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Ann Fowler
Prof. Cluff
Advanced Writing Paper
12/09/09
The Mentality of the Traditional Family within British Victorian Literature: When
Society Shuts the Door Peter Pan opens a Window
Peter Pan, published in 1911 by James M. Barrie, plays a significant and complex
role in criticizing the society that produced it. Shelley, a revolutionary poet, suggests
literature is "so closely linked to the society from which it rises that its health serves as a
barometer of societys health (Shelley 697). This idea is supported in study by Jerome
Bruner who links literature or as a product of society by incorporating Ignace
Meyersons, a French Cultural psychologist, theory of mentalities. Bruner summarizes
that the main function of all collective cultural activity is to produce worksthat
achieve an existence of their ownthat give identity [to] shared and negotiable forms
of thought and externalize thoughts and intentions into embodied external products
that make the mentality accessible to reflection and proper use (Bruner 23-24). These
combined theories explain how Peter Pan functions as a work of the Victorian Era with
the unconscious intention of diagnosing or unmasking mentalities through exaggerated
representations that reflect the barometer its societal health.
A proper cultural analysis then requires a thorough investigation of the novels
social influences in contrast with the authors unconscious interpretative representation
and therefore criticism of the society. Society breaks down their mentalities into its most

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basic unit, the family. The particular era that Peter Pan emerged from indicates how
society affected its smallest unit mentalities by placing each in obligatory stations or
classes; namely, in the patriarchal order, fathers first, mothers, and then children. It
further shows how each obligation of said classes creates in children a maturity complex.
This maturity complex is characterized by either the extreme resistance towards growing
up by acting out for attention or what one particular author described as children who
grew up too quickly and who were exposed too soon to the temptations of adult life
(Strickland 121). Since the complex begins with children it becomes a perpetual cycle
that creates conflicted adults who as Peter Pan illustrates behave in extreme fashions in
private out of a social concern for public reputation. By writing Peter Pan, Barrie created
a pretend environment and exaggerated characters to wholly contrast with reality and
allow children and adults to momentarily break free from these mentalities and
complexes. Thus contrasts and exaggerations unmask and diagnose reality while the
imaginative escapism of fantasy allows characters and audiences to participate with the
imaginative narrative through a land free from the social and familial obligations that
created their mentalities. The novel Peter Pan then, reveals the maturity complex deeply
rooted in the Victorian mentality by unmasking traditional family roles and allowing
them expression free from societal constraints. This new historian criticism properly
places Peter Pan as a lasting monument of the Victorian Eras insight into societys ideal
roles of family and allows readers to further connect and appreciate literatures sources
and vast imaginative influences in future homes, societies, and therefore literature.
Victorian domesticity is described in Judith Flanders book as formed by their
[Victorians] notions of what a home should be as demonstrated in popular literature i.e.

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fiction, journals, and magazines (Flanders 4). Combined, these materials describe a
dynamic period of economic growth and industrialization divided into two spheres,
public and private, in which Victorians used to balance guidelines and restrictions of
behavior with each other. The Victorian home was seen as a refuge from the burden of
public work and social obligations for fathers who worked nine-to-five jobs and earned
the bread. However, the home also had its own guidelines and restrictions dictated
through mothers who used the money to run and furnish the home to create a comfortable
social front. Children often got lost in the mix not truly belonging or participating fully in
either sphere. Comparing this with Barries life and its manifestation in Peter Pan allows
each individual role to be addressed on three basic levels revealing each mentality, the
affects of the mentality and the unconscious criticism produced as a result.
The Victorian society defined fatherhood as the combination of public and
private pressures of being the breadwinner, being expected to protect his weak
dependants from the harsh realities of a corrupt world, and being a figure of authority
despite his wifes role as the newly proclaimed guardian of moral and spiritual values in
the home (Tosh 658). Imbalance between these pressures or the rough transition between
these roles is also described as the explanation of three different stereotypes, the absent
father, the tyrannical father, and the distant father or intimate father. The first can be
explained in that in the pressure to make enough money to keep the family comfortable
or socially acceptable the father dedicates all his time to the job and has little to no direct
participation in the life of his children. The second is shaped by another popular study of
the time in Freuds theory of the Oedipus complex which is the failure of males to
separate from the mother and suffer feelings of rivalry with their fathers (Introduction to

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Theory and Criticism 17). It is the idea that fathers rule with a tight fist to establish
dominance of the mothers attention and affection. The third is the more typical situation
of fathers whose distance or intimacy is in response to the conflict of finding balance in
displaying and instilling a masculine image through discipline and the desire to prepare
children for the world by sending them off to school.
Barrie participated in each stereotype to a degree. The first appearance of fatherly
stereotype was his fathers absence. Andrew Birkin addresses the issue briefly by saying
that Mr. Barrie had little influence on his sons character and development. He is
scarcely mentioned (Birkin 6). Having therefore little to no masculine influence and
Barrie himself being small in stature Barries later experiences with fatherhood were
more in longing than in actuality. Between his own childhood and education he fell to the
pressure of providing for his mother and siblings by rising to the top of journalism and
eventually to literature and drama. Barrie claims his most precious possession I ever
had [was] my joy is hard work which Birkin says kept his mind off increasing bouts
of depression caused by problems of personality Barrie attributed to his stature and to
believing ladies thought him harmless (Birkin 16). His later marriage to Mary Ansell
based more on sentimental love and romantic affection than physical passion proved
childless and it was in that period of time Barrie befriended the Davies boys in the
Kensington Gardens. It was this friendship that introduced the second and third fatherly
stereotypes. Arthur Llewelyn Davies while not tyrannical in the typical sense in that he
never inflicted corporal punishment and was described as tender rather than terrible, he
did in fact arouse competition in Barrie for attention from both his wife and his children
(Birkin 122). Later, after the death of both Arthur and Sylvia Davies, Barrie became the

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boys adopted father. In this role Barries longing for fatherhood was realized and replaced
with the actual anxieties of parenting in which he feared to spoiling them as their nanny
claimed, losing them to time as they grew up and became more self-reliant, and to
tragically losing them to times crocodile. Barries experiences in each role gave him
ample material to round out the men and fatherly figures in Peter Pan.
Between the two main adult authoritative figures of Mr. Darling and Captain
James Hook, traditionally played by the same actor in the play, Barrie fleshes out fatherly
stereotypes by exaggerating their behavior in the privacy of their homes or territories
while explaining their motives as near to the earlier described social explanations of their
existence. Both desire attention and appreciation that they never seem to get or get
enough of, especially from women. The lack is Barries characters justification to their
exaggerated behavior while the behaviors themselves address typical concerns of social
and family obligations. For Mr. Darling there were the public pressures such as being
exactly like his neighbors (Barrie 4) and wondering if the neighbors talked because He
had his position in the city to consider (Barrie 5) and there were the private displays of
hypocrisy in telling Michael to be a man and take his medicine while he himself snuck
it in Nanas bowl. In learning of their fathers trickery they run to comfort Nana while he
vents his frustration at being the only breadwinner who never gets coddled but
craves for admiration. Captain Hook, on the left hand, demonstrates more the more
tyrannical competition Freud theorizes in his battle for Wendy as their mother.
After unmasking the perspective pressures of fatherhood in transitioning between
public and private life, it is the objective of creating a stable home and private refuge that
brings a societal focus on the important role that mothers play within the family.

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Victorian mothers were characterized as belonging to the one private sphere and as
dominating there under the direction of husbands; this of course applies to only those
who made enough money to not have to work and could afford servants and nannies. In
this class women could afford to treat children as accessories and leave their education
and nurturing to nurses and teachers while attending solely to social and house
management thus having an indirect public sphere while living completely within the
private sphere (Dolin 517). On the other hand, when money was scarce, mothers worked
out of home in factories or as governesses, cooks or nannies themselves meaning they
also had little influence on the daily activity or involvement in their own childrens lives.
This interesting conclusion that while women were the orchestrators of the private sphere
while actually neglecting their primary duty as direct nurturer to children explains the
intense desires both of Barrie and his characters for an ideal mother that was more nonexistent than actual.
Barries own relationship with women begins with his deep relationship with his
mother that developed from initial feelings of neglect and trying to live up to his older
brother David who passed away and left their mother emotionally broken. After
overcoming this experience at a young age Birkin describes how Barries professional
career stemmed from his mother having read to him often and having told him many
stories of her childhood. His appreciation of her encouragement and material for his own
writings extended even so far as he wrote a biography of her life which Birkin describes
as no nostalgic desire to return to his own boyhood. It was, rather, a craving to
experience a childhood he had never personally known (Birkin 38). This craving extends
to Barries desire but incapability for passionate relationships that he reveals in his early

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writings such as The Sentimental Tommy which also in large part describe his
relationship with his wife Mary and their bitter parting divorce. This craving transfers
over after being introduced to Sylvia Llewelyn Davies at a dinner party after already
having met her sons in the park. The relationship consisted of Barries devotion to Sylvia
and her childrens every want and need and saw them as satisfying his own cravings for
family intimacy that he had never before experienced.
These cravings are mentalities demonstrated by each individual yet devalued as a
whole by Peter thinking them overrated persons and the other lost children knowing
in what they called their hearts that one could get on quite well without a mother, and
it is only the mothers who think you cant (Barrie 120). This dismissal comes from the
characterized neglect from the societal mother while at the same time is the source for the
craving. Truly under Peters indifference lies anger at being forgotten and barred from his
true mother and her love. It is only Wendys sense of tragedy at the Lost Boys lack of
mother that lets her justify her own adventuring and candidacy as a mother herself,
Then they all went on their knees, and holding out their arms cried, O Wendy
lady, be our mother.
Ought I? Wendy said, all shinning. Of course its frightfully fascinating, but
you see I am only a little girl. I have no real experience.
That doesnt matter, said Peter who knew least. What we need is just a nice
motherly person.
Oh dear! Wendy said, you see, I feel that is exactly what I am. (Barrie 75).

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Furthermore it is only Wendys faith in a mothers love that prevents her and her
brothers from completely forgetting their parents and is their only source of comfort that
they will be able to return home after all their adventuring.
Children then seem to be as knowledgeable if not more to the face behind the
societal masking of reality even if their understanding of its source or motive is
unacknowledged. During the Victorian Era sanitation and hygiene decreased children
mortality rates and created a relatively stable home environment where parents got to
witness their children grow up in their own home until they were sent to school. This
became the beginning of the child-centered home and to what is referred to as the cult of
the child (Flanders 6).
James Kincaid studies this cult and uses the fascination of a romanticized
childhood innocence to demonstrate how Victorians created the todays ideology of
childhood. Before the late eighteenth century the todays ideology of a carefree and
fortunate class unsuited to the burdens of autonomy and decision-making, and better off
protected by those in control did not exist (Kincaid 64). In fact, according to Kincaids
sources it was the Victorians who distinguished between adulthood and childhood even if
as Kincaid concludes that the construction is shifting, various, and mysterious (Kincaid
63). To clarify such variances and mysteries Kincaid uses the character Peter Pan as
representative of a Freudian contrast to the idea that child-play is solely to imitate
adulthood as a kind of practice. Kincaid suggests instead that in offering Peter as
opposition to adulthood childhood is more than a desire to grow up but as an avoidance
of the trap of the obligations and mentalities associated with adulthood. Peter like Wendy
and other children see the trap but whereas they knowingly choose to accept it, Peter

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alone resists it. In resisting it he alone is able to avoid altogether one aspect of the
maturity complex so common of his era while embodying the extreme of the other that
were described Kincaid as sentimentalists such as Hardy, Lewis and Barrie. Barrie
however, separating himself from his contemporaries by not perceiving children as
trailing clouds of glory; he saw them as gay and innocent and heartless creatures,
inspired as much by the devil as by God (Birkin 15). And it was this insight to the true
identity of childhood that allowed Barrie to write so completely absorbed in the human
condition of both adult and child because he was so painfully aware of the gulf separating
them.
Barrie wrote in Margaret Ogilvy
The horror of my boyhood was that I knew a time would come when I also must
give up the games, and how it was to be done I saw not (this agony still returns to
me in dreams, when I catch myself playing marbles, and looking on with cold
displeasure); I felt that I must continue playing in secret. (Birkin 7-8).
His own confession to having continue being a child in secret with as much of his writing
career were adult works that he considered practice because, men are so much easier
to write about than boys culminates to the creation of Peter Pan (Birkin 10). His
childhood imitations of his dead brother to get attention from his grieving mother, thus
initiating the idea of an immortal child, combined with all the cravings of Barries adult
life transferred into one character that Barrie would no longer have to hide but could set
loose publically to give a voice to not only his private life but many children and adults
of his era that suffered from the same maturity complex and needed escape from the
mentalities that restricted their freedom of expression.

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Percy Shelley also once described the power of literatures ability to kindle the
sympathetic imagination [and] thereby unite individuals by breaking down the
differences among them (Shelley 697). Barrie achieves this union by speaking through
the narrator as an all-knowing participator who can authoritatively inform the readers of
the way things are and at the same time appeal directly to the readers understanding of
human behavior. In the first few chapters the narrator sets this tone and breaks down
the differences between characters in age and maturity levels. While these differences are
at times substantial, the narration and plot suggest that children bridge the gap created by
these differences through imitation and pretend and therefore use the imagination to unite
the narrator and reader observing their play. Therefore Barries Neverland becomes a
medium for imaginative exploration for children and adults yet the power remains with
the child to dictate the landscape and the adventures had in Neverland. There is one
specific game of pretend nearing the end of Wendy, John, and Michaels adventure with
Peter in Neverland when they and the lost boys are playing house. Think of the layers
here that Barrie has drawn over reality. The reader is being shown children playing adults
in a never-land while escaping the reality of the very game they are playing by having
flown out of their nursery window. In the middle of this game Peter, confused in the
layers of pretend seeks assurance that he has not been caught in the trap of adulthood by
asking Wendy,
It is only make-believe, isnt it, that I am their father?
Oh yes, Wendy said primly.
You see, he continued apologetically, it would make me seem so old to
their real father. (Barrie 113).

be

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The game has become so real to the Victorian ideal of a large family settling down for the
night around a large cozy fire that even Peter who is staunchly against adulthood gets lots
in the fun of imitating parental authority. Not long after assuring Peter though does
Wendy further his confusion by asking him to clarify his exact feelings for her looking
for passion, an emotion that is completely foreign to Peter as it would be to any child.
This gulf of emotion is what Barrie often felt in his relationships with adults and what
society forced him to recreate himself as Peter Pan facing those same questions only this
time having the ability to escape responsibility in eternal childhood ignorance.
Wendy, slowly emerging on the other side of this gulf as the novel concludes,
shows what Peter misses in his resistance to adulthood. Just as Wendy plays house, her
desire for a house and the responsibility of children allows her to accept the trap of
adulthood in the epilogue allowing her to enjoy the family life that Peter secretly wants
but cannot have for him self. Yet out of anger at grown-ups, who, as usual, were
spoiling everything and out of his own egotistical cockiness he continues to imitate
authoritative and fatherly figures by putting on Hooks clothes and becoming Captain
(Barrie 120). These evidences of all the mentalities beginning with father figures and
ending with ideal childhood are all established in Peter Pan are set mentalities of the era
with specific characterizations and motives that reveal to the society their own masks and
reveal to readers their own true desires.
The ultimate Victorian goal of establishing a private home environment was to
create stability in a time of new mass consumerism and money exchanging. The shift
division of these two spheres followed a division of gender and therefore a division of
social units that instead of working to support worked against each other to the self

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isolation and therefore destruction of harmony within the society. This disharmony then
began in the home and worked its way through to the entire culture. In Peter Pan the
divide is much simpler, to grow up or not to grow up. This divide gives insight into the
true source of the Victorian mentalities that are forced on children before they are ready
to accept adulthood. Upon leaving London the Darling children are only ready to
adventure out of novelty, but as soon as the novelty of Neverland wears off they retreat to
the fading memory of home and the eventuality of growing up. By the time they leave
Neverland their exploits have convinced the Darlings that the need to go home and have a
mother stems from fear of the adult forgetfulness. This fear parallels the fear that most
children and consequently adults had once felt of neglect. The lack or fear of lacking
motherly love or parental attention brings the Darlings home and bring the readers to a
similar clarification of desire and realization of maturity complexes that stem from a lack
of proper transitory time for children to let go of those attention cravings. For adults those
cravings become responsibilities and obligations to fulfill that craving in others by
providing for their needs. Adults who suffer from the maturity complex either do not
have the transitory time in Neverland to choose to grow up or they continue on like Peter,
selfishly gratifying their needs at the cost of others needs. Thus Peter Pan successfully
acknowledges the cultural mentalities by personifying them and setting them free to
express their desires in a land that caters to their imagination. The return to reality stands
in contrast as resolving the complexes revealed by their own pretend and produced as a
great work of the late Victorian Era.
Bibliography

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Victorian England. Victorian Studies Summer 2001: 657-59. Project Muse. Web.
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Barrie, James M. Peter Pan. New York: New American Library, 1987. Print.

Birkin, Andrew. J. M. Barrie & the lost boys; the love story that gave birth to Peter Pan.
New York: Clarkson N. Potter, Inc., 1979. Print.

Bruner, Jerome. The Culture of Education. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 2001. Print.

Dolin, Tim. Rev. of Professional Domesticity in the Victorian Novel: Women, Work and
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