A different book post: Peter Pan

I was thinking about thimbles the other day.  That was where the trouble started.  I probably own one somewhere, but in sewing as in most stuff, I tend to skip the protective equipment and get on with the work.  This means that my direct experience of them is negligible and the associations they evoke are literary.

 

People who are not as obsessed with Alice in Wonderland as I am may not recall that at the end of the caucus race, Alice is tasked with giving the prizes to all the creatures.  She ransacks her pockets, finding enough comfits for all of them, but then the Dodo says she also needs a prize.  She gives him her thimble, which he then presents back to her as her prize.

 

But there is another thimble that lurks in my memory.  It’s in Peter Pan.  Here’s the quote, from when Peter and Wendy meet:

 

“’Surely you know what a kiss is?’ she asked, aghast.

            “’I shall know when you give it to me,’ he replied stiffly, and not to hurt his feeling she gave him a thimble.”

 

I could have searched out the quote and left it at that, but I didn’t.  I had read all of Peter Pan at some point in my childhood, but a quick double-check of the shelves confirmed that I did not own a copy.  Well, I do now.  And, having re-read the whole, I am almost entirely appalled.

 

Times have changed and culture has shifted for the better in some places, obviously.  But the problems are deep.

 

Peter is held up as this enchanting being and he is awful.  Just awful.  He is everything that is toxic masculinity, violent, insensitive, cocky, self-centered.  And everyone lets him continue in it, admires him for it, and regrets when they can’t follow along his path any longer.

 

Wendy and the other females in the book are not better.  They suffer from toxic femininity, if that’s a thing.  They compete with each other for Peter’s attention and can only view each other with jealousy and suspicion.  They offer mothering as a gateway to what they hope will be romantic love, but they are constantly disappointed because Peter, in his narcissism, will never concede that he might need them or love them.

 

Then there is the way that violence exists in the book.  It is portrayed as exciting and inevitable and totally without consequences.  The pirates and the lost boys do not mourn, they do not regret their deeds, they see no mess or complication.  It is not real.  This is not a world where actions have reactions.  No one’s choices matter, except if they exhibit some weird public school constructed notion of Good Form, which pretty much comes down to the right clothes and showy bravery in stupid situations that should not have happened in the first place.

 

I don’t even want to write about the racism because I don’t want to repeat the stereotypes and slurs.  They’re in there.  They suck.  Stay away.

 

In Alice, Alice journeys through a place where the inhabitants are often not nice to her, but she learns things and thinks things and discovers things.  In Peter Pan, a horrible person encourages other people to go on being horrible and to regret having to give up bad behavior.

 

The only ray of hope is to be found at the very end of the book:  “…and thus it will go on, so long as children are gay and innocent and heartless.”

 

May we teach our children to have hearts to stop this horrible cycle.