It is as though I had withdrawn into some never-never land, the land of invisibles, of which I would know nothing had I not this faculty of remembering and imagining. Thinking annihilates temporal as well as spatial distances. I can anticipate the future, think of it as though it were already present, and I can remember the past as though it had not disappeared.

                    Hannah Arendt, The Life of the Mind

The Victorian period is the golden age of children’s literature. There is no over exaggerating how much the children of the day loved Potter, Barrie, Carroll, Burnett, and others. One can picture how nurseries littered with the precious little volumes of the tales of Peter Rabbit, so carefully crafted for little hands, must have been to each child: a private imaginarium filled with talking animals and flying friends. The nurses must have been driven mad by the stubborn spots of talcum powder and leftover fairy dust permanently wedged into carpets.

This is, of course, a romanticization. I am sure everyone’s childhood was perfectly miserable just like everyone else’s, except in retrospect. But children do not really read these books, do they? Adults do. Adults are the ones picking up the Barnes and Noble classic editions of Alice and Wonderland and Peter Pan, and most likely not to read to children. No—they read them quietly to themselves, maybe with a glass of wine or—if truly in the spirit—chocolate milk. I do not think this shift in readership can be attributed to a change in the times. I think the explanation is fairly straight-forward (it must be, as it came to me while I was in a public bathroom—a most straightforward place).

Each of these books is an adventure in imaginary suicide. Reading them is comparable to ideation—even hypothetical planning. Now, I recognize the boldness (and disturbing nature) of this claim, so I will try my best to lay out my thinking in some detail, but you will not realize that I have done so until the very end—this is not an academic paper, after all, and I am sick of thesis statements. I will not subscribe to the formula, “as evidenced by ______, ____________” or “what is at stake,” which—as sensible readers of Lewis Carroll—I am sure you will appreciate.

Onwards and upwards.

Why the Victorians and Their Predecessors Did Such Horrible Things to Children

Apart from the obvious answer, “because they hated them,” I will suggest some alternatives. You are probably familiar with the preceding literatures of Brothers Grimm and Hans Christian Andersen. You have likely had that experience in which you explain to someone who proclaims The Little Mermaid to be their fondest childhood memory (on a bad day), involving citing the latter. This is your story too, so I don’t want to presume too much, but I can guess it went something like this:

“Oh, hi Julie! Long time no see! How’s everything?”

“Oh alright, how are you?”

“I think I’ve gained three pounds in candy, but you know it happens—hey what are you supposed to be?” She asks as she tentatively wriggles her mermaid fins a little closer to the punch bowl—sure to get a skull ice cube in her orange SOLO-cup.

“I’m the Platonic form of myself.” You flip on your battery-operated Christmas light garland harness so she can observe your glowiness.

“Oh. How interesting! I think it’s good to be friends with yourself.”

If it were a joke it would have been funny, so you laugh. ¹

“I’m a mermaid!” she holds out her arms so you can observe that she is, indeed, a mermaid.

“Because you drink like a fish?”

She laughs disproportionately loudly. “Actually, The Little Mermaid has always been my favorite movie.”

“You know in the original story the mermaid’s love is unrequited so she kills herself, right?” you helpfully hand her an orange plastic knife—“Pretend to stab yourself in the breast occasionally and your costume will be extra-accurate.”

She decides to go talk to some people who appreciate how relatively well-situated their lives are.

“There’s ketchup, too!”

Are you properly ashamed? I would hope so—the Victorians would want you to be, after all, and we are going for immersion. The point is, yes—the Little Mermaid stabs herself in the heart after the prince marries someone else. Why would you read a child this story? Two reasons: one, because life is hard and the earlier they learn that the better for them. Two, because life is hard and the earlier you learn that the better for you. For a child today, I imagine this story is very confusing—they would be perfectly happy with the idea of an underwater mystical kingdom, and naturally there has to be a scary witch so the handsome prince can kill her, but he didn’t do anything he was meant to do, mommy, I don’t think I like this story.

For the children of the time, I suppose the moral was very straight-forward. Don’t go making deals with sea-witches because that’s how little girls get killed. Also, don’t go too far off into the ocean while bathing, that’s how they get you. Also, be class-conscious. Also, don’t drink potions given to you by strangers. Also, listen to your parents and wait for them to arrange a marriage for you so you don’t have to go through the trouble of offing yourself. You know, a children’s story. What did the woman (naturally) reading the story to the child get out of it? Guilt-free suicidal ideation. Heavens forbid you be unhappy with your lot in life as a 19^th-century woman, let alone talk about it. But that little mermaid, she was unhappy too. It is okay to be unhappy, it even happens to princesses of magical underwater kingdoms.

How conscious this thought pattern would have been, I can have no idea. It isn’t really subtle enough to invoke the sort of deep scrubbing of the psyche that would doubtlessly be necessary for a 19^th century woman. 20^th-century women, now, they scrubbed. They positively brillo-d. Unearthing untold varieties of brown spooge. Picking up the books from the nursery shelf they’d say—listen child, life is difficult. It is a rope of many, rough, prickly threads, knotted together so tightly you will never be able to unravel them all. But hold fast, because right now, before you go to sleep, I am going to help you weave in threads of wonder, magic, and love, so that when that rope becomes a noose around your neck, you will still be able to reach the gentle breath of my goodnight kiss. Life is hard. Life is magical. Let’s hear a story about a very special boy named Peter. Peter never wanted to grow up, and neither did I.

Mrs. Darling’s Flight to Neverland

We all know, at least to some degree, the story of Peter Pan.

What many may not know is that the story is more accurately titled the story of Peter Pan and Wendy. But perhaps the most accurate phrasing—though accurate may not be the best word at all in this case—would be the tale of Mrs. Darling. A somewhat odd claim, as we begin our story from the point of view of a very young Wendy, then Mr. Darling, then the boys, the neighbors… but not yet directly from Mrs. Darling. Her view is always elusive—Wendy describes her as

…a lovely lady, with a romantic mind and such a sweet mocking mouth. Her romantic mind was like the tiny boxes, one within the other, that come from the puzzling East, however many you discover there is always one more; and her sweet mocking mouth had one kiss on it that Wendy could never get, though there it was, perfectly conspicuous in the right-hand corner…. ²

Indeed, this elusive kiss will continue to vex Wendy, but not nearly as much as Mr. Darling who, Wendy notes, is never able to snatch it away. Mrs. Darling, however she may be occupied, has a quantum-locked kiss, hidden away the moment your lips reach the corner of her mouth. She is always projecting into the future, our lovely lady of the house—taking time out of her household accounting by drawing faceless children: her “guesses” of what any of her future children might look like. Three years later, while staring somewhere just past Wendy’s ear, she mourns the loss of the little child in front of her, wondering about and being in wonder of the potential lady of years-from-now. We do not see Mrs. Darling engaged in the present until she nods off after the busy work of tidying up her children’s minds, rummaging past games and lessons and stories—including, of course, the one about the Neverland where children never grow up. It is tiring chore and so not long before she is asleep by the fire, her sewing falling from her lap:

While she slept she had a dream. She dreamt that the Neverland had come too near and that a strange boy had broken through from it. He did not alarm her, for she thought she had seen him before in the faces of many women who have no children. Perhaps he is to be found in the faces of some mothers also. But in her dream he had rent the film that obscures the Neverland, and she saw Wendy and John and Michael peeping through the gap.

The forever-child, the playful imp with no mother but many magical friends in Neverland—the keeper of the veil between the Is and the Needn’t-Be’s and What-If’s. His existence lies not in the wonder of children, but in the imaginary, pure counter-factuals and quiet wishful thinking moments of women. Women without children, and a few women with… We cannot help but wonder—has Mrs. Darling seen Peter’s face in her own reflection? When sitting at her vanity, preparing for an evening ball that will never be, has she ever caught a glimpse of Peter’s face?

What if I’d never grown up?

What if I’d never had children?

What if my children did not need me?

What if they were gone?

What if I were gone?

These forbidden little thoughts that ghost our minds from time-to-time, harmless only when not given their proper dignity and attention. No—she insists, snapping shut her compact mirror with a puff of talcum powder—I love my family.

End of story.

Soon enough, of course, the narrative that we’ve largely become acquainted with through Disney continues—the Darling children fly away with Peter and Tink to Neverland to share in many a splendid adventure with the Lost Children. Wendy becomes the mother to the Lost Children of Neverland. Children always need a mother, see—even if only a pretend one. Because that is where stories come from. Not just the kind with narratives and characters—the living stories in which we ourselves are the protagonist.

She tells them a story about a mother named Mrs. Darling who loves her children very much. And for the first time since she was a little girl, Mrs. Darling has her own story—it is hers that our narrator sheepishly confides to like the best. This story is a nice story because, however long away the children might be, Mrs. Darling always leaves the window open—her love for her children is infinite and without condition. (Peter attempts to intercept the story of Mrs. Darling with that of his own mother who shut the window on him.) And indeed, when we come back to London we find that Mrs. Darling will not close the window for any reason. She loved her children when they were faceless drawings scribbled in the margins of a ledger—why should she love her absent children any less? All in the nursery returned to normal, all the children (except Wendy) forgot about Neverlands and fairies and a world in which children did not need their parents because they could fly.

And now, children, it is time for bed.

THE END.