Alice and Peter Pan: The (Wo)men Who Never Grew Up

Student: Loes van der Baan

Student number: S1883747

Supervisor: Dr. Kees de Vries

Date: 22-06-2015

Word count: 6970

Bachelor’s Thesis Modern literature

Department of English Language and Culture,

Rijksuniversiteit Groningen

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Table of Contents

Introduction 2

The Victorian era 3

Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1865) 8

J.M. Barrie’s Peter and Wendy (1911) 14

Conclusion 19

Notes 24

Works Cited 25

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Introduction

The novels Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1865) by Lewis Carroll and Peter and Wendy

(1911) by J.M. Barrie have been selected for this thesis on account of their history and the fact

that both novels present a tale fit for both children’s and adult’s imaginations. Moreover their

protagonists are different, a boy and a girl, therefore it will be interesting to see the effects of

the Victorian era in these works. Due to the fact that Barrie grew up and was educated during

the Victorian era, and his novel having been published so early in the Edwardian period (1911),

it may be considered as part of Victorian literature. Thus, the novel can be analysed from the

same historical reference point as Carroll’s work.

In this thesis, Carroll and Barrie’s novels will be compared and contrasted on several

aspects, which are: influence of Victorian gender ideology and separation, gender roles, male

and female character analysis, escapism, the novels’ role as children’s and adult literature,

and the appearance of dreamlands. This thesis attempts to demonstrate that both Alice’s

Adventures in Wonderland and Peter and Wendy are a reflection of childhood within the

Victorian society and its effects on adults, featuring elements of escapism and being utilized

as a form of therapy by its authors and adult readers.

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The Victorian era

Since both Lewis Carroll and James Barrie grew up in the Victorian era, it is necessary to

examine the lives of children growing up during this period in order to understand the

influence of this era and how it would have affected the author’s lives and works. For that

reason, this part of the thesis paints a picture of the childhood of boys as well as girls, the

gender separation from early childhood to adulthood, and the effects on culture and the

development of children’s literature.

During the Victorian era (1837-1901), boys of the middle and upper class had quite a

different experience of growing up than girls, due to the “rigid system of gender separation”

(Robson 4-5). Throughout the first six or seven years of a boy’s life there was a “clear stamp

of femininity, especially in retrospect” (Robson 4). This femininity was a natural effect of the

abundance of female influence during childhood; mothers and nannies took care of the

children, brothers were taught alongside their sisters at home, and boys were clothed in

“girlish dress[es]” (Robson 4). Since fathers were the sole providers for the family, they were

often absent in the home-life, resulting in not just an abundance of female influence, but also

an absence of direct male influence during childhood.

It was not until the age of six or seven that boys were confronted with the harsh reality:

they needed to grow up; as Catherine Robson states: “age of six or seven signalled the removal

from maternal or feminine care in the home into a masculine world of the school” (4). Boys

were now surrounded by male role models, including other boys, ripping off the stamp of

femininity they had previously worn. They suddenly needed to wear trousers and act like men,

whereas they had previously enjoyed a responsibility-free childhood alongside their female

caretakers (and siblings) (Roth 23). Not only was there a sharp contrast with childhood and

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adult life for boys, there was also a significant difference between the childhoods of both

genders.

The girls who grew up during the Victorian era did not experience “such divisions

between early and later childhood” (Robson 4). Girls continued to live in a feminine world,

being educated on how to become a mother, wife, and nurturing caregiver. As Aşkin Haluk

Yildrim expounds: “[a woman] was required to be domestic, nurturing and docile” (46). This

notion of women needing to be subservient was at the root of Victorian gender ideology,

which viewed women as dissimilar; “male autonomy was reinforced by highlighting masculine

values of courage and endeavour. Women were allowed to have only a subsidiary role

characterized by feminine virtues” (Yildrim 46). Yildrim goes on to highlight the Victorian view

of women as property of men, stating that when once a woman had become married, she

“was legally the slave to her husband. She had virtually no rights to her destiny” (47). In short,

whilst the men were working outside the home in order to provide for the family, the women

were in charge of the household and raising the children. This difference in later life for men

and women lies at the heart of the divide between genders, which can be observed in both

culture and literature.

The Victorian gender separation gave rise to the cult of the little girl (1860-1911) (Roth

34): an obsession with young girls, where they were viewed by adult men as mythological,

idyllic creatures, with -perhaps most importantly- a perfect childhood that was brutally taken

from themselves at the ages of six and seven. Not just women, but children -especially little

girls- were thought of as “the [O]ther” (Vallone 188). They not only represented the image of

lost childhood, they were also “biologically, physically and psychologically ‘other’” (Vallone

188). Thus gender separation created a curiosity in men to explore the Other.

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The aforementioned curiosity about the Other trickled down from culture into

children’s literature where the ‘otherness’ of children and females became a strong feature;

the protagonists were the Other, or the protagonist would enter a world filled with Others.

There was also a tendency of authors to “forc[e] the child to function as the adult’s opposite

or Other – a primitive, innocent, transparent being” (Roth 25). Moreover, there had

traditionally been a clear divide between literature for boys, and literature for girls: “[w]riting

in 1886, the literary critic Edward Salmon pronounced that ‘Boys’ literature of a sound kind

ought to help build up men and ‘Girls’ literature ought to help build up women” (Simmons

144). Books for these boys were filled with tales of adventure, with “strong, active boy

characters” whereas books for girls featured “much more submissive, domestic and

introspective girls” (Simmons 144). The combination of traditionally gender separated

children’s literature and the notion of ‘otherness’ enforced each other.

There is one area where children’s literature did not vary among the genders which

was in didacticism: “[t]here is a long … tradition of didacticism, which holds that children’s

books must be moral and educational” (Hunt 5). This tradition of didacticism entailed that

children’s novels were focussed on educating, whether it be in moral or social virtues. Yet, the

tradition of didacticism changed after 1850 (Simmons 146), due to a transformation of

attitudes towards childhood and family; there was less infant death and there were smaller

families, consequently it became increasingly important to address children in a more equal

manner (Hunt 13). Moreover, authors of children’s literature felt it had become too didactic

and that it was impertinent that children’s literature stimulated the child’s imagination. The

result was a ‘golden age of children’s books’, which stretched from 1860 to 1914 where

entertaining children became the focus (Hunt 16). Furthermore, due to the sudden loss of

childhood and gender separation, male authors and readers also began to utilize children’s

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literature as a coping mechanism in order to come to grips with the romanticized childhood

they had lost.

One way in which the wants and needs of British authors of children’s literature came

to light was with ‘escapism’. The literary term ‘escapism’ stems from the aforementioned

golden age, referring to writers who often wrote/used “children’s books as a kind of therapy

to sublimate their deviant feelings – very often caused by childhood traumas” (Hunt 16).

Escapism does not refer to children wanting to escape from childhood, rather it is “fantasy for

adults to escape into childhood” (Hunt 270). According to psychoanalysts such as Freud and

Jung, humans have a deep-seated need for fantasy (Hunt 169), a means of escaping the

everyday life, returning to the place and time they loved the most, or leaving everything

behind and starting anew in a faraway land. “Fantasy is a form of therapy for our pasts; … it

allows us to explore our psyche or connect to a collective psyche” (Hunt 269) and because

Victorian authors had experienced a somewhat traumatic childhood, the urge to write about

their own fantasies became stronger. Although every author had a different fantasy and the

resulting literature had many different forms, is was all written with the same goal: to escape.

According to Peter Hunt, the several types of these fantasies are: “‘other’ world fantasies”,

“future fantasies”, “dreams”, “excursions into other, parallel world” (Hunt 271) and so on and

so forth. Naturally all of these types of fantasies carry an element of escapism, but the

fantasies that will be discussed in the conclusion are the last two; dreams and excursions to

parallel worlds.

In the previous paragraph the term escapism was linked to adults, which is where one

stumbles upon the question who the readers of children’s literature are. In this thesis, the

term children’s literature incorporates both readers and authors, adults as well as children. It

must be said that children’s literature, including the novels discussed below, have been

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“largely shaped by a certain kind of writer (middle class, male, western)” (Hunt 10). Because

children’s literature has been subjected to the view of this stereotypical writer/adult, it is only

reasonable that one incorporates the adult reader as well. The need for escapism created

children’s literature that was suited for adults and children, although both types of readers

have different experiences whilst reading children’s literature. Hunt elaborates why children’s

literature is favoured by adults as well as children:

The reason that [children’s] books remain on the shelve (perhaps

in much the same way as adult ‘classics’) is partly because of the

lack of discrimination (meant in no derogatory way) of the

audience (children can only read what they are allowed to read),

but partly because they are ‘safe’ for adults and for adults’

concepts of childhood (9).

Due to the aforementioned break with didacticism and the rising trend of escapism, children’s

literature focused more on the needs of readers. Whilst children read these novels for the

adventures and self-exploration, adults relied on them to take them back to a childhood they

had been separated from. Children’s literature contained fantastical stories to lose oneself in

for both types of readers. Moreover, adults’ concepts of childhood, as Hunt states, were

adhered to, therefore novels such as Peter and Wendy and Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland

were an easy way for adults to reminisce about a time filled with adventures, without

responsibility. The motives for the authors of children’s novels are quite similar to those of its

adult readers, which will be elaborated upon in the following paragraphs.

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Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland

Christine Roth stated that Alice is “a child possessed by an adult consciousness” (28). This

means that Alice’s consciousness is actually Carroll’s, who reflects his, and all other male

contemporary readers’, longing for childhood. In order to support this statement it is first

necessary to provide a quick rendition of Carroll’s life, then continue to the analysis of his

novel, where it can be seen that Carroll and his contemporaries viewed Alice’s Adventures in

Wonderland (1865) as a means to escape into the childhood they had lost. Moreover, Alice is

in fact the personification of the male adult, who, after having had a feminized childhood,

continued to identify himself as a little girl.

Charles Dodgson (1832-1898) was a mathematician, deacon, photographer,

accomplished author, and one of those conventional male authors who grew up in the

Victorian era making him all too familiar with the gender separation and feminization of young

boys. When Dodgson had come of age he entered Rugby School, and left three years later to

study at Oxford. Here he befriended the Dean of his college, Henry Liddell. He also became

acquainted with the remainder of the Liddell family, and whilst on a “rowing picnic on the

Thames at Oxford in 1862” (Hunt 46), he told a story to the three Liddell sisters, Lorina

Charlotte, Alice Pleasance, and Edith Mary about a girl who visited another world. Two years

later, in 1864, Carroll wrote the story down, entitled Alice’s Adventures Underground, and

presented it as a birthday present for young Alice Liddell (Hunt 45-46). One year after that, in

1865, the children’s novel was first published in the United Kingdom entitled Alice’s

Adventures in Wonderland, under Charles Dodgson’s penname Carroll Lewis, accompanied by

illustrations from Sir John Tenniel (Hunt 45-46).

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The novel soon found an audience with children as well as adults and Carroll’s works

have even been “admitted to the adult canon” (Hunt 45). Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland

and its sequel Through the Looking-Glass were, and still are, especially popular due to the

manner they have been written. As Hunt elaborates “they have been credited with being the

first works to avoid didacticism – to ‘liberate’ children’s imaginations” (45). The novels were

as clean a break from didacticism as possible: a female character who does not fulfil the

expectations Victorian gender ideology had set for her, a dream land where everything is

upside down, and most importantly, it was an adventure worthy of children’s imagination. The

break from didacticism can be seen as a break from the values of Victorian traditions; the

children who grew up under the strict gender separation of the era were now adults, and

wanted to break with the traditions forced upon them during childhood. It therefore comes

as no surprise that the novels found a strong adult audience who were now able to relive their

childhood again through Alice, free from the rule governing Victorian era and with it,

didacticism.

Due to Carroll’s longing for the childhood he had lost, Alice’s Adventures in

Wonderland is filled with references to the loss of youth and childhood. One of these

references is in the epigraph of the novel, which is a poem entitled “All in the Golden

Afternoon” (Carroll 21-22). The poem refers to when Carroll first told the three Liddell sisters

the tale of Alice “Ah, cruel Three! In such an hour/ Beneath such dreamy weather/ To beg a

tale of breath too weak/ To stir the tiniest feather!” (Carroll 21), but more importantly, it refers

to childhood as being golden. Interestingly enough, there is another reference to gold when

Alice finds “a tiny golden key” (Carroll 29), this key opens “a little door about fifteen inches

high” (Carroll 30). Unfortunately, Alice has already grown too much physically -and perhaps

mentally- prohibiting her from entering the door. Even though she can see a beautiful garden

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– a symbol for childhood- behind it, she is physically prohibited from entering. This exemplifies

Carroll’s “own longing gaze” (Roth 29), where Alice is already possessed by Carroll’s

consciousness, able to nostalgically reminisce about childhood, but unable to physically enter

or touch it.

Another reference to the loss of childhood and an adult mind can be found in Alice’s

personality, as Christine Roth suggests; “Carroll regard[s] her as a vehicle for nostalgic travel

as well as a nostalgic destination in herself” (28). However, Carroll is painfully aware that he

is an adult and demonstrates this with Alice by giving her an adult frame of mind every time

she fails in Wonderland. For example, when Alice is unable to enter the door into the “Edenic

garden” (Roth 28), she begins to cry, but she quickly stops herself saying “Come, there’s no

use in crying like that!” (Carroll 32). This a very adult manner of speaking to oneself, and

perhaps it is not just Alice who is speaking to herself, it can also be Carroll’s voice telling Alice

to stop crying. The same goes for when Alice contemplates whether or not to drink the bottle

labelled “DRINK ME” (Carroll 31); she deliberates with herself whether or not she should drink

it, but children never even stop to think about questions such as this. Moreover, the manner

in which she deliberates is similar to an adult’s perspective.

The physical size of Alice as a means to indicate that she is already too grown up for

Wonderland is first displayed when she comes across the door she cannot enter due to her

size. After she drinks the bottle she grows even larger which is the first of many instances

where Alice’s size is altered. Each time Alice finds Wonderland too confusing she either grows

or shrinks, linking her identity to her size. For instance when she comes across the Caterpillar,

who inquires “Who are you?” (Carroll 67), Alice tells the Caterpillar she is unsure, and tries to

recite a poem which comes out completely wrong. Alice then grows again, just as she did in

the White Rabbit’s house, the novel even ends with Alice growing out of proportion whilst in

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a courtroom. Thus, whenever Alice is confused, frustrated or angry, her size is altered. This

can be seen as a reflection of Alice’s, therefore Carroll’s, realisation that she does not belong

in Wonderland, or in other words, childhood. In fact, she never did.

Alice’s mind is already an adult’s, not merely because she was imagined and possessed

by an adult writer, but also because she is already seven years of age. This age was significant

in the Victorian era, since it was at the age of six or seven that boys were forced to grow up,

reflecting Carroll’s childhood experience of becoming an adult. Further establishing that Alice

never stood a chance in Wonderland, she was already too grown, physically and mentally, to

enter the beautiful garden that is childhood.

It has been shown above that Carroll viewed Alice as a vessel and link to childhood,

resulting in him giving Alice adult features and traits. However, the little girl named Alice is

not just an adult, but an adult man. In Wonderland, Alice is also excluded from the notion of

the female Other in the novel, being portrayed quite favourably when compared to the

remainder of the female characters. As has previously been established, the Victorian gender

separation, which was created from a male point of view, saw women as the Other. Carroll

holds to this traditional view when it comes to the female characters in his novel, even Alice

is viewed as the Other. The reasoning behind Alice as the Other is that she is a child, thereby

“function[ing] as the adult’s opposite” (Roth 25). This illustrates that Alice is the

personification of Carroll’s childhood. Besides being females, the characters who are viewed

as Others also share that they are evil; the cat Dinah is a murderer, the Duchess is “very ugly”

(Carroll 120) and has two distinct personalities, the cook throws pots and pans, and the Queen

continuously orders decapitations.

Dinah the cat is first referenced to by Alice when she is sitting with her sister, and again

when she meets a mouse. During the conversation with the Mouse, she muses about her cat

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stating that “she’s such a capital one for catching mice” (Carroll 42), a reference perhaps to

women murdering men by catching them in marriage. When it comes to the Mouse’s response

“Our family always hated cats: nasty, low, vulgar things!” (Carroll 42-43), there is a strong

reference to the lesser value of women in Victorian society.

The Duchess is not physically described in much detail by Carroll, besides having “an

uncomfortably sharp chin” (Carroll 120), but upon viewing Sir John Tenniel’s depiction of the

Duchess, one can get a better picture of her appearance. Naturally Carroll and Tenniel

collaborated and discussed the illustrations, thus it may be assumed that it is an accurate

representation of the Duchess. According to The Annotated Alice Tenniel based his rendition

on a portrait by Flemish painter Quintin Matsys called Ugly Duchess, said to be Margaretha

Maultasch, and rumoured to be the ugliest princess to ever live (Carroll 82). Furthermore, the

outer appearance of the Duchess is similar to the depiction of medieval women, meaning the

uglier they were, the worse their personalities or sins. Carroll seems to have adhered to this

manner of depiction, since the Duchess also has a disagreeable personality when Alice first

encounters her. She is aggressive and insults Alice: “You don’t know much” (Carroll 83).

Furthermore she violently shakes her baby and flings it to Alice when she needs to leave. On

Alice’s second encounter with the Duchess, she is acting almost too nice, taking Alice by the

arm and “squeeze[ing] herself up closer to Alice’s side as she sp[eaks]” (Carroll 120). This

change in personality can be taken as a reflection of women’s quickly changing attitudes and

personalities. Alice does not quite know how to respond to an adult women’s kindness and

ever changing moods, it could be that Carroll was writing from personal experience, therefore

Alice would reflect Carroll’s uncertainty towards women.

As for the cook, she is seemingly angry, “throwing everything in her reach at the

Duchess and the baby - the fire-irons came first; then followed a shower of saucepans, plates

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and dishes” (Carrol 83-84), though she does not really speak, she does sing along with the

Duchess’ lullaby. Although the cook does not have any lines, it is already possible to establish

that she is depicted unfavourable by examining her actions. This again, creates a female

character who is seen as the Other, aggressive, and voiceless.

The last woman who is not presented in a favourable manner is the Queen of Hearts.

Not only does she give the order “Off with her head!” (Carroll 109) a little too often, she also

treats animals and her subjects as props. When Alice is invited to play croquet, she sees that

“the croquet balls were live hedgehogs, and the mallets were live flamingos, and the soldiers

had to double themselves up and stand on their hands and feet, to make arches” (Carroll 111).

Moreover, whenever the Queen gives the order of beheading, in her overbearing shrill voice,

her husband quickly nullifies the order, exemplifying that though women may be loud, their

voices are not truly heard.

The portrayal of all the aforementioned female characters is negative, they are

frustrated, captors, overbearing, unpredictable, ugly, and when they do have a voice they are

not to be trusted or worse, are not heard. They are the Other in Wonderland and in the

Victorian era. Upon examination of Alice, it can be seen that she does not share any of the

features of these characters, this is because Alice is not a female character, but a seven-year-

old Victorian boy. The notion of Alice being possessed by Carroll’s consciousness is proven

once more when the Duchess flings her child to Alice, and Alice does not know how to mother

the pig in the blanket because she is not a nurturing motherly type. This is in strong contrast

with Victorian gender ideology and children’s literature since they were based on educating

women to be nurturing mothers and caregivers. Furthermore, as has been stated earlier,

adventures were reserved for ‘Boy’s’ literature (Simmons 144), as Deborah Ross explains:

“most girls’ stories of [the Victorian] era promoted humility, devotion, punctuality, and

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tidiness, implying that adventure … is something a nice girl would be wise to avoid” (56),

emphasizing that only boys were allowed to have adventures. All of these examples

demonstrate that Alice does not adhere to the gender roles prescribed by the Victorian era,

not because she is an anarchist or has been given more rights than other women, but because

at her core, she is a man.

J. M. Barrie’s Peter and Wendy

The statement from Roth that Alice is “a child possessed by an adult consciousness” (28) can

also be applied to Barrie’s portrayal of Peter. This means that Barrie possessed the

consciousness of Peter, living vicariously through the adventurous boy. In order to support

this argument it is necessary to provide a short summary of Barrie’s life and childhood,

examining the experiences and influences from the Victorian era that led up to the creation

of his novel.

James Matthew Barrie (1860-1937) was a mildly successful playwright who found his

biggest success with the play Peter Pan, or The Boy Who Wouldn’t Grow Up (1904), which was

published as the children’s novel Peter and Wendy in 1911. Barrie had an idyllic Victorian

childhood up until his older sibling David died, whose passing he described in his memoir:

“[J.M. Barrie] describes the death of his elder brother due to a skating accident and young

James’s failed attempt to take his place during the mourning period” (Jack 20). Not only did

Barrie need to fill the void his older brother left, he was also forced to grow up instantaneously

at the age of six. He dealt with the loss of his brother by sharing stories with his mother,

Margaret Ogilvy, who felt comforted by the thought that David would forever remain a young

boy. When Barrie reached the age of eight, he was sent to school in Glasgow, and after having

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enjoyed further education in Scotland, he left for London in order to pursue his dream of

becoming a successful playwright.

It was in the Kensington Gardens that Barrie first encountered some of the Llewelyn

Davies boys, whom he befriended, as well as their parents. The family consisted of mother

Sylvia, father Arthur and five sons, George, John, Peter, Michael and Nicholas. Barrie was

inspired to tell the Llewelyn Davies boys a story, the tale of Peter Pan, which featured

characters based on the Llewelyn Davies boys and their mother, as well as Barrie, who became

known to the world as Peter Pan. Since Barrie was a playwright, he decided to turn the story

into a play and after having found success, he edited it to become a children’s novel.

Even though Barrie wrote his novel fifty years after the initial break with didacticism, he did

create a world inspired by a story for children, staged in a dreamland where they could remain

children forever, thereby adhering to the new traditions for children’s literature, catering to

the needs and wants of children.

In the words of Ronald Jack, Barrie’s traumatic childhood “already places him on an

Oedipal couch, ready for analysis” (20). It is of no help to Barrie that during his literary success

Sigmund Freud and his psychoanalysis had enjoyed similar attention; giving rise to many

literary criticisms of his work filled with references to Oedipal complexes. Even though Freud

is no longer the most appropriate point of reference for analysing Barrie’s work, there is still

some truth in the notion that Barrie has used his novel Peter and Wendy as a therapeutic aid

in order to find peace with the loss of his brother and therefore his childhood. Whether Peter

Pan is a representation of James or his brother David is debatable, but it can still be said that

Peter Pan is the personification of male childhood, and most importantly, he adheres to the

gender roles for boys set by the Victorian gender ideology.

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As extrapolated earlier, many Victorian boys experienced a feminized childhood, only

being thrust into the male world at the age of six or seven which resulted in adults longing for

the childhood they had lost, consequently identifying with little girls. However, as Barrie

demonstrates, there is another manner of reacting: creating an extremely male character,

named Peter Pan who acts as the stereotypical example of a protagonist of ‘Boy’s’ literature

(Simmons 144). Peter Pan not only lives in a land that has been created from a boy’s

imagination, there are also adventures around every corner, with women serving the male

population. These adventures are one of the most important features of the novel; Peter first

lures out the Darling boys by asking them to go on an adventure, and throughout the novel

the term adventure is used very often. Pan himself “had no sense of time, and was so full of

adventures that all I have told you about him is only halfpenny-worth of them” (Barrie 206),

showing Peter Pan did not just have adventures, he had so many that even the author is unable

to describe all of them. Again, this shows an extreme response to the childhood experiences

Barrie and Victorian adults alike had; a stereotypical boy protagonist was not enough, it

needed to be a boy who was free from responsibility, rules, and time.

Upon examination of one of the other male characters, Captain Hook, it becomes even

clearer that Neverland is created in accordance with Peter Pan’s desires. Hook is the

personification of “the tyrant father, always attempting to kill Peter and capture the Lost

Boys” (Shipley 153)². However, when Hook fails to fulfil his only purpose, Peter’s desire for an

enemy pirate, he essentially throws himself to the crocodile. Amy Billone supports this notion

by saying that he “is really a child playing the part of the grownup” (186-187)³, just like the

Lost Boys and the Darling children, everybody plays their parts for the amusement of Peter

Pan. This concept of Neverland being influenced by Peter Pan is even supported by Barrie

himself:

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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 all under way again: if you put your ear to the ground

now, you would hear the whole island seething with life (Barrie

70).

The island and its inhabitants only come to life when Peter is near; his imagination fuels the

entire island. This is also indicative of the effect of Victorian gender ideology; Peter (a man) is

the ruler of Neverland, without him it does not live, and everybody else lives by expectations

set for them by Peter Pan.

The Victorian gender separation and its influences in children’s literature are further

emphasized by Barrie through his depiction of female characters, who can all be seen as the

Other in Neverland. These characters include Wendy Darling, who is a crossover from the ‘real

world’ where she also adheres to the expectations set for her, and the native characters of

Neverland: Tinkerbell, Tiger Lily, and the mermaids. The male inhabitants and visitors of

Neverland are not perceived as the Other, they blend into the fantastical world. Thus the focus

lies upon the portrayal of the females who are the only ones considered to be the Other.

The women in Neverland adhere to Victorian gender ideology and Heather Shipley

illuminates this with a description of their roles:

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The prescribed roles of the women in Neverland are as follows:

(a) Vengeful Mistress (Tinker Bell), (b) Not-Human-At-All

(mermaids of Mermaid Lagoon), (c) Mother (Wendy), and (d)

Virginal, Untouchable “Other” (Tiger Lily) (156).

Not merely their roles, but also their voices are worth discussing: Tinker Bell is not just jealous

of Wendy, even plotting her murder, she is also not heard. Everybody besides Peter Pan hears

“[t]he loveliest tinkle as of golden bells” (Barrie 36), consequently, Peter Pan is the one who

speaks for Tinker Bell. Tinker Bell’s voice is literally brought across by a male who decides what

he does and does not relate to the others, thereby controlling Tinker Bell’s speech and the

situation. As for the mermaids, they only speak to Peter, because they want to hear his

adventures, however, they are never heard by any of the other characters. Wendy is also

“restricted in [her] speech” (Shipley 157), she is allowed to tell the boys when to go to bed

and to do their homework, but only because those fall under her motherly duties. Tiger Lily

does not even speak in the novel. Besides the fact that all female characters’ voices are

monitored by Peter Pan/Barrie, they are also not allowed to speak to each other. The

characters remain separated on the island: the mermaids live in the lagoon, Wendy lives in

the underground house, Tinker Bell in “a bird-cage” (Barrie 98), and Tiger Lily with the

Redskins. It is quite telling that Tinker Bell is literally caged up, which can be seen as a

representation of Victorian women; in the ‘real’ world women were also contained by men.

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Conclusion

In line with the above, the novels by Barrie and Carroll both share some similarities and show

notable differences. As stated above, Carroll as well as Barrie utilized their main child

characters as a means to relive childhood. Furthermore, their narratives both feature

dreamlands, or parallel worlds, as a means of escapism. Moreover, their stories viewed

women as the Other, both are the results of the Victorian era with its rigid gender ideology

and separation in culture as well as in literature. Barrie reacted to the Victorian era and his

childhood by creating an extremely boyish protagonist, whilst Carroll has the opposite

reaction, namely to idolize little girls. The reactions of the authors due to a (traumatic)

Victorian childhood is recapitulated by Roth:

Carroll and Barrie create juvenile characters who bridge the

chaotic, unconstrained world of childhood and the safe,

enclosed world of adult domestic culture, enabling adult

authors/readers to look out on a world of childhood fantasy

through the eyes of figures who have access to experiences and

perspectives that would be otherwise inaccessible to them (25).

Although they both utilized children as a means to escape and relive childhood, there are vast

differences between their protagonists. Alice is portrayed as an adventurous girl who appears

to have been set free from Victorian restrictions. However, since Alice is a personification of

Carroll (thus a boy) the story is actually adhering to Victorian gender ideology. Whilst Alice

may be considered a boy thus adhering to the gender roles, she is still (physically) portrayed

van der Baan 20

as a girl/ Other; Alice is continuously reminded that she does not belong in Wonderland. Peter

Pan, on the contrary, has the outside features of a young boy, accompanied by the personality

of, and possibilities for a boy. Another contrast lies within the behaviour of the protagonists;

Peter Pan is a boy who does not want to, and will never grow up, whereas Alice is already an

adult in her mind, further emphasized by her manner of reasoning. Moreover, Alice is not a

girl, which is illustrated by the portrayal of other female characters and her inability to mother

the pig. The latter can of course be due to the fact that she has an older sister who already

carries the responsibilities, and therefore has never needed to be nurturing or motherly

herself.

When examining the only other female from the ‘real world’ who enters a dream land,

namely Wendy, the eldest of her siblings, it becomes clear that she is the epitome of the

eternal mother, a girl who, from the start of Barrie’s novel, “knew that she must grow

up”(Barrie 13). Wendy and Alice are both aware of the fact that they need to grow up, become

adults and fulfil the roles set for them by Victorian gender ideology, a sharp contrast to Peter

Pan, a boy who does not follow any rules and will forever remain a child. It can even be said

that both Wendy and Alice are born as adults, they do not even have the option of being true

children, as Peter Pan does.

As has been expounded above, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland as well as Peter and

Wendy feature female characters who are viewed through the lens of a male dominated

society. Characters such as the Dinah, Tiger Lily, the Duchess, the mermaids, the Queen of

Hearts, Wendy Darling, and Tinker Bell are all women who have little to no voice, and are

“restricted in their speech” (Shipley 157). Alice is not viewed as the Other because at her heart

she is really a man, and Peter Pan and the other boys in the novel, as well as the other male

characters in the Alice story, are all considered to be superior to the female characters. One

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of these superior male characters is the King of Hearts, a quiet, demure man, who actually

holds more power than the loud Queen, undoing all her orders of decapitation. Furthermore,

in Neverland Peter Pan is the person who keeps all the women separate, being the only one

to be able to hear Tinker Bell’s speech, and talk to the mermaids, each of whom are placed in

a specific area of Neverland.

Hence, with the notion of the female Other also comes the notion of the superior male,

being in control. Alice herself does not have much of a say in Wonderland either, but she is

heard because she is in fact a man, her situation is comparable to Wendy’s, who also has a

voice, and is even able to order the other boys around. However, Wendy’s position in

Neverland is that of the mother, which is why she is allowed to speak and be heard in the

capacity of her role. In short, in both novels the traditions of the real world are carried into

the dream land, respectively Neverland and Wonderland. Both lands have been created by

the stereotypical Victorian male author, which is why the Victorian gender ideology, and

therefore the notion of the female Other, is transferred to the parallel reality.

The escapism in the novels is strengthened by the use of dreamlands and parallel

worlds, which have become a strong feature in Carroll and Barrie’s works. Not only do Alice

and Peter Pan function as imaginary children, they are also dreamchildren, who “tend to be

fantasized about by the authors of the stories in which they appear” (Billone 180), and with

these dreamchildren comes the territory of dreamlands. Neverland is visited by the Darling

children in their dreams before they ever physically enter it, and they are able to pass

Neverland along to their parents via these dreams:

Mrs. Darling first heard of Peter when she was tidying up her

children's minds. It is the nightly custom of every good mother

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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

(Barrie 17).

Neverland is both a dreamland and a parallel world, for when Wendy dreams about it, Peter

Pan is able to cross over to the real world and fly in the window: ”She dreamt that the

Neverland had come too near and that a strange boy had broken through from it.” (Barrie 21).

Moreover, when the children leave for Neverland they physically leave the real world behind

and Peter gives the infamous directions “‘Second to the right, and straight on till morning’”

(Barrie 56). Similarly to the Darling children travelling to Neverland whilst dreaming, Alice visits

Wonderland through her dreams. However, Alice literally falls asleep, tumbling down a rabbit

hole into Wonderland. And Wonderland is only a dreamland, not a parallel world that can

physically be visited. Another similarity between the novels is that the lands and tales are

passed on. Where the mother first sees Neverland through her children’s minds, Alice

discloses the story to her sister;

“Wake up, Alice dear!” said her sister. “Why, what a long sleep

you’ve had!” “Oh, I’ve had such a curios dream!” said Alice. And

she told her sister, as well as she could remember them, all these

strange Adventures of hers that you have just been reading

about … her sister sat still just as she left her, leaning her head

on her hand, watching the setting sun, and thinking of little Alice

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and all her wonderful Adventures, till she too began dreaming

(Carroll 162).

Alice’s sister enters Wonderland by daydreaming about Alice’s tales, however the Darling

parents are never able to physically visit Neverland, since only children can. They are familiar

with it since all children dream of Neverland, but once an adult the memories fade away.

Where Alice’s sister is able to dream of Wonderland, the Darling parents can never get that

close. Therefore, both novels do feature dreamlands, although not in the same capacity or

manner of transference. Neverland and Wonderland are of course also literary dreamlands

for adults, adding a romanticist feature to escapism, a faraway land. By reading, the adults are

able to escape into their dream childhood and respective dreamlands since “[i]n dreams the

thought “if only” becomes “it is” (Shipley 155)

Perhaps the most important feature of both Barrie’s Peter and Wendy and Carroll’s

Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland is that the novels broke with the tradition of didacticism.

This had to do with the “originary myth” (Grenby 16) surrounding their works, meaning they

were inspired by children, consequently, children’s wants and needs were taken into account.

Instead of producing a stereotypical children’s novel featuring high doses of education and

morality lessons, they focussed on the story they had first told the Liddell girls and Davies

boys. It became a story to tell and live, instead of just learn from. Whatever the ulterior

motives behind these novels may have been, they remain adventurous. The stories contain

faraway lands that children as well as adult readers can visit by reading the books, or simply

falling asleep.

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Notes

¹This thesis primarily refers to Charles Dodgson by his penname, in order to avoid

confusion. However, in the instances where Carroll’s personal life is discussed, his real name

will be used.

²Because Shipley focusses on all of Barrie’s versions of the Peter Pan story, including

the play and movie adaptations, the quotes used in this thesis have been carefully chosen,

and have been deemed sound for discussing the 1911 novel Peter and Wendy.

³Billone also does not discriminate between the various versions of the Peter Pan tale,

therefore there has also been a strict selection process when quoting her work.

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