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For Thursday: Barrie, Peter Pan, Chapters 7-13



Try to read through Chapter 13, "Do You Believe in Fairies?" for Thursday's class. And don't forget to think about your Art & Literature paper if you need to do it. The Sargent painting above, of The Pallieron Children, looks a lot like Peter and Wendy, don't you think?? The boy, especially, has that calculating, impressed-with-himself look of Peter Pan. 

Answer two of the following:

Q1: What do you find interesting in how Wendy, her brothers, and the Lost Boys play at being mothers and children? How might this be Barrie's own parody of the conventions of the Victorian family? Is it meant to satirize the children's unquestioning belief in these values, or the very values themselves? 

Q2: Throughout the book, Barrie calls children "heartless," which might mean something different to him than to us. He says also that "Off we skip like the most heartless things in the world, which is what children are, but so attractive" (Chapter 11, 97). Why does he think children are heartless, and is he praising or criticizing this quality in children? 

Q3: Why do you think all the women in the book--Wendy, Tiger Lily, Tinkerbell, the Mermaids--all fall in love with Peter Pan? What quality seems to attract them? Or is it merely that he's the only 'man' in the story, so they love him by default? (consider that he's the father to Wendy's mother, even though he's a child just like the other Lost Boys). 

Q4: What other dated or objectionable passages do you find in the novel? Do you think these are simply the biases/beliefs of the period, or is there something more sinister or inexcusable in these passages? Another way to think about this: what part would you want to skip or leave out for your own children? 

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