The Problem of Sex in J. M. Barrie’s Fiction

A euphemistic, biographically supported reading of Tommy’s failure to “love” in Sentimental Tommy and Tommy and Grizel, has profoundly affected subsequent analyses of the novels and interpretations of Barrie’s thinking about both sexuality and art. This discussion begins by examining the difference that Barrie establishes between love and sexual passion in his early novels, before showing how he places this difference within a wider theory of human nature, in which sexual passion is both admitted as necessary and worried about as potentially destructive. The implications this has for Barrie’s consideration of artistic sexuality in the Tommy novels are then analysed, revealing the potential dangers of euphemistic readings which erroneously seek meaning from beyond rather than within the text.