Category
Oral - Textual or Investigative
Description
Though recent scholars like Duschinsky and Heath have plunged into analysis of girlhood and femininity in film adaptations of Peter Pan, the shifting treatment of femininity in Barrie’s own adaptation is less discussed. In his novelization of the Pan tales, Barrie revises his story to focus on motherhood, emphasizing the role of an underdeveloped demographic in the play. Childhood reigns supreme in Barrie’s play, but the novel adaptation Peter and Wendy foregrounds mothers. Though scholars such as Jack and Morse have discussed the creator role of mothers in both the play and the novel, Peter and Wendy introduces a fresh emphasis on motherly sorrow. A comparison of key scenes in the narrative shows that Barrie took advantage of the revision process to make the suffering of mothers central in the novel, presenting a more sympathetic view of mothers and a more critical view of children who forget them. While the stage directions of the play hint at the heartlessness of children, the novel’s narrator belabors this theme. An examination of an alternate ending created several years after the play’s first performance reveals that the suffering of mothers figures more prominently in the novel than in either of the play’s best-known iterations. The possibility of direct address in the novel form allows the narrator to explicate the suffering of mothers and the heartlessness of children, ensuring that the novel’s audience grasps this idea which the play’s audience might have missed. This shift in focus may further illuminate (or complicate) Barrie’s treatment of and connection to mothers—a theme that has riddled Pan scholarship for nearly a century.
"I like her best": Motherhood and Revision in J. M. Barrie's Pan Narratives
Oral - Textual or Investigative
Though recent scholars like Duschinsky and Heath have plunged into analysis of girlhood and femininity in film adaptations of Peter Pan, the shifting treatment of femininity in Barrie’s own adaptation is less discussed. In his novelization of the Pan tales, Barrie revises his story to focus on motherhood, emphasizing the role of an underdeveloped demographic in the play. Childhood reigns supreme in Barrie’s play, but the novel adaptation Peter and Wendy foregrounds mothers. Though scholars such as Jack and Morse have discussed the creator role of mothers in both the play and the novel, Peter and Wendy introduces a fresh emphasis on motherly sorrow. A comparison of key scenes in the narrative shows that Barrie took advantage of the revision process to make the suffering of mothers central in the novel, presenting a more sympathetic view of mothers and a more critical view of children who forget them. While the stage directions of the play hint at the heartlessness of children, the novel’s narrator belabors this theme. An examination of an alternate ending created several years after the play’s first performance reveals that the suffering of mothers figures more prominently in the novel than in either of the play’s best-known iterations. The possibility of direct address in the novel form allows the narrator to explicate the suffering of mothers and the heartlessness of children, ensuring that the novel’s audience grasps this idea which the play’s audience might have missed. This shift in focus may further illuminate (or complicate) Barrie’s treatment of and connection to mothers—a theme that has riddled Pan scholarship for nearly a century.
Comments
Graduate