Customer Reviews

The Case of Peter Pan, or the Impossibility of Children's Fiction (New Cultural Studies)

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This book is a very well-written and brilliantly argued engagement with an important and under-theorized topic. If you like literary theoretical work that challenges assumptions about childhood, desire, culture, and reading, you should check the book out. On the other hand, if you aren't into psychoanalytic work, this book will not be your cup of tea. In the book Rose discusses the way in which Peter Pan has become a cultural phenomenon unto itself, and argues that the obsession with innocence and eternal childhood reveals not something about children necessarily, but rather something about the investment adults have in childhood. Rose wants to interrogate children's fiction as a phenomenon produced by adults. She is very concerned about the specter of child abuse, and this book is her contribution to understanding this phenomenon and its proliferation better. This may be a difficult set of ideas for many to understand, since her argument flies in the face of deeply-cherished assumptions about childhood (many of which indeed play a part in the deep problems our culture has in ethical relations to children). But it is precisely this phenomenon of emotional and peremptory devotion to the idea of innocence that Rose argues gets in the way of a useful understanding of how child sexual abuse operates. This book also delves into the history of Peter Pan and children's fiction in general, which is fascinating.

Jacqueline Rose has done some serious scholarship in literary criticism, but this work is dubious, at best. I'm not sure why she misses the mark so poorly in this extended essay on the link between children's fiction and the publishing industry. But the work is very un-focused and rather trite. The approach is a bit dated, and I can imagine that perhaps the book is more an extended discourse on the theoretical apparatus that she seems to be enamored with rather than a solid interpretation of Peter Pan. The book is really an odd one, and it left me feeling so disgusted that I did not wish to finish the tome. Although, the other reviewers are a bit too vituperative in their critique, this book really strikes me as somewhat immature.

Rose's analysis is dubious. She attempts to make the claim that Barrie created a new genre of fantasy with the publication of Peter Pan. The problem is that Barrie's books about Peter Pan are actually components of a genre well-studied and documented for hundreds of years. Even a cursory read of scholarship in folklore would have clearly demonstrated to Rose that Peter Pan is a Marchen, a genre of folklore in which a poor, obscure hero is called to complete acts of bravery in a land of fantasy and magic. There are numerous other problems with her analysis. Even reading this study as an essay on contemporary social issues is a confusing exercise, at best, because Rose's style tends to obfuscate rather than to provide any semblance of clarity. Sorry to be so critical of literary criticism, but incoherence and bad writing simply do not belong in scholarly discourse.

The book is absurd. Rose reifies "culture," assuming that it is a property of "children" or "adults." As a result, she fails to recognize that the process of enculturation is actually a sharing of cultural resources rather than a colonialist imposition of cultural hegemony. Furthermore in using Freudian psychoanalysis, she undermines her counterhegemonic cultural critique, as Freud, himself, maintained a view that "the child" is less than the civilized adult. As a result of these two fatal errors, her analysis is bogus.

I am amazed that a book this bad was even written, let alone published and bought. Rose develops an incoherent analysis of children's literature that is an olio of deconstructionist literature theory, formalism, psychoanalytical musing, and neomarxism. The main argument, if there is one, is that children's literature is a form of child molestation. This book is an insult to the agony of the millions of children who suffer from the devasting psychological consequences of child molestation. As this book is sometimes assigned in courses in cultural studies, it is a sad indicator of how inane attempts to be provocative are now passing for "scholarship." Why can't books be given negative scores?

I am a high school student and I am not ashamed to say that i have an affinity for children's literature, particularly english, such as Alice in Wonderland, Harry Potter (all of them), and especially PETER PAN. This literature contains a magic that this author proceeds to bash at every chance she gets. I mean, are children supposed to read about oil spills and war? Preserve the magic of childhood people!