Francolini) played Mrs Darling and a female Captain Hook, adding complexity to the ideas about motherhood and male/female roles. Barrie’s play is, after all, as Yeoman put it, ‘so much about the dynamics between masculine and feminine, youth and adulthood, and the dysfunctional


relationships


that tend to persist between these opposing pairs’. An emotionally stunted Peter, the object of rivalry between Wendy and Tinkerbell, cannot cope with a romantic attachment to either. When he plays at mothers and fathers with Wendy, he needs to be constantly reassured that it is only a game.


Fluidity of gender is an idea picked up in the novel, Peter Pan and Wendy, when Barrie writes, of fairies, ‘the mauve ones are boys and the white ones are girls and the blue ones are just little sillies who don’t know what they are’. And, Yeoman pointed out, ‘gender ambiguity is also characteristic of Dionysus/Bacchus and other beautiful youthful Greek gods to whom Barrie links Peter Pan (Hermes, Adonis, Attis, Narcissus)’.


According to Yeoman, another critical aspect of the normal development of an adult is memory, ‘through which we relate to our ‘history’ and understand our lives in terms of our life’s ‘story’.’ Peter Pan has precious little memory. He forgets Wendy, and all stories, and hardly remembers his adventures from one to the next, let alone the details of his infancy. So, as Yeoman put it, ‘Peter has no sense of history, of past or future, and therefore no desire whatsoever to enter adulthood and become a man with a beard, business suit and briefcase.’


When the question of Peter Pan’s narcissism was raised (his cockiness, his need to be the undisputed leader of the Lost Boys, his perpetual delight in his own cleverness) the discussion inevitably led to Donald Trump – who also experienced childhood rejection. He was sent away by his father to military academy at 13 as a punishment for his misbehaviour and lack of success at school. He was beaten at the academy, where the regime was harsh, though his own account now is that it was the making of him. It may indeed have been the making of an eternal-boy-turned-Hook, who lacks (unlike his presidential predecessor), as Yeoman put it, ‘the ability to keep the eternal boy alive in the mature adult by incorporating creativity, openness, imagination and life-enhancing ‘play’ into his present role’.


In terms of Barrie’s play, Yeoman’s advice on how to maintain a healthy psychology and life-affirming attitude was:


‘keep the


window open to Peter. That is, keep yourself open to imagination and creative potential; find a way to keep alive the ‘magic spark’ that is Peter Pan no matter how young or old you may be.’


Now or Neverland: Peter Pan and the Myth of Eternal Youth (Studies in Jungian Psychology by Jungian Analysts), Ann Yeoman, Inner City Books, 978-0-9191-2383-0, £11.99 pbk.


Nicolette Jones has been the children’s books reviewer of The Sunday Times for more than two decades. In 2012 she was nominated for an Eleanor Farjeon Award for outstanding service to children’s books, and she has judged many book prizes including Booktrust’s Ten Best New Illustrators and the Macmillan Prize for Illustration.


Photo © Steve Tanner Books for Keeps No.223 March 2017 5


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