look-out in front,” ignoring that “danger may be creeping up from behind,” illustrates “how real the island was” (p. 70).

Central to this, of course, is the conflict between Peter and Captain Hook. While the “redskins” and the beasts represent also a danger for the children, and even Tinker

Bell herself conspires several times against Wendy; from the moment Peter first talks about Hook it becomes clear how defeating him is one of the main problems or instabilities that move the narrative forward: “‘There is one thing,’ Peter continued, ‘that every boy who serves under me has to promise, and so must you.’ (…) ‘It is this, if we meet Hook in open fight, you must leave him to me’” (Barrie, 1911/2011, p. 59). Not only does Peter single him out as his greatest adversary, but Barrie spends a lot of time and space (more than with any other character) constructing him as this completely dreadful (and at the same time strangely sympathetic) character.

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His eyes were of the blue of the forget-me-not, and of a profound melancholy,

save when he was plunging his hook into you, at which time two red spots

appeared in them and lit them up horribly. (…) In dress he somewhat aped the

attire associated with the name of Charles II, having heard it said in some earlier

period of his career that he bore a strange resemblance to the ill-fated Stuarts; and

in his mouth he had a holder of his own contrivance which enabled him to smoke

two cigars at once. But undoubtedly the grimmest part of him was his iron claw.

(Barrie, 1911/2011, p. 68)

Though many of his traits are taken directly from the tradition of what Blake

(2009) calls “boy’s book pirates,” inspired by Lord Byron’s “The Corsair” and going all the way to Stevenson’s Long John Silver (pp. 168-170), and there is a certain comic quality about him—from the way he dresses in 17th century clothing to his contraption to smoke two cigars at once—both the grim image of the hook, and the way he would plunge into the narratee without remorse (like he does with one of his own men a few lines later), leave little doubt about the kind of man he is, and the threat he represents for the children, particularly Peter. As Hook explicitly explains to Smee: “‘’Twas he cut off my arm.’ He brandished the hook threateningly. ‘I’ve waited long to shake his hand with this. Oh’ I’ll tear him!’” (Barrie, 1911/2011, p. 73). 56

56 According to Tatar (2011), while Barrie himself recognized how Captain Hook could be seen as a comical character, he insisted in his scenario for the screen version of Peter Pan that the character should be played “absolutely seriously,” avoiding the temptation to play the part “as if he was conscious of its humours,” which he claimed would ruin the performance (pp. 59-60).

205

However, it is only until chapter 8, “The Mermaids Lagoon” (the only one of the children’s adventures in Neverland that is narrated in detail), that we see Peter and Hook finally clash. The scene begins, again, with a sudden change in tone: The children are sleeping on Marooner’s Rock, after playing with the mermaids’ rainbow colored bubbles, when Wendy starts to feel something ominous is about to happen; “It was not, she knew, that night had come, but something as dark as night had come. No, worse than that. It had not come, but it had sent that shiver through the sea to say that it was coming” (Barrie,

1911/2011, p. 97). Though she lets the children sleep, sticking to her rule that they must rest for half an hour after their meals, it is soon revealed that the pirates are the ones approaching with Tiger Lily as their prisoner.

Her hands and ankles were tied, and she knew what was to be her fate. She was to

be left on the rock to perish, and end to one of her race as more terrible than death

by fire or torture, for is it not written in the book of the tribe that there is no path

through water to the happy hunting ground? Yet her face was impassive; she was

the daughter of a chief, she must die a chief’s daughter, it is enough. (Barrie,

1911/2011, p. 98)

The passage is one of the darkest and most serious of the whole book, as not only is Tiger Lily about to die in a horrible way, highlighting once more the ruthlessness of the pirates, but she also faces that destiny with a stoic, almost tragic dignity that contrast with the playful and careless tone at the beginning of the chapter. Perhaps even more suggestive is the contrast between Wendy’s and Peter’s own reactions. While she cries for the native princess—for, as the narrator points out, “it was the first tragedy she had 206 seen” (Barrie, 1911/2011, p. 98)—Peter is not only more concerned with the unfairness of having two against one, but also seems frightfully excited about the possibility of fighting the pirates and proving how clever he is: “A strange smile was playing about his face, and Wendy saw it and shuddered” (pp. 97-98).

Beyond what it tells us about their personal character, the scene is particularly interesting for the manner in which it illustrates once more the difference between the world where the story begins and the fantastic. Though Wendy is very much aware of the peril, and the fact that children like her would never be fighting pirates in the real world,

Peter seems almost oblivious of danger, and takes the confrontation more like a game than an actual fight: “An easy way would have been to wait until the pirates had gone, but he was never one to choose the easy way. (…) There was almost nothing he could not do and he now imitated the voice of Hook” (Barrie, 1911/2011, p. 100). While he certainly manages to free Tiger Lily, it is hard not to share Wendy’s concern when he carelessly reveals who he is, prompting the pirates to attack. 57

In one way or another, the scene can be seen as an illustration of Tolkien’s

(1947/1966) comments on how children read and engage with fairy stories, and the difference between reading about dragons and have those dragons intrude into the real world, where it is possible, for instance, to “read stories in peace of mind, free from fear”

57 As Blake (2009) points out, highlighting how Peter takes to an extreme the stereotypical (and unrealistic) image of the adventure hero, who enjoys danger and excitement for their own sake: “He does nothing to simply get something done. He never just lives; he has adventures. And he organizes his life in order to have them” (p. 171).

207

(p. 64). Though Wendy and her brothers are initially fascinated with the prospect of going to Neverland, and seeing the mermaids and the pirates, once they get there, they have to deal with the difference between “the island of make-believe and the same island come true” (Barrie, 1911/2011, p. 62), from the fact that the mermaids are not as friendly as Wendy would have liked (and even pull her into the water when she lays unconscious on the rock) to the fact that the pirates can actually hurt them.

Even Peter himself, despite his bravado and incapacity to distinguish between reality and fantasy, seems to realize the seriousness of the situation: First, when he tries to help Hook get on top of the rock so they can have a fair fight, and the pirate stabs him with his claw, and second then when he realizes that he is trapped, and is probably going to die, after letting Wendy escape with the kite. While the narrator clearly points out how

Peter is not afraid of Hook at all, and actually enjoys the chance to fight him, he is completely dumbfounded when the pirate betrays him, highlighting both Peter’s heroic naïveté and the ruthlessness of his opponent: “Not the pain of this but its unfairness was what dazed Peter. (…) He could only stare, horrified. Every child is affected thus the first time he is treated unfairly” (Barrie, 1911/2011, p. 105).58

58 The subsequent reflection on how children deal with this type of situations is also interesting for the manner in which the narrator seems to be warning the adult, who might be unfair to a young boy, of how this experience will mark him, forcing him in one way or another to grow up: “After you have been unfair to him he will love you again, but will never afterwards be quite the same boy. No one ever gets over the first unfairness” (Barrie, 1911/2011, p. 105).

208

Though the scene ends with this incredibly inspiring and, at the same time, theatrical moment—as Peter stands defiantly on Marooners’ Rock, thinking (or saying aloud in the play) how “to die will be an awfully big adventure”—the narrator explicitly points out how he is afraid, apparently for the first time in his life: “Peter was not quite like other boys; but he was afraid at last. A tremor ran through him, like a shudder passing over the sea” (Barrie, 1911/2011, p. 108). It lasts only for an instant, and Peter does not seem to change or grow because of this experience, but that only serves to highlight the difference between him and everyone else, including the narratee, and ultimately the reader, who would probably be unable to remain impassive—much less that cocky—if they were in a similar situation.59

While Peter finally escapes, and the following chapters have a much lighter tone—beginning with Never bird’s comical attempts to communicate with him, so he can use its nest to sail back to the shore—the episode not only emphasizes what it means for the children (and the reader) to move from one world to another, but also sets the stage for the final confrontation with the pirates on the deck of the Jolly Roger. Both scenes have actually a lot in common, from the way they involve some sort of rescue (first Tiger

Lily, then Wendy’s and the rest of the children) to the manner in which Peter plays with

Hook and his men, pretending to be first the crocodile, then a vengeful spirit, and finally

59 Ironically enough, it has been reported that Charles Frohman, the producer of the original play, actually paraphrased Peter’s “last words” during the sinking of the Lusitania in 1915. As Tatar (2011) points out, this eventually contributed to “the discourse establishing unsettling connections linking death, adventure, and World War I with the play Peter Pan” (p. 108).

209

Wendy herself, emphasizing the contrast between the seriousness of the situation and his own childlike and careless demeanor.

What is really interesting about that final scene, however, as well as the chapters leading to it, is the manner in which we are invited to see Captain Hook from a different perspective, and in one way or another reflect on what all this fighting and killing really entails, starting with the pirate attack on the “Piccaninnies.” As the narrator explicitly points out, the battle is more a “massacre” than an actual fight, as the pirates surprise the

“redskins” by attacking, instead of waiting to be attacked, according to the “laws of savage warfare” (Barrie, 1911/2011, pp. 133-135). Though Hook’s actions are described as “treacherous” and “unscrupulous,” inviting us to judge him accordingly, the narrator also admits a “reluctant admiration for the wit that had conceived so bold a scheme, and the fell genius with which it was carried out” (pp. 133-136).60

Despite being portrayed from the start, in more or less stereotypical terms, as the villain of the story; despite being a cheater and a murderer, and taking Wendy and the lost boys away; we are repeatedly invited to peer into Captain Hook’s mind, and recognize how he is a much more complex and ultimately sympathetic character, which

60 He furthermore recognizes how if the pirates had waited, the “Piccaninnies” would have butchered them instead, significantly leaving for the historian to decide whether or not Hook should be blamed for his tactics. According to Paul Fox (2007), the whole scene can be read as a reproach to the type of reductive historical discourses that explains behavior and confrontation between groups as a result of overdetermined identity binaries, as “either single approach agreed upon by both parties would have ended in confrontation and the massacre of one group” (pp. 261-264).

210 complicates the whole idea of killing him, even if he does seem to deserve it. Consider in particular the scene where he descends through the hollow tree looking for Peter: Not only does the narrator point out how he struggles with his own fears, before bravely jumping into the unknown, effectively humanizing the character; but also remarks how he is not entirely the heartless and brutal man he seems to be, revealing his gentler side and conflicted feelings about Peter.

Did no feeling of compassion disturb his somber breast? The man was not wholly

evil; he loved flowers (I have been told) and sweet music (he was himself no

mean performer of the harpsichord); and let it be frankly admitted, the idyllic

nature of the scene stirred him profoundly. Mastered by his better self he would

have returned up the tree, but for one thing.

What stayed him was Peter’s impertinent appearance as he slept. The open

mouth, the dropping arm, the arched knee: they were such a personification of

cockiness as, taken together, will never again, one may hope, be presented to eyes

so sensitive to their offensiveness. (Barrie, 1911/2011, p. 141)

Though he only hesitates for a moment, and most readers (particularly adults) would find the child’s “impertinent appearance” endearing, rather than offensive, the narrator clearly invites us to see Hook in a different light. Even after he tries to poison

Peter, and almost kills Tinker Bell in the process, it is hard not to feel a certain sympathy for him as he paces along the deck of the pirate ship—thinking about his old school days at Eton College, and the problem of “good form” (hardly a pirate’s concern)—when he suddenly feels his end is near, and has a pressing desire to make his final speech, before 211 he literally runs out of time: “‘Better for Hook,’ he cried, ‘if he had less ambition.’ It was in his darkest hours only that he referred to himself in the third person. (…) ‘No little children love me’” (Barrie, 1911/2011, p. 149).61

In one way or another, Captain Hook can be seen as a fallen child, who has not only grown up, and forsaken the moral and social virtues associated with a proper upper- class Edwardian education, but also has lost the very innocence and carelessness of childhood.62 As William Blackburn (1982) points out, he becomes this almost Miltonian character: “‘Terribly alone,’ cursed with acute self-consciousness and the knowledge of his failure to live up to his ideals, Hook is also obsessed with good form, the lost grace and innocence of childhood which Peter cannot help possessing” (p. 51). This is only made worse by the way Peter seems to play with him throughout the scene, terrorizing

Hook and his crew, while eliminating the pirates one by one, before finally revealing who he is, and leading the lost boys on a final attack.

61 The implicit address to the audience is even clearer in the play, as Hook explicitly points out how, while children like to play they are Peter Pan, “they would rather be a Twin than Hook; they force the baby to be

Hook. The baby! that is where the canker gnaws” (Barrie, 1928/2008, p. 139).

62 This is particularly clear in the scene where he offers the children to join his crew, highlighting not only the children’s fascination with pirates, but also how they can easily become Hook himself: “‘You, boy,’ he said, addressing John, ‘you look as if you had a little pluck in you. Didst never want to be a pirate my hearty?’ (…) Now John had sometimes experienced this hankering at maths. prep.; and he was struck by

Hook’s picking him out. (…) ‘I once thought of calling myself Red-handed Jack,’ he said diffidently”

(Barrie, 1911/2011, p. 150).

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While the battle itself is fierce, the pirates ultimately have little chance. Like the

“Piccaninnies” before them, they quickly fall to the children’s swords, who have no mercy for them either, highlighting again the violent nature of the fantasy world: “There was little sound to be heard but the clang of weapons, an occasional screech or splash, and Slightly monotonously counting—five—six—seven—eight—nine—ten—eleven”

(Barrie, 1911/2011, p. 162).63 The scene, of course, ends with the climactic duel between

Peter and Captain Hook, who has managed to keep the children at bay until that point, but cannot help but shudder in fear when he finds himself face to face with his opponent:

“‘Proud and insolent youth,’ said Hook, ‘prepare to meet thy doom.’ (…) ‘Dark and sinister man,’ Peter answered, ‘have at thee’” (p. 163).

As the way in which they address each other suggests, their combat has clear symbolic, even mythical, resonance; an impression emphasized a few lines later when

Hook asks Peter who he is and he responds he is “youth,” “joy,” the “little bird that has broken out of the egg” (Barrie, 1911/2011, p. 163). While the narrator explains this is nonsense, and he does not really know who he is, Hook immediately realizes he cannot win: Not only is Peter the epitome of good form, but he represents childhood itself, while his own time is running out.64 Though he still fights with all he has, and even fires the

63 Even Michael himself kills a pirate, and then brags about it to Wendy, who is particularly distressed about it in the play—“It’s awful, awful”—especially when Michael responds “No, it isn’t, I like it, I like it,” and then rejoins the rest of the boys (Barrie, 1928/2008, pp. 144-145).

64 According to Blackburn (1982), we ultimately sympathize with Hook, as we do with all the adults in the novel (especially the children themselves once they grow up), because they deal, like us, with the inevitable

213 powder magazine in an attempt to blow up the ship, he finally seems to accept his fate, and significantly goes back to his own childhood, inviting, if not the sympathy, at least the pity and admiration of the narrator.

Misguided man though he was, we may be glad, without sympathising with him,

that in the end he was true to the traditions of his race. The other boys were flying

around him now, flouting, scornful; and as he staggered about the deck striking up

at them impotently, his mind was no longer with them; it was slouching in the

playing fields of long ago, or being sent up for good, or watching the wall-game

from a famous wall. And his shoes were right and his waistcoat was right, and his

tie was right, and his socks were right. (Barrie, 1911/2011, p. 164)

Though we still root for the children throughout the scene, and it is certainly satisfying to see Hook get what he deserves, it is hard not to share the narrator’s impression that he is not a “wholly unheroic figure.” He even gets the small victory of having Peter display bad form, by kicking him overboard, instead of stabbing him. What all this ultimately does is highlight, once more, the difference between the island of make-believe and the same island come true, by not only humanizing the villain—who progressively moves away from the stereotypical image of the pirate presented in the beginning, and becomes a much more interesting and tragic character—but also

ravages of time; unlike Peter himself, whose existence outside of time makes him essentially heartless, and therefore not entirely human (pp. 51-52).

214 questioning the role of the hero, and what it implies for the children to fight and kill the pirates, in particular Captain Hook.

This is not to say that the children (or the reader) are in some way traumatized by the events and the death of the villain—though Peter does cries in his sleep that night, in one of the few moments in the book in which he seems vulnerable and helpless—or that the overall tone of the story is essentially bleak and violent; after all, there are plenty of comical moments throughout the scene, from Hook himself dancing and singing to the way Starkey is finally captured by the “redskins” and made to serve as a “nurse for all their papooses” (Barrie, 1911/2011, p. 165). The point is rather that events of the story themselves should be taken seriously, that the children have actually traveled between worlds and find this fantastic, but also dangerously real place, making the decision to stay or go back home all the more meaningful.

Belief and Make-Believe. Like all portal-quest fantasies, Peter and Wendy is as much about the children’s adventures in Neverland as it is about the transit between worlds itself and what it entails for the characters. Though the conflict between Peter and

Captain Hook seems to be the main problem or instability that moves the narrative forward, it is in the episodes and chapters in-between—where the narrator describes the children’s everyday routine on the island, and their relationship with Peter and the lost boys—that the difference between reality, fantasy and make-believe is ultimately negotiated, leading to Wendy and her brothers’ decision to go back home. These chapters are, in this sense, fundamental to understand both the trajectory of the characters and what Barrie is trying to say about childhood, imagination and fantasy. 215

Contrary to the scenes dealing with Hook and the pirates, these passages have a more playful and childlike tone, starting with chapter 6, “The Little House,” where the lost boys celebrate Peter’s return to Neverland and the fact that he has finally brought someone to be their mother. While the chapter begins with Wendy being shot out of the sky due to Tinker Bell’s petty machinations, and we see Peter ready to strike Tootles with his own arrow for what he has done—highlighting again how dangerous the fantasy world can be—it is quickly revealed that she is alright to everyone’s relief, particularly

Tootles: “Slightly cried instantly, ‘The Wendy lady lives’ (…) Then Peter knelt beside her and found his button. (…) ‘See,’ he said, ‘the arrow struck against this. It is the kiss I gave her. It has saved her life’” (Barrie, 1911/2011, p. 80).

What follows is a fantastically fun theatrical and childlike scene, as Peter turns the whole situation into a game, asking Slightly to “fetch the doctor,” which he does by

“wearing John’s hat and looking solemn,” and then using an imaginary thermometer to treat Wendy: “‘I will put a glass thing in her mouth,’ said Slightly, and he made-believe to do it, while Peter waited. It was an anxious moment when the glass thing was withdrawn. (…) ‘Tut, tut, tut,’ said Slightly, ‘this has cured her’” (Barrie, 1911/2011, p.

83). Not only are we explicitly invited to recognize that what they are doing is just pretend—in opposition, among other things, to the way Tootles actually shoots Wendy— but also find amusing the way they imagine doctors (and adults in general) to be, as well as the childlike way they play their roles.

At the same time, the fact that all this is taking place in a world that is initially only “make-believe,” but “comes true” once the children cross the portal, immediately 216 raises some questions about the nature of Neverland; especially as the narrator points out how Peter himself is unable to distinguish between “make-believe and true,” and expects the lost boys to act accordingly: “This sometimes troubled them, as when they had to make-believe they had had their dinners. (…) If they broke down their make-believe he rapped them on the knuckles” (Barrie, 1911/2011, p. 83).65 In addition to this becoming a major problem for the characters in terms of their relationship with Peter, it highlights how they themselves have to deal, at the level of story, with the question of what is real, what is fantasy, and what is only make-believe.

The ambiguous nature of the island is highlighted again by the way the children built the little house that gives its title to the chapter. Deciding that it would be improper to carry Wendy to their underground home, Peter orders the lost boys to build a house around her, recreating the scene from Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens where the fairies do the same for little Maimie Mannering, when she falls asleep in the snow (Barrie,

1907/2008, pp. 151-155). Like the incident with the doctor, the building of the house seems initially to be purely make-believe, from the manner in which the children sing along as they work (and even Wendy joins in, despite being supposedly asleep) to the way they use John’s hat for the chimney, just like kids around the world use blankets and old boxes to build their imaginary forts.

65 It is worth noticing, however, that Peter does seem to have a certain awareness of the difference between reality, fantasy and make-believe, starting with the fact that he can tell when the lost boys are not playing straight; not to mention how he consciously decides to leave the human world behind, and stay a child forever, when he hears his parents talking about his future.

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As Maria Tatar (2011) points out, however, looking at how the chimney immediately starts to smoke, as well as how the children grow the roses to decorate the house through sheer power of imagination: “In Neverland (…) the make-believe becomes real, and it is through play that fantasies take material shape” (p. 85). There is even a moment, when Wendy asks for the house to be full of babies, and the lost boys hurry to come up with an excuse not to make them before Peter orders them to do it, suggesting how they are somewhat afraid of their own power and the responsibility that would entail, while announcing Peter’s own uneasiness towards the end of the novel when he cannot longer say for sure if he is actually the father of the lost boys: “We’ve made the roses peeping out,/ The babes are at the door,/ We cannot make ourselves, you know,/

’cos we’ve been made before” (Barrie, 1911/2011, p. 85).

At the same time, there is still something inherently alluring about the possibility of having everything one imagines or plays about come true, which is precisely what makes Neverland such a desirable fantasy setting, from the possibility of flying away to another world to assuming all manner of adult roles without having to grow up first.

According to John Griffith (1979), who sees the island as a representation of the psychological struggle between the desire and fear at the heart of all fantasy, while the adventures of Wendy and her brothers have a lot in common with the adventures of the

Pevensie children or even a more realistic hero like Jim Hawkings, “the worlds of

Treasure Island and Narnia do not threaten or lure the characters in quite the same way.

The Neverland is more disturbing in a sense because it is too desirable. And therefore

Barrie must deny it all the more emphatically” (p. 29).

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Whereas for John, Michael and the rest of the boys (including Peter himself) it is all about fighting pirates and going on adventures, however, what seduces Wendy from the start about going to Neverland is the chance of actually being a mother and taking care of them all. It is not casual by any means that the children decide to build her a house, leading directly to the moment where they ask Wendy to be their mother: “‘[W]e are your children,’ cried the twins. (...) Then all went to their knees, and holding their arms cried, ‘O Wendy lady, be our mother’” (Barrie, 1911/2011, p. 86).66 Though she seems hesitant for a moment, and significantly points out how she is “only a little girl” and has “no real experience,” she steps into the role quickly enough, when Peter tells her that what they need is just a “nice motherly person” like her.

“Very well,” she said, “I will do my best. Come inside at once, you naughty

children; I am sure your feet are damp. And before I put you to bed I have just

time to finish the story of Cinderella.

In they went; I don’t know how there was room for them, but you can

squeeze very tight in the Neverland. And that was the first of the many joyous

evenings they had with Wendy. (Barrie, 1911/2011, p. 86)

Like the nursery scene, where Peter convinces Wendy to come with him by mentioning, among other things, the possibility of tucking in the lost boys, the episode

66 As Shirley Foster and Judy Simons (1995) highlight, even though the characters move into a different world altogether, Neverland still recreates, in one way or another, the “strict gendered division of

Edwardian England,” encouraging the boys to have fun and go on adventures, while Wendy becomes “a surrogate mother figure who stays at home and cares for her ‘children’” (p. 175).

219 with the little house can be read as a scene of seduction, intended to persuade Wendy to stay in Neverland: From the way Peter “saves her” with his “kiss,” in almost fairy-tale fashion, to how he orders the lost boys to look their best, before asking her to be their mother. While it is clear that she is just pretending to be this mother figure—evidenced by both her sudden change in register and the childlike way she defines motherhood through scolding and storytelling—by agreeing to “play the game,” she implicitly embraces both the existence and imaginative possibilities of the fantasy world, where little girls like her can effectively become mothers.

Though we might find problematic today the way she is left behind cooking and cleaning, while the rest of the boys go outside and have all manner of adventures—“there where whole weeks when, except perhaps with stockings in the evening, she was never above ground” (Barrie, 1911/2011, p. 90)—she clearly enjoys playing her part; from the fairylike domestic space of the underground home, with its colorful mushroom stools and the huge bed where everybody fits in, which she finds lovely, to mending the children’s clothes once they all have gone to bed, and she has a little time for herself, allowing her to complain about it, as she probably has heard Mrs. Darling do, back in the world where the story begins: “‘Oh dear, I am sure I sometimes think spinsters are to be envied’ (…)

Her faced beamed when she exclaimed this” (p. 91).67

67 Though the book seems to privilege—as critics like Amy Billone (2004) and Foster and Simons (1995) suggest—a male experience of childhood, Barrie spends a lot of time and space describing Wendy’s routine instead of the boys’ (most of whose adventures we only hear about in the passing), emphasizing, in one

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The only thing that concerns her is the fact that John and Michael have started to forget about their parents, and think that she is indeed their real mother, highlighting how the difference between reality, fantasy and make-believe becomes more and more blurred as the story progresses: “These things scared her a little, and nobly anxious to do her duty, she tried to fix the old life in her minds by setting them examination papers on it, as like as possible to the ones she use to do school” (Barrie, 1911/2011, p. 91). While both the idea of the exams and the questions she asks are completely hilarious, the scene not only reminds both characters and readers of the real world, but also warns us early on about the danger of staying in Neverland too long, as the narrator highlights when he points out how Wendy herself has started to forget.

On the other side of the equation, by effectively becoming the lost boys’ mother and recreating, in one way or another, the children’s everyday experience back home

(including having tests about it), Wendy seems to defeat the very purpose of flying away to Neverland. According to Griffith (1979), while the island is supposed to be an escape from the world where the story begins, specifically adult authority, a space where children can do whatever they want (“exploring, fighting, running risks—things boys do away from home”), the lost boys’ need to find a mother (even if it is only a make-believe one like Wendy) reveals how for Barrie that space is paradoxically incomplete without her: “The primary intention of the Neverland—to be a world free of the mother- fixation—is immediately compromised” (pp. 30-31). way or another, the contrast between both experiences, which finally connects to the question of going back home, growing up, and having a family, or staying in Neverland for good.

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Consider how Wendy chides the children for being out of bed as soon as she agrees to be their mother. Whereas Peter entices her to come with him by pointing out how she could be “flying and saying funny things to the stars” instead of sleeping (Barrie,

1911/2011, p. 47), and that is precisely what the children do by leaving the nursery, the first thing she does once she is in charge is send the children to bed, like she does again after the adventure with the mermaids, and once more after their fight with the pirates:

“The lateness of the hour was almost the biggest thing of all. She got them to bed in the pirates’ bunks pretty quickly, you may be sure” (p. 165). Not only does this take away all the fun, and reduces the boys again to little children, but also invites us to question if their adventures were indeed that serious.68

Perhaps the most telling effect of Wendy’s disruptive presence in Neverland, however, is the fact that Peter starts to play a new game which consists “in pretending not to have adventures, in doing the sort of thing John and Michael had been doing all their lives: sitting on stools flinging ball in the air, pushing each other, going out for walks”

(Barrie, 1911/2011, p. 92). While the narrator points out how it is quite difficult for Peter to stay in character for too long, it is John and Michael who find the hardest to enjoy the game, having come all the way to Neverland hoping to have some extraordinary adventure—an expectation that the audience shares as well, even if we find their

68 This is particularly clear in the case of Michael, who is further forced to sleep in a cradle, instead of sharing the bed with everybody else: “Michael should have used it also; but Wendy would have a baby, and he was the littlest, and you know how women are, and the short and long of it is that he was hung up in a basket” (Barrie, 1911/2011, p. 89).

222 predicament funny at the moment—only to find themselves doing what they usually do in the world where the story begins.

As Hook himself confesses a few pages later, Wendy changes, in one way or another, the whole dynamic of the island: “‘The game’s up,’ he cried, ‘those boys have found a mother’” (Barrie, 1911/2011, p. 100). The passage can be read as both an explicit recognition that having a mother gives the children a significant advantage over the pirates (who finally wish they had one too), and a foreboding announcement that now that the lost boys have a mother, they will no longer be able to “play” with them.

According to James Kincaid (1992), it is actually Wendy, instead of Hook, who represents a real danger for Peter and everything he stands for: “[She] comes into the play as an intruder, a disturber of the peace and play, sets up a school, and is last seen on a broomstick, where she should had been all along” (p. 285).69

Whether we agree with Kincaid’s harsh judgement of Wendy or not, as the story progresses it becomes clear how having a family like she wants and staying in Neverland with Peter are finally incompatible. While the children’s multiple encounters with the pirates certainly force them to confront the implications of leaving the safe and familiar space of home behind and moving into direct contact with the fantastic, it is only until

69 Barrie’s own comments in the dedication to Peter Pan (1928/2008) are particularly telling: Not only does he points out how Wendy was explicitly conceived as a “disturbing element,” to be introduced later on into the childlike fantasy world he first created with the Llewelyn Davies boys, but he even suggests that “Peter did not really bring her to the Never Land of his free will, but merely pretended to do so because she would not stay away” (p. 84).

223 chapter 10—ironically titled “The Happy Home”—and chapter 11—where Peter reveals that their mother will not wait for them forever as Wendy imagines—that they really have to decide between one world and the other (reality and fantasy, growing up or staying young forever); an impression emphasized by the narrator reminding us over and over that it is the children’s last night on the island.70

Though the scene begins “happy” enough with the “redskins” celebrating their alliance with Peter, and the children having their make-believe tea, like an ordinary make-believe family, we quickly learn that neither Wendy nor the boys are really thrilled with the way Peter lets the “Piccaninnies” treat them, fascinated as he is with how they prostrate before him and call him the Great White Father.71 We further see children bickering and complaining about each other, to Wendy’s motherly dismay—“I’m sure I sometimes think that children are more trouble than they are worth”—and even see John

70 The effect is quite similar to what we have at the beginning of the book when Mr. and Mrs. Darling remember their last joyful moments with their children before they left with Peter. Though the scene itself is described in domestic, even idyllic terms, it is very clear how we have reached a turning point in the narrative: “While [Wendy] sewed [the children] played around her; such a group of happy faces and dancing limbs lit up by that romantic fire. It had become a very familiar scene this in the home under the ground, but we are looking on it for the last time” (Barrie, 1911/2011, p. 119).

71 As we learn later on, Wendy’s dislike for the “Piccaninnies” is further connected with the fact that Tiger

Lily is trying to seduce Peter, highlighting how Wendy effectively sees him as her husband, even if he does not understands what is going on: “‘You are so queer,’ he said, frankly puzzled, ‘and Tiger Lily is just the same. There is something she wants to be to me, but she says is not my mother’ (…) ‘No, indeed, it is not,’

Wendy replied with frightful emphasis” (Barrie, 1911/2011, p. 121).

224 point out how Peter is “not really [their] father” and “didn’t even know how a father does till [he] showed him,” reminding both Wendy and the audience that their family life is just pretend (Barrie, 1911/2011, pp. 117-118).

While the scene is in general quite fun—from Tootles asking to play the role of the baby, or even one of the twins, to the way Peter pretends to act and talk like a grown man—things start to get too serious when Wendy remarks (still in character) how old she is gotten, and asks Peter if he would change her, announcing in one way or another what is going to happen towards the end of the book: “Certainly he did not want a change, but he looked at her uncomfortably; blinking, you know, like one not sure whether he was awake or asleep” (Barrie, 1911/2011, p. 120). Incapable of distinguish between is true and what is only make-believe, Peter immediately asks Wendy to reassure him that everything is still a game, and they do not really have a family, for that would mean, of course, that he can no longer be a child.

“You see,” he continued apologetically, “it would make me seem so old to be

their real father.”

“But they are ours, Peter, yours and mine.”

“But not really, Wendy?” he asked anxiously.

“Not if you don’t wish it,” she replied; and she distinctly heard his sigh of

relief. (Barrie, 1911/2011, pp. 120-121).

Not only is Wendy forced to recognized how they have all been playing pretend all along, but also how Peter will never be able to love her like she wants, as she confirms

225 when she asks him what are his “exact feelings” for her, and he responds “those of a devoted son,” effectively breaking her heart: “‘I thought so,’ she said, and went and sat by herself at the extreme of the room” (Barrie, 1911/2011, p. 121). He does not even understand why she is so upset, reminding us how his eternal youth prevents him from seeing any woman as anything else than a mother figure and ultimately connecting with anybody. As Peter Hollindale (1993) points out: “He is immune to sexual signals from

Wendy, Tinkerbell, and Tiger Lily, and the immunity is, paradoxically, callous and hurtful, even though inadvertent” (p. 28).

Though Neverland is, in one way or another, this space where children can play all manner of adult roles, from building houses to fighting pirates and “redskins,” Barrie significantly draws the line at romantic love and, of course, sexuality. According to

Griffith (1979), becoming father to the lost boys and therefore husband to Wendy—not to mention how being simultaneously her son implies a sort of incestuous relationship— compromises Peter’s essential innocence in a way that killing pirates would not (pp. 32-

34). Beyond what this tells us about Barrie’s notion of childhood and children’s literature, how growing up is clearly associated in the text with developing this type of feelings, it highlights how if Wendy really wants a family of her own (and it seems like she does), she finally has to leave the island.

Paradoxically enough, it is Peter who convinces her to go back home by revealing how she cannot expect Mrs. Darling to wait forever, as she suggests in the story she tells the lost boys at the beginning of chapter 11. Despite inviting the children to “consider the feelings of the unhappy parents with all their children flown away,” the point of Wendy’s 226 story is how they can stay in Neverland for as long as they want and still go back to the world where the story begins as if nothing had happened: “‘You see,’ Wendy said complacently, ‘our heroine knew that the mother would always leave the window open for her children to fly back by; so they stayed away for years and had a lovely time’”

(Barrie, 1911/2011, p. 125).72 As Peter points out, however, this is not necessarily true, as he knows from personal experience.

“Long ago,” he said, “I thought like you that my mother would always keep the

window open for me, so I stayed away for moons and moons and moons, and then

flew back; but the window was barred, for mother had forgotten all about me, and

there was another little boy sleeping in my bed.”

I am not sure that this was true, but Peter thought it was true; and it scared

them. (Barrie, 1911/2011, p. 127)

In addition to shedding light on Peter’s conflictive relationship with his mother and mother figures in general (including both Wendy and Mrs. Darling), and of course giving the children a powerful reason to go back home, before they too become like

Peter; the passage is particularly interesting for the manner in which it ultimately addresses the fundamental problem of fantasy. As Hollindale (1993) explains, while

72 The very fact that Wendy is telling these almost fairytale-like stories about the world where the story begins highlights how the relationship between reality and fantasy has started to change, and the children have started to look at their lives back home as imaginary (or nearly forgotten) and their life in Neverland as real, as Michael highlights when he points out how he is not sure if he has actually met his parents or not: “‘I think I knew them,’ said Michael rather doubtfully” (Barrie, 1911/2011, p. 124).

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“both play and story offer an entry into the world of imagination and make-believe through truant play,” allowing Wendy and her brothers to go on adventures and assume all manner of adult roles, without risk or responsibility, “the worlds of escape contain the ever-present danger that they will gain too much reality for you also or else prove treacherously irreversible” (p. 26).

Though we know that the children will be able to return safely and find the window still open—highlighting how Barrie’s text provides, in one way or another, the kind of escape that Hollindale describes—the danger is still there for both the characters and, on a different level, the reader. As the narrator points out, simultaneously inviting us to identify with the children, and how much they enjoy their time in Neverland, while questioning from a more adult perspective their assumption that they can “afford to be callous for a bit longer,” without any regard for their parents: “Off we skip like the most heartless things in the world (…) and we have an entirely selfish time, and then when we need of special attention we nobly return for it, confident that we shall be embraced instead of smacked” (Barrie, 1911/2011, p. 126).

While the children immediately decide to go back home, and even convince the lost boys to come with them, we still see them struggle with the fact that they will have to say goodbye to Peter, who has, of course, very little interest in returning to the world where the story begins and everything that would entail: “[I]f Peter had ever quite had a mother, he no longer missed her. (…) ‘No, no,’ he told Wendy decisively; ‘perhaps she would say I was old, and I just want always to be a little boy and to have fun’” (Barrie,

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1911/2011, p. 131).73 The children’s departure further leads to their capture by the pirates, who significantly take them to their ship by putting them all in the little house and then carrying it all the way to the coast, emphasizing how their make-believe family life in

Neverland has effectively come to an end.

What is interesting is that is precisely at this moment, when the situations seems most desperate, giving credence to the argument that the children should not have stayed that long in Neverland, that Barrie asks the audience to affirm its belief in the existence of the fantasy world, and the power of imaginative fantasy in general. As Tinker Bell is about to die, poisoned by Captain Hook, she reveals she might get better “if children believed in fairies,” prompting Peter to address “all who might be dreaming of the

Neverland” and ask them to clap their hands if they believe (Barrie, 1911/2011, p. 145).

The effect is even clearer in the play where he actually addresses the audience: “He rises and throws out his arms he knows not to whom, perhaps to the boys and girls of whom he is not one” (Barrie, 1928/2008, pp. 136-137).74

73 While he pretends to be unmoved, the narrator points how Peter is not only affected by their departure, but sees the situation as an example of how adults “were spoiling everything,” and takes his revenge by breathing rapidly in the hope killing as many as possible: “He did this because there is a saying in the

Neverland that, every time you breathe, a grown-up dies” (Barrie, 1911/2011, p. 128).

74 As Humphrey Carpenter (1985) points out, the original producers of the play back in 1904 were unsure if the audience was really going to clap, and had instructed the orchestra to do it, but this proved unnecessary:

“There may well have been, as Barrie suggests in the stage direction and in Peter and Wendy, ‘a few little

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As Tatar (2011) points out, the scene is particularly interesting for the manner in which it simultaneously exposes the theatricality of the text, while demanding “faith in the spectacle onstage by asking for palpable proof of the audience’s faith in fairies” (p.

145). Though she sees this as an example of Coleridge’s “willing suspension of disbelief,” it can be seen as well in terms of the double-consciousness, resulting from seeing the events as both “true” and “untrue,” as Rabinowitz (1977) proposes in Truth in

Fiction: A Reexamination of Audiences. On the one hand, we are invited to recognize the fact that what happens on stage is purely fictional; on the other hand, we are invited to assume the position of the narrative audience and pretend that fairies (and Peter and

Neverland, for that matter) actually exist.

Like the passage where the narrator kills one of the pirates in order to illustrate how dreadful Hook really is, Peter’s appeal to the audience entails a clear instance of metalepsis or transgression of narrative levels. Where the narrator’s initial move, however, takes us from the extradiegetic to the diegetic level—highlighting how the narrator has authorial control over the events, which we are therefore invited to regard as at least partly fictional—the transgression works here the other way around, as Peter breaks the “fourth wall” (the term is specifically used in the text a few lines earlier when

Peter looks into Tinker Bell’s little house) and has all the children who are not there, but can significantly hear his words, assert their belief by physically clapping their hands, which in turn has effect on the world of the story. beasts’ who ‘hissed’, but the clapping overwhelmed them” (p. 186). This not only highlights how the actual audience caught the cue, but also agreed to play along and accept the existence of fairies.

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The clapping stopped suddenly; as if countless mothers had rushed to their

nurseries to see what on earth was happening; but already Tink was saved. First

her voice grew strong, then she popped out of bed; then she was flashing through

the room more merry and impudent than ever. She never thought of thanking

those who believed, but she would have liked to get at the ones who had hissed.

“And now to rescue Wendy.” (Barrie, 1911/2011, p. 145)

The passage ultimately highlights the ambiguous nature of Neverland, how while most children (and adults) can only visit the island in their dreams, and its existence depends very literally on their belief, it is also a fantasy world come true. In opposition to other portal-quest fantasies like The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe or Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, where the characters discover the existence of these magic worlds they have never heard about before, and exist independently from the world where the story begins, Peter and Wendy takes the characters into a clearly imaginary or dream- like setting that simultaneously exists through their belief (and somehow ours), making explicit within the text itself how the characters transit between worlds reflects on the readers’ own experience with the fantastic.

As Blake (2009) points out, comparing Barrie’s novel and Stevenson’s Treasure

Island, which she ultimately considers a wish-fulfilling narrative, not unlike what we have in most fantasy stories: “Whereas Treasure Island is the dream, Peter Pan (1911) is about dreaming, and waking” (p. 165). While we are certainly invited to engage mimetically with the story, and wonder if Peter will be able to save the children or not

(which implies accepting the fantasy world as true); we are also invited to be aware of 231 the synthetic components of the narrative (specifically the relation between fictional world, narrator, and the different audiences involved), as well as the broader thematic reflection that Barrie is finally proposing on childhood, fantasy and children’s literature at the level of both narratorial and plot dynamics.

2.3. Looking Back, Looking Forward: The Ending of Peter and Wendy

Contrary to what happens in most portal-quest fantasies, and many children’s books for that matter, where the protagonists’ return home is a more or less uneventful and generally happy occurrence—think of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz or The Book of

Three—Barrie not only pays a lot of attention to how Wendy and her brothers have to readapt to the world where the story begins, and what happens to them once they grow up, but also invites us to question the desirability of doing so: How while the children are able to reunite with their family, and eventually have families of their own, there is also an overwhelming sense of loss in the way they have to leave Peter and Neverland behind, as well as the childlike innocence and imagination they represent for both the characters and, on a different level, the reader.

Interestingly enough, despite the fact that we are back in a more or less realistic setting, the interaction between story world, narrator and the different audiences involved is still quite problematic: From the way Barrie calls attention to the narrating instance, how the novel is framed again at multiple levels, to the way the narrator breaks (or at least appear to break) those limits, only to find himself rejected by the characters. This is further connected with a personal, ethical and thematic component as the narrator struggles with his own position as both adult and outsider, criticizing the children and 232

Mrs. Darling early on, only to praise her a few pages later, and finally identifying with

Peter as he watches the family reunion from afar, highlighting Barrie’s own ambivalent view towards childhood and the whole question of growing up.

Just as it happens at the beginning of the novel, the children’s return from

Neverland is significantly framed at the level of plot dynamics by what happens with Mr. and Mrs. Darling, emphasizing how we are back in the world where the story begins, while highlighting how the children have actually disappeared and been gone for several days, as well as the effect that all this has on their parents. The focus then moves to Peter, who arrives with the intention of closing the window, preventing the children to go back home, at least until he spies Mrs. Darling playing the piano and realizes how sad she is, forcing him to deal with his own issues of abandonment and the central question of whether to stay in the real world, and have a family, or go back to the island where he can stay a child forever.

While the novel makes an argument for the children to go back home, emphasizing how growing up is ultimately inevitable, and we see Wendy herself embrace and even enjoy the process, the text also shows us very clearly the cost of leaving childhood and, more important yet, the childlike capacity to believe and imagine behind; from the way the lost boys start to question their decision to come back to the real world, as soon as they realize they will have to go to school, to the heartbreaking scene where

Wendy, now a mother herself, confesses to Peter that she can no longer fly. At the end we are left only with the comfort that as long as children are “gay and innocent and

233 heartless”—as Barrie famously and evocatively puts it—Peter will come back again to take them (and us) back to his fantasy world.

Here, but not really. Like the journey from London to Neverland, it takes a long time for the children to get back from the island, especially since Peter decides to sail most of the way, instead of flying, highlighting how we are already moving from the fantastic into what seems to be the real world: “Captain Pan calculated, after consulting the ship’s chart, that if this weather lasted they should strike the Azores about the 21st of

June, after which it would save time to fly” (Barrie, 1911/2011, p. 166).75 Rather than follow Wendy and her brothers, however, the narrator takes us directly to the nursery, significantly switching the focus from the children to the adults, while revealing his own ambivalent feelings towards the characters, his position outside the story, and the whole question of growing up or staying a child forever.

[W]e must now return to that desolate home from which three of our characters

had taken heartless flight so long ago. It seems a shame to have neglected No. 14

all this time; and yet we may be sure that Mrs. Darling does not blame us. If we

had returned sooner to look with sorrowful sympathy at her, she would probably

have cried, “Don’t be silly; what do I matter? Do go back and keep an eye on the

children.” So long as mothers are like this their children will take advantage of

them, and they may lay to that” (Barrie, 1911/2011, p. 167)

75 In opposition to the children’s initial fly to Neverland, where they quickly lose notion of where they are or how long they had been flying, announcing how time and space work differently on the island, their return journey is marked by references to a specific date and real world setting.

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Though the hypothetical conversation with Mrs. Darling suggests that both narrator and narratee are actually there, and the events are narrated in real time—more or less like it happens in Neverland when the narrator considers warning Tootles about

Tinker Bell’s mischievous plans—the fact that the he not only refers to the children as characters, and reflects on the way the story is told, but is literally imagining the whole exchange, reminds us that this is just an illusion, and none of us is really there. As

Kathleen Blake (2009) points out, despite being back in the world where the story begins, the episode is interesting precisely because “it takes place on some secondary (…) plane, outside of ‘the story’ and without effect on it,” ultimately calling attention to the synthetic components of the narrative (p. 173).

This impression is emphasized a few lines later when the narrator points out how, while he is venturing into the familiar space of the nursery with the sole purpose of checking if the children beds are “properly aired and that Mr. and Mrs. Darling do not go out for the evening,” suggesting that he is indeed able to interact directly with the fictional world, while claiming at the same time that both he and the narratee are “no more than servants” to the children (Barrie, 1911/2011, p. 167); what he would really like to do, in order to teach Wendy and her brothers a lesson, and spare Mrs. Darling the anxiety of waiting for them, is to spoil the surprise they are planning and tell her, “in the way authors have [emphasis added], that the children are coming back, that indeed they will be there on Thursday week” (p. 168).

To the narrator’s disappointment, however, Mrs. Darling responds (or would respond, according again to the narrator) that she would rather Wendy and her brothers 235 have their fun than be aware of their return (of which she would be paradoxically already aware): “We are beginning to know Mrs. Darling by this time, and may be sure that she would upbraid us for depriving the children of their little pleasure” (Barrie, 1911/2011, p.

168). Though this invites us to treat her as a real person and even sympathize with her— more than we do with the narrator, who wants her to ignore the children once they arrive, and even deny Wendy a welcome kiss—their conversation ironically convinces him that there is no point in telling her about the children, and the only thing he (and the narratee) can do is spy on the characters and comment on what is going on.

She does not really need to be told to have things ready, for they are ready. All the

beds are aired, and she never leaves the house, and observe, the window is open.

For all the use we are to her, we might go back to the ship. However, as we are

here we may as well stay and look on. That is all we are, lookers-on. Nobody

really wants us. So let us watch and say jaggy things, in the hope that some of

them will hurt. (p. 168)

While the passage suggests, once more, that the fictional world exists on its own, beyond the control and jaggy comments of the narrator, stressing the difference between diegetic and extradiegetic levels—an impression emphasized later on when he mistakenly reports the children’s arrival, when in reality is Peter who comes flying through the window—it simultaneously calls attention to the narrating instance and how the narrator himself struggles, both narratively and personally, with his position outside the story. As

Maria Tatar (2011) points out, the episode not only reveals “how much [the narrator] feels marginalized by the children’s mother,” but also how, despite his multiple attempts 236 to the contrary, “the world of family life and parenting that he has created, like

Neverland, is barred to him forever” (p. 168).

In one way or another, the scene is as much about the narrator as it is about the characters themselves. In addition to commenting on Mrs. Darling’s motherly role and her decision to welcome Wendy and her brothers back home, inviting us to judge both the characters and the narrator himself based on his comments; the whole back-and-forth between telling her or not about the children highlights how, despite assuming a conventional extradiegetic position, the narrator yearns to enter that world and somehow join the family. Though we are aware form the start that he is not a child, his ambiguous relation with both the characters and the fictional world invites us to wonder if he has really come to terms with his own maturity, complicating the whole question of growing up and choosing between one world and the other.

The scene actually begins with the narrator criticizing the children for going away, suggesting it would “serve them jolly well right if they came back and found that their parents were spending the week-end in the country,” highlighting how this would be

“the moral lesson they have been in need of ever since we met them” (Barrie, 1911/2011, p. 167). As he hints when Wendy and her brothers are still in Neverland, he finds particularly problematic the manner in which they take their parents’ love and patience for granted, convinced they will be “embraced instead of smacked” once they return (p.

126); an opinion he reiterates towards the end, when he points out how finding the window open is “more than they deserve,” especially since they land “quite unashamed of themselves” on the nursery’s floor (p. 173). 237

This immediately contrasts, however, with how Mrs. Darling herself feels (or is, again, supposed to feel) about the whole situation, inviting us to question both the narrator’s judgement and relation with the characters. Not only does she find the idea of going away when the children are finally coming back completely absurd, as the narrator highlights when he points out how “if we contrived things in this way Mrs. Darling would never forgive us” (Barrie, 1911/2011, p. 167); but also reveals how she is indeed willing to do anything to see them happy, simultaneously inviting us to sympathize with her, while paradoxically increasing the narrator’s frustration about it: “You see, the woman had no proper spirit. I had meant to say extraordinary nice things about her, but I despise her and not one of them will I say now” (p. 168).

As Tatar (2011) points out, looking at the opening chapters of the book, the narrator’s diatribe against Mrs. Darling is “astonishingly mean-spirited in the context of the novel’s earlier sentimentalization of domestic life and mothers” (p. 168). The only other moment in the whole narrative in which the narrator subscribes such a negative view of motherhood is when Peter reveals how, when he himself decided to go back home, he discovered his mother had barred the window and replaced him with another boy, and it is hard not to see a similarity between Peter’s position and the narrator’s:

From the way they both lash at mothers to how they are ultimately jealous of Wendy and her brothers and how they are still able to go back home, explaining the narrator’s ambivalent feelings towards the children.

At the same time—and, again, just like Peter—the narrator cannot help but be moved by Mrs. Darling´s motherly devotion and sadness when he sees her waiting in the 238 nursery for her “rubbishy” children to return: “Now that we look at her closely and remember the gaiety of her in the old days, all gone now just because she has lost her babes, I find I won’t be able to say nasty things about her” (Barrie, 1911/2011, p. 170).

Not only does this highlight how he does not really despise Mrs. Darling, and only lashes at her because he is hurt by her rejection, but also makes explicit the narrator’ fascination with the character and the domestic life she represents, leading to the climactic moment where he finally decides to tell her about the children, apparently breaking the boundary between diegetic and extradiegetic levels.

Some like Peter best, and some like Wendy best, but I like her best. Suppose to

make her happy, we whisper to her in her sleep that the brats are coming back.

They are really within two miles of the window now, and flying strong, but all we

need whisper is that they are on the way. Let’s.

It is a pity we did it, for she has started up, calling their names; and there is

no one in the room but Nana. (Barrie, 1911/2011, p. 170) 76

The passage is particularly interesting for the manner in which it passes from a purely hypothetical suggestion, not unlike the ones we find early on, to explicitly encouraging the narratee to participate—which, of course, we are unable to see—before focusing again on Mrs. Darling, who significantly thinks she has been dreaming, like she

76 As Tatar (2011) points out, the monosyllabic imperative let’s at the end of the first paragraph highlights how the narrator identifies with “a collective ‘we’ and becomes a spectral presence in the nursery, eerily whispering in Mrs. Darling’s ear when there is no other human in the room” (p. 170).

239 does when she first meets Peter. Contrary to what happens in Neverland when the narrator stops the crocodile’s clock, for example, the moment Hook is about to jump overboard, the transgression not only has little effect on the story (beyond getting Mrs.

Darling more upset), but rather than underline the fact that the fictional world is not real, it emphasizes the narrator’s inability to step in and become part of that world, as Mrs.

Darling confirms when she looks around the room to find only Nana.

The effect is further and significantly recreated towards the end of the scene, when the narrator points out how there is no one except Peter to see how the children are reunited with their parents, stressing again the similarity between the two. According to

Jacqueline Rose (1984/1993), the scene ultimately highlights how “the narrative voice itself occupies the place of the one child who does not grow up,” torn between the fantastic possibility of staying young forever and the adult awareness of what that would entail, which allows it to “sagely comment on the place of the outsider as the unique and exceptional dilemma of Peter Pan” (p.74). Though the focus later moves back to the characters, it is the narrator who ultimately points out (in a way that Peter himself cannot) the significance of that last moment.

There could not have been a lovelier sight; but there was none to see it except a

strange boy who was staring in at the window. He had ecstasies innumerable that

other children can never know; but he was looking through the window at the one

joy from which he must be for ever barred. (Barrie, 1911/2011, p. 174)

Though Peter is certainly aware that if he wants to stay a child forever, then he must give up having a family and return to Neverland, the narrator not only calls attention 240 to how this sets him apart from all those “other children” for whom growing up is ultimately inevitable (including both the narratee and the reader), but also the real-world consequences of deluding ourselves and pretending that we are like Peter, as the narrator himself seems to do. As Humphrey Carpenter (1985) points out, highlighting how Peter’s dilemma has often been read as a projection of Barrie’s own incapacity to grow up and form significant adult relationships with anybody, the scene reminds the audience of “the limitations as well as the marvels of childhood, and of the price that has to be paid by those who choose to remain as children” (p. 179).

Beyond whether or not this has anything to do with the real Barrie—a question better left to the biographers rather than the critics—what is interesting here is the parallel between narrator and character, how Barrie effectively uses this very conspicuous and problematic narrative voice to both comment on the story and, in one way or another, illustrate the dangers of pretending that we can stay young forever, highlighting the connection between diegetic and extradiegetic levels, and how the text ultimately comments on reality. This is not to say, however, that the narrator and Peter are by any means unsympathetic. If there is anything the novel show is precisely the undeniable allure of the fantastic, and the childlike capacity to experience it, emphasized by the popularity and longevity of the book.

The very fact that the narrator himself struggles with his own role as an adult, significantly exiled from both the nursery and the island, suggest how there is also a clear cost to pay for growing up, starting with those “ecstasies innumerable” that only Peter as an eternal child can enjoy. As both William Blackburn (1982) and Sarah Gilead (1991) 241 point out, the last chapter of the novel in particular is marked by an almost tragic sense of loss that not only invites us to question the children’s decision to go back home, and therefore rethink the relationship between reality, fantasy, and make-believe, but also what the process of growing up entails for both the character and the reader, highlighting how the novel is a more complex, even subversive, text than most people think about when they think about Peter Pan (pp. 48-50; pp. 285-287).

Mr. Darling, Mrs. Darling and Peter (reprised). In opposition to Alice’s

Adventures in Wonderland, where everything is revealed to be a dream in the end, or The

Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, where the characters go back to the very moment they left, making it difficult to say for sure if they have travelled to Narnia or not; the ending of Barrie’s novel emphasizes how Wendy and her brothers are actually gone for several days to the understandable distress of their parents. Though the nursery seems initially unchanged, highlighting how we are back in the world where the story begins, the narrator immediately points out how the kennel is no longer there, for Mr. Darling has decided to trade places with Nana as punishment for chaining her in the backyard, allowing Peter to take the children away.

In the bitterness of his remorse he swore that he would never leave the kennel

until the children came back. Of course this was a pity; but whatever Mr. Darling

did he had to do in excess; otherwise he soon gave up doing it. And there never

was a more humble man than the once proud George Darling, as he sat in the

kennel of an evening talking with his wife of their children and all their pretty

ways. (Barrie, 1911/2011, p. 169) 242

Despite the narrator’s earlier claims that Wendy and her brothers need to be taught a lesson for going away to Neverland and leaving their parents alone, it is in fact

Mr. Darling (who, again, represents more than anybody else the Edwardian middle-class world where the story begins) who is shown contrite and eager to make amends, complicating the way we are invited to interpret the story and the relation between children and adults, as well as the world where the story begins and the fantastic. While the children certainly gain a new appreciation for home and family, and ultimately come back ready to grow up and become adults themselves, it is in one way or another Mr.

Darling who appears to change the most from the moment the children leave the nursery to the moment they come back.

Though the whole idea of trading places with Nana is ridiculous, as both Mrs.

Darling and later Liza the servant point out, it highlights how Wendy and her brothers’ disappearance has had a profound effect on the character.77 Not only has Mr. Darling realized how poorly and unfairly he behaved with Nana and the children early on, but is even willing to risk public ridicule by leaving the house and going to work in the kennel to the delight of London’s children and gossips, which he endures with surprising

77 While the narrator significantly dismisses Liza’s reaction by pointing out how she has “no imagination,” and is therefore “quite incapable of understanding the motives of such a man” (Barrie, 1911/2011, p. 170), this actually highlights how she represents the voice of reason, against the over-the-top middle-class concerns and romantic eccentricity of her employers. As she explicitly points out in the original play: “I am a married woman myself. I don’t think it’s respectable to go to his office in a kennel, with the street boys running alongside cheering” (Barrie, 1928/2008, p. 147).

243 stoicism. As the narrator points out, emphasizing the contrast with the beginning of the book: “Something of the strength of character of the man will be seen if we remember how sensitive he was to the opinion of his neighbours: this man whose every movement now attracted surprised attention” (Barrie, 1911/2011, p. 169).

While he is still described as a simple man and a significantly childish character—

“indeed he might have passed for a boy again if he had been able to take his baldness off”—reminding us that we are not supposed to take him too seriously, the narrator also highlights (albeit with a certain irony) how he has a “noble sense of justice and a lion’s courage to do what seemed right to him,” inviting us to agree, at least in part, with his decision to make amends, and even move into the kennel (Barrie, 1911/2011, p 169). An impression emphasized a few lines later when the narrator describes the reaction of the people of London once his motives for doing so are finally revealed: “It may had been quixotic, but it was magnificent. Soon the inward meaning of it leaked out, and the great heart of the public was touched” (p. 169).78

The very fact that he is ironically rewarded with the social success he yearns for at the beginning of the novel, from being invited to dinner (kennel and all) to having crowds of people cheering in the street as he passes by, is already significant. Though Mrs.

78 Though he is no Don Quixote by any means, the comparison with Cervantes’ misguided hero is particularly suggestive: Not only does he challenge the very social norms he was so concerned about early on, embracing the childlike and, in one way or another, quixotic willingness to believe and play pretend, but we are also invited to sympathize with him in a way we do not before, when he brags about how much his wife respects him or makes a fuss about losing his job.

244

Darling is concerned that he might be enjoying the attention of the public a bit too much, and we see him get upset later on when nobody asks him for his opinion on whether or not to adopt the lost boys, revealing how he is still very anxious about the way his wife and children treat him; the narrator not only highlights how his social success has actually sweeten his character, but once the lost boys themselves assure him that they do not think he is a fool like he suspects, he is more than happy to welcome them into the family and dance with them around the house.

[Mr. Darling] was absurdly gratified, and said he would find a space for them all

in the drawing-room if they fitted in.

“We’ll fit in, sir,” they assured him.

“Then follow the leader,” he cried gaily. “Mind you, I am not sure we have

a drawing-room, but we pretend we have, and it’s all the same. Hoop la!” (Barrie,

1911/2011, p. 176)

The passage is particularly interesting for the manner in which simultaneously reassures Mr. Darling of the respect of the lost boys, while highlighting how he embraces his own childlike quality, from theatrically leading the children on their dance, like Peter does back in Neverland, to significantly pointing out how they only pretend to have a drawing-room in the house, and that is as good as having one. Though Wendy and her brothers are not aware of how their father has changed before they decide to go back home, and we do not see them interact that much after they return, the scene not only resolves the specific instabilities resulting from Mr. Darling’s bad temper and unjust

245 treatment of Nana, but also proposes a different, more understanding type of relation between children and adults in general.

While this invites us to see the journey to Neverland in a more or less positive light, his reaction is contrasted with Mrs. Darling’s, for whom the loss of Wendy and her brothers is a much more serious and devastating experience, as the narrator’s description highlights: “Look at her in the chair, where she has fallen asleep. The corner of the mouth, where one looks first, is almost withered up. Her hand moves restlessly on her breast as if she had a pain there” (Barrie, 1911/2011, p. 170). The passage immediately recalls the beginning of the novel when Mrs. Darling puts her hand on her heart after seeing Wendy playing in the garden, and we learn about the kiss at the corner of her mouth that no one can get (and now is almost gone), emphasizing the physical toll that the children’s disappearance has taken on her.

Whereas Mr. Darling’s plight is further presented as a form of punishment and ultimately redemption, additionally mediated by the comical nature of the character, Mrs.

Darling’s is completely undeserved, making her situation all the more tragic. Despite the narrator’s earlier claims that it is her fault if the children take advantage of her for being too permissive, it is hard not to sympathize with Mrs. Darling (and blame Wendy and her brothers for going away) when she insists on keeping the window open, hoping they will return, to the point where she cannot even believe her eyes when she finally sees them on their beds: “The children waited for her cry of joy, but it did not come. (…) You see, she saw them in their beds so often in her dreams that she thought this was just the dream hanging around her still” (Barrie, 1911/2011, p. 174). 246

Contrary to what happens in most portal-quest fantasies, the novel not only invites us to consider what it realistically means for Wendy and her brothers to travel between worlds, but also what it means for their parents to have their children suddenly disappear, juxtaposing the childlike excitement of going away with the vexation and distress of the adults. Though Mrs. Darling explicitly refuses (or would refuse, according to the narrator) to punish the children for going away, and even agrees to let Wendy go back to

Neverland to help Peter with the spring cleaning (highlighting how she feels a special sympathy for him), the scene clearly makes an argument for the children to return, emphasizing how, despite the undeniable allure of the fantastic, to stay with Peter would mean that they would have to abandon their mother.

Interestingly enough, it is not Wendy and her brothers but Peter who realizes how much their disappearance has affected Mrs. Darling and takes pity on her, ultimately allowing the children to come back. Despite claiming throughout the book that he does not care about mothers, and entering the nursery with the sole purpose of closing the window so the children cannot get in, he cannot help but spy with a certain longing on

Mrs. Darling: “[H]e peeped in to the day-nursery to see who was playing [the piano]. He whispered to Tink, ‘It’s Wendy’s mother. She is a pretty lady, but no so pretty as my mother” (Barrie, 1911/2011, p. 172). Though the narrator points out how he does not really remember how his mother looks, the very fact that he mentions her highlights how he still has conflicting feelings about her.

Just like it happens with the narrator when he imagines how Mrs. Darling would react if he told her about the children, the scene is as much about Peter, and how he feels 247 about the whole situation, as it is about Mrs. Darling, who is not even on stage in the original play, and can only be heard playing the piano from afar: “He did not know the tune, which was ‘Home, Sweet Home,’ but he knew it was saying, ‘Come back, Wendy,

Wendy, Wendy’; and he cried exultantly, ‘You will never see Wendy again, lady, for the window is barred’” (Barrie, 1911/2011, p. 172). While Peter tries to appear indifferent and flippant, and insists several times he will not yield and let her have the children back, no matter how sad she seems, it is clear how the vision of Mrs. Darling confounds him and forces him to rethink what he is doing.

He peeped in again to see why the music had stopped; and now he saw that Mrs.

Darling had laid her head on the box, and that two tears were sitting on her eyes.

“She wants me to unbar the window,” thought Peter, “but I won’t, not I.”

He peeped again, and the tears were still there, or another two had taken

their place.

“She’s awfully fond of Wendy,” he said to himself. He was angry with her

now for not seeing why she could not have Wendy. (Barrie, 1911/2011, p. 172)

The passage is one of the most dramatic and psychologically revealing of the whole novel. Though Peter argues in vain that he is also fond of Wendy, and even tries to look away, hoping to get the image of Mrs. Darling out of his mind, only to find that she is still “inside him, knocking” (the language itself is very telling), he finally has no choice but to let the children go home: “‘Oh, all right,’ he said at last, and gulped. Then he unbarred the window. ‘Come on Tink,’ he cried, with a frightful sneer at the laws of

248 nature; ‘we don’t want any silly mothers’; and he flew away” (Barrie, 1911/2011, p. 172).

The very fact that he is so frustrated and at the same time willing to make Mrs. Darling happy simultaneously warns us about the dangers of going away, while making an argument for the children to go back home.79

Of course, Wendy and her brothers are already on their way and arrive essentially unaware of what has happened with their parents, or what Peter has just done. While they are certainly surprised to find their father sleeping in the kennel, and wonder with a chill if they have stayed away too long, and have started to forget about the real world—

“‘John,’ Wendy said falteringly, ‘perhaps we don’t remember the old life as well as we thought we did?’” (Barrie, 1911/2011, p. 173)—they do not feel particularly ashamed for leaving, and even complaint about their mother not being there, to the shock and reproof of the narrator.80 It is hard to blame the children, however, once Mrs. Darling comes into the room and realizes she is not dreaming, presenting us with the family reunion we had been waiting for since they first leave to Neverland.

79 According to Maria Tatar (2011), the scene can be seen as a turning point for Peter, as he “overcomes his own nature and ‘heartlessness.’ Moved by Mrs. Darling’s tears, he not only feels compassion but also acts on it” (p. 172). Though he later goes back to the way he was before, it still says something about Mrs.

Darling—as well as Peter’s own abandonment issues—that she has such an effect on him.

80 In addition to marking how the fantastic has started to replace the real world in their minds, the lack of memory, and therefore remorse, becomes for Barrie one of the essential characteristics of childhood. As

William Blackburn (1982) points out, “to remember is, in this novel, to be an adult;” while Peter represents the extreme case of this, the memories of Wendy and her brothers are also “somewhat fluid” (p. 51).

249

“Mother!” cried Michael. He knew her now.

“That’s Michael,” she said, and she stretched out her arms for the three

little selfish children they would never envelop again. Yes, they did, they went

around Wendy and John and Michael, who had slipped out of bed and run to her.

“George, George,” she cried when she could speak, and Mr. Darling woke

to share her bliss, and Nana came rushing in. (Barrie, 1911/2011, p. 173)

In opposition to the opening chapters of the book, where Mrs. Darling’s unsettling discovery that Peter is real introduces a clearly disruptive element into the otherwise ordinary world where the story begins, ultimately leading to the children’s disappearance; the revelation that they are back and safely tucked in their beds has the complete opposite effect. Though the scene is a bit melodramatic (hardly surprising when we consider that it comes directly from the play), it provides also a perfect ending for the story: From

Michael finally recognizing Mrs. Darling, and running into her arms like he does at the beginning of the book, to the fact that Nana is back in the nursery, highlighting once more Mr. Darling’s own change of heart—an impression confirmed later on when he agrees to adopt the lost boys, who also appear to get their own happy ending.

All this happiness contrasts, however, with what happens with Peter (and on a different level the narrator), who can only watch from afar, aware that he can never take part in their reunion; juxtaposing the alluring possibility of staying young forever, and share the “ecstasies innumerable” that only Peter has access to, with the joy of having a family, from which he “must be for ever barred” (Barrie, 1911/2011, p. 174). Contrary to

250 what happens in most portal-quest fantasies, where it is the characters that move into direct contact with the fantastic who primarily have to choose between one world and the other, and usually decide to go back to the real world; we are invited to consider Peter’s situation as well, how he not only chooses to go away, but also what that decision entails for both him and the rest of the characters.

While Peter is clearly envious of the children, and wishes in one way or another to share their joy, he is also very aware that if he decides to stay, and accepts Mrs. Darling’s offer to adopt him, then he would have to go to school, and then an office like Mr.

Darling—the most ordinary and awful things he can think of, besides eventually growing up—“‘I don’t want to go to school and learn solemn things,’ he told her passionately. ‘I don’t want to be a man. O Wendy’s mother, if I was to wake up and feel there was a beard!’” (Barrie, 1911/2011, p. 177). Though Wendy hilariously reassures him that he would look lovely in a beard, while Mrs. Darling tries to hold him and keep him from going away, he significantly draws back and points out how neither of them is going to catch him, and make a man out of him.

The scene highlights once more the tension between Peter’s childlike desire to have a family and the equally childlike desire to be free from both motherly authority and, in the case of Wendy in particular, romantic and sexual desire, hinted by the very manner in which he refuses to be touched, and associates this with the process of growing up. This is highlighted a few lines earlier when Wendy inquiries one last time about his feelings—“‘You don’t feel, Peter,’ she said falteringly, ‘that you would like to say anything to my parents about a very sweet subject?’” (Barrie, 1911/2011, p. 176)—to 251 which he of course responds he does not, paradoxically unable to see Wendy (or any other woman for that matter) as anything else than a mother figure, which again prevents him from having a real relationship with anybody.

Though he still wants Wendy to come with him, and effectively appeals (like he does in the beginning) to both her motherly instincts and childlike fascination with the fantastic; when she asks Mrs. Darling for permission, she is less than thrilled with the prospect of losing her child once more: “I have got you home again, and I mean to keep you” (Barrie, 1911/2011, p. 178). It is one of the few moments in the whole book in which we see Mrs. Darling actually impose herself, and deny something to her children, highlighting her authority as adult and parent. While she finally agrees to let her go once a year and help him with the spring cleaning—unable to resist his childlike pout—she makes very clear how, for all Wendy’s attraction to Peter and the fantasy world he represents, her home is in London with her family.

Wendy would have preferred a more permanent arrangement; and it seemed to her

that spring would be long in coming; but this promise sent Peter away quite gay

again. He had no sense of time, and was so full of adventures that all I have told

you about him is only a halfpenny-worth of them. I suppose it was because

Wendy knew this that her last words to him were these rather plaintive ones:

“You won’t forget me, Peter, will you, before spring-cleaning-time

comes?”

Of course Peter promised and then flew away. (Barrie, 1911/2011, p. 178)

252

Though he is happy enough with their agreement, and even takes Mrs. Darling’s kiss before flying away to Neverland—resolving the mystery of who it was for—the fact that he is so easily appeased is particularly troublesome for Wendy, who worries he might forget her, as it effectively happens later on. As the narrator reminds us, Peter has no sense of time: Like a young child, he lives in this eternal present where one adventure follows another and no person or event has real significance. While he comes back one year later, and then two years after that, Wendy quickly realizes with a certain chill that he does not remember Captain Hook—“‘I forget them after I kill them’ he replied carelessly”—or even Tinker Bell herself—“‘There are such a lot of them,’ he said, ‘I expect she is no more’” (Barrie, 1911/2011, p. 179).

According to Blackburn (1982), the novel ultimately highlights how in order to stay young forever Peter sacrifices part of his humanity, problematizing the common perception that Barrie invites us to identify uncritically with his hero: “Exempt from time, and its burden of an irrevocable past, Peter is likewise exempt from remorse; as his final meeting with Wendy demonstrates, to be without memory is to be without a heart” (p.

51). The last stage note of the play is particularly telling, as Barrie highlights how, for all the excitement and wonder he experiences, Peter is not actually living, at least not in the full sense of the word: “If he could get the hang of the thing his cry might become ‘To live would be an awfully big adventure!’ but he can never get the hang of it, and so no one is as gay as he” (Barrie, 1928/2008, pp. 153-154).

Though both Mr. Darling’s and Mrs. Darling’s reaction highlight the effect that the children’s journey to Neverland has had in the real world and, by allowing Peter to 253 come back once a year and take Wendy to help him with the spring cleaning, Mrs.

Darling seems to leave the door (or, better yet, the window) open for new adventures; the scene not only closes the narrative frame, but also establishes the primacy of the world where the story begins (and ends) over the fantastic, juxtaposing the idea of home and family with Peter’s extraordinary but ultimately lonely existence. As the next section seeks to show, however, this is later problematized in the novel, as we see the children become adults themselves, and lose their ability to fly and believe in the fantastic, inviting the reader to reflect on what the whole process entails.

“When Wendy Grew Up.” One of the most significant differences between the novel and the stage version of Peter Pan is the inclusion of what happens with Wendy and the rest of the children later on; how they not only have to readapt to the world where the story begins, particularly how they lose their capacity to fly and believe in the fantastic, but also how they grow up and become adults themselves. Based on Barrie’s epilogue or “afterthought” of the same name—performed only once during the closing night of Peter Pan’s 1907-1908 run in London and published later on—the last chapter of the novel not only continues the story, but also complicates the manner in which we are invited to judge the children’s decision to go back home and ultimately grow up, as well as what these processes entail.

Though the original play hints at some of this, by showing us what happens one year later, when Peter comes back for Wendy to help him with the spring cleaning—how while he appears “just the same,” she not only “looks a little older,” but also “flies so badly now that she has to use a broomstick,” pretty much like a witch (Barrie, 1928/2008, 254 p 153)—the novel takes this further and describes how the children slowly forget about

Peter and become as ordinary and boring as Mr. Darling; how even Wendy herself grows up and eventually has family of her own, leading to the climactic scene where they both painfully realize that she can no longer fly or go with him back to Neverland: “She was not a little girl heart-broken about him; she was a grown woman smiling at it all, but they were wet smiles” (Barrie, 1911/2011, p. 185).

Even before the year is over, the novel highlights how the lost boys start to question their decision to stay in the real world, particularly when they discover that they will have to go to school, instead of playing all day long and going on crazy adventures like they did back in Neverland: “[T]hey saw what goats they had been not to remain on the island; but it was too late now, and soon they settled down to being as ordinary as you or me or Jenkins minor” (Barrie, 1911/2011, p 179). The direct address to the narratee is particularly significant, inviting us to not only identify with the children and wonder what we would do if we could choose between staying in Neverland for good or coming back to the real world, but also remind us once more how, no matter how much we want to, we are still ordinary people (like Jenkins minor), who have to go to school, and eventually an office, and cannot fly or stay young forever (like Peter).

While the novel makes an argument for the children to return, emphasizing the importance of home and family, and ultimately the desirability (and inevitability) of growing up, it also makes very clear how that also comes with a steep price. As Sarah

Gilead (1991) points out: “Though the Darling children and the Lost Boys are ‘found’ again by the powerful social realities and narrative conventions that appear to triumph in 255 the end, the return does not bring stability but, rather, generates further losses and returns” (p. 287). Not only are the children forced to go to school, an essentially socializing and yet in some ways repressive institution, but also gradually lose their ability to fly, a power explicitly connected throughout the novel with the childlike capacity to imagine and believe in the fantastic.

At first Nana tied their feet to the bed-posts so that they should not fly away in the

night; and one of their diversions by day was to pretend to fall off ‘buses; but by

and by they ceased to tug at their bonds in bed, and found that they hurt

themselves when they let go of the ‘bus. In time they could not even fly after their

hats. Want of practice, they called it; but what it really meant was that they no

longer believed. (Barrie, 1911/2011, p. 179)

The very manner in which Nana has to tie the children to their beds until they finally stop tugging at their bonds is already telling. If, as Jerry Griswold (2006) points out, the possibility of flying away in children’s books dissolves the “solidity of the world” and offers both characters and readers a universe of “remarkable plasticity” (p.

96); the opposite process reminds us of the inescapable reality of the world where the story begins, as the lost boys painfully discover when they try to jump off the bus and fall flat on the ground. Not only are the characters back in a world where the laws of physics apply, where children grow up and grow old, and eventually have to take adult responsibilities, but they are also forced to give up on their belief that it is possible to break those laws and fly away to Neverland.

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For a novel that is all about belief the effect is quite demoralizing, as Michael and

Wendy’s reaction when he finally stops believing highlights. Contrary to the rest of the boys, who seem to adapt quickly enough to the real world, Michael still believes in Peter when he comes back for Wendy the first time. However, when he fails to show one year later (and Michael is therefore two years older), he starts to wonder if he is real: “Michael came close to her and whispered, with a shiver, ‘Perhaps there is no such person,

Wendy!’ and then Wendy would have cried if Michael had not been crying” (Barrie,

1911/2011, p. 180). What makes the scene so tragic is that both characters are very much aware of what Michael is giving up, how this effectively marks the end of his childhood, and he will never be able to go back to Neverland.

Though Wendy, of course, still believes, and faithfully waits for Peter, she is also growing up herself, both physically and psychologically. Even when he comes back the first time, she is already worried that he might notice how “the frock she had woven from leaves and berries in the Neverland,” emphasizing her connection with the island, has become conspicuously short (Barrie, 1911/2011, p. 179). This is also suggested in the original play where she not only finds the little house too small, a sign that either she has started to grow or the island itself has shrunk down, but also has trouble seeing Peter, suggesting she is already starting to doubt, and worries he might replace her: “If another girl—if one younger than I am—(She can’t go on) Oh, Peter, how I wish I could take you and squdge you!” (Barrie, 1928/2008, p. 153).81

81 The idea that Peter might find a younger girl to be his mother is later developed in both When Wendy

Grew Up and the novel, where is actually Wendy’s daughter, Jane, who takes her place, while Wendy in

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The passage of time and its effects on the characters are again highlighted by the fact that Peter himself remains unchanged, and has no notion of how long they had been apart, emphasizing how time works different in Neverland, and passes more quickly in the real world: “Wendy was pained too to find that the past year was but as yesterday to

Peter; it had seemed such a long year of waiting to her” (Barrie, 1911/2011, p. 180). The effect is the complete opposite to what we have, for example, in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, where the characters spent several years in Narnia only to return to the very moment they left. It further announces what will happen later on, how Peter will skip first one year, without even noticing he has done so, before disappearing altogether, until Wendy herself is an adult and has child of her own.

That was the last time the girl Wendy ever saw him. For a little longer she tried

for his sake not to have growing pains; and she felt she was untrue to him when

she got a prize for general knowledge. But years came and went without bringing

the careless boy; and when they met again Wendy was a married woman, and

Peter was no more to her than a little dust in the box in which she had kept her

toys. (Barrie, 1911/2011, p. 181)

While we see her struggle early on, convinced that she is somehow betraying

Peter, and the passage has a clear nostalgic tone—especially the image of the toy box as a metaphor for Wendy’s childhood memories—it also makes very clear how growing up is

turn replaces Mrs. Darling, calling attention to the inevitable generational tension between adults and children, particularly mothers and daughters.

258 ultimately inevitable, even desirable. As the narrator points out, addressing specifically the audience, who might see this as a bad thing: “You need not to be sorry for her. 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” (Barrie, 1911/2011, p. 181). Contrary to Peter himself, who by refusing to grow up, as we have seen, sacrifices part of his humanity (and forgets to come back for Wendy), she not only accepts, but also enjoys the process, inviting both young and older readers to do the same.82

According to William Blackburn (1982), while “Barrie’s novel is perfectly frank about the fact that childhood is a lost paradise,” emphasized by the narrator’s painful awareness that he too is no longer a child, and therefore cannot go back to Neverland, it also “tells us that it might be a paradise well lost” (p. 52). In the case of Wendy in particular, leaving the island behind and stop waiting for Peter is specifically associated with the possibility of finding love and having a family of her own, as she wants from the very beginning. Though we do not hear much about her wedding—beyond the fact Peter fails to show and stop the ceremony—the birth of Wendy’s daughter, Jane, is clearly marked as a happy occasion that, at least according to the narrator, “ought not to be written in ink but in a golden splash” (Barrie, 1911/2011, p. 181).

82 The stage directions at the beginning of When Wendy Grew Up (Barrie, 1957/2008) are particularly suggestive, as she walks directly towards the audience in an “excessively matronly manner” and proudly calls attention to how she is wearing a long skirt and has her hair tied up, indicating (in an ironically childish manner) that she is indeed an adult, as beautiful and elegant as Mrs. Darling (p. 157).

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In one way or another, Wendy’s whole trajectory can be seen as leading to this moment, from playing house with her brothers early on to pretending to be the lost boys’ mother back in Neverland, only now is the real thing. Like it happens with Mrs. Darling before her, Wendy’s portrayal as an adult responds to an ideal image of motherhood and domestic bliss, emphasized by the fact that she and her husband have bought the

Darling’s old house and it is now her, instead Mrs. Darling, who puts young Jane to bed and tells her stories about Peter. Though she is still painfully aware of how long has been, and even doubts sometimes whether she flew away to Neverland or not, the very exercise of telling her story again, with the help of Jane herself, who by now knows it better than she does, becomes a way of recovering her childhood.

“I do believe,” she says, “that this is the nursery.”

“I do believe it is,” says Jane. “Go on.”

They are now embarked on the great adventure of the night when Peter

flew in looking for his shadow.

“The foolish fellow,” says Wendy, “tried to stick it on with soap and when

he could not he cried, and that woke me, and I sewed it on for him.” (Barrie,

1911/2011, p. 183)

In addition to bringing us back to the beginning of the novel, highlighting the parallel between Mrs. Darling, Wendy, and finally Jane—how just like Wendy has taken

Mrs. Darling’s place as mother figure, Jane in turn has taken Wendy’s, announcing how she will fly away with Peter at the end of the book—the passage calls attention to both

260 the importance of keeping one’s childhood memories and capacity to imagine alive, and the role that storytelling and fantasy play on this. While the novel makes an argument for the children to return to the real world, and therefore grow up, it also recognizes the allure and value of the fantastic, as both actual and literary experience, suggesting it might not be just for children but for adults as well, as Wendy and the narrator himself, as characters and storytellers, demonstrate.

All this is contrasted, however, with what happens to the rest of the boys, who grow up to be just like Mr. Darling, emphasizing again the distinction between the idyllic space of home and family and the broader socioeconomic context where the story takes place. A world for which Barrie cares very little, as he suggests when he points out how

“it is scarcely worth while saying anything more about them,” before listing in a matter- of-fact fashion how Nibs, Curly and the twins have become run-of–the-mill employees,

Michael is an engine-driver (a slightly more adventurous occupation, yet significantly associated with a modern industrialized setting), while Slightly “married a lady of title, and so he became a lord,” recreating and ultimately mocking Mr. Darling’s concern with wealth and social status (Barrie, 1911/2011, p. 181).

The most heartbreaking cases are perhaps Tootles’ and John’s. Despite being described as the sweetest, humblest and most unfortunate of the lost boys, Tootles grows up to become a judge, a very respectable position for sure, but hardly the most child- friendly: “You see that judge in the wig coming out at the iron door? That used to be

Tootles” (Barrie, 1911/2011, p. 181). The very fact that it is so hard to recognize him at first sight is already telling, and the same happens with John, who is not only now a 261

“bearded man”—a clear sign that he has grown up—but also “doesn’t know any story to tell his children” (p. 181), emphasizing how adults in general tend to lose their childlike capacity to imagine, which makes them in turn less creative (not to mention able to connect with their children) and, in one way or another, less happy.

The bleaker side of growing up, and eventually growing old, is further highlighted by the passing mention that Mrs. Darling herself is “now dead and forgotten” (Barrie,

1911/2011, p. 181). Contrary to Captain Hook’s dramatic demise, during the battle between the lost boys and the pirates, we do not get much details about Mrs. Darling’s passing, or see Wendy and her brothers mourning her death, which makes it even more shocking; especially considering the significance of the character, as well as the fact that the comment is immediately followed by a detailed description of Nana’s final years, emphasizing again the passage of time: “She died of old age, and at the end she had been rather difficult to get on with; being very firmly convinced that no one knew how to look after the children except herself” (pp. 181-182).

As Kathleen Blake points out in “The Sea-Dream: Peter Pan and Treasure

Island” (2009), despite talking about fairies and childlike escapades into another world, and reminding us over and over again that the story is just a story, Barrie’s novel finally deals with “matters of life and death,” revealing in one way or another the real-world anxiety at the heart of its own fantasy: “To grow up is to hear the clock ticking for you like Hook; to be ‘dead and forgotten,’ like Mrs. Darling (…); to be replaced by your daughter in Peter’s affection, like Wendy, and she by her daughter after her” (p. 176). It is a harsh reminder of how death comes to us all, but also of why we find the idea of 262 flying away with Peter and staying a child forever so compelling, inviting us to rethink the children’s decision to go back home.

Nowhere is this tension more clear than in the final encounter between Peter and

Wendy. Despite being happily married, and having grown up of her own will, the whole scene leading to their encounter is marked by a clear sense of loss and nostalgia, as she tells Jane the story of Peter: How he chose her of all the girls in the world to go with him back to Neverland, and then promised to return, but never did; finally explaining to Jane how she can no longer fly: “‘Because I am grown up, dearest. When people grow up they forget the way’” (Barrie, 1911/2011, p. 182). It is the first time we hear how only those who are “gay and innocent and heartless” like children are able to fly, and therefore go away with Peter, setting the stage for their final meeting, when both “tragically” realize that they will never meet again.

Wendy was sitting on the floor, very close to the fire, so as to see to darn, for

there was no other light in the nursery; and while she sat darning she heard a

crow. Then the window blew open as of old, and Peter dropped on the floor.

He was exactly the same as ever, and Wendy saw at once that he still had

all his first teeth.

He was a little boy, and she was grown up. She huddled by the fire not

daring to move, helpless and guilty, a big woman.

“Hullo, Wendy,” he said. (Barrie, 1911/2011, pp. 183-184)

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The scene clearly recreates the beginning of the book when Mrs. Darling has fallen asleep sewing by the fire, and Peter drops to the floor; from the way he comes flying through the nursery’s window to the fact that the first thing they both notice is his teeth. The tone and mood of scene, however, are completely different, as the wonder and fear of the beginning are replaced with a tragic sense of foreboding. The very manner in which Wendy tries to hide in vain from Peter is already telling, emphasized by the irony that despite being the adult, she is the one who feels “helpless and guilty.” The fact that

Peter is again unaware of how much time has passed only serve to increase the effect, inviting us to share her anxiety, as he looks in vain for John and Michael, and finally asks her to come with him back to Neverland.

Of course, Wendy cannot go. Like the narrator explains at the beginning of the book, she can probably still “hear the sound of the surf,” but she shall land there no more

(Barrie, 1911/2011, p. 185). The moment is particularly heartbreaking, not just for her, but also for Peter, who has to confront the fact that she has grown up: “‘I will turn up the light,’ she said, ‘and then you can see for yourself.’ (…) For almost the only time in his life that I know of, Peter was afraid. ‘Don’t turn up the light,’ he cried” (p. 185). The effect is intensified by the manner in which we are invited to sympathize with her, as she sympathizes in turn with Peter, and explains how, despite her earlier promise not to, she inevitably had to grow up; knowing full well that in doing so she is effectively breaking his heart, and is probably going to lose him forever: “I am old, Peter. I am ever so much more than twenty. I grew up long ago” (p. 185).

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Though it seems like Peter is somehow aware of what she is going to say, and the narrator significantly describes Wendy as this “tall beautiful creature,” he cannot hold back a cry of pain when she finally turns up the light, and even threatens to hurt Jane once Wendy explains that she is her daughter: “He took a step towards the sleeping child with his dagger upraised. Of course he did not strike. He sat down on the floor instead and sobbed, and Wendy did not know how to comfort him” (p. 185). As upsetting as the situation is for Peter, it is even more tragic for Wendy, who not only finds herself unable to help him, despite being now an actual mother, but also realizes how things have changed, and she is no longer the little girl who found him crying at the foot of her bed and offered, half in love, to sew his shadow.

This is further highlighted by the fact that Jane effectively takes her place, recreating almost word by word her first encounter with Peter—“‘Boy,’ she said, ‘why are you crying?’”—after which he immediately introduce himself as Peter Pan and asks her to be his mother, without any remorse or memory of what just happened: “When

Wendy returned diffidently she found Peter sitting on the bed-post crowing gloriously, while Jane in her nighty was flying around the room in solemn ecstasy” (Barrie,

1911/2011, p. 186). The passage simultaneously reminds us how heartless can Peter be, especially from Wendy’s adult and, in one way or another, more realistic perspective, as well as the undeniable allure of the fantastic, emphasized by Jane’s childlike sense of wonder and excitement as she learns how to fly.

Though Wendy might not regret her decision to return to the real world and become, among other things, Jane’s mother, she not only allows her to leave with Peter 265 and help him again with the spring cleaning, but is even tempted to go with them herself, at least until Jane casually reminds her that she can no longer fly, emphasizing how choosing between both worlds (or being forced to choose) is not that simple, even more so when that implies growing up or staying young forever. At the end, there is no much

Wendy (or any of us, for that matter) can do, but watch longingly from the nursery’s window as Jane and Peter disappear in the distance, while she herself starts to age in front of us, and is symbolically replaced by her daughter, and her daughter’s daughter after that, marking the inevitable passage of time.

Our last glimpse of her shows her at the window, watching them receding into the

sky until they were as small as stars.

As you look at Wendy you may see her hair becoming white, and her

figure little again, for all this happened long ago. Jane is now a common grown-

up, with a daughter called Margaret (…). When Margaret grows up she will have

a daughter, who is to be Peter’s mother in turn, and thus it will go on, so long as

children are gay and innocent and heartless. (Barrie, 1911/2011, pp. 186-187).

The scene is particularly interesting for the manner in which it invites us to look at Wendy, as she looks in turn at Jane, assuming very clearly the position of the adult who looks nostalgically on childhood—significantly defined as “gay and innocent and heartless”—emphasizing the tension between the adult storyteller and the growing-up narratee, and possibly implied and actual readers. While the passage further suggests that

Wendy herself has died, and has likely been forgotten like Mrs. Darling, as Jane becomes in turn a “common grown-up” and probably loses her ability to fly; the fact that Peter will 266 keep coming back to take their descendants to Neverland leaves us with a hopeful note, as new generations of children are born, and therefore new generations of fairies, opening the possibility for new adventures and new stories.83

As Paul Fox (2007) finally points out, highlighting how the text resists fixed interpretations, and encourages the audience to embrace the imaginative possibilities of the fantastic, readers cannot “experience the last paragraph of the text as an ending,” but rather as a new beginning (p. 260). An impression emphasized by the manner in which

Wendy tells her story to Jane, and in doing so invites us to relives her adventures; as well as the way in which many of the closing scenes recreate what happens at the beginning of the book, suggesting we can actually go back and start reading all over again—as long as we are still willing to believe in fairies—ultimately making an argument for both children and adults to read this type of stories and travel vicariously to Neverland, as thousands of readers have done for the last hundred years.

83 This is even clearer at the end of When Wendy Grew Up, right before the final curtain, where Wendy confesses to Nana, who is still alive in the stage version, how she has planned the whole thing: “I will let

Jane fly away with him to the darling Never Never Land, and when she grows up I will hope she will have a little daughter, who will fly away with him in turn—and in this way may I go on for ever and ever, dear

Nana, so long as children are young and innocent” (Barrie, 1957/2008, p. 163).

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Conclusions

As my analysis of Peter and Wendy demonstrates, rhetorical narrative theory can provide a particularly effective way to approach not just Barrie’s novel, but the portal- quest fantasy in general. In addition to looking in detail at the construction and narrative devices of the text—a type of narratological analysis that, as I explain in the introduction, has been sorely missing from most studies and reflections on children’s fantasy, including those on Peter and Wendy in particular—the way the approach pays attention to both the intentionality of the author and the ongoing experience of the reader, makes it easier to see how those same devices, in particular the progression of the narrative as we move from beginning through middle to end, are used to address the main rhetorical problem of the form—to convince readers to accept as true the fantastic elements of the story—and invite us to explore the fantasy world itself, while proposing at the same time a serious ethical and metafictional reflection on the fantastic.

It is not casual at all that a critic like W. R. Irving (1976) begins his reflection on the genre by pointing out how “fantasy is governed by the requirements and devices of rhetoric” (p. 58). Mendlesohn herself highlights in the introduction of Rhetorics of

Fantasy (2008)—the title is already telling—how “the fantastic is an area of literature that is heavily dependent on the dialectic between author and reader for the construction

268 of a sense of wonder, that is a fiction of consensual construction of belief” (p. xiii). While

Phelan and Rabinowitz are not specifically focusing on fantasy, their approach not only provides a theoretical and methodological framework that can account for this distinct rhetorical quality, but also introduces two concepts that are central to my argument and analysis of the portal-quest fantasy in particular: The distinction between authorial and narrative audience and the notion of narrative progression.

As I explain in the first part of my dissertation, I find Rabinowitz’s (1977) distinction between authorial and narrative audience an especially effective way to define fantasy and explain how we are invited to engage with and react to the fantastic. Though he is mainly concerned with clarifying the way in which we talk about what is “true” or

“real” within the fictional world of the story—what would be in Rabinowitz’s model

“true” or “real” for the text’s narrative audience—he not only highlights the importance of distinguishing between this and what is “true” or “real” for the authorial and ultimately the actual audience, but also how, based on this, it is possible to differentiate as well between those texts where the authorial and narrative audiences are situated closer together—what we call “realistic” narratives—and those texts and genres where they are not, starting with the uncanny and moving all the way to fantasy, emphasizing the effect this has on the textual and readerly dynamics of the work.

Unlike other approaches to fantasy that juxtapose the world of the story with the world of extraliterary reality—making it difficult to distinguish, for example, between traditional forms like myths and legends and modern texts like The Lord of the Rings or

The Chronicles of Prydain—one of the main advantages of defining the genre in terms of 269 how it challenges the authorial audience’s expectations and beliefs about the “real world” is that it both establishes more clearly the specific idea of reality that is being subverted

(and, in many cases, commented upon) in the text, while highlighting the intentionality of the author and the effect this has on the reader. This is, of course, particularly clear in the case of the portal-quest and the intrusion fantasy, where the authorial audience is first expected to recognize, and therefore accept as true, a specific idea of reality, only to see it subverted by the later introduction of the fantastic.

Perhaps more important yet, this allows to explain how—as Tolkien paradoxically suggests in his essay “On Fairy-Stories” (1947/1966)—we must, at the same time,

“enter” the fictional or “secondary world” and accept what is being told as “true,” while being aware throughout of the “unlikeness” between that world and our own, in order to get the feeling of “strangeness and wonder” that Tolkien sees as characteristic of the genre (pp. 60-69). According to Rabinowitz (1977), who sees this “duality” as a defining feature of representational art in general, what happens is that we experience the story on two different levels at once: As part of the narrative audience, which takes the narrator’s account as a non-fictional narrative, with everything that implies, and as part of the authorial audience, which is clearly expected to be aware of the fictional and, in the case fantasy, strange and wonderful nature of the story.

Last, but not least, by defining “realism” in these terms it is also possible to distinguish between this and how “convincing” or “unconvincing” a specific text happens to be. In Rabinowitz’s (1977) words, how “skillfully” the author “navigates us”—the language here is already evocative of the journey—across the distance between the 270 authorial and the narrative audiences’ positions, and how likely we are to be “standing on the shore (…) when the trip begins” (p. 133). While this is, of course, harder to achieve when the audiences are farther apart, this not only highlights once more how this becomes a central issue for the way that fantasy fiction is constructed, but also how, when it is successfully accomplished, then we are dealing, as Tolkien (1947/1966) finally puts it in his essay, with “a rare achievement of Art: indeed narrative art, story-making in its primary and most potent mode” (p. 70).

The other key concept of rhetorical narrative theory that informs my analysis and revaluation of the portal-quest fantasy in particular is, of course, the concept of narrative progression proposed by Phelan. Unlike other theoretical approaches, which define plot in terms of either paradigmatic structures or static sequences of events (see Brooks, 1984) and tend to see it as something separate from other, supposedly more important issues, like character and narrative technique (see Crane, 1952/1968), Phelan’s notion of progression emphasizes both the dynamic nature of narrative as an event that “must move, in both is telling and its reception, through time” (Phelan, 1989, p. 15) and the connection between plot, narratorial and ultimately readerly dynamics: How the “logic of the text’s movement from beginning though middle to ending” affects, and it is, in turn, affected by, the reader’s own “temporal experience (…) of that movement” (Phelan and

Rabinowitz, 2012, p. 58).

The result is a theoretical and methodological model that not only allows to look in detail at the transit between worlds itself—how the characters decide (are forced or simply happen) to cross the portal, what happens once they get into direct contact with 271 the fantastic, and how they finally negotiate the relation between reality and fantasy—but also how this affects both the overall design of the text and the reader’s ongoing experience with it, in particular the way we are invited to approach and ultimately reflect on the fantastic. The case of Peter and Wendy provides, again, a great example, from the way we are encouraged early on to identify with Wendy and her brothers, and share their enthusiasm and wonder as they fly away to Neverland, to how the novel finally addresses the central issue of growing up or staying young forever, forcing characters and readers to choose between the real world and the fantastic.

As I explain in the introduction and the first part of my dissertation, one of the main problems I have with Mendlesohn’s characterization and analysis of the portal- quest fantasy in general is the way it jumps to the language and reliability of the narrator, without paying much attention to the rhetorical dimension of the plot—how, as Wayne

Booth (1983) puts it, the narrative line is “made to work” and “towards what purpose,” emphasizing how this comprises one of author’s most important “creative acts” (p. 436).

If we look at the progression of the narrative, however, it becomes easily apparent how the form’s distinct plot structure responds to a clear authorial intention, specifically how it contributes to bring the reader into the world of the story and convince us to assume (or pretend to assume) the position of the narrative audience, while reinforcing at the same time our sense of estrangement and wonder.

Contrary to the immersive fantasy, where we are put right from the start into direct contact with the fantastic, leaving readers to navigate on their own the distance between the authorial and the narrative audiences’ positions characteristic of the genre as 272 a whole, by starting in a familiar and recognizable setting—like early 20th century

London in the case of Barrie’s novel, including both the domestic space of the house and the broader historical and social context—the portal-quest fantasy requires readers to accept initially very little that contradicts our experience and beliefs about reality, making easier for us to bridge the gap and engage both mimetically and thematically with the narrative. Even when the story begins in a different world altogether, as it happens in the pure quest fantasy, the characters still begin their journey in a distinctly mundane setting that provides a familiar point of entry into that world.

While things get, of course, weirder and weirder as the protagonists leave their home and move into direct contact with the fantastic, we not only have already assumed the position of the narrative audience and accepted that initial space or fictional universe as real, making easier to accept what comes next, but also approach the fantastic through the familiar (in many ways, real-world) ontological and ethical perspective of the protagonist, with whom we are clearly expected to identify and follow as he or she crosses the portal, accepts the existence of the fantastic, and then proceeds to explore and interact directly with that new setting. This again allows the author to negotiate at the level of plot, often also narratorial dynamics (as it happens in Peter and Wendy) the relation between reality and fantasy, addressing the incredulity of the reader, while taking us little by little to the point where (much like the characters themselves) we are willing to accept as true the fantastic elements of the story.

The very manner in which the fantasy world is described, often explicitly explained, for both the characters and, on a different level, the reader, contributes in no 273 small part to the whole process. Though Mendlesohn (2008) finds problematic the way the portal-quest fantasy in general situates both characters and readers as naïve, forcing them to trust what they are told about the fantasy world and its inhabitants (pp. 2-13), this not only allows the author to guide us little by little into that world—the expression results here particularly appropriate—and help us understand what is going on, making easier to navigate the distance between the authorial and narrative audience’s positions, but also highlights the focus on both the fantasy world itself and the process of transition and exploration: How characters and readers negotiate and ultimately come to terms with a world that is not their own.

The other key effect of moving from a familiar and recognizable setting into direct contact with the fantastic, particularly at the beginning of the text, is to increase our sense of estrangement and wonder. While there is a significant ontological, ethical, and even thematic overlap between one world and the other, allowing both characters and readers to approach a world that would otherwise be completely unintelligible, as well as highlighting how that experience reflects, in one way or another, on real life; by putting both worlds side by side, the author also highlights their differences, making explicit within the text itself how we are entering a fantastic space: An “otherworld” that results even more strange and wonderful when compared with the intentionally mundane, often safe, but also boring space (think of The Chronicles of Narnia or the Harry Potter series) where the portal-quest fantasy characteristically begins.

Unlike the immersive fantasy, where both the characters and the narrative audience are expected to be already familiar with and therefore hardly surprised by the 274 fantastic, which would be only fantastic for the authorial and ultimately actual audiences; the portal-quest fantasy deals specifically with the experience of traveling into another world or space and encountering creatures and situations that we would never expect to find in real life, emphasizing at the level of story, often also narratorial dynamics, the distinct sense of estrangement and wonder associated with the contemplation of the fantastic. The first chapters of Barrie’s novel illustrate this quite clearly, from Wendy’s early fascination with Peter and the prospect of flying away to Neverland to the children’s cries of enthusiasm (and later mix of fear and excitement), once they finally reach the island and discover it has “come true.”

As my analysis finally demonstrates, and I develop further in the next section, this not only calls attention to the fantasy world itself, its landscape, history, and natural and cultural particularities, which the author is, again, able to describe and explain in detail, emphasizing the contrast with the real world; but also becomes a key component of the overall progression of the narrative, as both characters and readers are encouraged to explore and learn about that world. While there are more things going on at the level of plot dynamics that contribute to move the narrative forward, including the completion quest itself, this process of exploration and learning is not just central to understand the character’s journey, but part of what keep us reading and interested in the story as well, not to mention one of the themes that the form as a whole deals with, proposing in many ways a metafictional reflection on the subject.

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Reading for the World

As Mendlesohn herself highlights in Rhetorics of Fantasy (2008), one of the most distinctive features of the portal-quest fantasy in general is the way the world itself acquires a central role in the story: “As I write, I am increasingly convinced that the primary character in the portal fantasy is the land” (p. 28). Not only is there a clear emphasis in the description of the setting—an “intense concentration on the landscape”

(emphasis in the original) that Mendlesohn significantly compares with the distorting amount of detail found in some pre-Raphaelite paintings—but the world itself often becomes an active “participant” in the adventure: Making difficult the character’s journey or providing a safe haven along the way, influencing (or reflecting, depending on how you see it) the emotions of the characters, and even marking the morality of the place, as it happens for example in The Lord of the Rings where the well-being land is explicitly tied to the king and the “virtue of the people” (pp. 35-36).

Of course, Mendlesohn (2008) finds this problematic: In addition to the world being “flattened thereby into a travelogue, a series of descriptions made possible by the protagonists’ unfamiliarity with it”—a structure she compares, following Diana Wynne

Jones, with the travel guide (p. xix)—this, once more, requires the author to reaffirm both the “narrative and descriptive competence of the protagonist,” through whose naïve and yet perceptive point of view we are invited to approach that world, and the “authority and reliability of the narrator,” who again explains that world for us, denying the possibility of alternate or contradictory readings. The very “accumulation of detail” that characterizes the form and contributes, in no small manner, to create the illusion of 276 reality, simultaneously allows the author to “avoid too close analysis,” emphasizing how we only see the surface of that world (pp. 7-18).

While I find the comparison with landscape painting and travel literature (a term that takes away the dismissive tone of the mere “travel guide”) very suggestive, and she is certainly right when she highlights how the form requires characters and readers to accept as true what we are told about the fictional world and its inhabitants, this not only ignores, again, how the emphasis on the description of the land, and the language used to do so, are both consistent with and effectively used to convey the experience of entering and exploring a strange new setting, but also how that process is central to both the story and overall progression narrative. Contrary to Mendlesohn, I see this focus on the world, and how it becomes almost a character in the story, as one of the most attractive and narratologically interesting features of the portal-quest fantasy, inviting us, among other things, to revise the way we think about progression.

As I explain in the first part of my dissertation, most portal-quest fantasies follow a more or less common structure that corresponds in many ways with the traditional structure of the fairy tale, including the crossing of the portal, a succession of episodes or tests where the hero proves his worth, and a final confrontation with the villain, before finally returning home in the end, which is now seen from a different perspective. This is not, however, the whole story. As books like The Book of Three and Harry Potter and

Philosopher Stone illustrate, the portal-quest fantasy is more than a mere reenactment of the fairy tale or the heroic romance. While the characters certainly assume a heroic role, they not only struggle with it, and the kind of heroic values that define the fantasy world 277 itself, but also deal, at the same time, with all manner of personal issues, that give the journey an additional dimension, often connected in children’s literature with the process of growing up and becoming one’s own person.

Though this already suggests a more modern, character-driven, and complex kind of plot dynamics, and therefore narrative progression, than what we find in the traditional quest story or fairy tale, where the main instability or conflict that contributes to moves the narrative forward is the completion of the quest itself; what really sets the portal-quest fantasy apart is the way all this is combined with the process of exploration and learning that takes place both within the story and, perhaps more important yet, at the level of narratorial and ultimately readerly dyanmics. The result is a type of narrative where we are as interested in the events themselves—what happens to the characters once they cross the portal and decide to take on the quest, as well as what this means for their own personal journey—as we are in the discovery and contemplation of the explicitly fantastic setting where the story as a whole is taking place.

The case of Peter and Wendy (Barrie, 1911/2011) provides again a great example.

While not as extended or detailed as the type of descriptions and world-building that we have in The Lord of the Rings or Harry Potter, which are significantly longer narratives, there is no denying that part of what keep us interesting and reading is the discovery and exploration of Neverland, from Peter’s early teasing about flying away and saying funny things to the stars—not to mention, of course, the mermaids: “‘Mermaids! With tails?’

(…) ‘Such long tails.’ (…) ‘Oh,’ cried Wendy, ‘to see a mermaid!’” (p. 47)—to the climactic moment where the children arrive to the island and see it shinning in the sun, 278 inviting us to share their sense of excitement and wonder: “Indeed a million golden arrows were pointing out the island to the children, all directed by their friend the sun, who wanted them to be sure of their way” (p. 56).

Based on these observations, I want to finally propose here that what the portal- quest fantasy does is to combine a standard form of narrative, where we have, as Phelan and Rabinowitz (2012) puts it, “somebody telling someone else, on some occasion, and for some purposes, that something happened [emphasis added]” (p. 3), with something similar to what we see in what Phelan (2007) calls the portrait narrative: An hybrid form itself where “the narrative principles ultimately serves those of portraiture” in order to achieve a “revelation of character” (pp. 178-179). Since the focus is, of course, on the world rather than the character, no matter what Mendlesohn herself might say about it, I suggest using the term landscape or, even better yet, worldscape narrative, emphasizing the pictorial quality of the form, and define it as somebody tells someone else, on some occasion, and for some purposes, that the world (specifically a world that is unfamiliar or nonexistent for the reader) exists and it is a certain way.

Perhaps the most significant similarity with what happens in the portrait narrative is the way the progression depends (at least in part) on the “introduction of a global tension,” associated with either the character or, in this case, the world, and what we as part of the authorial audience ignore or have yet to fully understand about them, “that must be resolved before completeness can be achieved” (Phelan, 2007, p. 179). Unlike most traditional narratives which proceed mainly through the introduction, complication, and solution of local and global instabilities, which might be accompanied or not by 279 tensions in the telling, both forms invite us to focus (again, at least in part) on the character and the world themselves, as we move, once more, from beginning through middle to ending, and how this affects in turn our experience, ethical judgments, and ultimately interpretation and evaluation of the narrative.

While it could be argued that this happens, at least implicitly, in all forms of antirealistic fiction, where there is always a fundamental tension between the author/narrator, on the one hand, who knows everything there is to know about the fictional world of the story, and the authorial audience on the other, who has of course no such knowledge; the portal-quest fantasy is unique for the way it not only recreates that tension at the level of plot dynamics, where the protagonists also have to deal with a world that is not their own, and therefore need to explore and learn about it, in order to, among other things, complete the quest; but also makes it explicit at the level of narratorial dynamics, where, unlike the immersive fantasy, the narrative audience itself is assumed to be unfamiliar with that world, requiring the author/narrator to describe and explain what is going on, making all this again central to the overall progression of the narrative.

As Phelan (2007) points out, when he compares the portrait and the lyric narrative—another hybrid form where the narrative principles serve those of lyricality— one of the main consequences of focusing on the description and revelation of character, is the way the audience is mainly situated as an observer (p. 179). The same is true, in many ways, about the portal-quest fantasy as well. While we are still invited to accompany, even identify with the characters, and share their enthusiasm and wonder as they explore the fantasy world, the way that world is described, often interpret for the 280 reader, situates us at the same time as observers—an impression emphasized in many cases (including Peter and Wendy and The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe) by the narrator’s direct addresses to the narratee, where both the storytelling process and the fantastic nature of the world are explicitly acknowledged.

According to Mendlesohn (2008), who sees this as one the “defining features” of the form, the result is a type of narrative where the reader is invited to assume a position of “companion-audience,” riding with the point of view of the character who, at the same time, “describes fantasyland and the adventure to the reader, as if we are both with her and yet external to the fantasy world” (p. 8). While she finds this, again, problematic for the way it seems to reduces the world into a travelogue or series of descriptions, while forcing us to accept as true the account and interpretation of the protagonist, this is not only consistent, once more, with the overall focus on the description and revelation of the fantasy world itself, but also allows the author to highlight our sense of estrangement and wonder, while inviting us at the same time to reflect on the whole experience, as companions, witnesses, and ultimately, of course, readers.

Just like the portrait narrative, which, despite privileging the mimetic, “also invites careful attention to the thematic component of character” (Phelan, 2007, p. 179), the portal-quest fantasy finally encourages us to consider the thematic and, as I suggest in the next section, metafictional dimension of the world and the characters and the reader’s experience with it. Though the way the world is described is intended to reinforce the illusion that we are dealing with a fully realized setting, with its own landscape and history, and results quite effective at that, the very emphasis on the process of exploration 281 and learning, at the level of both plot and narratorial dynamics, thematizes within the text itself the overall experience of the fantastic as not only fictionally true, encouraging us to consider what would happen if such world actually exist, but also as a literary experience, inviting a more complex and self-aware reading that reveals the ethical, thematic, and ultimately aesthetic sophistication of the form.

Ethical and Metafictional Complexity

As I explain in the introduction and the first part of my dissertation, the last, perhaps most significant issue I have with Mendlesohn’s characterization and analysis of the portal-quest fantasy in general—which I otherwise find again very useful, as my adoption of the term and constant references to her work hopefully suggest—is the way she finally accuses the form of imposing a monosemic understanding of the world, sustained by the reliability of the narrator and the different character-guides that the protagonists find along the way, that effectively closes the narrative. As Mendlesohn

(2008) points out, emphasizing how the world is, once more, explained, often interpret for the reader: “The result, when done poorly, is didactic, but as I hope to demonstrate, even the most creative writers find it difficult in this form to avoid impressing upon the reader an authoritative interpretation of their world” (p. xx).

While Mendlesohn’s (2008) whole taxonomy is based on the idea that each category has its own stylistic and rhetorical needs that must be grasped by the author if the story is to be successfully presented—how “an immersive fantasy told in the voice of portal fantasy will feel leaden,” for example, or “a liminal fantasy written with the naïveté of the intrusion fantasy will feel overcontrived” (p. xv)—she not only clearly 282 prefers the less leaden and overcontrived language (the terms themselves are already telling) of the immersive and the liminal fantasy, but also finds inherently problematic the way the portal-quest fantasy in particular “valorizes the control of the narrator,” and therefore the author, recreating the rhetoric and resulting ideological determinism of the

19th century club story—a type of narrative where the storyteller is both “uninterruptible and incontestable; and the narrative as it is downloaded is essentially closed,” leaving “no room for the delicacies of interpretation” (pp. 6-17).

As I explain in the first part of my dissertation, it is hard not to see in these comments the same kind of critical prejudices that made so difficult for earlier fantasy critics to appreciate a work like The Lord of the Rings that relied on an authoritative narrator and followed the restrictive structure and moral clarity of the traditional quest narrative. While she never goes to the extreme of a critic like Edmund Wilson (1956), who could not understand how “grown up” readers, like Richard Hughes and W. H.

Auden, could take seriously a book like Tolkien’s (pp. 312-313), there is an evident judgment implied in the way Mendlesohn (2008) describes how the form situates the reader in relation to both the world and the narrative itself: “Although I hesitate to describe the position constructed in the porta-quest fantasy as infantilizing (…) it is perhaps not coincidental that the classic portal tale is more common in children’s fantasy than in that ostensibly written for the adult market” (p. 1).

The problem with this, again, is that it not only assumes the superiority and, in many ways, adult appeal of certain stylistic and narrative devices over others, but also fails to acknowledge how they each serve different and, more important yet, legitimate 283 rhetorical purposes. As Wayne Booth points out in The Rhetoric of Fiction (1983), emphasizing how, while many modern authors (and critics) have sought to “cultivate the reader’s interest in the quality of ambiguity,” there is a legitimate intellectual and aesthetic pleasure in “seeing someone whom we like triumph over difficulties” and learning the “simple truth,” rather than finding out that the “truth is not simple” (pp. 135-

136); whenever that is the desired effect of the narrative, as it happens in the portal-quest fantasy, then “the author will seek those devices which can maintain facts as facts and reliable judgments as reliable judgments” (p. 176).

Consider how a text like The Lord of the Rings or, more recently, the Harry Potter series, would change if the quest and moral order that sustains it would be unclear or left ambiguous: How while it might reinforce the illusion that the story is “telling itself” and reflecting the “complexity of the world” (Booth, 1983, pp. 135-136), it would reduce both our interest in the quest and emotional and intellectual investment in the success (or eventual failure) of the protagonists, and therefore the dramatic effect that the author is finally looking for, not to mention the overall meaning of the story. This does not mean, however, that these texts are ethically or narratively simplistic. As my analysis of the different works, including Peter and Wendy, demonstrates, the characters still struggle with significant ethical and emotional issues, from growing up (or staying young forever) to what it means to sacrifices oneself for a cause.

The same is true, in many ways, about the way the fantasy world is presented for both the character and, on a different level, the reader. While the effect of the liminal fantasy, for example, depends on the way we are never entirely sure about the nature of 284 the fantastic, or the way we should react to it, inviting us, as Mendlesohn (2008) puts it, to “accept the truth behind multiple and competing narratives while refusing to explain which truth is we should discover” (p. 240); this would feel completely out of place in the case of the portal-quest fantasy where, as I explain in the last section, the focus is on the revelation and description of the fantasy world itself—how that world actually exist and is a certain way—and the effect this has, again, on both protagonists and readers—an effect that would be lost, or at least greatly diminished, if we are constantly invited to doubt the existence and nature of the fantastic.

This does not mean, once more—and here is where I really move away from

Mendlesohn’s analysis and evaluation of the form—that the result is ethically simplistic and ultimately interpretatively closed. While we are indeed expected to accept as true what we are told about the fantasy world and its inhabitants, the fact that the characters are moving from a familiar and recognizable setting, often the real world itself, into direct contact with the fantastic, which is explicitly characterized as fantastic in relation to that initial setting, forces both protagonists and readers to compare one space or world with the other, and reflect on both their differences and similarities, ultimately questioning not only desirability of crossing to, exploring, and staying for good on the other side of the portal, but also coming back to the real world, and how the experience itself changes the way we see and deal with our everyday reality.

Barrie’s novel provides again a great example. As I explain in the second part of my dissertation, much of the effect of the book depends on the juxtaposition between

Neverland—and, of course, Peter himself as the eternal symbol of childhood—and the 285 mundane, adult-controlled world of London—personified early on by the money- and reputation-obsessed figure of Mr. Darling—where children have to behave a certain way, and go to school, and eventually grow up and go to an office. As Peter Hollindale (1993) points out, emphasizing how the island becomes by contrast this space of infinite possibilities: “Peter Pan invites children (…) through the spectacular allure of flying, into a world of magical precocious powers, where the adult roles of father, commander, aviator, duelist, ship’s captain, and sacrificial hero can be experienced without responsibility or inconvenient permanence” (p. 25).

The same is true, in many ways about a text like Harry Potter and the

Philosopher’s Stone (Rowling, 1997/2010) where we are constantly invited to compare all the strange and wonderful things that Harry finds at Hogwarts with his previous, awful life with the Dursleys; from the Chocolate Frogs, Pumpking Pasties, and Bertie Bott’s

Every-Flavour Beans that he buys in the train to share with Ron—“he had never had any money for sweets with the Dursleys” (p. 76)—to the fact that he is now a wizard, and a famous one at that, able to cast spells and fly, with all the power and freedom that represents, not to mention the sheer enjoyment of it: “He mounted the broom and kicked hard against the ground and up, up he soared (…) and in a rush of fierce joy he realized he’d found something he could do without being taught – this was easy, this was wonderful [emphasis in the original]” (pp. 110-111).

This is not to say, however, that everything is perfect or enjoyable, as Peter and

Wendy (Barrie, 1911/2011) also demonstrates. While the children are initially excited to get to Neverland, which they significantly recognize as the same island from their 286 dreams—“a familiar friend to whom they were returning home from the holidays” (p.

57)—they soon start to get scared once they realize that, while “Neverland had always begun to look a little dark and threatening by bedtime,” back in the real world, where

Nana could always reassure them that it was all make-believe; they are all in real danger now, as the pirates’ cannon shot confirms, forcing the “terrified three to learn the difference between an island of make-believe and the same island come true” (pp. 57-62).

Despite the allure of the fantastic, the novel clearly invites us to question if we would really want to visit such a world, and leave the safety and comfort of home (not to mention, of course, our families) to risk our lives that way.

Even a character like Taran from Lloyd Alexander’s The Book of Three

(1964/2006), who has been dreaming all his life about leaving Caer Dallben and becoming an heroic figure like prince Gwydion, realizes soon enough that going on a quest is much more complicated and dangerous than he first thought, subverting both his own and the reader’s expectations about the story, while encouraging us to regard his previous life in a completely different manner: “To his surprise, Taran found himself yearning to work with Coll in his own vegetable plot. The weeding and hoeing he had so despised at Caer Dallben now seemed, as he thought of his past journey (…), infinitely pleasant” (p. 118). Though we are still invited to accept what we are told about the fantasy world and its inhabitants, the text invites us, once more, to question both the desirability and ultimately meaning of the journey.

It is not casual at all that most portal-quest fantasies end with the characters having to choose between the real world and the fantastic. While there are cases, like The 287

Wonderful Wizard of Oz, where Dorothy is looking to go back home from the start, or the

Harry Potter series, where despite having to return at the end of each year to Privet

Drive, there is no doubt where Harry actually belongs and is probably going to live the rest of his life; the decision and its final repercussions are often more complex, implying both looking back at the real world and the journey and experience of the fantastic: From

Taran looking back at his old room at Caer Dallben and find it “smaller than [he] remember” (Alexander, 1964/2006, p. 186) to an older Wendy telling her own story to her daughter, and confessing to her and Peter that she has “forgotten how to fly” and can no longer come to Neverland (Barrie, 1911/2011. p. 185).

While all forms of fantasy require readers, as W. R. Irwin puts it in The Game of the Impossible (1976), to “regard the impossible construct vis-à-vis its established opposite,” emphasizing how “until the reader has used the story for some kind of critique of what it opposes, the experience that fantasy enables is incomplete” (p. 76), the portal- quest fantasy is unique for the manner in which it not only makes this explicit at the level of plot, often also narratorial dynamics, but also, in doing so, thematizes the relation between reality and fantasy itself. The result is a type of narrative that is, in many ways, about the experience of the fantastic: What it entails to enter a strange and wonderful world, how that world corresponds and differs from the world where the story begins

(often the “real world”), and how that experience finally affects both the characters and the way they look at and reflect on their initial setting.

From this perspective, it is not difficult to see how the form invites, once more, a metafictional reading of the events. As I point out several times in my dissertation, there 288 is a clear parallel between the character’s experience and relation with the fantastic and the reader’s own experience with the text: From the way we are expected to recognize the world or setting where the characters’ adventure begins, and share their incredulity and sense of wonder once they get into direct contact with the fantastic—contributing, as I explain above, to our overall engagement with the narrative—to the way we are invited, much like them, to reflect on the experience of the fantastic as both fictionally possible and, perhaps more important yet, purely literary, addressing in one way or another the question of the value and significance of fantasy and, in the case of many children’s books, imagination and imaginative play in general.

While a book like Peter and Wendy in particular explicitly warns us about the dangers of staying in Neverland too long, emphasizing once more the complexity of the whole issue—how, as Hollindale (1993) puts it, the children might be at risk “of forgetting and being forgotten, of being left with nothing but make-believe [emphasis in the original]” and become a bit like Peter, who becomes the “deterrent model of one to whom these catastrophes have happened” (p. 27)—it not only still exalts the imaginative and literary possibilities of the fantastic, presenting us with this ideal world made of dreams and literary references, where children (and adults, at least vicariously, as the narrator himself does) can escape from a mundane and, in many ways, dull reality, and have all manner of exciting adventures, but also makes an argument for the importance of keeping alive the childlike capacity to imagine.

Though the children, including Wendy, finally lose their ability to fly, and grow up and grow old, like we all eventually must (except, of course, for Peter), we are still 289 asked to “clap our hands,” at the end of the play (or the book), if we too “believe in fairies,” and trust that Peter is still coming back to take more children to Neverland

(Barrie, 1911/2011, pp. 144-145; 186-187). As I argue in the second part of my dissertation, the ending of the novel can be read as a new beginning—an invitation to go back to first page and read the book all over again. The effect is not too different from what happens at the end of Harry Potter and the Philosopher Stone or The Lion, the

Witch and the Wardrobe, where the return to the real world is accompanied by the promise of more adventures to come in the next book of the series: “Eh? What’s that?

Yes, of course you’ll get back to Narnia again someday. (…) But don’t go trying to use the same route twice” (Lewis, 1950/2002, p. 206)

In addition to encouraging the reader to leave the comfort and security of the real world and explore other realities, with everything that implies, the form finally makes an argument on how both fantasy in general, and the portal-quest fantasy in particular, ultimately comment upon and invite us to see the world from a different perspective.

Despite the common accusations of escapism raised particularly against children’s fantasy, most of texts of this kind actually end with the characters coming back to the world where the story begins, suggesting, at least on the surface, the precedence of the real world over the fantastic. While things are not that simple, as Sarah Gilead (1991) points out, emphasizing how in some cases the return can actually serve a subversive purpose (pp. 277-278; 285-289), this does make clear, once more, how the genre ultimately builds upon and reflects on the real world.

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Perhaps more important yet, the return often reveals how the experience of the fantastic itself has affected both the protagonists and the way they see and interact with their own world, emphasizing how the journey is often associated, particularly in children’s books, with the process of growing up and becoming one’s own person: From

Wendy and the rest of the children literally deciding that they are ready to grow up at the end of Peter and Wendy to the way Harry himself grows in confidence and self-assurance through his adventures and experience at Hogwarts. The implication, of course, is that we too as readers can learn something and grow through our own experience with the text and, through it, the fantastic; emphasizing how, as Barbara Kiefer (2010) puts it, good fantasy might actually “be critical to children’s understanding of themselves and of the struggles they will face as human beings” (p. 286).

As I hope my study has been able to show, the portal-quest fantasy can be a fascinating, ethically complex, and meticulously constructed form of fantasy. In addition to bringing the reader into the world of the story, and encouraging us to explore that world, through what I have called a landscape or worldscape narrative, the character’s transit between worlds invites both characters and readers to reflect on both the real world and the fantastic, as well as the relation between the two, proposing a serious ethical and metaficional reflection on the genre. This is particularly clear in a text like

Peter and Wendy, a novel that significantly resists fixed interpretations, making an argument for both going back home, growing up, and having a family, and staying young forever like Peter, who becomes, again, this eternal symbol of childhood, imagination, and the paradoxical and alluring nature of fantasy.

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Future Directions

One of the inevitable limitations of a dissertation like this is the amount of books that can be both considered and actually addressed in the text; particularly if we take into account how the portal-quest fantasy is, without doubt, the most popular form of fantasy, especially within the ambit of children’s and young adult literature. Though I have tried to select some representative texts that allow me to illustrate and support my analysis, while sustaining my generalizations about the form, there are still plenty of other works that could be analyzed as well and would probably reveal interesting variations of the portal-quest fantasy’s basic structure, including what Mendlesohn (2008) considers the most common subversion of the form, where the direction of the transit between worlds is inverted (p. 49), as it happens in Diana Wynne Jones’ Howl’s Moving Castle and—I would personally argue—Kenneth Grahame’s The Wind in the Willows, a text I also thought at some point to explore in depth in my study.

Many of the texts I actually mention in the first part could also be explored in more detail, the way I do with Peter and Wendy. While I think I touch the main elements associated with the characters transit between worlds and how it affects both the textual and readerly dynamics of each work, in order to get a full picture of the progression of narrative it would be necessary to dedicate a lot more space to each one of them. One specific aspect that I think deserves more attention is what happens with those texts that are part of longer series, in particular The Chronicles of Prydain and the Harry Potter books. While I think they can be read as extended portal-quest narratives, especially if we focus on the heroic quest and the character’s personal journey, I suspect that as the series 292 progresses, and characters and readers become increasingly familiar with the fantastic, we start to move more and more into immersive fantasy territory, with everything that implies in terms of how the world is presented.

Perhaps my biggest regret, however, has been to having to cut down completely my analysis of J. R. R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit, a text I originally intended to pair and contrasts with Peter and Wendy as an example of a pure quest fantasy. While I do address

The Lord of the Rings, as well as Tolkien’s essay “On Fairy-Stories,” I find The Hobbit particularly interesting for the manner in which it not only recreates the distinctive plot, even narratorial dynamics characteristic of the portal-quest fantasy—from the way the narrator explicitly addresses the narratee to explain what hobbits are at the beginning of the novel to the manner in which Bilbo struggles to assume his role as hero and explores the world beyond the Shire—but also provides a turning point in the history of children’s fantasy, closing in many ways the Golden Age of children’s literature, while paving the way for Tolkien’s later masterpiece and all the fantasy literature that came after, and was clearly influenced by his work (see Carpenter, 1985, pp. 211-213).

As I explain in the introduction, my project was initially conceived as a comparative analysis, specifically focused on the late Victorian and Edwardian Eras.

Though that would entail a different, more historically oriented approach, and would require expanding, once more, the selection of texts to be discussed, there is a remarkable amount of popular, now classic portal-quest fantasies produced during this period—from early works like Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Charles Kingsley’s The Water

Babies to, of course, Peter and Wendy, The Wind in the Willows, and The Hobbit—that I 293 think is intimately related to the way the fantasy genre as a whole was being rediscovered and presented to a new audience; an objective for which the portal-quest fantasy results particularly appropriate, as it takes again both characters and reader from a familiar and recognizable setting into direct contact with the fantastic, while reflecting at the same time on the value of the genre itself.

In addition to expanding the study in this manner, I believe my approach paves the way for looking at other forms of fantasy, as well as children’s literature, from a rhetorical narrative theory perspective, employing in particular the concepts of authorial and narrative audience and of course narrative progression proposed by Phelan and

Rabinowitz. Considering the similarities between both forms, and the emphasis they put on the plot and the gradual revelation of the fantastic, a companion study on the intrusion fantasy would result, for example, particularly revealing. Another interesting subject would be to look at realistic children’s books where, just like in the portal-quest fantasy, the characters leave their home to go on adventures, before finally coming back in the end—a structure common to many children’s stories that might shed some light on the popularity of the portal-quest fantasy itself.

Last but not least, while my approach is focused on the text, and the relation between authorial and narrative audiences, there is a whole field of ethnographic research on children’s literature that can take my study as a starting point and shed light on what happens with the actual audience. How do actual children read this type of texts? Does the transit between worlds really help them to enter the fictional world and accept the fantastic elements of the story? Do they need help at all? What about Peter and Wendy? 294

Is the text still accessible, relatable, even popular with contemporary children? In addition to leading to an interesting dialogue between a more theoretical/analytical and a more practical approach, this could further inform the way in which this type of texts are taught and used in the classroom, as well as provide new argument for the discussion on the appropriateness and value of children’s fantasy.

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