Peter Pan

kezia.de

Oct 24, 2025

I always wanted to read Peter Pan but never got around to it as a child and on finally doing so as an adult, I found myself disappointed. Perhaps it is merely my lack of childish wonder. Peter is almost an anti-hero... annoying and selfish (but I suppose as the narrator points out... that is what children are like at that age). The writing of Wendy is quite misogynistic. She has no intrinsic value except as a caretaker of the lost boys and in particular Peter. She (and her daughter, and her daughter, and her daughter... presumably forever...) is in the story largely to fix clothes, clean house, do the cooking, and flatter the boys when they do something well. She even stands back in the big final battle and waits to be rescued. It is likely more indicative of the time period though than anything more sinister. All up, it's a fun enough adventure through nonsense and fantasy and magic and makes no attempt to clearly define which is which or what is real even within the world created.There is much more going on than what is on the surface of this silly novel though and much could (and has) been said about it. For me, what stood out particularly is there is so much longing for a mother throughout the pages and the love/hate relationship Peter has with that longing. On the one hand, he wants... no, needs... a mother...to provide more than the mere physical acts of love such as cooking and darning socks, but also the safety and stability and structure a mother should provide. On the other, he has lost his own mother and resents all mothers because of it. He has been hurt and hides that hurt behind the childish declarations that mothers are silly. Yet still he longs for a mother all the same and tries to put every female he meets into that role... from Tinkerbell, to Wendy, to TigerLily... trying to replace what he has lost and find that unconditional love mother's are supposed to have for their children. Knowing Barrie's own troubled relationship with his mother (due to his brother's death and her subsequent emotional absence from his life), it is quite a haunting story.