“Father’s a Cowardly Custard”: Peter Pan and the Crisis of Victorian Fatherhood

Abstract

This article deals with the presence of Victorian ideas about fatherhood in Peter Pan’s story. While motherhood in J. M. Barrie’s classic creation has been thoroughly analyzed, the strategic role of the sole father figure has been neglected, mostly because of his alleged identification with the character of Captain Hook. It will be argued that Mr. Darling’s failure as a father is the major plot trigger and is key to understanding some essential aspects of Peter Pan himself. What Barrie created is actually a dramatic embodiment of masculine anxieties around family roles in the late-Victorian and Edwardian periods.