J.M. Barrie's Peter Pan: In and Out of Time (review)

Jacqueline Rose's claim that "Peter Pan is peculiar" and is "one of the most fragmented and troubled works in the history of children's fiction" could be an apt epigram for the Scarecrow Press's celebratory centenary edition J. M. Barrie's Peter Pan: In and Out of Time, edited by Donna R. White and Anita Tarr (11). The editors' choice of essays affirms their disruptive intention, "The fifteen essays in this collection offer a wide array of new readings of Peter Pan interpretations that challenge our smug belief that we already know all there is to know about this story. The essays are highly provocative and, though diverse, all connect with the theme of time . . . as it connects to cultural, psychoanalytical, feminist, historical, and linguistic theories" (xxii). Yet although "time" does thread thematically through the essays, it is the protean, fluid nature of Peter Pan that troubles and haunts them—and may truly be the core reflection of this volume.

Two issues are of particular concern. First, there is the problem of the absence of a definitive text. Barrie not only confuses by having produced Peter Pan in many genres (story, novel, play), but also by altering the text with each performance of the play. The editors note that this "textual history makes it difficult to know what scholars are talking about when the subject is Peter Pan" (x). This slippery quality of the Peter Pan texts also infects the character of Peter with core identity issues. Although to the general popular imagination, Peter Pan is an iconic figure of lost innocence and idealized childhood, Rose's The Case of Peter Pan and James Kincaid's Child-Loving have substantially troubled that vision, a troubling that informs these essays. Captain Hook's question "Pan, who and what are thou?" is ever present. In addition to gender issues resulting from the cross-gendered casting, even more puzzling is the inseparability of those traits associated with idealized childhood (Peter's immortality, his loss of memory, his exuberant buoyancy) from a sense of tragic loneliness. How does one make sense of contradictory, confusing perceptions of an iconic figure that may be, as the editors assert, "the mightiest figure in children's literature" (xix)? Although uneven, these essays as a whole are stimulating, provocative, aggravating, and deliciously rich in ideas, information, and insight. They point to the continued cultural importance of Peter Pan—its energy and indefinability.

In a playful and provocative salvo, the editors begin the volume by explicitly stating they have no intention of reducing scholarly confusion about text and genre: "We say Peter Pan is pantomime"(x). After briefly reviewing Peter Pan's problematic textual history, this mini-essay within the introduction reviews the pantomime genre, its Victorian significance, and its relationship to Barrie and Peter Pan. This genre, contend the authors, clarifies some of the Pan puzzles. For example, confusion about the cross-gendered casting of Peter Pan is explained because the leads in pantomimes were played by women—and, in fact, cross-gendered roles were quite common. Other structural elements of the pantomime, such as the stock figures of Harlequin and Pantaloon, can explain character motivations, like Hook's hatred of Peter, "Why does Hook hate Peter Pan and constantly seek to kill him? Because Peter is Harlequin, and Pantaloon always goes after Harlequin" (xiv). While other explanations do come to mind, the authors note that these pantomime types along with other required elements like audience participation, song, and dance help us to understand the formative elements of Peter Pan. This embedded essay sets the volume's tone of solid scholarship and theoretical exploration around a loosely defined notion of "time."

The volume is divided into four sections. The first section, "In His Own Time," contains five essays that explore contemporary influences on Barrie. Three essays examine Peter Pan from a perspective that deconstructs the iconic innocent Peter. Karen's...