I knew you
Tried to change the ending
Peter losing Wendy, I
Knew you
Leavin’ like a father
Running like water, I
And when you are young, they assume you know nothing.
Taylor Swift’s evocative lyrics in ‘cardigan’ – “Peter losing Wendy” – serve as a potent invitation to revisit a story deeply embedded in our cultural consciousness: Peter and Wendy. This seemingly simple line from a pop song encourages us to delve beyond the sugar-coated, often romanticized versions of our childhood and confront the more nuanced, and perhaps unsettling, undertones of J.M. Barrie’s 1911 novel.
The lyric itself is rich with ambiguity, sparking immediate questions. Did Peter attempt to alter a positive outcome, inadvertently leading to Wendy’s loss? Or did he fail to avert a predetermined fate where “Peter losing Wendy” was always the inevitable conclusion? Perhaps he tried to change a negative ending, but Wendy was lost regardless. This very ambiguity, however, becomes a compelling entry point into a deeper exploration of the Peter Wendy narrative.
Our collective memory of Peter Pan is largely shaped by Disney’s 1953 animated film. This version typically concludes with Wendy’s enthusiastic return home, filled with tales of Neverland adventures. However, Barrie’s original novel presents a starkly different, more melancholic ending. Peter promises Wendy an annual return to Neverland for “spring-cleaning time,” but despite her hopeful anticipation in a new dress, he fails to appear. This poignant scene echoes the themes of longing and unfulfilled promises found in Swift’s own songs like ‘All Too Well (10 Minute Version)’ and ‘The Moment I Knew’ – the solitary figure waiting, dressed for a celebration that never materializes.
Years later, Peter does return, only to find Wendy transformed – a married woman. To him, she is “no more to her than a little dust in the box in which she had kept her toys.” His reaction is not one of understanding, but of shock and anger at her audacity to grow up. A powerful internal conflict is revealed within Wendy, an inner voice crying out, “Woman, woman, let go of me.” This image of Wendy’s trapped inner child is profoundly haunting, highlighting the sacrifices and compromises often demanded by adulthood, especially for women.
Sobbing at Wendy’s transformation, Peter is comforted by her, and then, in a cyclical continuation, Wendy offers her daughter, Jane, as a replacement, to fly to Neverland with Peter for spring cleaning. This pattern repeats, generation after generation, with Jane’s daughter Margaret then taking her turn, “every spring-cleaning time, except when he forgets.” The narrator concludes this unsettling cycle with the jarring statement that it will continue “so long as children are gay and innocent and heartless.”
Wendy, John, and Michael Darling look out the window in Peter Pan
Ending a children’s novel with the assertion of children’s heartlessness is undeniably provocative. Barrie’s Peter and Wendy is interwoven with a surprising undercurrent of criticism directed at both adults and children. This complexity, often overlooked, makes it a curious choice for a children’s classic. It’s understandable why Disney streamlined the narrative, omitting much of its depth (though regrettably retaining its problematic racial elements), and reshaping the Peter-Wendy dynamic into a more conventional youthful romance.
However, Swift’s lyrical reference brings back some of this crucial complexity. Having seemingly moved beyond the romanticization of perpetual youth evident in her earlier work like Speak Now, Swift, in ‘cardigan’, coupled with the line “leaving like a father, running like water,” and within the context of the Betty-James-Augustine love triangle (where infidelity is implied), reframes the Peter Wendy story. It becomes a narrative about a thoughtless, self-centered man-child, shirking responsibility and refusing to mature. This resonates with the concept of ‘Peter Pan syndrome’ in popular psychology, which describes individuals, often exhibiting traits akin to narcissistic personality disorder, who resist growing up and embracing adult responsibilities.
Swift is not alone in re-evaluating the Peter Pan narrative through a modern, particularly feminist, lens. British singer-songwriter Maisie Peters, in her 2023 song ‘Wendy’ (from her album The Good Witch), takes this reinterpretation even further than Swift. She explicitly connects Peter Pan syndrome to potentially damaging and unequal gender dynamics. In the chorus, Peters sings to a lover, “you could take me to Neverland, baby/We could live off of magic and maybes.” Yet, the speaker is acutely aware of the unrealistic nature of this romantic fantasy. She recognizes the underlying truth: “Behind every lost boy, there’s always a Wendy” – a figure who undertakes the emotional labor of guiding and supporting him, until he inevitably loses interest and “wanders back to the forest.” In this dynamic, Wendy sacrifices her own aspirations and potential:
Take the hand and go with him
Be the clock that he watches
Wait until he gets bored and
Wanders back to the forest
Lose the world that you live in
Pretend that it’s what you wanted
It’s a life I could have, I know.
The song’s speaker clearly perceives this potential future and expresses her fear: “if I’m not careful, I’ll wake up and we’ll be married, and I’ll still flinch at the sound of a door.” The line “It gets old being forever 20,” is ambiguous, possibly reflecting her own weariness or her observation of his arrested development.
For Peters, the pivotal lines appear early in the song: “Lost my page when you kissed me, now I remember the whole book – she almost loses her way ’cause she followed him after one look.” This encapsulates the experience of many women who, swept up in romantic ideals and fairytale fantasies, find themselves enmeshed in unequal relationships, losing sight of their own paths.
However, Peters has “remembered the whole book,” urging listeners to do the same. We need to look beyond the romanticized notions of adventure and nostalgia often associated with Peter Pan and delve into the power dynamics inherent in Barrie’s creation and its problematic legacy. ‘Wendy’ becomes a contemporary Peter Pan for a feminist generation attuned to concepts like weaponized incompetence and the unequal distribution of mental load in relationships.
The Wendy in Peters’ song makes a decisive choice: “so I’ll lock the window and turn on the AC/You’ll throw your rocks and you’ll scream that you hate me.” Peter Pan’s iconic entry through the window, present in both Barrie’s novel and the Disney film, becomes a symbol of intrusion that Wendy now rejects, turning her back on him and all that he represents. This resonates strongly with the sentiment expressed at the conclusion of Swift’s song ‘Peter,’ from The Tortured Poets Department. After repeated waiting and disappointment, she finally relinquishes the hope of his maturation and return:
And I won’t confess that I waited
But I let the lamp burn
As the men masqueraded
I hoped you’d return
With your feet on the ground
Tell me all that you’d learned
Cause love’s never lost when perspective is earned
And you said you’d come and get me but you were 25
And the shelf life of those fantasies has expired
Lost to the lost boys chapter of your life
Forgive me Peter, please know that I tried
To hold onto the days when you were mine
But the woman who sits by the window has turned out the light.
“Lost to the lost boys chapter” – Swift’s Peter mirrors Peters’ Peter, a figure perpetually wandering in the forest, leaving Wendy in a cycle of anticipation and ultimate disillusionment.
Both artists’ speakers refuse to accept this fate. Swift “turns out the light” – symbolically extinguishing the romanticized fantasy, and arguably, illuminating the harsh realities of the situation. She subjects the idealized dynamics of Barrie’s classic to scrutiny, revealing their flaws. Peters’ song concludes with a lingering, defiant question, “What about my wings? What about Wendy?”
Indeed, what about Wendy? While Barrie’s novel was originally titled Peter and Wendy, it is now predominantly known and referred to simply as Peter Pan. However, thanks to artists like Peters and Swift, Wendy is experiencing a resurgence. This moment underscores the power and significance of adaptation.
Adaptation functions as both a tribute to a source text and a critical interrogation of it. Adaptations are not passive derivations; they engage in a dialogue with their originals. Peter and Wendy, and Swift’s and Peters’ songs, enrich each other reciprocally. They allow us to understand and question both the reimagined narrative and its origin. We can appreciate the nostalgia for a beloved childhood classic while, as adults, becoming aware of its more poignant, even troubling, undertones.
Swift and Peters highlight the pitfalls of adhering to outdated gender roles perpetuated by fairytales and children’s literature – a theme Swift explored earlier in ‘White Horse’ – and the tendency of older works to reinforce patriarchal ideologies detrimental to women’s well-being. It’s time to move beyond romanticizing men who resist growing up. It’s not charming or endearing; it is often a privilege afforded by the invisible labor of women who handle the adult responsibilities, women who, conversely, are often forced to grow up prematurely. Does the fairytale truly rescue the damsel in distress, or does it, in fact, perpetuate her distress in the long run?
Johannes Fehrle observes that perceptions of “original” texts are inevitably shaped by subsequent adaptations, making a return to a purely original interpretation impossible. In the case of Peter and Wendy, this might be a positive development. It’s a story that should not be confined to Neverland, eternally youthful and unquestioned. Instead, it is one of many narratives we must continually revisit and critically examine in the twenty-first century.
We must persistently ask: What about Wendy?
