Hello everyone! It’s Phoebe back with another post for you! Today I would like to discuss the character of Wendy Darling from Peter Pan. As some of you may know, a couple of weeks ago I played Wendy in a middle school production of the play and because of this she’s been on my mind a lot lately so I thought I would share with you a character profile on from what I’ve found in reading the script and in being familiar with the original book and movie. Let’s get onto this!
Wendy Darling is the twelve or thirteen year old girl who goes with Peter to Neverland and finds herself stepping into the role of mother to the clan of orphans called lost boys of whom Peter is the leader. Wendy is quite pleased with the responsibility as she has always thought of herself as motherly and already has experience with taking care of and telling stories to her younger brothers John and Michael. Stricken with some feelings for Peter, she asks if, since she’s the mother, he would be the father. Peter agrees “so long as it’s only make believe”. Throughout the show we see that Peter is somewhat conflicted about whether to love Wendy as she does him. Love is such a grown-up emotion to him that he finds it very hard to participate in although we see that he does care for the lost boys, Wendy, Michael and John. But even when he was playing the father figure, in the book, Peter declared to Wendy “but you will be my mother too”. After a while, Wendy decides that she must leave Neverland with her brothers and go back home. One major question that I’ve kind of wrestled with in trying to figure out Wendy as a character is why does she seem so perfectly inclined to fly to Neverland with a strange boy she just met? There are a few possible answers or explanations to this question. First off, in the book Neverland is supposed to represent imagination. It is described as a place that children go to when they dream and in the beginning of the book, Wendy and her brothers already are vaguely familiar with Neverland and Wendy even has a slight recollection of Peter when she wakes up in the middle of the night and finds him in the nursery. So maybe Neverland and this strange boy in her room aren’t all as foreign to her as we think it is. Plus, we see that Wendy is on the brink of growing up--in the movie, her father is going to make her leave the nursery, and we see that Wendy is very proper and mature. Perhaps seeing Peter and being invited to a place where she will never grow up stirs up some feelings about not wanting to grow up or being sad that she may have to leave behind the world of stories and endless imagination. Though this is a pretty deep theory, I’ve found that it’s hinted at throughout the show and it’s especially evident in her feelings for Peter. Now, while this may seem like a love story it’s much more than that. One way I can illustrate that is by posing the question, why would Wendy leave Peter if it’s clear she loves him? Maybe Peter Pan is supposed to represent Wendy’s childhood and in deciding to leave Peter, that’s a metaphor for deciding to grow up. We see that Wendy’s always had a dream of being a mother (this is evident from the very beginning of the story where she and John are “playing at being mother and father”), and if she was to stay with Peter, she would probably have to give up on that dream as Peter is unable to grow up. Wendy wants someone to love her in a way that is too much of a grown up emotion for Peter to want to or perhaps even be able to give. If Wendy had stayed with Peter Pan, I don’t think it would’ve ended up as a perfect fairy tale ending that we think of if we say that we wanted Peter and Wendy to end up together. I think if Wendy had stayed, her role would still have been to care for Peter and the lost boys, nothing more. And in the book we are told that Peter Pan “disposes of” anyone in his clan that show signs of growing up which would mean Wendy is in trouble. Although in Neverland Wendy gets to pretend to be the mother, it just isn’t enough to satisfy a deeply set desire to be a real one someday. And maybe getting to play at being the mother made her realize even more how much she wanted to be one. Thank you for reading! I hope you enjoyed this type of post and if you did, please leave a comment below letting us know and we may upload more of these character profiles.
1 Comment
rose e.
3/27/2018 10:16:16 am
Have you read the original book Peter Pan by J.M. Barry? The book goes into more detail about Wendy leaving with Peter Pan and also shares more about Peter through Mrs. Darling.
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