I love the origins of Peter Pan. Here’s something I wrote about it before:
Peter Pan’s Dark Origins
I wanted to talk about the dark and macabre origins of Peter Pan. The Peter Pan mythos was introduced to the world by J.M. Barrie, in the Little White bird which was published in 1902. A few chapters within the Little White Bird were expanded into Peter Pan in the Kensington Gardens published in 1906. According to the story Peter was once, like all infants part bird, and later found that he was more like a human than a bird. This potential allegory for depression is grounded where Peter Pan had always been sourced from a tragic event in J.M. Barrie’s life. Reading directly from Wikipedia part of the story goes like this: "Peter feels rather guilty for leaving his mother, mostly because he believes she misses him terribly. He considers returning to live with her, but first decides to go back to the Gardens to say his last good-byes. Unfortunately, Peter stays too long in the Gardens, and, when he uses his second wish to go home permanently, he is devastated to learn that, in his absence, his mother has given birth to another boy she can love. Peter returns, heartbroken, to Kensington Gardens.
Peter later meets a little girl named Maimie Mannering, who is lost in the Gardens. He and Maimie become fast friends, and little Peter asks her to marry him. Maimie is going to stay with him, but realizes that her mother must be missing her dreadfully, so she leaves Peter to return home. Maimie does not forget Peter, however, and when she is older, she makes presents and letters for him. Maimie is the literary predecessor to the character Wendy Darling in Barrie’s later Peter and Wendy story. Throughout the novel, Peter misunderstands simple things like children’s games. He does not know what a pram (a baby carriage) is, mistaking it for an animal, and he becomes extremely attached to a boy’s lost kite. It is only when Maimie tells him that he discovers he plays all his games incorrectly. When Peter is not playing, he likes to make graves for the children who get lost at night, burying them with little headstones in the Gardens." "In the actual Kensington gardens, there are two stones that are ancient border markers that JM Barrie has integrated into Peter Pan in the Kensington garden’s mythos. "Here Peter found the two babes, who had fallen unnoticed from their perambulators, Phoebe aged thirteen months and Walter probably still younger, for Peter seems
to have felt a delicacy about putting any age on his stone. They lie side by side…”I do want to emphasize that much of the following is speculative and people have varying theories as to what actually happened the day before his brother David’s 14thbirthday. Who died in an ice-skating accident forever cementing him as a child.JM Barrie’s mom, how she reacted to his brother’s death. Conflicting theories a to who caused the ice-skating accident that cost his 13 year old brother David his life the day before his brother’s birthday. Forever cementing him as a child. I believe that in a way part of JM Barrie also died with his brother and the subsequent neglect from his grief stricken mother. Regardless, the tremendous psychological trauma as well as essentially being abandoned by his mother had left him to process this trauma in which he did through Peter Pan. Wendy was often looked at from Peter not as a love interest but recruited as a mother. This actually was a pattern from Peter, who later befriends Jane, Wendy’s daughter and then Janes daughter Margaret, in a pattern of missing his mother.
JM Barrie was 6 at the time his brother died. Some speculate that he was there, and may have even been responsible for pushing his brother, although a new biography suggests that he wasn’t even at the ice skating rink and it was a “friend” who accidentally lead to his brothers death. It gets dark pretty quickly in his life. He once dressed up in his brother’s clothing, entering his grief stricken mother’s dark room. When one considers the further allegory of the Lost Boys the theme is quite apparent. Reading from JM Barrie’s Wikipedia entry: “This left his mother devastated, and Barrie tried to fill David’s place in his mother’s attentions, even wearing David’s clothes and whistling in the manner that he did. One time, Barrie entered her room and heard her say, “Is that you?” “I thought it was the dead boy she was speaking to”, wrote Barrie in his biographical account of his mother Margaret Ogilvy (1896) “and I said in a little lonely voice, ‘No, it’s not him, it’s just me.’” Barrie’s mother found comfort in the fact that her dead son would remain a boy forever, never to grow up and leave her.” "Peter Pan of course was also made into a novel and a play, among other things.
The final scene of the play takes place a year later when we see Wendy preparing to go back home after the spring-cleaning has taken place. It is stated that Tinker Bell has died during this year since fairies are naturally short-lived creatures. However, Peter has already forgotten about Tinker Bell, the Lost Boys and even Hook when Wendy returns, and he does not understand Wendy’s wistful wish that she could take him back with her.
I love the origins of Peter Pan. Here’s something I wrote about it before:
Peter Pan’s Dark Origins
I wanted to talk about the dark and macabre origins of Peter Pan. The Peter Pan mythos was introduced to the world by J.M. Barrie, in the Little White bird which was published in 1902. A few chapters within the Little White Bird were expanded into Peter Pan in the Kensington Gardens published in 1906. According to the story Peter was once, like all infants part bird, and later found that he was more like a human than a bird. This potential allegory for depression is grounded where Peter Pan had always been sourced from a tragic event in J.M. Barrie’s life. Reading directly from Wikipedia part of the story goes like this: "Peter feels rather guilty for leaving his mother, mostly because he believes she misses him terribly. He considers returning to live with her, but first decides to go back to the Gardens to say his last good-byes. Unfortunately, Peter stays too long in the Gardens, and, when he uses his second wish to go home permanently, he is devastated to learn that, in his absence, his mother has given birth to another boy she can love. Peter returns, heartbroken, to Kensington Gardens.
Peter later meets a little girl named Maimie Mannering, who is lost in the Gardens. He and Maimie become fast friends, and little Peter asks her to marry him. Maimie is going to stay with him, but realizes that her mother must be missing her dreadfully, so she leaves Peter to return home. Maimie does not forget Peter, however, and when she is older, she makes presents and letters for him. Maimie is the literary predecessor to the character Wendy Darling in Barrie’s later Peter and Wendy story. Throughout the novel, Peter misunderstands simple things like children’s games. He does not know what a pram (a baby carriage) is, mistaking it for an animal, and he becomes extremely attached to a boy’s lost kite. It is only when Maimie tells him that he discovers he plays all his games incorrectly. When Peter is not playing, he likes to make graves for the children who get lost at night, burying them with little headstones in the Gardens." "In the actual Kensington gardens, there are two stones that are ancient border markers that JM Barrie has integrated into Peter Pan in the Kensington garden’s mythos. "Here Peter found the two babes, who had fallen unnoticed from their perambulators, Phoebe aged thirteen months and Walter probably still younger, for Peter seems
to have felt a delicacy about putting any age on his stone. They lie side by side…”I do want to emphasize that much of the following is speculative and people have varying theories as to what actually happened the day before his brother David’s 14thbirthday. Who died in an ice-skating accident forever cementing him as a child.JM Barrie’s mom, how she reacted to his brother’s death. Conflicting theories a to who caused the ice-skating accident that cost his 13 year old brother David his life the day before his brother’s birthday. Forever cementing him as a child. I believe that in a way part of JM Barrie also died with his brother and the subsequent neglect from his grief stricken mother. Regardless, the tremendous psychological trauma as well as essentially being abandoned by his mother had left him to process this trauma in which he did through Peter Pan. Wendy was often looked at from Peter not as a love interest but recruited as a mother. This actually was a pattern from Peter, who later befriends Jane, Wendy’s daughter and then Janes daughter Margaret, in a pattern of missing his mother.
JM Barrie was 6 at the time his brother died. Some speculate that he was there, and may have even been responsible for pushing his brother, although a new biography suggests that he wasn’t even at the ice skating rink and it was a “friend” who accidentally lead to his brothers death. It gets dark pretty quickly in his life. He once dressed up in his brother’s clothing, entering his grief stricken mother’s dark room. When one considers the further allegory of the Lost Boys the theme is quite apparent. Reading from JM Barrie’s Wikipedia entry: “This left his mother devastated, and Barrie tried to fill David’s place in his mother’s attentions, even wearing David’s clothes and whistling in the manner that he did. One time, Barrie entered her room and heard her say, “Is that you?” “I thought it was the dead boy she was speaking to”, wrote Barrie in his biographical account of his mother Margaret Ogilvy (1896) “and I said in a little lonely voice, ‘No, it’s not him, it’s just me.’” Barrie’s mother found comfort in the fact that her dead son would remain a boy forever, never to grow up and leave her.” "Peter Pan of course was also made into a novel and a play, among other things.
The final scene of the play takes place a year later when we see Wendy preparing to go back home after the spring-cleaning has taken place. It is stated that Tinker Bell has died during this year since fairies are naturally short-lived creatures. However, Peter has already forgotten about Tinker Bell, the Lost Boys and even Hook when Wendy returns, and he does not understand Wendy’s wistful wish that she could take him back with her.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Pan_in_Kensington_Gardens
https://londonist.com/2013/09/the-secret-stones-of-kensington-gardens
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._M._Barrie
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter\_and\_Wendy