The Glorious Revolution

The Glorious Revolution was the relatively peaceful overthrow of James the II by William of Orange. James the II was a catholic and also an absolutist, or for absolute monarchy. By 1686 he had this position had isolated him from both of the powerful English political parties, the Whigs were against him for ignoring parliament and limiting its power, while both the Whigs, Tories, and most of the country was against his catholicism. Still his position remained stable, because his daughter, the current heir to the throne, was a Protestant. The situation became unbalanced when he had a catholic son, as the parliament wanted to prevent a line of catholic monarchs. William, who was married to Jame's daughter Mary, informed the English people and Parliament that if he should ascend to the throne by any means, he would restrain royal power and restore Protestantism in England. He raised a large expidionary force of mercenaries, and announcing that he was coming to "negotiate" with the English King and parliament, crossed the English channel and slowly advance on London. James's position was very weak, many of the ruling class and common people joined with William, while the majority waited passively for the outcome of events. With little or no support, James eventually left the country. After a long debate parliament agreed that since the kingship had been abdicated, the crown would be given jointly to William and Mary.

This was signifigant because the will of the people was used to influence the government and remove the monarch. While William of Orange and his Dutch armada were also a large factor, the revolution was relatively little conflict because it was promoted and accepted and promoted by the majority, not only the nobles but also the common people, many of whom joined Williams army. In most revolutions the King was executed and the existing goverment scattered, however in this case James was allowed to leave the country and the goverment and the houses of parliament remained intact, the only change was the monarch. Parliament's power was also increased, since William had negotiated with them before the revolution to gain their support, or at least neutrality.

Peter Pan Critical Essay

There is a sense of wonder which comes naturally to children. The child’s world is full of secrets, in the corners of the attic, behind the locked doors and high fences, in the late night after they are in bed; there is mystery and adventure in the unknown. The world is constantly expanding, the geographies further unfolding before their infinite and voracious wonder lust, the child is a Christopher Columbus, or rather Christopher Columbus as he should have been, joyfully discovering and bounding across new continents, new worlds, dripping with experience. This sense of wonder usually becomes lost or forgotten in adulthood. James Barrie regretted this loss deeply. Peter Pan was his effort to remember and record this lost sense, giving new life to a spirit. He pulls these characters from his mind and the minds of others, embodying them in his writing, an attempt to reawaken wonder.

On attending elementary school, children are introduced to the idea that there is a known way the world works, one way, it has been tested and proven by multiple generations before them, and the people before those generations were simply ignorant. Your first grade teacher knows a great deal about it and you know very little, so you would do best to be quiet and listen. Children are given the “answers”. When nearly everything is known, and there is very little unknown, there can be no mystery, no wonder. If you cannot see it, it is not real, there is nothing real in the world that cannot be seen and documented in a rational manner. By creating these “answers”, the world is given a ceiling and a roof, which we may not climb on. We lose or forget the wonder lust which revealed the geographies of the world to us as children.

Barrie had the ability to move thoughts and ideas from his mind into the real world. Neverland and the Kensington gardens are the geographies of his mind. William Phelps writes of Barrie “he is one of those extremely rare artists who can actually embody their con­ceptions. His dreams come true. At his desk, he is visited by visions so fantastic that he must often laugh aloud in solitude; but the amazing thing is that he can make the whole world see them as he sees them.” He describes how after “lockout time” in the Kensington Gardens the park becomes the realm of the birds and the fairies, which hold banquets and dances in the fields of the park. “Long ago children were forbidden the Gardens, and at that time there was not a fairy in the place; then the children were admitted, and the fairies came trooping in that very evening. They can’t resist following the children, but you seldom see them, partly because they live in the daytime behind the railings, where you are not allowed to go, and also partly because they are so cunning”. His characters are drawn from childhood archetypes, his descriptions pull on the psyche to for the awe of a child who sees the world towering over him. The world expands again; there are secrets in intricacy and detail.

So Barrie has pulled these things from his mind, and shown them to the world. However these are “just” Barrie’s thought, however perhaps they are not only Barrie’s. Perhaps the reason his stories, along with all great stories, have such a strong pull on people is that we already know them, we have only forgotten. Even then, they are still things which are only present in the mind, in most cases the subconscious. The question of whether or not Peter Pan is of any literary significance boils down to the question of which is more important; the consciousness, or the physically present. If the physical (as in what is currently real) is what mainly matters, then Barrie was just a bit of a pedophile who wrote trite and ridiculous children’s stories, which became a permanent but equally ridiculous fad, and was probably mad. Though maybe he was mad anyway, if to be insane is to see the world “differently”. If what is in the consciousness is mainly what matters, then Barrie was probably a genius, and has had some hand in shaping the world for the better. Does the real form the consciousness or the consciousness form the real? In a letter to Barrie, Robert Louis Stevenson wrote that “the actual is not the true”. Most of Barrie’s writing is not directly social satire and or philosophy, but when I read his pages, the realities of modern society seem to stammer and dim. A man may count his gold, but he is not wealthy, he may put the crown tottering on his head, but he is not king.

J.M. Barrie Biography

James Barrie was was born in May of 1860, his father, David, was a middle class weaver, little else is generally mentioned of him. He seems to have been closest to his mother, she was mother to ten children of whom James was the ninth, two had died before he was born. Before this she had been caretaker of her own childhood household after her mother when she was eight. From all accounts she was hard working and affectionate, she told James stories of her childhood as well as Robinson Crusoe and Pilgrims Progress. She was probably the main basis of the character Wendy.

When he was six, his older brother David died in an ice skating accident two days before his fourteenth birthday. His mother was devestated, but supposedly was comforted by the thought that he would "remain a boy forevever". This had a signifigant influence on James, who continued to look upto him, idolizing to his older brother after his death; he began wearing his dead brothers brothers oversized clothes, frightening his mother. In his later writings he suggest that children who die before their fourteenth birthday remain pure and innocent forever.

Starting at age eight he was sent to attend several academies, here he became a constant reader, his favorite authors at the time were James fenimore Cooper and Robert Michael Ballantyne. He wanted to begin a career as a write after leaving these academies, but gave way to his families ambition that he attend Edinburgh University, in hopes that he would become a minister. He felt supressed or at least disinterested by adult life, he once described a nightmare he had of waking up in a bed, married. Fortunately his early writings were enough of a success to allow him to make a living and continue writing, until he became firmly established as a playwrite. His early novels were tales of childhood and Scotland, along with the tale of Tom, a young man who clings to his childhood fantasie and becomes materially and socially ruined.

Through some series of events he became married to Mary Ansell in 1891, she was an actress and met Barrie when she was cast as the lead in one of his early plays. He seems to have been fond of her, but the marriage detiorated. Barrie spent more time in the park where he befriended several of the younger patrons, participating in and recording childrens games. The closest of these friendships was with the Llewellyn Davie boys; Peter, George, Michael, John, and Nicholas, and their parents, Arthur and Sylvia. The boys were the final spark which ignited the character of Peter Pan in his mind. After the death of the boys father he became even closer to the family, taking them to his country house for the summers and giving their mother financial aid. His marriage with Mary was at this point destroyed, she had become involved with an acquantance of Barrie's and he granted her a divorce. Soon after Mrs. Llewelyn became very ill and died; Barrie claimed they had been engaged to be married, this was never confirmed.

Barrie became the godfather of the boys; , and he was able to support the boys through college. The boys grew up, though they were not allowed happy lives. George was shot and killed in World War I, Michael was drowned while swimming his first year at Oxford, Peter commited suicide in 1959. Barrie died of pneumonia in 1937, he left the rights and royalties of Peter Pan to Great Ormond Street Children's Hospital. Though the tabloids of the victorian society of he tried to escape continued to suggest that that he was a pedophile, Peter Pan had caste him as a permanent figure in english literature; he was made a baronet in 1913, and admitted into the British Order of Merit in 1922.

Peter Pan 111-197

Wendy and her brothers eventually return home because they are afraid that if they stay gone too long their parents will replace them. This is what happened to Peter, one night long before when he had attempted to fly back to his mother, he found the window had been shut; he had become completely severed from his home and mother. Though he is now carefree and thoughtless, it is suggested that this upset him considerably at the time, however he does not tell this to the children.

After leaving the children Peter promises to return to take Wendy to neverland every spring; after a few years he forgets and Wendy believes he has forgotten. Many years later when Wendy is grown up and has become a mother, Peter appears again at the window. While Peter seems unconscious that more than one spring has past, Wendy is taken by surprise. Neverland is now only a story she tells to her daughter, before Peter returned she wonders if she had only imagined the entire adventure. She ask about tinker bell and the lost boys, but finds that Peter has completely forgotten them; he merely shrugs off the question, explaining that there are lots of being born and dying constantly. This is very sad and melancholy, though also hopeful since the cycle is constantly being continued. Fairies and magic are being reformed and given new life like the passing formations of lights and clouds.

In the last third of the book is made up of the stories of Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens. These were Barrie's first conceptions of Peter Pan, however these were not merely rough drafts, the stories stand independently. According to the text he was helped in his writing by a boy he had befriended named David. He would tell David a story, who would then tell it back to him, changing it slightly and adding his own interpretations. This was probably my favorite part of the book. The concepts and characters seem to be drawn from Barrie's childhood archetypes, they pull strongly towards the child's conceptions of secrets and magic hidden just out of sight in the unknown, a sense that weakens and is lost when children grow older, the world stops expanding. Barrie regrets this loss, most of his writing here seems to be an attempt to remember these sensations and record them, and perhaps to awake them in others.

Peter Pan 45-111

Wendy becomes Peter and the lost boys' mother. Tinkerbell hates Wendy out of Wendy, when she first arrives on the island she tells the lost boys that Wendy is a bird and Peter wants them to shoot her. Toodles, who is the most gullible of the lost boys, strikes Wendy with an arrow, however she survives Tinkerbells plot and lives. The lost boys build a house around here until she is well, after which they all move into the lost boys' underground home. Wendy and the lost boys "make believe" to live in an ordinary house, and they go around pretending to do things such as eat dinner, do chores, and have school.

Peters character is a bit questionable at times; while he is often brave and heroic, he is also at times selfish and seems to border on sociopathy. He is constantly forgetting things that he is not immediately concerned with, he may forget events or people once he loses interest. He is entirely unbound by obligations of any sort, he seems to simply do whatever strikes his interest at the moment, nearly everything is a game to him. Sometimes when he and his lost boys are fighting the indians, he becomes bored and switches sides to add interest. At the same time many actions are very courageous and noble; however you always have to question whether or not he merely did it for the fun of it, and if it was only for the fun of it, does that make it wrong?

Hook is obsessed with the idea of "good form". To him this means that to do a thing well, it must not only be done, achieving the end, but it must be done in a certian and correct way. He is constantly agonized by whether or not he has done something in the correct form. He feels that all his sucess, though is the most feared of pirates, is undermined, falsified, if what he has done has not been in good form. If what he did was not in good form, then though he may have achieved a thing through some cheat or mistake, he feels he will soon be found out as a hollow fraud, without good form to back him. Most excruciating to him is that if one has to wonder whether or not one was in good form, this is inherently bad form. Even at his death, when he is knocked from his ship to the crocodile by Peter, he is gratified by the fact that Peter shows bad form by kicking instead of stabbing on his final blow.

Mentor Log, April 3, 3:15 - 5:15

This mentor meeting was also in the classroom. We discussed project ideas. I want to do something related to archetypes amd myth ideas and how they are formed, possibly a map. This may involve some sort of survey, gathering and analyzing other peoples myth conceptions and psychic images. This probably wouldn't be practical. I may try to to find and map out what my archetype ideas are, or come up with and explain some sort of method for doing this. My mentor suggested a map of hero and villian archetypes and how the connect, I may do this but it would be more interesting if the map was broader. Also I am more interested in looking at the original images and how they are formed than looking at the pre-formed categories protaganist and antagonist, which would be more of a study of literary mechanics than mythology.

Mentor Log, March 20, 3:15 - 5:15

My first meeting with my mentor was in the classroom. We spent the time editing my research paper for my final draft. This was helpful in figuring out which parts of the paper made absolutely no sense in which parts made some slight sense. We also edited for basic mistakes and reforming some sentence structures, but this was less relevant since I can do this alone.

Peter Pan 1-45

Peter Pan comes to take Wendy and the other Darling children to Neverland. This is a fairy island that exist in children's head's, somewhat outside of space and time. An assortment of magical creatures and romantic figures live on the island, such as pirates and fairies. Peter Pan is the ruler, or at least central figure, of the realm. Adventures, conflicts and extraordinary events are constantly occuring here, most of these have the feel of childs play, but can still be fatal. Things which would usually be neccesities, such as working and eating, are only lightly adhered to. They may eat an actual dinner, or they may only pretend to, as the idea is mostly what counts here.

Captain Hook is the main antagonist on the island. He commands the pirates, most of whom are not specificially from neverland, but have come to harrass and raid the island. Hook doesn't associate with his crew and considers himself to be on a different class from them. He views most of his henchment as unintelligent and classless, this seems to isolate and frustrate him. Occasionally he impales them on his hook when they are exceptionally stupid.

The only thing Hook fears is the Crocodile, who is always slowly following on his tail; when it comes to near he is reduced to an almost pitiable and pathetic state by his fear of it. He is usually able to escape however because of the watch which the crocodile has in its stomach, the ticking and tocking warns him off. Peter Pan was the one who originally gave the crocodile a taste for him, he cut off Hooks arm and threw it to the beast. Hook hates Peter for this, as well as for his "cockyness".

Even before they go there, Neverland exist in some form in all of the childrens heads, a landscape of their dreams and daydreams. The geographies and inhabitants of the neverlands are different according to the child, for example in Wendies neverland home is a house sown of leaves, whereas John's is an overturned boat on the shore, and Michael's a wig wam; also because Michael is very young, in his neverland the ground is up and the sky is down. However all the neverlands are essentially the same place, and they are all connected. However when the children actually go to neverland with Peter, finding it as a place in the "real" world, it is somewhat different. When the children had visited their own individual neverlands it had always been daytime; and while they had adventures, they were never in any real danger. In the neverland Peter has taken them too, there is both night and day, not only benevolent animals and magical creatures, but also malicious wolves and pirates.