Peter Pan Stereotypes

Wendy stays in the home underground and mends socks, cleans, and cooks while all the little boys go out on adventures. This is just one example of the gender stereotyping found in Peter and Wendy or Peter Pan by J.M. Barrie. Peter Pan has elusive origins, much like the character himself. As Jonathan Padley puts it, “Peter is a character with no distinct beginning” (Padley 275). The story has taken many forms over the last hundred years, and will continue to proliferate thanks to Disney. In all of the versions, Peter Pan is a little boy of about six years old, “had all his first teeth”, who lives in Neverland (Barrie 15). Neverland is “Peter’s male-centered fantasy island” (Shipley 154) filled with pirates, mermaids, fairies, ‘redskins’, and

The fairies, the mermaids, and Tiger Lily, the redskin chief’s daughter. These characters are mainly there for Peter’s enjoyment and entertainment, and to support him on his adventures. Tinkerbell is a womanly fairy. Tink is jealous and scheming towards Wendy because of Peter’s interest in Wendy, and stories, even today, often have women in competition over a boy or man. Tink loves Peter but the young boy is not aware, and he mostly laughs at Tink at her expense. Tiger Lily plays the damsel in the distress who has to be rescued from the pirates by Peter, and then starts to fall for him as well. She is also an object of exchange between the pirates and Peter, and after her rescue, the redskins respect Peter even more. The mermaids, who are hypersexual and beautiful women, also play a role in Peter’s adventures, but don’t seem to serve any other purpose. In an essay titled “Fairies, Mermaids, Mothers: Sexual Differences and Gender Roles in Peter Pan”, Heather Shipley explains many of the stories’ issues surrounding these characters. Her main argument, based on psychoanalytic theories, is that women serve as objects in male-dominated trades. In this critique, women only exist in relation to men and can only take on certain roles such as wife, mother, or princess, rather than subjects in their own right. Shipley also notes these characters’ lack of speech, and thus lack of voice, subjectivity, and importance, and their “otherness” since Tink and the mermaids are not human and Tiger Lily is from another race and class (Shipley 157). These female characters all have roles of subordination to Peter and the other male characters. Their role is more as objects than as subjects, and they often support and admire Peter’s