THE BOY WHO MUST NOT GROW UP: GERALDINE MCCAUGHREAN'S TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY PETER PAN

Abstract

The centenary of J.M. Barrie's 1906 Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens was marked by the publication of an official sequel, Geraldine McCaughrean's Peter Pan in Scarlet in 2006. This article traces the fruitful relationship between McCaughrean's novel and its illustrious predecessor, with particular attention to Barrie's 1911 version of the story, Peter and Wendy. While it acknowledges Peter Pan's powerful hold on our collective imaginary as the puer aeternus, McCaughrean's sensitive engagement with the original material is a testimony both to her talent and to the modernity of Barrie's text. In fact, Peter Pan in Scarlet offers compelling allusions to Lacan's theories on the formation of the subject and Butler's notion of the performativity of identity, much as Peter and Wendy provides an intuitive, artistic correlative to Freud's studies on the unconscious and on infantile sexuality. In the end, McCaughrean's emphasis on the complex articulation of the notions of gender and childhood, and her analysis of the paradoxical appeal of the myth of eternal youth, are grounded in the premises of Barrie's fictional creation. The continuity between Peter and Wendy and its twentieth-first century sequel is McCaughrean's greatest creative resource, and an invitation to re-read and celebrate Barrie's classic masterpiece.