Peter Pan (Peter and Wendy)

Summary

Peter and Wendy, the 1911 novel that grew out of J. M. Barrie's play Peter Pan, opens in the London nursery of the Darling family: Mr. Darling, a clerk anxious about money and dignity; Mrs. Darling, who tidies her children's minds each night; Wendy, John and Michael; and Nana, a Newfoundland dog who serves as their nurse. Mrs. Darling finds the name Peter in her children's thoughts and later sees a strange boy at the nursery window; Nana snaps the window shut on his shadow. One evening Mr. Darling plays a trick with his medicine, pours it into Nana's bowl, and in a temper chains the dog in the yard. With Nana gone, Peter Pan returns for his shadow. Wendy sews it back on, and Peter, who ran away as a baby so that he would never grow up, invites her to the Neverland to be a mother to the Lost Boys and tell them stories. With fairy dust from his jealous fairy, Tinker Bell, the three children fly out of the window: second to the right, and straight on till morning. On the island Tinker Bell tricks the Lost Boy Tootles into shooting Wendy with an arrow; an acorn button Peter gave her as a kiss saves her life, and the boys build a little house around her where she lies. The children settle into the home under the ground, entered through hollow trees. Adventures follow: at the Mermaids' Lagoon Peter saves the princess Tiger Lily from the pirates and is wounded by Captain Hook, whose right hand Peter once cut off and fed to a crocodile that has since swallowed a clock; the Never bird floats her nest to the stranded Peter. Wendy keeps house, doses the boys with medicine and tells them the story of a family whose children flew away, which makes John and Michael realise they are forgetting home. When the children decide to return, the pirates defeat the tribe guarding the house and carry off Wendy and the boys. Hook poisons Peter's medicine, Tinker Bell drinks it to save him, and Peter begs children everywhere to clap if they believe in fairies, which revives her. Peter boards the Jolly Roger, kills pirates one by one in the dark cabin, and duels Hook, who, kicked overboard by Peter at the last, falls into the crocodile's jaws. The children fly home, where Mr. Darling has been living in Nana's kennel in penance, and the Lost Boys are adopted. Peter refuses to stay and grow up. He returns for Wendy's spring cleaning, then forgets; Wendy grows up and marries, and Peter later carries off her daughter Jane, and then Jane's daughter Margaret, so long as children are gay and innocent and heartless. The book was published in 1911 by Hodder and Stoughton in London and Scribner's in New York, with illustrations by F. D. Bedford.

Top Lessons

• Growing up is a loss and a gift

  Wendy learns at two that she must grow up, and the book ends with her grown, her hair turning white, watching her daughter fly away. Peter never grows up, but he also forgets his friends, his adventures and even Tinker Bell. Barrie lets readers feel the sadness of leaving childhood while showing that only those who grow up can love and remember.

• A mother's love keeps the window open

  While her children are gone, Mrs. Darling keeps the nursery window open and waits. Wendy's bedtime story about the mother who always left the window open for her children is what calls John and Michael home. The book treats a mother's faithful waiting as stronger than all the magic of the Neverland.

• Saying sorry the hard way

  Mr. Darling plays a mean trick on Nana and chains her outside, and that night his children fly away. Ashamed, he crawls into Nana's kennel and lives there, even riding to the office in it, until they come home. His penance is comic, but it is real repentance: he takes the blame on himself instead of making excuses.

• Courage in danger

  On Marooners' Rock Peter is afraid for the first time, yet he stands up straight as the water rises. On the pirate ship Wendy refuses to join the pirates and walks toward the plank telling the boys their mothers hope they will die like English gentlemen. Barrie gives his young heroes real danger and lets them meet it bravely.

Verified Quotes

Medical Lens

Medicine runs through the book as a domestic comedy of the Edwardian nursery, where children were dosed from bottles and the father boasts of having taken his own medicine without a murmur. Nana the dog is the nursery nurse, and Wendy's mothering of the Lost Boys includes giving them medicine, which the narrator says she gave too often. Hook's plot turns the household dose into poison: he drops a lethal drug into the cup Wendy left for Peter, and Tinker Bell's drinking it and reviving through the children's belief is the book's death-and-recovery scene. When Wendy is shot, Slightly is sent to fetch a doctor and plays one, a child's imitation of the family doctor's visit. Outside the text, Barrie's 1929 gift of the Peter Pan copyright to Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children is a notable episode in the history of hospital philanthropy.

• Chapter I

  The narrator compares a child's mind to the maps doctors draw of other parts of the body, introducing the Neverland as a map of the mind.

• Chapter II

  Mr. Darling's medicine trick: he dodges his own dose by pouring it into Nana's bowl, and the quarrel ends with Nana chained outside.

• Chapter VI

  After Wendy is shot, Slightly is sent for a doctor and returns in John's hat pretending to be one, taking her temperature with a glass thing.

• Chapter XIII

  Hook poisons the medicine cup by Peter's bed; Tinker Bell drinks it, her light fades, and the children's clapping restores her.