Wilson's Hauntings: Anxiety, Technology, And Gender In Peter Pan

Ann Wilson explains the anxieties expressed in Barrie's Peter Pan as a reaction to the changes occurring in the late nineteenth/early twentieth century, and is resolved by Humphrey Carpenter who explains that this statement is linked to the desire to remain a child and avoid the real world.
In Humphrey Carpenter's Secret Gardens' section on Peter Pan, "That Terrible Masterpiece," after quoting a scene from the play in which Peter and company are eating a pretend meal, he makes an argument that, "Barrie seems to be saying that the childish imagination, splendid as it is, has the most terrible limitations, and can never (without growing up) come to terms with the real world." This idea connects to Ann Wilson 's Hauntings: Anxiety, Technology, and Gender in Peter Pan. Wilson argues that, confronted with the industrial revolution and its progression combined with social issues at the turn of the century in 1900, "Barrie's response is anxious and nostalgic, the desire to return to an imagined past of stability that, if it ever existed, is impossible to recuperate," reflecting the desire to remain a child and avoid confronting reality.

In Hollandale’s article, it states: “tension between change and changelessness” (x). We can then connect this thought to Wilson’s article, which states: “The familiar, and now both familiar and unfamiliar, generates anxiety (595). These two quotes demonstrate the fear and anxiety of change and growing up. If you stay a child, you will not have to take part of either action. Instead, you will be in a world full of fun, have no responsibilities, and stay oblivious to the