This analogy dovetails with the confusion and game playing in Neverland, according to Yeoman's point-of-view.
The author dips into the sexuality issues on page 133, asserting that the blending together of masculine and feminine attributes within Berrie's characters offers "yet another example" of how powerful "but unconscious" the hold on maternal feminine is. Yes, Peter's charm is in large part based on his "prepubescent asexuality" but the way Hook is presented casts a shadowy set of images that mix masculine and feminine qualities, Yeoman asserts. For example, Hook's style of dress reminds the author of King Charles II, whose court "was renowned for its permissive admixture of effeminacy, sexual license and perversity" (Yeoman, p. 133). Hook is both elegant and sinister, Yeoman writes, and he has features of the devil and yet his eyes are "of the blue of the forget-me-not"; he pretends to be impervious to emotional change, yet he "swipes an errant tear from his eye with a flourish of his iron claw," Yeoman continues (p. 133).
Continuing her psychological analysis of the play, Yeoman (p. 135) explains that the crocodile signifies "the dual nature of humankind"; it reflects ancient worlds that existed long before recorded history, and also is seen as having "a nearness to the origins and source of life" (p. 135). And so for Hook, to be eaten by the crocodile reflects in the story an "irreversible defeat by process (time) and a final descent into hell, into the maternal matrix," the author posits (p. 135). She suggests that Hook's "horror of death" shows readers the "fragmentation of identity" and "resistance against regression" (p. 135).
The real bottom line as to why Berrie created this iconic fictional work, according to Yeoman (p. 149), is connected to the fact that his own boyhood lacked security and "solace." His own childhood was based largely on fantasy, Yeoman asserts, and hence the Davies family filled his desire for a family right out of a storybook. Moreover, the author explains on page 151, "Play and fantasy lead us into the future because they make us creators" and they also "legitimize" our own reconstruction and "re-creation" of the world we live in. Creating fantasy, as Berrie did so brilliantly, makes us "gods for an hour or a day"; and in addition, by making our own fantasy, we are creating an unlimited vision of a world of our own making that is, Yeoman writes, "is secret and therefore save" (p. 151).
There are no deep psychological investigations in the Peter Pan illustrated book by Young Classics, adapted by Michael Johnstone. In fact this is the classic children's version of the story. And interestingly, in the two pages prior to the start of the story, readers are given a brief biography of Berrie and more than that, a map of the gardens in London near where Berrie grew up. The Kensington Gardens in London are connected to Kensington Palace, where Princess Diana lived prior to her untimely, tragic death. Berrie, as a boy, fantasized that there were fairies and runaway children hidden in Kensington Gardens; he visited the gardens often but he wasn't alone because many others enjoyed walks through the gardens, including nannies that took their children to the gardens to play.
The book has a beautiful illustration (made by Barrie) of the Kensington Gardens, with his own fictional venues prominently displayed. There is the Fairies' Winter Palace, the Bird's Island, the Fairies' Basin and, of course, X marks the spot where "Peter Pan landed" (Johnstone, 1998, pp. 6-7). The publisher of the Young Classics book, Dorling Kindersley Limited, and since Berrie had donated his copyright to the Great Ormond Street Children's Hospital in 1929, a royalty (not specified as to how much) is sent to the hospital from the sale of this book.
Still on the subject of Berrie's youth, Sydney Blow has written the Foreword in Barrie's book, When Wendy Grew Up: An Afterthought, and Blow describes Berrie's childhood experiences in a way that links seamlessly in some passages with the story of Peter Pan. Blow notes that at the age of seven, Barrie suffered and grieved because his older brother (David, nearly 14 years old) was killed in a skating accident. "The bond of sorrow" brought James and his mother closer together than they had been, and part of that bonding included the two reading books to one another, Blow explains (Blow,...
Peter Behrens Born in Hamburg, Germany in 1869, Peter Behrens studied painting from 1886 to 1889 at the Karlsruhe School of Art, and in 1889 in Dusseldorf under Ferdinand Brutt (Peter pp). He visited the Netherlands in 1890 before finally settling down in Munich (Peter pp). Behrens was a member of the Munich Secession and associated with the contemporary artistic radicals of the day, and in 1897, after visiting Italy the
Identifying Archetypes in Peter Pan Introduction J. M. Barrie’s Peter Pan is full of a wide range of characters who embody or represent various literary types. For instance, there are archetypes of Innocent Youth, the Hero, the Doppleganger, the Villain, the Mother, and so on. This paper will identify these archetypes and show how they are used in Barrie’s Peter Pan. Archetype The archetype is an example or representation of a specific type of
Peter, Wendy & the Victorian British Family In J.M. Barrie's epic fantasy, Peter and Wendy, three children from Victorian England set off for a distant paradise of endless boy-centered adventures called 'Neverland'. This land that can be reached by Peter Pan's nonsensical directions, "second to the right, and then straight on till morning" (Barrie 24), represents an upside-down world where the codes of Victorian England can be deeply analyzed and challenged.
In both stories, Peter has an air of childish innocence and enthusiasm about him, and a bit of an ego, as well. He is rarely sad, and he learns how to make his own entertainment and fun, but he is lonely, and wishes he could play with other boys and girls in the first book. In both books, he ends up alone, although Mamie does bring him gifts until she
It is Dudgeon's hypothesis through this bizarre methodology that the author Barrie and Kicky actually met and somehow Kicky demonstrated his power of psychic perception to Berrie, which of course fascinates Berrie. After becoming very interested in Kicky's powers Berrie than attempts to emulate those powers and in doing so gives Dudgeon's book its own mysterious glow (Haslin). Once Berrie has become acquainted with the boys he becomes, according to
James Kincaid, Peter Pan & Grimm's Tales "By insisting so loudly on the innocence, purity and asexuality of the child, we have created a subversive echo: experience, corruption, exoticism." This statement from James Kincaid's work on Victorian children's literature would be later expanded and ramified to provide the central thesis for Kincaid's study Erotic Innocence: The Culture of Child Molesting, a work which inquires into the cultural investment that contemporary mainstream
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