Negating History and Male Fantasies through Psychoanalytic Criticism

If psychoanalytic criticism of literature is to be effective, it must stop denying the historical significance of the author's psyche and fantasizing, and it must consider the author and work in the context of the times in which the work is produced. A number of the essays in volume 18 of Children's Literature barely touch on these factors and thus are limited by the prescriptions of the psychological theories they employ. By dismissing the author's psyche and history, it seems to me that they undermine an approach which might yield important insights about psychoanalysis and literature. By no means do I wish to assert that such readings are wrong or fallacious; I am more concerned with raising questions about the psychoanalytic approach to children's literature that are often ignored if not negated. Underlying my questions is the thesis that the psychoanalytic approach might be enriched if history and society were not repressed. By reviewing some key biographical and historical factors, one could draw remarkable parallels between Peter Pan and Charlotte's Web, for example, that might reveal common patterns of male fantasizing and demonstrate how differently J. M. Barrie and E. B. White conceived problems of maturation in two different societies.

Peter Pan was first produced as a play in 1904 and then transformed into a novel in 1911. Barrie had been going through a marital crisis during this time, and he had also met the five Davies boys for whom he created Peter Pan in a series of stories he told them in Kensington Gardens. In addition to the marital crisis and encounter with the Davies boys, his early childhood attachment to his mother, whom he more or less had to parent after the death of Barrie's older brother, and the idyllic five years he spent at the allmale Dumfries Academy during his adolescence must be taken into account if we are to understand the psychological implications of Peter Pan. Finally, there is an interesting connection to be made between the symbolic figure of the eternal boy Peter in his Neverland and the imperial power and highly rationalized system of manufacturing.

If we take these factors into consideration, Richard Rotert's interpretation of Peter Pan in relation to the inaccessability of the mother ego appears rather one-dimensional. Let me suggest certain perspectives that might shed greater light on the psychological implications of the play/novel. Instead of viewing Peter Pan merely as an escapist figure, the eternal adolescent, the unfulfilled son, I would argue that Peter is also a rebel who consciously rejects the role of adulthood in conventional society. In some respects, Barrie's work reflects his own struggle to conceive a different type of parenting and educating that he missed during his youth. It is through Peter's help, for instance, that Wendy learns to become a mother, and this construct enables Barrie to postulate a theory of mothering and responsibility valid for both males and females. Viewed from this vantage point, Barrie's sublimated neurosis has broader socio-psychological ramifications in his work, for Peter continually returns to children in the conventional world to guide them through experiences that enable them to love, understand trust, and be loved in a nurturing environment. Neverland thus retains a Utopian value as part of what Herbert Marcuse in Eros and Civilization designated the romantic "great refusal" to acquiesce in a society bent on "instrumentalizing the imagination."

Barrie's male fantasy of romantic refusal in the early twentieth century, when England was the major industrial power in the world, has some interesting parallels with E. B. White's male fantasy of refusal in Charlotte's Web (1952), when the United States had become the dominant political and economic power in the West. Written shortly after White had left New York and settled in Maine for good, the novel is obviously a celebration of friendship between the sexes and country life as a utopian idyll. Moreover, as Lucy Rollin perceptively demonstrates, it is a remarkable description of mothering. But Rollin omits a discussion of the male perspective and overlooks the significance...