Nacho Typical Bedtime Story

As I drove back to school after Easter, I used the cartime to listen to J. M. Barrie's Peter and Wendy (1911). Somehow I never read this story growing up, although I was well familiar with the Disney movie. I remember the movie frustrated me as a little kid. Even as a four or five year old, I resented Wendy's role. She was expected to cook and clean and take care of the house?? These were all of the things I wanted to avoid! The unfairness of it all really needled at me, and I couldn't love the movie even with all of its magic and mermaids.

After I got home, I went out for nachos with my neighbor. No way in hell was I going to cook after sitting in a car for six hours, you know? Plus I knew that if I cooked, I would watch tv. And if I watched tv, I would not think about Peter Pan.

So I'm thinking about Peter Pan, but I guess I should start at the beginning. As I began the novel today, I had my assumptions about what the novel's perspective on motherhood would entail. I wasn't entirely wrong. From the outset, Wendy is shown as a mother in the making. She mediates the conflict between her father and brothers, she bemoans the mess left by the unseen Peter, and she mends Peter's shadow on their first meeting. As soon as they introduce themselves, Wendy assumes a maternal role, seeing herself as more mature than he, despite their seeming to be the same age. She gleefully embraces the role and revels in the power this allows over her:

Then Wendy saw the shadow on the floor, looking so draggled, and she was frightfully sorry for Peter. 'How awful!' she said, but she could not help smiling when she saw that he had been trying to stick it on with soap. How exactly like a boy!

Fortunately she knew at once what to do. 'It must be sewn on,' she said, just a little patronisingly.

'What's sewn?' he asked.

'You're dreadfully ignorant.'

'No, I'm not.'

But she was exulting in his ignorance. 'I shall sew it on for you, my little man,' she said, though he was as tall as herself; and she got out her housewife, and sewed the shadow on to Peter's foot. (Emphasis my own.)

Later on, the narrator reveals how Wendy spends her time when the Lost Boys, her brothers, and Peter go off on adventures:

I suppose it was all especially entrancing to Wendy, because those rampagious boys of hers gave her so much to do. Really there were whole weeks when, except perhaps with a stocking in the evening, she was never above ground. The cooking, I can tell you, kept her nose to the pot. . . . Wendy's favourite time for sewing and darning was after they had all gone to bed. Then, as she expressed it, she had a breathing time for herself; and she occupied it in making new things for them, and putting double pieces on the knees, for they were all most frightfully hard on their knees.When she sat down to a basketful of their stockings, every heel with a hole in it, she would fling up her arms and exclaim, 'Oh dear, I am sure I sometimes think spinsters are to be envied.'Her face beamed when she exclaimed this.

But, of course, that's not all Wendy is (thank goodness). Wendy dreams of wolves, she often manipulates Peter, and she tries to hold on to her own values even against Peter's wishes.

Wendy's role as a child-mother highlights the ultimate tension of the novel: how can a child never grow up? As both an aficionado of childhood adventures and the embodiment of the essentialized maternal, Wendy's character seems to articulate the novel's implication that mothers allow--and perhaps even prolong--childhood. I know that might seem counter-intuitive or even contradictory so please bear with me. To be a child depends on a mother's existence. We see that even before the children go to Neverland. While Mr. Darling torments his children and demands that his son "be a man," Mrs. Darling nurtures her children and encourages their childhood dreamings. Mr. Darling chides his wife for "pampering" the children and indulging their childish whims, but he simultaneously demands his own whims be indulged. Wendy, following her mother's path, attempts to find a solution that indulges both father and son, and consequently, we see her trying to mother her own father. When Wendy chooses to nurture other people in the house, Mr. Darling becomes resentful, shouting, "That's right. . . Coddle her! Nobody coddles me. Oh dear no! I am only the breadwinner, why should I be coddled, why, why, why!' His immature temper tantrum reveals his own childishness and begins the novel's claim that mothers allow for childhood (later on, the pirates declare that they will kidnap Wendy from the Lost Boys to make Wendy their own mother. In some ways, the novel is equally a fight between grown men over a child-mother). Because of his own wife and daughter's mothering, Mr. Darling is able to extend his childhood well into his adulthood.

This continues once the children arrive in Neverland. Peter announces to the Lost Boys that he has finally brought them a mother after promising them for so long. The boys are cheered by this, but don't question the obvious oversight: why can Peter remember that he promised them a mother when he cannot remember what he did five minutes ago? Throughout the novel, we watch Peter exist in a perpetual state of amnesia, bouncing from one adventure to the next with little concern or recollection of prior events. In fact, he cant always even remember Wendy's name or even John and Michael's presence! Peter is the prolonged present. That's obvious, of course, but I was struck by the implication of this. Peter can have no future because he has no past. So why can he remember his promise to procure a mother and why can he remember Wendy? Because mothers provide a past. They provide a biological past, but--as we see through Wendy's own actions--they offer a cultural and intellectual past as well. Wendy maintains the family identity and her individual memories, and she works with the boys to ensure they do as well. Wendy repeatedly articulates the importance of a family as she tests and quizzes the boys on a slate of chalk. Even Wendy's mending of Peter's shadow is a means of maintaining the connection between the past and present. Wendy maintains the continuity of the novel's timeline (which is furthered in the later penned afterword).

The novel tells us from the very beginning that Peter Pan will never grow up, so why does he need a mother? Well, he doesn't. Or not really. That's the riddle to his character: he is the only one who doesn't need a mother to stay young. That doesn't stop him from wanting a mother, however, and so he brings back Wendy to Neverland.

But Wendy's purpose is twofold although the second reason is unspoken. Living in Neverland does not prevent you from growing up. The novel makes this clear (though it is easy to overlook). When first introducing us to the Lost Boys, the narrator mentions that "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." Unlike Peter, the Lost Boys do not stay young forever; Peter simply prevents their growing up by offing them instead.

It's unclear how time passes in Neverland. It seems somewhat similar to the later Narnia, but it is clear that time is indeed passing. Early in the novel, the narrator reveals a scene between Mr. and Mrs. Darling, mourning their own lost children. Later in the novel, Wendy herself considers the passing of time and its effect on the children:

As time wore on did she think much about the beloved parents she had left behind her? This is a difficult question, because it is quite impossible to say how time does wear on in the Neverland, where it is calculated by moons and suns, and there are ever so many more of them than on the mainland. But I am afraid that Wendy did not really worry about her father and mother; she was absolutely confident that they would always keep the window open for her to fly back by, and this gave her complete ease of mind. What did disturb her at times was that John remembered his parents vaguely only, as people he had once known, while Michael was quite willing to believe that she was really his mother.

But despite time passing and the children's changing mental states, it does not seem that the children grow in anyway physically. Neither the Darlings nor the Lost Boys seem to grow any older than Peter Pan does. With the arrival of the Darlings, the aging process has seemed to stop and the children can remain perpetually children.

But remaining in the perpetual present like Peter is not the point of childhood. As stated earlier, Peter has no future because he has no past. A mother anchors the past, but she does so to construct the future. Childhood is constructed so adulthood is possible. The novel pivots on this supposition when Wendy tells the boys a story:

'I'm frightfully anxious.'

'If you knew how great is a mother's love,' Wendy told them triumphantly, 'you would have no fear.' She had now come to the part that Peter hated.

'I do like a mother's love,' said Tootles, hitting Nibs with a pillow. 'Do you like a mother's love, Nibs?'

'I do just,' said Nibs, hitting back.

'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.'

'Did they ever go back?'

'Let us now,' said Wendy, bracing herself for her finest effort, 'take a peep into the future'; and they all gave themselves the twist that makes peeps into the future easier. 'Years have rolled by; and who is this elegant lady of uncertain age alighting at London Station?'

'O Wendy, who is she?' cried Nibs, every bit as excited as if he didn't know.

'Can it be—yes—no—it is—the fair Wendy!'

As Wendy tells the children the story of their past, she creates a new future for them and it is this future that convinces them to leave Neverland. The children return home, resume their process of growing up, and assume their respective futures of businessmen, engine-drivers, and judges. The role of the mother in this evolution is made quite clear in the final chapter of the novel:

Mrs. Darling came to the window, for at present she was keeping a sharp eye on Wendy. She told Peter that she had adopted all the other boys, and would like to adopt him also.

'Would you send me to school?' he inquired craftily.

'Yes.'

'And then to an office?'

'I suppose so.'

'Soon I should be a man?'

'Very soon.'

'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!'

'Peter,' said Wendy the comforter, 'I should love you in a beard'; and Mrs. Darling stretched out her arms to him, but he repulsed her.

'Keep back, lady, no one is going to catch me and make me a man.'

Mothers extend childhood, but they also end it. According to the novel, their nurturing guides children towards a future, and perhaps, as Peter's attitude suggests, there is some resentment towards that.

As Kristeva posits, the first betrayal we experience is our mothers' introducing us to a mortal life. Life is full of beauty and promise, but it also must inevitably end. It's first ending is the end of childhood. And so while Wendy and the Lost Boys grow up, Peter never does. And as Wendy and Jane and Margaret die, Peter remains, returning to the window again and again for just one more spring cleaning, one more adventure. But these adventures are only possible because mothers give birth to daughters who become mothers who give birht to daughters (paging John Mayer). That is the ultimate riddle to Peter Pan: life requires death; adulthood requires childhood; Peter Pan requires mothers; and the reverse of all this is equally true.

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