In Peter Pan by Geraldine McCaughrean, the young protagonist Wendy Darling struggles with the ideals of growing up and being a woman. Wendy wishes to grow up and become a novelist, however, her aunt Millicent, constantly reprimands her and tells her that her dreams of becoming a novelist are childish and irrelevant. Thus, making Wendy question her future. Wendy who has an overactive imagination spends her days telling her younger brothers, John and Michael, magical stories about fairies and pirates, with all three of them acting as the main characters. One night while Wendy is asleep in bed, she awakens to find a young boy watching her sleep. Wendy can’t stop thinking about the boy who flew through her window who managed to escape leaving behind his shadow.However, the boy returns every night into the nursery where Wendy and her brothers slumber. One night, all three Darling children are awoken by the antics of the boy - Peter - and his fairy friend - Tinker-bell, and are amazed by their ability to fly. Peter, convinces, Wendy, John and little Michael to join him in a magical adventure to a place called, Nederland. Once in Nederland, the children are in awe of the magical island they have been taken …show more content…
Nederland only came to life because of the stories told to John and Michael by their sister, Wendy. Nederland is a mystical place where Peter and those who live there have eternal childhood. Therefore, I believe that Wendy, has bought Nederland to life from her own imagination, because like Peter Pan, she wishes to never grow up. She loathes the idea of growing up and being an adult. Therefore, she invented Nederland, and all its inhabitants based on her fears of growing up. It is a place she describes as an island that only comes to life when Peter Pan is there. In Peter’s absence the place is quiet. The novel states that when Peter is away from the island “the fairies take an hour longer in the morning, the beasts attend to their young, the redskins feed heavily for six days, and when pirates and the lost boys meet they merely bite their thumbs at each other”. However, when Peter returns “you can put your ear to the ground” and “you would hear the island seething with life”. Peter returns home (Nederland) with Wendy and her younger brothers, where he tells her about all the inhabitants of the island. The inhabitants that he described are exactly the same as the ones told in Wendy’s own stories that she made up. Thus, cementing the fact that Peter Pan and Nederland is all a figment of Wendy’s imagination and fear of growing up and dealing with what she constantly states as ‘adult