Peter Pan and his American cousin, Huck Finn

This year marks the 100^th anniversary of the publication of Peter and Wendy, the novel by J.M. Barrie based on his earlier stage play (which was not put into text form until after the novel) and the basis of numerous versions of the Peter Pan story to follow. (An annotated version of the novel has been released to mark this anniversary.)

Peter Pan remains the ultimate Victorian-Edwardian fictional tribute to childhood, a story about a boy who won’t grow up and a story that reflects and comments on the very clear demarcation between the innocence and endless optimism of childhood and the serious and rigidly structured state of adulthood. Peter Pan, the mischievous and rebellious boy forever on the cusp of adolescence, embodies the adventurous and imaginative spirit of boyhood.

Yet, in the stage play and musical, the character of Peter Pan is usually played by a girl or woman, and the character of the father and Captain Hook are played by the same actor. Similarly, the Lost Boys and Wendy’s brothers are often played by girls. These kinds of choices, along with the fact that the girl protagonist, Wendy, plays a mother figure, give the story all kinds of strange Freudian undercurrents and a general sense of gender confusion. In the original play and novel (not the Disney film), Wendy and her brothers pay a sad price for the act of putting off childhood. Aside from the idealistic yearnings for a childhood that lasts forever, the story in many ways comments on the special confusion of adolescence and the way in which we grow into our sexual identities.

A few years earlier, in the 1880s, Mark Twain released another book about a boyhood hero, the Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Unlike Peter, Huck Finn is distinctly male, an adolescent, tough boy hardened by living with an alcoholic father and having to survive on his own. He smokes a pipe and fishes with a bamboo fishing pole on the banks of the Mississippi River. Gender confusion does not figure into this realistically rendered story, although there is a humorous scene in which Huck dresses like a girl. Huck and Peter Pan also share a love of adventure and a fondness for the wilderness. But while Peter has difficult relationships with Wendy and women in general, Huck generally feels a fondness toward women and a shy kind of desire to please them.

A more important difference exists between the English Victorian creation of Peter Pan and the very American boy hero of Huckleberry Finn. While Peter Pan refuses to grow up, and while the story in general hangs on to sentimental notions about childhood, Huckleberry Finn sees himself put in a situation where he has to grow up. He has to learn to consider what is valuable to him and to question the mores of the corrupt society around him. He has to learn to accept the consequences of his actions and to do the right thing to help a friend, even if that means he is doing the wrong thing according to the rest of society. Huck Finn must learn that sometimes being an adult isn’t easy and can be pretty confusing, almost as confusing as being an adolescent.

Of course, in spite of Victorian sentiments to the contrary, we know that childhood is not always an easy time and comes with its own confusing moments. Most Victorians also knew this, and indeed they lived in a society in which child labor and poverty had become side effects of the industrial age. Perhaps Victorians sentimentalized childhood as a way of protecting children in a symbolic sense, to reassure themselves that things were not as bad as they appeared.

Mark Twain also sentimentalized childhood to a point, especially in his first boyhood classic, the Adventures of Tom Sawyer. But in Huck Finn, Twain became more honest in his assessment of childhood and considered the special pain of adolescence as a time when one wrestles not just with gender identity but with a whole host of other issues central to one’s moral and intellectual identity. With Huck, Twain created the American counterpart to the English romantic heroes beloved by Tom Sawyer. Huck is adventurous, yes, but his adventures are full of real danger and serious consequences, not the stuff of pixie dust and daydreams.