Gender Roles In Peter Pan

On May 25th, one hundred and twenty one years ago today, Oscar Wilde was sent to prison, convicted for sodomy (Mercer). Just 9 years later, J.M Barrie wrote the iconic children’s novel, Peter Pan, about the boy who would never grow up. Buried within this classic text are deeper messages about Peter and Wendy; their complex symbolic relationships as mother and son, husband and wife, and friendly companions are lush with ripples of the trial of Oscar Wilde. Ideals concerning gender, sexuality, and what it means to be a child are explored throughout the text in myriad ways. Due to the persecution of Oscar Wilde, sexuality and gender were clearly at the forefront of the educated Victorian mind. In J.M Barrie's Peter Pan, Wendy's various roles as

Wendy is a mother figure throughout the novel; first she is a mother-like figure to her brothers, then to Peter and the lost boys, and finally, she is kidnapped and coerced into being a mother to Hook’s pirate crew. But Peter and Wendy’s interaction within the imaginary role of mother and son are particularly favored by Wendy’s desire for romance with Peter. When Wendy asks Peter his “exact feelings” towards her, he replies that he they are “those of a devoted son,” but this doesn’t stop Wendy’s feelings or advances towards him (Barrie). Once the two have fallen into a mother son relationship, Oedipal implications begin to immediately swell up. But Peter happily rejects them, not only oblivious to the romantic advances of Wendy, but scornful to the concept of motherhood in general: “He despised all mothers except Wendy… He was above all that sort of thing” (Barrie). To the reader, Peter and Wendy’s relationship may seem like the most obvious thing in the world, but by being both obvlious and resentful of the Oedipal relationship which he and Wendy have been set up in, Peter begins to transcend typical masculine sexuality. A typical man might easily see the implications of Wendy’s relationship with him, but Peter is no man. Peter has no thoughts of sexual interaction with Wendy, and is time and time again oblivious to her “making herself passively available,” (Hauntings) but he is undeniably a “boy” throughout the text (Barrie). The reader cannot possibly doubt his gender, and yet, is unable to tie him down into an Oedipal relationship; Peter refuses to be boxed in, liminally standing with one foot in a firmly grounded masculinity, and the other in a completely non sexual relationship with Wendy. By putting their relationship outside of the adult world, the reader has no choice but to embrace their