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urce: Expert Group Report on Financial Requirements for making Elementary Education a ndamental Right (Tapas Majumdar Committee), MHRD, 1999. do Mestrado Universidade Lusófona de Humanidades e Tecnologias, Lisboa, Portugal Email: [email protected] USA

EPAA is published by the Education Policy Studies Laboratory, Arizona State University

Communications Skills – The Importance of Removing Barriers Problems with communication can pop-up at every stage of the communication process (which consists of the sender, encoding, the channel, decoding, the receiver, feedback and the context – see the diagram below). At each stage, there is the potential for misunderstanding and confusion.

To be an effective communicator and to get your point across without misunderstanding and confusion, your goal should be to lessen the frequency of problems at each stage of this process, with clear, concise, accurate, well-planned communications. We follow the process through below: Source... As the source of the message, you need to be clear about why you're communicating, and what you want to communicate. You also need to be confident that the information you're communicating is useful and accurate.

Message... The message is the information that you want to communicate. Encoding... This is the process of transferring the information you want to communicate into a form that can be sent and correctly decoded at the other end. Your success in encoding depends partly on your ability to convey information clearly and simply, but also on your ability to anticipate and eliminate sources of confusion (for example, cultural issues, mistaken assumptions, and missing information.) A key part of this is knowing your audience: Failure to understand who you are communicating with will result in delivering messages that are misunderstood. Channel... Messages are conveyed through channels, with verbal channels including face-to-face meetings, telephone and videoconferencing; and written channels including letters, emails, memos and reports. Different channels have different strengths and weaknesses. For example, it's not particularly effective to give a long list of directions verbally, while you'll quickly cause problems if you give someone negative feedback using email. Decoding... Just as successful encoding is a skill, so is successful decoding (involving, for example, taking the time to read a message carefully, or listen actively to it.) Just as confusion can arise from errors in encoding, it can also arise from decoding errors. This is particularly the case if the decoder doesn't have enough knowledge to understand the message. Receiver... Your message is delivered to individual members of your audience. No doubt, you have in mind the actions or reactions you hope your

message will get from this audience. Keep in mind, though, that each of these individuals enters into the communication process with ideas and feelings that will undoubtedly influence their understanding of your message, and their response. To be a successful communicator, you should consider these before delivering your message, and act appropriately. Feedback... Your audience will provide you with feedback, as verbal and nonverbal reactions to your communicated message. Pay close attention to this feedback, as it is the only thing that can give you confidence that your audience has understood your message. If you find that there has been a misunderstanding, at least you have the opportunity to send the message a second time. Context... The situation in which your message is delivered is the context. This may include the surrounding environment or broader culture (corporate culture, international cultures, and so on). Removing Barriers at All These Stages To deliver your messages effectively, you must commit to breaking down the barriers that exist within each of these stages of the communication process. Let’s begin with the message itself. If your message is too lengthy, disorganized, or contains errors, you can expect the message to be misunderstood and misinterpreted. Use of poor verbal and body language can also confuse the message. Barriers in context tend to stem from senders offering too much information too fast. When in doubt here, less is oftentimes more. It is best to be mindful of the demands on other people’s time, especially in today’s ultra-busy society. Once you understand this, you need to work to understand your audience’s culture, making sure you can converse and deliver your message to people of different backgrounds and cultures within your own organization, in your country and even abroad

MindTools.com - Join Our Community! The first skill that you'll learn in this section is 'How to Make a Great First Impression": This is essential if you're going to have the chance to communicate your message. To read this, click 'Next article' below. Other relevant destinations are shown in the "Extension Resources" list underneath. Spread the word:

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Extension Resources (Not included in the Mind Tools E-book.) * Shows articles available in full only to Career Excellence Club Premium members Empathic Listening - Going beyond active listening* Assertiveness - Working WITH people not against them* Delivering Great Presentations - Communicating effectively* Managing Presentation Nerves - Coping with the fear within Facilitation - Guiding an event through to a successful conclusion Giving and Receiving Feedback - Keeping team member performance high* 360 Degree Feedback - Encourage teamwork and improve performance* AIDA: Attention-Interest-Desire-Action - Inspiring action with your writing Questioning Techniques - Asking questions effectively Keep It Simple - Avoiding confusion and complexity* Creating a Value Proposition - Clearly communicating benefits* Dealing with Unfair Criticism - Responding rationally to unwarranted criticism* Charts and Graphs - Choosing the right format Chunking - Grouping information so it's more easily understood

The Rhetorical Triangle - Making your writing credible, appealing and logical* Role Playing - Preparing for difficult conversations and situations Powers of Persuasion - Understanding the dos and don'ts of persuading* Communicating in a Crisis - Don't shut down communication* Communicating Internationally* Cross Culture Communication - Collaborative efforts a must!* Communicating in Your Organization Communications Planning - Getting the right message over, in the right way* Concept Attainment - Reaching a shared understanding of important ideas* Jargon Busting - Communicating without creating barriers* Neuro-Linguistic Programming - Achieving excellence in communication * Delivering Bad News* The Johari Window Creating Better Understanding Between Individuals and Groups The Johari Window is a communication model that can be used to improve understanding between individuals within a team or in a group setting. Based on disclosure, self-disclosure and feedback, the Johari Window can also be used to improve a group's relationship with other groups Developed by Joseph Luft and Harry Ingham (the word “Johari” comes from Joseph Luft and Harry Ingham), there are two key ideas behind the tool: 1. That individuals can build trust between themselves by disclosing information about themselves; and 2. That they can learn about themselves and come to terms with personal issues with the help of feedback from others. By explaining the idea of the Johari Window to your team, you can help team members understand the value of self-disclosure, and gently encourage people to give and accept feedback. Done sensitively, this can help people build more-trusting relationships

with one another, solve issues and work more effectively as a team. Explaining the Johari Window: The Johari Window model consists of a foursquare grid (think of taking a piece of paper and dividing it into four parts by drawing one line down the middle of the paper from top to bottom, and another line through the middle of the paper from side-to-side). This is shown in the diagram below:

Using the Johari model, each person is represented by their own four-quadrant, or four-pane, window. Each of these contains and represents personal information – feelings, motivation – about the person, and shows whether the information is known or not known by themselves or other people. The four quadrants are: Quadrant 1: Open Area What is known by the person about him/herself and is also known by others. Quadrant 2: Blind Area, or "Blind Spot"

What is unknown by the person about him/herself but which others know. This can be simple information, or can involve deep issues (for example, feelings of inadequacy, incompetence, unworthiness, rejection) which are difficult for individuals to face directly, and yet can be seen by others. Quadrant 3: Hidden or Avoided Area What the person knows about him/herself that others do not. Quadrant 4: Unknown Area What is unknown by the person about him/herself and is also unknown by others. The process of enlarging the open quadrant vertically is called selfdisclosure, a give and take process between the person and the people he/she interacts with. As information is shared, the boundary with the hidden quadrant moves downwards. And as other people reciprocate, trust tends to build between them. Tip 1: Don’t be rash in your self-disclosure. Disclosing harmless items builds trust. However, disclosing information which could damage people’s respect for you can put you in a position of weakness. Using the Tool: The process of enlarging the open quadrant horizontally is one of feedback. Here the individual learns things about him- or her-self that others can see, but he or she can’t. Tip 2: Be careful in the way you give feedback. Some cultures have a very open and accepting approach to feedback. Others don’t. You can cause incredible offence if you offer personal feedback to someone

who’s not used to it. Be sensitive, and start gradually. If anyone is interested in learning more about this individual, they reciprocate by disclosing information in their hidden quadrant. For example, the first participant may disclose that he/she is a runner. The other participant may respond by adding that he/she works out regularly at the local gym, and may then disclose that the gym has recently added an indoor jogging track for winter runners. As your levels of confidence and self-esteem rises, it is easier to invite others to comment on your blind spots. Obviously, active and empathic listening skills are useful in this exercise. The Johari Window in a Team Context Keep in mind that established team members will have larger open areas than new team members. New team members start with smaller open areas because little knowledge about the new team member has yet been shared. The size of the Open Area can be expanded horizontally into the blind space, by seeking and actively listening to feedback from other group members. Group members should strive to assist a team member in expanding their Open Area by offering constructive feedback. The size of the Open Area can also be expanded vertically downwards into the hidden or avoided space by the sender’s disclosure of information, feelings, etc about himself/herself to the group and group members. Also, group members can help a person expand their Open Area into the hidden area by asking the sender about himself/herself. Managers and team leaders play a key role here, facilitating feedback and disclosure among group members, and by providing constructive feedback to individuals about their own blind areas. Key Points: In most cases, the aim in groups should be to develop the Open Area for every person.

Working in this area with others usually allows for enhanced individual and team effectiveness and productivity. The Open Area is the ‘space’ where good communications and cooperation occur, free from confusion, conflict and misunderstanding. Self-disclosure is the process by which people expand the Open Area vertically. Feedback is the process by which people expand this area horizontally. By encouraging healthy self-disclosure and sensitive feedback, you can build a stronger and more effective team. Click here for the free "Active Listening from Mind Tools" PDF, which brings together four articles on Active Listening from our May, June and July newsletters. And please feel free to email this PDF to friends, co-workers, and anyone who might be interested. (You'll need Adobe Acrobat Reader installed on your PC to open this. If you don't have it installed, visit http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/readstep2.html for the free download.) MindTools.com - Join Our Community! In the next article, learn how better to speak in public. To read this, click 'Next article' below. Other relevant destinations are shown in the "Where to go from here" list underneath. Spread the Word:

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New Articles (Not included in the Mind Tools E-book.) * Shows articles available in full only

to Career Excellence Club Premium members Empathic Listening - Going beyond active listening* Assertiveness - Working WITH people not against them* Delivering Great Presentations - Communicating effectively* Managing Presentation Nerves - Coping with the fear within Facilitation - Guiding an event through to a successful conclusion Giving and Receiving Feedback - Keeping team member performance high* 360 Degree Feedback - Encourage teamwork and improve performance* AIDA: Attention-Interest-Desire-Action - Inspiring action with your writing Questioning Techniques - Asking questions effectively Keep It Simple - Avoiding confusion and complexity* Creating a Value Proposition - Clearly communicating benefits* Dealing with Unfair Criticism - Responding rationally to unwarranted criticism* Charts and Graphs - Choosing the right format Chunking - Grouping information so it's more easily understood* The Rhetorical Triangle - Making your writing credible, appealing and logical* Role Playing - Preparing for difficult conversations and situations Powers of Persuasion - Understanding the dos and don'ts of persuading* Communicating in a Crisis - Don't shut down communication* Communicating Internationally* Cross Culture Communication - Collaborative efforts a must!* Communicating in Your Organization Communications Planning - Getting the right message over, in the right way* Concept Attainment - Reaching a shared understanding of important ideas* Jargon Busting - Communicating without creating barriers* Neuro-Linguistic Programming - Achieving excellence in communication * Delivering Bad News* Better Public Speaking and Presentation

Ensure Your Words Are Always Understood Think of the last really memorable talk or presentation that you attended. Now, was that easy to do, or did you really have to rack your brains to remember one? Sadly, too many presentations are easy to forget. And that's a big problem because the only reason the presenter gave the talk was to communicate something to you! However, there are three basic things that you can do to ensure that your verbal messages are understood – and remembered – time and time again. Although somewhat obvious and deceptively simple, these are: • • • •

Understand the purpose of the presentation Keep the message clear and concise Be prepared Be vivid when delivering the message

Understand what you want to achieve Before you start working on your talk or presentation, it's vital that you really understand what you want to say, who you want to tell and why they might want to hear it. To do this, ask yourself: Who? What? How? When? Where? Why? Who are you speaking to? What are their interests, presuppositions and values? What do they share in common with others; how are they unique? What do you wish to communicate? One way of answering this question is to ask yourself about the ‘success criteria’. How do you know if and when you have successfully communicated what you have in mind? How can you best convey your message? Language is important here, as are the nonverbal cues discussed earlier. Choose your words and your nonverbal cues with your audience in mind. Plan a beginning, middle and end. If time and place allow, consider and prepare audio-visual aids.

When? Timing is important here. Develop a sense of timing, so that your contributions are seen and heard as relevant to the issue or matter at hand. There is a time to speak and a time to be silent. ‘It’s better to be silent than sing a bad tune.’ Where? What is the physical context of the communication in mind? You may have time to visit the room, for example, and rearrange the furniture. Check for availability and visibility if you are using audio or visual aids. Why? In order to convert hearers into listeners, you need to know why they should listen to you – and tell them if necessary. What disposes them to listen? That implies that you know yourself why you are seeking to communicate – the value or worth or interest of what you are going to say. Keep it simple When it comes to wording your message, less is more. You're giving your audience headlines. They don't need to and are usually not expecting to become experts on the subject as a result of hearing your talk. If you're using slides, limit the content of each one to a few bullet points, or one statement or a very simple diagram Be prepared Preparation is underrated. In fact, it is one of the most important factors in determining your communication successes. When possible, set meeting times and speaking and presentation times well in advance, thus allowing yourself the time you need to prepare your communications, mindful of the entire communication process (source, encoding, channel, decoding, receiver, feedback and context). By paying close attention to each of these stages and preparing accordingly, you ensure your communications will be more effective and better understood. Of course, not all communications can be scheduled. In this case, preparation may mean having a good, thorough understanding of the office goings-on, enabling you to communicate with the knowledge you need to be effective, both through verbal and written communications.

Unforgettable delivery Your delivery of your speech or presentation will make or break it, no matter how well you've prepared and crafted your clear, concise message. Some useful tips for keeping your presentation vivid include: • • • • •

Use examples to bring your points to life Keep your body language up-beat – don't stay stuck behind a rostrum Don't talk to fast. Less is more here too. Pauses are effective. Use a variety of tones of voice Use visual aids. MindTools.com - Join Our Community!

In the next article in this section, we look at Active Listening - a technique for understanding what people are really saying. To read this, click 'Next article' below. Other relevant destinations are shown in the "Where to go from here" list underneath. Ice Breakers Getting everyone to contribute at the start of a successful event Ice Breakers can be an effective way of starting a training session or team-building event. As interactive and often fun sessions run before the main proceedings, they help people get to know each other and buy into the purpose of the event. If an ice breaker session is well-designed and well-facilitated, it can really help get things off to a great start. By getting to know each other, getting to know the facilitators and learning about the objectives of the event, people can become more engaged in the proceedings and so contribute more effectively towards a successful outcome. But have you ever been to an event when the ice breaker session went badly? Just as a great ice breaker session can smooth the way for a great event, so a bad ice breaker session can be a

recipe for disaster. A bad ice breaker session is at best simply a waste of time, or worse an embarrassment for everyone involved. As a facilitator, the secret of a successful icebreaking session is to keep it simple: Design the session with specific objectives in mind and make sure the session is appropriate and comfortable for everyone involved. This article helps you think through the objectives of your ice breaker session, and then suggests various types of ice breaker you might use. As a facilitator, make sure your ice breakers are remembered for the right reasons – as a great start to a great event! When to Use Icebreakers As the name suggests, an ice breaker session is designed to “break the ice” at an event or meeting. The technique is often used when people who do not usually work together, or may not know each other at all, meet for a specific, common purpose. Consider using an ice breaker when: • • • • •

Participants come from different backgrounds; People need to bond quickly so as to work towards a common goal; Your team is newly formed; The topics you are discussing are new or unfamiliar to many people involved; or As facilitator you need to get to know participants and have them know you better. So What’s the “Ice”?

When designing your ice breaker, think about the “ice” that needs to be broken. If you are bringing together like-minded people, the “ice” may simply reflect the fact that people have not yet met. If you are bringing together people of different grades and levels in your organization for an open discussion, the “ice” may come from the difference in status between participants.

If you are bringing together people of different backgrounds, cultures and outlooks for work within your community, then the “ice” may come from people’s perceptions of each other. You’ll need to handle these differences sensitively. Only focus on what’s important to your event. (Remember, you want to break some ice for your event, not uncover the whole iceberg, or bring about world peace!) And as you move on to design and facilitate the event, it’s always best to focus on similarities (rather than differences), such as a shared interest in the event’s outcome. Designing Your Icebreaker The key to a successful ice breaker is to make sure the ice breaker is specifically focused on meeting your objectives and appropriate to the group of people involved. Once you have established what the “ice” is, the next step is to clarify the specific objectives for your ice breaker session. For example, when meeting to solve problems at work, the ice breaker objectives may be: “To establish a productive working environment for today’s event with good participation from everyone involved, irrespective of their level or job role in the organization.” With clear objectives, you can start to design the session. Ask yourself questions about how you will meet your objectives. For example: • • •

“How will people become comfortable with contributing? “How will you establish a level playing field for people with different levels and jobs? “How will you create a common sense of purpose?...” and so on.

These questions can be used as a check list once you have designed the ice breaker session: “Will this ice breaker session help people feel comfortable… establish a level playing field… etc”

As a further check, you should also ask yourself how each person is likely to react to the session. Will participants feel comfortable? Will they feel the session is appropriate and worthwhile? Example Ice Breakers There are many types of ice breakers, each suited to different types of objectives. Here we look at a few of the more popular types of ice breakers and how they can be used. Introductory Ice Breakers Introductory ice breakers are used to introduce participants to each other and to facilitate conversation amongst the participants. The Little Known Fact: Ask participants to share their name, department or role in the organization, length of service, and one little known fact about themselves. This "little known fact" becomes a humanizing element that can help break down differences such as grade / status in future interaction. True or False: Ask your participants to introduce themselves and make three or four statements about themselves, one of which is false. Now get the rest of the group to vote on which fact is false. As well as getting to know each other as individuals, this ice breaker helps to start interaction within the group. Interviews: Ask participants to get into twos. Each person then interviews his or her partner for a set time while paired up. When the group reconvenes, each person introduces their interviewee to the rest of the group. Problem Solvers: Ask participants to work in small groups. Create a simple problem scenario for them to work on in a short time. Once the group have analyzed the problem and prepared their feedback, ask each group in turn to present their analysis and solutions to the wider group. Tip: Choose a fairly simple scenario that everyone can contribute to.

The idea is not to solve a real problem but to “warm up” the group for further interaction or problem solving later in the event. The group will also learn each other's styles of problem-solving and interaction. Team-Building Ice Breakers Team-building ice breakers are used to bring together individuals who are in the early stages of team building. This can help the people start working together more cohesively towards shared goals or plans. The Human Web: This ice breaker focuses on how people in the group inter-relate and depend on each other. The facilitator begins with a ball of yarn. Keeping one end, pass the ball to one of the participants, and the person to introduce himor her-self and their role in the organization. Once this person has made their introduction, ask him or her to pass the ball of yarn on to another person in the group. The person handing over the ball must describe how he/she relates (or expects to relate) to the other person. The process continues until everyone is introduced. To emphasis the interdependencies amongst the team, the facilitator then pulls on the starting thread and everyone's hand should move. Ball Challenge: This exercise creates a simple, timed challenge for the team to help focus on shared goals, and also encourages people to include other people. The facilitator arranges the group in a circle and asks each person to throw the ball across the circle, first announcing his or her own name, and then announcing the name of the person to whom they are throwing the ball (the first few times, each person throws the ball to someone whose name they already know.) When every person in the group has thrown the ball at least once, it’s time to set the challenge – to pass the ball around all group members as quickly as possible. Time the process, then ask the group to beat that timing. As the challenge progresses, the team will improve their process, for example by standing closer together. And so the group will learn to work as a team.

Hope, Fears and Expectations: Best done when participants already have a good understanding of their challenge as a team. Group people into 2s or 3s, and ask people to discuss their expectations for the event or work ahead, then what they fears and their hopes. Gather the group’s response by collating 3-4 hopes, fears and expectation from pairing or threesome. Topic exploration ice breakers Topic exploration ice breakers can be used to explore the topic at the outset, or perhaps to change pace and re-energize people during the even. Word association: This ice breaker helps people explore the breadth of the area under discussion. Generate a list of words related to the topic of your event or training. For example, in a health and safety workshop, ask participants what words or phrases come to mind relating to "hazardous materials". Participants may suggest: 'danger,' 'corrosive,' 'flammable,' 'warning,' 'skull and crossbones,' etc. Write all suggestions on the board, perhaps clustering by theme. You can use this opportunity to introduce essential terms and discuss the scope (what’s in and what’s out) of your training or event. Burning questions: This ice breaker gives each person the opportunity to ask key questions they hope to cover in the event or training. Again you can use this opportunity to discuss key terminology and scope. Be sure to keep the questions and refer back to them as the event progresses and concludes. Brainstorm: Brainstorming can be used as an ice breaker or reenergizer during an event. If people are getting bogged down in the detail during problem solving, for example, you can change pace easily by running a quick-fire brainstorming session. If you are looking for answers to customer service problems, try brainstorming how to create problems rather than solve them. This can help people think creatively again and gives the group a boost when energy levels are flagging. MindTools.com - Join Our Community! The next article in this series shows you how to use Win Win Negotiation, an essential technique for getting what you want honestly and co-operatively, and in a way that leaves the other

person feeling happy with the outcome. To read this, click "Next article" below. Tips and Techniques Tips to help make your presentation a smashing success: •

•

• • • •

•

Avoid too many statistics and confusing information in your presentation. Instead, put this information in a handout for participants to refer to at a later date. If you forget your words, pause for a moment and remember your objective. While the words may not come right back to you, this will help keep you on track and may even help you to think of additional thoughts and ideas your audience will benefit from hearing. Visualize yourself succeeding. Begin by breathing. Before the presentation, focus on the needs of the audience. Take a public speaking course at a local college or university. These are oftentimes offered as night courses and are usually very inexpensive, while providing you with important skills that will enhance your confidence in this area. Videotape yourself going through the presentation. All you need to do this is a video camera and a tripod. Then, run through the video and make changes according to your thoughts on the taped presentation Spread the word: Active Listening

Hear What People Are Really Saying

Listening is one of the most important skills you can have. How well you listen has a major impact on your job effectiveness, and on the quality of your relationships with others. We listen to obtain information. We listen to understand.

We listen for enjoyment. We listen to learn. Given all this listening we do, you would think we’d be good at it! In fact we’re not. Depending on the study being quoted, we remember a dismal 25-50% of what we hear. That means that when you talk to your boss, colleagues, customers or spouse for 10 minutes, they only really hear 2½-5 minutes of the conversation. Turn it around and it reveals that when you are receiving directions or being presented with information, you aren’t hearing the whole message either. You hope the important parts are captured in your 25- 50%, but what if they’re not? Clearly, listening is a skill that we can all benefit from improving. By becoming a better listener, you will improve your productivity, as well as your ability to influence, persuade negotiate. What’s more, you’ll avoid conflict and misunderstandings – all necessary for workplace success. ) Good communication skills require a high level of self-awareness. By understanding your personal style of communicating, you will go a long way towards creating good and lasting impressions with others. The way to become a better listener is to practice “active listening”. This is where you make a conscious effort to hear not only the words that another person is saying but, more importantly, to try and understand the total message being sent. In order to do this you must pay attention to the other person very carefully. You cannot allow yourself to become distracted by what else may be going on around you, or by forming counter arguments that you’ll make when the other person stops speaking. Nor can you allow yourself to lose focus on what the other person is saying. All of these barriers contribute to a lack of listening and understanding. Tip: If you're finding it particularly difficult to concentrate on what someone is saying, try repeating their words

mentally as they say it – this will reinforce their message and help you control mind drift. To enhance your listening skills, you need to let the other person know that you are listening to what he or she is saying. To understand the importance of this, ask yourself if you’ve ever been engaged in a conversation when you wondered if the other person was listening to what you were saying. You wonder if your message is getting across, or if it’s even worthwhile to continue speaking. It feels like talking to a brick wall and it’s something you want to avoid. Acknowledgement can be something as simple as a nod of the head or a simple “uh huh.” You aren’t necessarily agreeing with the person, you are simply indicating that you are listening. Using body language and other signs to acknowledge you are listening also reminds you to pay attention and not let your mind wander. You should also try to respond to the speaker in a way that will both encourage him or her to continue speaking, so that you can get the information if you need. While nodding and “uh huhing” says you’re interested, an occasional question or comment to recap what has been said communicates that you understand the message as well. Becoming an Active Listener There are five key elements of active listening. They all help you ensure that you hear the other person, and that the other person knows you are hearing what they are saying. 1. Pay attention.

Give the speaker your undivided attention and acknowledge the message. Recognize that what is not said also speaks loudly. o Look at the speaker directly. o Put aside distracting thoughts. Don’t mentally prepare a rebuttal! o Avoid being distracted by environmental factors. o “Listen” to the speaker’s body language. o Refrain from side conversations when listening in a group setting.

2. Show that you are listening.

Use your own body language and gestures to convey your attention. o Nod occasionally. o Smile and use other facial expressions. o Note your posture and make sure it is open and inviting. o Encourage the speaker to continue with small verbal comments like yes, and uh huh. 3. Provide feedback.

Our personal filters, assumptions, judgments, and beliefs can distort what we hear. As a listener, your role is to understand what is being said. This may require you to reflect what is being said and ask questions. o Reflect what has been said by paraphrasing. “What I’m hearing is…” and “Sounds like you are saying…” are great ways to reflect back. o Ask questions to clarify certain points. “What do you mean when you say…” “Is this what you mean?” o Summarize the speaker’s comments periodically. Tip: If you find yourself responding emotionally to what someone said, say so, and ask for more information: "I may not be understanding you correctly, and I find myself taking what you said personally. What I thought you just said is XXX; is that what you meant?" 4. Defer judgment.

Interrupting is a waste of time. It frustrates the speaker and limits full understanding of the message. o Allow the speaker to finish. o Don’t interrupt with counterarguments. 5. Respond Appropriately.

Active listening is a model for respect and understanding. You are gaining information and perspective. You add nothing by attacking the speaker or otherwise putting him or her down. o Be candid, open, and honest in your response. o Assert your opinions respectfully. o Treat the other person as he or she would want to be treated.

Key Points: It takes a lot of concentration and determination to be an active listener. Old habits are hard to break, and if your listening habits are as bad as many people’s are, then there’s a lot of habitbreaking to do! Be deliberate with your listening and remind yourself constantly that your goal is to truly hear what the other person is saying. Set aside all other thoughts and behaviors and concentrate on the message. Ask question, reflect, and paraphrase to ensure you understand the message. If you don’t, then you’ll find that what someone says to you and what you hear can be amazingly different! Start using active listening today to become a better communicator and improve your workplace productivity and relationships. As a young professional in today's global business world, it is imperative that you are competent in both oral as well as written communication. Important forms of oral communication at the workplace include: • •

Building interpersonal relationships. Giving presentations and debating viewpoints effectively.

You need to master oral skills for both in-person and over-the-phone interactions. Similarly, important written communication includes: • • •

Writing professional e-mails (sans SMS slang). Putting together concise reports. Creating visually powerful Powerpoint presentations.

And the key to acing oral and written communication is to spruce up your communication skills. And it is a lot easier than you think. Here are some easy tips to do it on your own: 1. Improve pronunciation and diction There are a few tricks to making a vernacular accent more globally understandable. ~ Try making sure that 'air' comes out of your mouth when saying the letters, 'T, P, K' and the sound 'Ch'. ~ Focus on elongating your vowel sounds. This will also automatically slow down your rate of

speech. ~ Sing English songs out loud! ~ Watch news shows on channels like CNN and BBC. ~ The web site www.m-w.com is great for pronunciation help. ~ I would also suggest buying books on pronunciation and language that come with audio cassettes. A good book that I found really useful was Better English Pronunciation by J D O'Connor. It is part of the Cambridge series, and some of those books come with cassettes. 2. Spruce up your writing skills ~ Believe it or not, you have to Read More! ~ Well-written magazines, like The Economist and India Today, are great to read not only to improve language skills but also to learn more about the world. ~ In terms of books, read what interests you. The basic goal is to read as much as you can. There are a plethora of good authors who are popular today. Some good writers whose language is easy to follow include Vikram Seth, Jhumpa Lahiri, Paulo Coelho, J D Salinger, Albert Camus and Roald Dahl. ~ People tend to forget basic grammar when writing e-mails. An e-mail is nothing more than a letter which is sent electronically. Make sure salutations and content are professional. Use special phrases when attaching documents. For example, "Please find attached with this e-mail a report on..." This helps you sound professional. 3. Five exercises to practise every day! i. Pretend you are a newscaster and read out the newspaper to your mirror. ii. Do not read local newspapers. Focus on national newspapers. iii. While reading a book, underline all the words you do not know. Look them up in the dictionary. iv. Make a list of these words, and make sure you use at least five of them in a conversation during the day. v. Most important, make an effort to speak in English to your friends and family. Nasha Fitter spoke to Merril Diniz Nasha Fitter operates Fitter Solutions, a communication and training organisation

with expertise in public and interpersonal communication.

178 Amy Billone 178 Children’s Literature 32, Hollins University © 2004. The Boy Who Lived: From Carroll’s Alice and Barrie’s Peter Pan to Rowling’s Harry Potter Amy Billone Who is today’s most beloved child character? In the midst of J. K. Rowling’s triumphs on the literary market, we would have difficulty giving any answer other than Harry Potter. Rowling’s fifth novel in the series, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, broke records with its first print run of 6.8 million copies and a second print run of 1.7 million copies. Rowling has become an international celebrity; she is now the richest woman in England, wealthier than the Queen herself, and she has even been named an Officer of the British Empire. However, five years before the publication of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, James Kincaid boldly declared that “no children have ever been more desirable” than Lewis Carroll’s Alice and J. M. Barrie’s Peter Pan (275). In this essay I will argue that Harry Potter competes with Alice and Peter Pan by combining both of them inside himself. He experiences Peter’s ecstasy when he gracefully flies, Peter’s superhuman aptness when he battles deadly foes, and Peter’s effortless capacity to make dreams come alive. At the same time, like Alice, Harry struggles to

understand the difference between what appears to be true and what is true. In Book 1, he must work his way along a chessboard by playing with and against violently destructive chess pieces; by the end of Book 5 he has suffered betrayal by nearly everyone he knows.1 Moreover, as Harry matures, he becomes angrier and angrier at the chaos surrounding him. In the fourth and fifth books, he longs to leave Hogwarts forever. Just as Alice, who is about to be decapitated by the Queen of Hearts, finally shouts out, “‘Who cares for you? . . . You’re nothing but a pack of cards!’” (97), Harry discovers that his dreams have deceived him—consequently, he has led all of his friends to their probable deaths and allowed his godfather to be murdered. For Alice and Harry, the knowledge that dreams and reality do not coincide accompanies their growth out of childhood. In Alice’s case, childhood may have evaporated before her discovery of Wonderland (when she is only seven years old); the lovely Edenic garden that she The Boy Who Lived 179 glimpses after she tumbles down the rabbit hole turns out to be an illusion. Her resulting rage, which augments throughout the book, causes her physically to grow out of her nightmare. Harry Potter experiences a similar kind of fury throughout Book 5 (when he is nearly sixteen years old); this anger interferes with the truthfulness of his dreamscape and finally forces him to realize the discrepancy between

fantasy and reality. In the first parts of this paper I will investigate why Peter Pan’s gender allows him to remain in Neverland (to control it, in fact) while Alice’s gender causes her fantasy universe to distort into a nightmarish mirror reflection. If we take Kincaid’s words seriously (and I do), that as of 1992 no two children had ever been more desirable to us than Alice and Peter Pan, we must arrive at the conclusion that until very recently childhood has been an unsettlingly masculine space. By comparing Harry Potter to Alice and Peter Pan, I want to question whether now, in the twenty-first century, we have expanded our conception of childhood so that girls participate as comfortably in fantasylands as boys do. In particular, I am interested in the notion of the dreamchild. While many people (including J. K. Rowling herself) may prefer Hermione to Harry, it is Harry and not Hermione who experiences an intense and increasingly unstable relationship with dreams and nightmares. Hermione surprisingly seems to have no dreams at all. As I will demonstrate in this paper, gender may still prohibit girls from traveling to childhood dreamscapes, where fantasy and reality completely reverse roles, and from feeling at home there. True, although Harry is a boy, he does have some conventionally feminine traits (he is definitely more compassionate than Alice is). He has his

mother’s eyes, her gentleness, her sensitivity, her carefulness not to hurt other people’s feelings. Significantly, however, Harry Potter is a boy, and in every respect (with the exception of his eyes) he remarkably resembles his father. Therefore, even though Harry’s personality contains both traditionally masculine and feminine qualities, masculinity still surpasses femininity in his makeup, forcing him not only to take on the literal shape of a boy, but also grounding him in a universe dominated by men. There might be as many girls as boys at Hogwarts, but women have little power in Harry’s world, and the two most frightening, nearly omnipotent wizards—the evil Voldemort and the benevolent Dumbledore—give us the impression (especially when we compare them to female characters in the series) that they could 180 Amy Billone be nothing other than men. Even after we recognize this gender imbalance, it may be impossible for us to imagine any alternative narrative structure because J. K. Rowling plainly has given the majority of contemporary readers the object of their dreams. I. Dreamchildren are not only imaginary child characters who dream; they also tend to be fantasized about by the authors of the stories in which they appear. Lewis Carroll opens and closes the Alice books with melancholy poems about his beloved Alice Liddell; Barrie prefaces

his first publication of the play Peter Pan (1928) with a long mournful dedication “To the Five,” addressing the five Llewelyn Davies boys whom he passionately adored and eventually adopted. Within their texts, Carroll and Barrie make us aware that the characters who haunt them “phantomwise” correspond to real children. They inscribe the tragedy of these children’s departures so intimately and so painfully into their narratives (in spite of or perhaps because of the tonal levity with which the stories are written) that we as readers long for the children, too, grieve for their dissolution, too, even though we never are sure who the real children were or how and why they disappeared. Karoline Leach has asserted that the entire Carroll phenomenon “manifests the psychology of iconicism in its most bizarre and subliminal form” (10). According to Leach, Lewis Carroll “never confused Alice [Liddell] with ‘Alice’ as we do. She was never his ‘dreamchild’, and he never pretended that she was” (174). Leach persuasively argues that if Carroll had been in love with anyone in the Liddell family it was not with the child Alice but with her mother, Lorina. How do we make sense, then, of the closing poem in Through the LookingGlass which contains at its center the lines, “Still she haunts me, phantomwise/Alice moving under skies/Never seen by waking eyes,” considering that the initial letters of each line in the poem, read downward,

spell “Alice Pleasance Liddell”? (Carroll 209). Who is the real Alice if not Alice Liddell? Carroll’s obsessive references to the elusive “Alice” might remind us of the glare of letters that spell “nothing but a name repeated in all kinds of characters, large and small” and which start from the dark “as vivid as spectres” until “the air swarm[s] with Catherines,” producing Lockwood’s terrifying (and uncannily truthful) nightmare in Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights (15). In Lockwood’s dream he hears perThe Boy Who Lived 181 sistent knocking against his window pane; when he opens it up, he discovers a ghost child (named Catherine), who grabs hold of him and will not let go, begging him to let her inside.2 Heathcliff has kept Catherine’s spirit alive, and if Alice and Peter survive as dreamchildren they may do so because, as Jacqueline Rose says of Peter Pan, their stories fit within “a realm of literature which stares unblinkingly at the truth, which strides over flaws and inconsistencies, over the intellectual and social forces of our time, straight into the collective mind of its audience” (111–12). Whatever love Carroll and Barrie may have felt for real children, these writers ultimately confront the distressing evaporation of innocence brought about by temporality itself.3 Karoline Leach contends that if Charles Dodgson was having an affair with a married adult

woman (perhaps with Mrs. Liddell), then he turned his attention to children not because he was sexually attracted to them, but because he wanted to regain his own sense of lost spiritual purity. I would suggest that Carroll/Dodgson chose a girl instead of a boy as his protagonist because, like him, Alice unsuccessfully struggles to enter an idyllic landscape where sin is left behind. In Barrie’s Dedication to the published play version of Peter Pan he explains to the Llewelyn Davies brothers (whom he refers to not by name but by code numbers) why he has “no recollection” of having written the story (75).4 He supposes that if he made Peter he must have done so “by rubbing the five of you violently together, as savages with two sticks produce a flame. That is all he is, the spark I got from you” (76, 75). But Barrie wrote this Dedication at the earliest in 1920; George Llewelyn Davies (No. 1) was killed in the First World War in 1915, and Michael (No. 4) was drowned (a possible suicide) in 1921, so that at least one and probably two of Barrie’s real-life addressees were already dead at the time he composed it. Barrie seems aware in his Dedication that he is, and always has been, talking to and about dead or nonexistent children. “There is Peter still,” he writes, “but to me he lies sunk in the gay Black Lake” (Peter Pan 77). He goes on to explain his belief that people remain the same

throughout their lives, “merely passing, as it were, in these lapses of time from one room to another, but all in the same house” (78). He speaks as though his childhood self is alive now, and he will not let go of his conviction that “a little something in us which is no larger than a mote in the eye . . . dances in front of us beguiling us all our days. I cannot cut the hair by which it hangs” (79). Rather than correspond182 Amy Billone ing to the real-life object of Carroll’s sexual desire, the little girl Alice (simply because she is a girl and not a boy) may at once represent Carroll’s lost innocence and his inability to possess that innocence again. Likewise, rather than taking the place of any of the Llewelyn Davies boys or serving as a reincarnation of Barrie’s brother who died as a child, Peter Pan may embody the storyteller’s own childhood self— lost because Barrie has grown up, but also alive, still, playfully (albeit tragically) hidden inside a distant room. II. Of all child characters, Neverland’s Peter Pan and Wonderland’s Alice may have been for so long the most desirable to us because as dreamchildren they do not materialize quite the way we want them to. In Kincaid’s opinion, these two children are so tremendously appealing because no “figures are more insistently Other, more adept at resisting satisfaction, blocking fulfillment, keeping the chase and desire

alive” (276). However, in spite of their common unavailability to us, Peter and Alice could not be more dissimilar. According to Kincaid, “Peter, the child, is lodged in the world of play and the adult is stuck in the world of power; Alice, the apparent child (actually the adult) is firmly in the world of power and the apparent adult (actually the child) is in the world of play” (276). In other words, even in the dreamworld of Neverland, Peter is a child; but Alice is what Kincaid calls a “false child” who wants only to resist the nonsensical world of Wonderland into which she accidentally falls (289). On one level, Kincaid’s analysis of these tales rings regrettably true. In Alice in Wonderland, we find ourselves hurled into what Knoepflmacher calls a “childland,” yet sadly we find no child there. Kincaid observes, “We find only Alice, the false child, resisting the play, telling us coldly at every turn in the game that we are being silly, that we must wake up, grow up” (289). What is maddeningly desirable to us about Alice is that she has vacated the position of the true child, betrayed us by growing up almost as soon as her life begins. If Peter’s inability to age and to return Wendy’s romantic love gives her anguish (while her ability to mature does not), we might ask what Alice’s emotions are (the real Alice, the fictional Alice, the dream Alice) about her own eroticized nonexistent childhood. Kincaid insists: But Alice is not at home with play. She is at home with the bees—

with logic, accounts, work, death, and sentimentality: the rewards The Boy Who Lived 183 that come to those willing to grow up. The Otherness represented by Alice is even more elusive than Peter’s, more subtle and indistinct, more a photograph we can set in the past and tell stories about, more a memory her sister can dream when Alice runs off, more a child who never was. (289) Where I differ from Kincaid is in my sympathy for Alice the “false child” who appears to be “not at home with play.” On the boat trip to Godstow when Dodgson first narrated the fictional Alice’s dream journey in 1862, the ten-year-old real-life Alice allegedly hoped, “‘There will be nonsense in it!’” (Carroll 3). The waking seven-yearold fictional Alice gets tired sitting by her older sister on the bank; once or twice she looks into her sister’s book and wonders what the use is of a book “without pictures or conversations” (7). Alice wants to experience a universe consisting of pictures or playing cards or chess pieces come to life and nonsensical conversations. But what happens when Carroll allows her to enter this dreamland? The nonsense world torments and rejects her, pigeons scream that she is a serpent, cooks throw everything within reach at duchesses who violently beat their babies, furious queens try to decapitate her and everyone around them, and the sympathetic Cheshire Cat says that not only is everyone in

Wonderland mad, but Alice herself must have been mad to come there in the first place.5 In a book so full of puns that a story or “tale” appears visually in the shape of a winding mouse’s “tail;” the word “mad” obviously has two meanings. Carroll radically altered the mouse’s tale from Alice’s Adventures Under Ground, which began, “We lived beneath the mat/warm and snug and fat/But one woe, & that/Was the cat!” In the extended, revised Alice in Wonderland, the tale begins, “Fury said to/ a mouse . . . ‘Let/us both go/to law: I/will prose-/cute you—” (25). Unlike the all-male Neverland where pirates and redskins and Lost Boys pursue each other in an endless dance around the island, Wonderland is driven from start to finish by women’s fury. When the White Rabbit exclaims, “‘Oh dear! Oh dear! I shall be too late!’” he does so out of terror that the Duchess will have him executed (7). In Alice’s first meeting with the Mouse she horrifies him by mentioning her female cat Dinah, who is “‘such a capital one for catching mice’” (18). It is the repulsively ugly female Duchess who violently beats her baby and the revolting female cook who throws everything in the room at both of them. Finally, the Queen of Hearts might be characterized almost exclusively by her seemingly unjustified rage and its consequences. 184 Amy Billone She turns “crimson with fury” during Alice’s first encounter with her,

moves “angrily away” from the gentle King (65), and while playing croquet stamps “in a furious passion” (67). The Queen speaks “in a shrill, loud voice” (65); she screams, roars, shouts “in a voice of thunder” (66). Yet none of her actions has any effect in the end, for the smiling, timid King pardons everyone she sentences to execution, as he always does. Like the Queen, Alice experiences increasing anger throughout the book. In the scene with the disagreeable Caterpillar, Alice “swallow[s] down her anger as well as she could” (36). Because “she [has] never been so much contradicted in all her life before,” she feels that she is “losing her temper” (41). At the “mad teaparty,” her anger heightens beyond any earlier point in the story. She speaks to the creatures “indignantly,” “angrily,” “with some severity,” and “in an offended tone” (54–59). This scene prepares Alice for her meeting with the Queen of Hearts; as the Queen screams, “‘Off with her head!’” Alice interrupts: “‘Nonsense!’ . . . and the Queen [is] silent” (64). At last, during the trial scene, the Queen demands the sentence first and the verdict afterwards. Alice, having grown inexplicably much taller, loudly retorts, “‘Stuff and nonsense!’”; this infuriates the Queen, who, turning purple, shouts “‘Off with her head!’” (97). Now Alice’s own anger, which corresponds to her physical growth, explodes the entire

dreamworld: “‘Who cares for you?’ said Alice (she had grown to her full size by this time). ‘You’re nothing but a pack of cards!’” (97). When the whole pack rises into the air and comes flying down upon her, she gives “a little scream, half of fright and half of anger,” tries “to beat them off” and instead wakes up with her head in the lap of her older sister, who is herself brushing away dead leaves from Alice’s face (97–98). Alice cannot survive in the Wonderland of magic and nonsense for which she longs, not because she responds as a cold adult to the games we want to play with her, as Kincaid suggests, but because her dream of “the beautiful garden” full of “bright flower-beds” and “cool fountains” turns out to be an illusion (61). Alice’s desperate efforts to make her body the right size to fit into the lovely garden and even her final success in entering the garden, once she finds out what it really is, leave her stranded in a false paradise.6 In Barrie’s tales about Peter Pan, as in the Alice books, gender prohibits female characters from entering childland. Shirley Foster and Judy Simons argue that Barrie’s “fantasy of permanent childhood” The Boy Who Lived 185 privileges male experience, recreating “the strict gendered division of Edwardian England; the boys go hunting and fight pirates while Wendy becomes a surrogate mother figure who stays at home and

cares for her ‘children’” (175). Even though Barrie tells us that “[a]ll the characters, whether grown-ups or babes, must wear a child’s outlook on life as their only important adornment,” he nevertheless closes the doors of childhood to little girls (Peter Pan 88). According to Claudia Nelson, the difficulty we have in figuring out where child leaves off and adult begins “makes possible the greater, if more subtle, opposition in the novel—that between female and male” (170). The text ultimately shows how “even female children are to some extent adult and dangerous, even adult males childlike and endangered” (170). It seems that if womanhood automatically partakes of childhood, then girls would differ from women only through their absence of maternal feelings along with their unreadiness to enter the sexual relationships that maternity demands. Yet Wendy, we are told, “was every inch a woman, though there were not very many inches” (Peter and Wendy 91). Everyone wants Wendy for a mother, the pirates as well as the Lost Boys, and she wants more than anything to be one. When the Lost Boys first speak with her in the play, they all simultaneously shout, “‘Wendy lady, be our mother!’” (Peter Pan 116). Wendy at first doubts the appropriateness of this request, or at least pretends to (so as “not to make herself too cheap”): “‘Ought I? Of course it is frightfully fascinating; but you see I am only a little girl; I have no real

experience’” (116). But the Lost Boys are not at all discouraged: “‘That doesn’t matter. What we need is just a nice motherly person’” (116). And Wendy cannot escape this characterization: “‘Oh dear,’” she says, “‘I feel that is just exactly what I am’” (116).7 It is difficult not to relate Barrie’s description of Wendy to that of his own mother, about whom he writes in Margaret Ogilvy: She was eight when her mother’s death made her mistress of the house and mother to her little brother, and from that time she scrubbed and mended and baked and sewed . . . and had her washing days and her ironings and a stocking always on the wire for odd moments, and gossiped like a matron with the other women, and humoured the men with a tolerant smile. (241–42) In his introduction to Peter and Wendy in the Oxford edition, Peter Hollindale offers one reason why biographical interpretations of Barrie’s work remain so attractive: namely, that Barrie himself drew 186 Amy Billone attention to the close interaction between his life and work “not only privately, for his own uses, in his notebooks, but publicly and openly, in novels, autobiography, and speeches” (vii). Barrie encourages us to relate Wendy to his mother when, in Margaret Ogilvy, he devotes a chapter to “my heroine,” claiming that his mother is the most important female character in all of his books because she is the only woman

he ever truly knew. It is not coincidental, then, that the name “Wendy” was Barrie’s own invention, deriving, ironically, from that of a little girl (dead at the age of five) with his mother’s own name, Margaret, who had told him that he was her “fwendy” (“friendy”) and she was his “wendy.” Wendy lacks none of Mrs. Darling’s maternal impulses; nor is she a stranger to romantic desire. She “artfully” tries to kiss Peter during their first meeting (Peter and Wendy 101), continually inquires what his “exact feelings” are for her (130, 162), fiercely agrees with Tinker Bell that in his sexual ignorance he is a “silly ass” (130), demands at the end whether he would like to say anything to her parents “‘about a very sweet subject’” (151) and one year later (at this point unable to fly without a broomstick) cries out “‘Oh, Peter, how I wish I could take you up and squdge you!’” (153).8 In his Dedication, Barrie recognizes the threat that Wendy poses. He refers to her as a “disturbing element,” speculating that she may never initially have been wanted by Peter in Neverland at all (Peter Pan 84). Speaking of one of the earliest versions of the play (The Boy Castaways: The Boy Castaways of Black Lake Island, a book composed entirely of a preface and captioned photographs), which evolved from his games with the young Davies boys during a summer holiday in 1901, Barrie says, “Wendy has not

yet appeared . . .” (Peter Pan 84). However, he hypothesizes that she might have “bored her way in at last whether we wanted her or not. It may be that even Peter did not really bring her to the Never Land of his free will, but merely pretended to do so because she would not stay away” (84). Kincaid wholeheartedly concurs that Wendy acts as the most frightening source of evil in the book. He even goes so far as to say that Wendy enters the story as “an intruder, a disturber of the peace and play, sets up a school, and is last seen on a broomstick, where she should have been all along” (285). As Kincaid sees it, Wendy, just like Alice, “wants so badly to grow up, she more or less is grown-up now, probably was born grown-up” (288). It is almost as though, opposite to Wendy, who cannot be anything other than an adult, Captain Hook The Boy Who Lived 187 is really a child playing the part of a grownup. Kincaid suggests that “the one adult [Peter] does, more or less, manage to kill does not seem to be an enemy at all but a bellowing, funny parody, a player who, like Peter, does not know, a child who has agreed to play Daddy and is having a fine old time of it” (284). Hook understands the world of Neverland, and would never choose to leave it. If, in Kincaid’s words, “Hook is the entry adults have into the itch that is Peter,” then the adults who want to destroy Neverland, children’s real enemies, seem

to “wear skirts instead of hooks, come in the form of women who threaten to disrupt the pederastic unity being forged” (285). I agree with Kincaid that while giving every appearance to the contrary, Wendy doubles as a wicked witch in Peter Pan. What I see omitted from his discussion, however, is the extent to which Wendy’s gender forces her into this role. Kincaid likes Peter best “when he can be seen napping, leg arched and hand thrown over the edge of the bed like a serpentining Cleopatra in drag . . . But not really in drag, being so genderless. One of the things he does not know is gender, or maybe it is one of the things we are allowed for a moment not to know” (282). No matter how compelling this argument may be, I think it is impossible not to know gender when we read Barrie’s text. True, male and female relationships collide in Peter Pan much as do relations between children and adults. We constantly find people playing all the wrong parts. Barrie explains in his dedication that Nana was originally (and biographically) a male dog and that s/he first belonged not to the Darlings but to Captain Hook. This piece of historical information serves as one more example of the shifting roles between good and evil characters in the story; it also provides an instance of gender fluidity that Barrie does not let us forget. At the beginning of the play, Barrie places emphasis on Nana’s still ambiguous gender. He says that

the “first moment in the play is tremendously important, for if the actor playing Nana does not spring properly we are undone. She will probably be played by a boy, if one clever enough can be found” (Peter Pan 88; emphasis added). Barrie uses Nana’s sex change as one of the few pieces of evidence that he in fact did write the play himself.9 Nana’s gender ambiguity most definitely applies to representations of the boy Peter Pan. As a play produced in 1904, Peter Pan, or the Boy Who Wouldn’t Grow Up followed the model of nineteenthcentury English pantomimes—holiday treats for children, which included music, humor, harlequin clowns, magic, flying, and fantastic effects. In these performances, the most important boy characters were gener188 Amy Billone ally played by women rather than male children, in part because adults could better handle the many lines and because women (more easily than men) could successfully masquerade as little boys.10 Making use of the same sort of cross-dressing that characterized British pantomimes, Peter Pan was introduced in London at the Duke of York’s Theatre on December 27, 1904, with 37-year-old Nina Boucicault in the role of Peter. This performance set the standard around the world for the next 50 years. In America, the play first featured Maude Adams in the leading role. Some of the most famous Peters were Pauline Chase, who played the part for eight revivals, and Jean Forbes-

Robertson, who played it for nine. Intriguingly, the same actresses often played different parts at different times. Jane Baxter has been a Redskin, Mrs. Darling, and Peter Pan, while four actresses have played both Wendy and Peter: Lila Maravan, Dinah Sheridan, Joan Greenwood and Julia Lockwood.11 The disguising of actresses (often grown-up women) as eternal boychildren continued throughout the twentieth century: we might think of the famous 1954 musical production of Peter Pan, which starred Mary Martin in tights (filmed for television and broadcast seven times between 1955 and 1973) or the two major Broadway revivals starring Sandy Duncan in the late 1970s and Cathy Rigby several times in the 1990s. At last, a 1952 German production used a male Peter and in America, Disney’s animated 1953 version did the same, but it wasn’t until 1982, when Trevor Nunn and John Caird produced their version of Peter Pan at the Barbican Theatre in London, that a male lead was cast in the role of Peter Pan in England. If boys and men interchange roles in Peter Pan while neither Mrs. Darling nor Wendy can be anything other than mature women, we might want to ask whether these female characters could transform into children simply by disguising themselves as little boys. Like Nana, who changes his moral system as well as his gender, Peter, too (beyond the question of who plays his part), enjoys altering positions in

these categories. In Act 3, Peter pretends to be Hook and all the pirates unknowingly take orders from him. Even Hook grips “the stave for support” when he hears Peter talk in his own voice (Peter Pan 121). In response to Hook’s question, “‘Who are you, stranger, speak,’” Peter, “who can imitate the captain’s voice so perfectly that even the author has a dizzy feeling that at times he was really Hook,” answers, “‘I am Jas Hook, Captain of the Jolly Roger,’” and Hook turns “white to the gills” (120–21). Finally, after Hook “prostrates himself into the The Boy Who Lived 189 water, where the crocodile is waiting for him openmouthed,” the curtain “must not rise again lest we see [Peter] on the poop in Hook’s hat and cigars, and with a small iron claw” (146). Peter’s convincing ability to impersonate his worst enemy mimics his gift for posing as the opposite gender. In Act 3, “Tiger Lily slides between [the pirates’] legs into the lagoon, forgetting in her haste to utter her war-cry, but Peter utters it for her, so naturally that even the lost boys are deceived” (120). To mask Wendy’s dismayed exclamation that Smee doesn’t know what a mother is, Peter “makes the splash of a mermaid’s tail” and the pirates think no more of it (121). At the most suspenseful moment leading up to the final battle, Peter folds Wendy’s cloak around himself “with awful grimness” and “takes her place by the mast” (144). The pirates decide the ship is “bewitched”

by someone—in fact, by “a man with a hook”—but Hook shifts the blame to “the girl” and tells them to throw her overboard (144). Mullins jeers, “‘There is none can save you now, missy,’” and “Wendy” answers, “‘There is one . . . Peter Pan, the avenger!’” at which point Peter proudly casts off the cloak and “continues standing there to let the effect sink in” (144). Consequently, we watch an adult woman disguised as a boy hero pretend to be a little girl and then reveal herself to be a little boy after all, who goes on to give the play’s author the “dizzy feeling” that s/he is actually not a child hero in the first place but an adult male villain. To sort through these difficulties, I think we need to step back and ask ourselves one simple question: Who is Peter Pan? First of all, he is a child whom other children see only in their dreams; as they grow older he is completely forgotten and ceases to be visible. Thus it “disturbs” Wendy that one year after her first visit to Never-Never Land, she “does not see him quite so clearly . . . as she used to do” (153). However, there are two things that this dreamchild does know (Kincaid’s speculations notwithstanding): 1) that he is a child rather than a grownup and 2) that he is a boy rather than a girl. It is for this reason that viewers often feel uncomfortable watching grown women play his part. Patrick Braybrooke wrote as early as 1924 in an “Author’s

Note” to a book on Barrie that Peter Pan should never again be played by a woman: “There is no character of Barrie’s so essentially masculine as ‘PETER PAN,’ yet the part is played by actresses who are in every sense horribly and inevitably grown up” (5). People may doubt the reality of Peter, but no one wonders whether he might be in truth an adult woman. Whatever he is, Peter Pan is a 190 Amy Billone child. In the scene where Peter faultlessly imitates Captain Hook, Tiger Lily, and a mermaid, he plays a guessing game with Hook to solve the riddle of his identity. Peter knows he is not a vegetable, a mineral, a man or an ordinary boy. But when Hook asks, “‘Wonderful boy?’” Peter shouts (much to Wendy’s distress), “‘Yes!’” (Peter Pan 122). At the end of this scene, Peter and Wendy nearly drown together, but although she wants to “draw lots” to see which one of them should fly away with a kite and which one should stay behind, he answers, “‘And you a lady, never!’” (124). Peter obviously knows gender and he delights in his own little-boyishness, singing “‘Wendy, look, look; oh the cleverness of me!’” and “‘I’m sweet, oh, I am sweet!’” (Peter Pan 99, 103). Part of the effect of using sexually mature women to play the part of Peter Pan is further to eroticize him, as the whole drama centers around this issue. Female characters think of Peter almost as though he is the ghost of a heart-stoppingly gorgeous man who died

as a child; he is supposed to be sexually grown up but he isn’t, even though he still has erotic appeal, and this tragic fact causes Tinker Bell (the would-be Cinderella) to pull Wendy’s hair and nearly to murder her, then to take her own life out of unfulfillable love for him. Because grown women may have physical attractiveness without possessing the sexual potency of manhood, their impersonations of Peter Pan help us to see precisely what it is that he lacks. Clearly, however, Peter’s allure is not comparable to the seductiveness of girls and women. Wendy and Mrs. Darling own this kind of appeal and, erotically, they neither compete with Peter nor entice him, nor bring him to an understanding of what sexual temptation is. For a girl or a woman to pretend to be Peter Pan she must at every moment realize that she is only playing a part. III. If Alice suffers from the agony of never being able to enter the beautiful place she envisions (the loveliest garden you ever saw, full of bright flowers and cool fountains), and Peter Pan orchestrates all adventures in a paradisiacal Neverland where he can always be a little boy and have fun, how does Harry Potter interact with fantasylands? In this part of my analysis I will defend two claims. First, because Harry Potter is growing up at the turn from the twentieth to the twentyfirst century, he fuses Peter Pan’s and Alice’s roles, participating in a

dreamworld that is at once the product of his greatest joys and his The Boy Who Lived 191 most awful fears. His integration of masculine and feminine characteristics encourages all readers to identify with him (unlike Peter and Alice he is the figment of a woman writer’s imagination). This means that the Harry Potter books do not problematize femininity the way that nineteenth- and early twentieth-century texts do. Second (and this point contradicts my first), when we compare Harry Potter’s dreams with those of the male and female characters in his world we find ourselves in exactly the same situation we were in before—girls still cannot confidently make the voyage to dreamland and back again; this power seems to be the privilege of male characters alone. Due to “the riddle of his being,” Peter Pan remains the paragon of childhood innocence, and “no one is as gay as he” (Peter Pan 153–54). For Barrie, children have principally three skills that adults do not have: 1) they can enter their own dreams and make these dreams come true; 2) they can play fantasy games in which the imaginary world takes the place of concrete reality; 3) they can fly (with the help of Pixie Dust and happy thoughts). Harry Potter makes his own journey to Neverland when he finds out about Hogwarts and travels there. The morning after Hagrid has suddenly shown up on Harry’s eleventh

birthday, Harry is afraid to open his eyes: “‘It was a dream,’ he told himself firmly. ‘I dreamed a giant called Hagrid came to tell me I was going to a school for wizards. When I open my eyes I’ll be at home in my cupboard.’ . . . It had been such a good dream” (Sorcerer’s Stone 76). However, Harry’s “good dream” comes true for him. When Harry reaches the Great Hall at Hogwarts he realizes he has “never even imagined such a strange and splendid place” (145). In this dreamworld all that is make-believe takes on physical reality. Just as Peter Pan never knows whether or not he has eaten because he is capable of living in a fantasy game, Harry, who has never been given enough to eat at home, wishes for food on his first night at Hogwarts, and food magically appears: “He had never seen so many things he liked to eat on one table” (153). Once he has eaten as much as he can, “the remains of the food” vanish “from the plates, leaving them sparkling clean as before” (155). A moment later the desserts materialize: “Blocks of ice cream in every flavor you could think of, apple pies, treacle tarts, chocolate éclairs and jam doughnuts, trifle, strawberries, Jell-O, rice pudding . . . ” (155).12 Rowling’s long, exaggerated descriptions of delicious foods underscore the equation between Harry’s dreams and what he discovers to be true. Harry Potter’s initial response to Hogwarts differs from other characters’

reactions; he is quite literally entering a fantasy world. Ron, on 192 Amy Billone the other hand, has always lived in such a world, as both his parents are practicing wizards, and Hermione (whose parents are only “Muggles”) has read everything she can find about Hogwarts and has taught herself spells at home. Nor does Harry’s discovery of his ability to fly bear any resemblance to that of the other characters. Here, we find some of the most striking similarities between Harry and Peter Pan. Harry’s gifts when he is flying remain unrivaled by anyone else his age. 13 During his first flying lesson (unlike Peter, these characters all mature and here they all must use brooms), “Harry’s broom jumped into his hand at once, but it was one of the few that did. Hermione Granger’s had simply rolled over on the ground” (Sorcerer’s Stone 181). Harry ignores Hermione’s warning and breaks all the rules —“up, up, he soared; air rushed through his hair . . . in a rush of fierce joy he realized he’d found something he could do without being taught— this was easy, this was wonderful. He pulled his broomstick up a little to take it even higher, and heard screams and gasps of girls back on the ground . . .” (182–83). As in Peter Pan, where the male children forget about reality and want to make Neverland their home, Harry believes his dreamworld feels “more like home than Privet Drive ever had” (Sorcerer’s Stone

211).14 However, just like girls, every boy except for Peter Pan must eventually leave make-believe behind. Even if Harry Potter will have more power than women in real life (as men in his world certainly seem to have), his journey parallels Alice’s; like Alice, Harry undergoes magnifying rage and fury as his dreams betray him and stop functioning as true—he, too, must grow up. Harry’s dreams increase not only in quantity but in severity as the series progresses. Like Alice, he moves gradually into a nightmare universe. Rowling calls our attention to five kinds of dreams in the Harry Potter series: normal dreams (which she fills with delightfully Freudian implications), retrospective dreams (which simply replay scenes from the past), prophetic dreams (which show us what will happen in the future), factual dreams (which mirror what is simultaneously happening in real life) and implanted dreams (which give every appearance of being factual but have actually been inserted in the mind by someone else). Harry is the only character who experiences all five types of dream; further, he seems to be the only character who undergoes retrospective dreams, factual dreams and implanted dreams. Harry appears to dream much more frequently than anyone he knows. His dreams are not only numerous but recurrent, so that by the fifth book, The Boy Who Lived 193 whenever he closes his eyes, it is “as though a film in his head had

been waiting to start” (Phoenix 496). When he is still a child, Harry’s dreamscapes resemble Neverland more than Wonderland. At the start of the first book (when he is still ten years old), Harry is waking up, trying to remember a dream he had just had: “It had been a good one. There had been a flying motorcycle in it. He had a funny feeling he’d had the same dream before” (Sorcerer’s Stone 23). Unlike Harry, we know that this dream is retrospective— when Harry was a baby, Hagrid carried him to the Dursleys’ house on a flying motorcycle; it is not, therefore, as Harry thinks, “only a dream” (31). When Harry’s other “good dream” comes true and he is taken to Hogwarts, his dreamlife begins to complicate (76). On his first night there, he has “a very strange dream” (162). This one turns out to be a disturbingly prophetic nightmare; he thinks he is wearing Professor Quirrell’s turban, which keeps telling him he must transfer to Slytherin while Draco Malfoy laughs and Snape turns into Voldemort. Harry will find out at the end of the book that Voldemort really does live beneath Quirrell’s turban; eventually he will realize he contains a part of Voldemort within himself (just as Alice eventually makes the connection between herself, the Duchess, and the Queen of Hearts); moreover, Snape is a former (and perhaps a future?) DeathEater. However, Harry’s reaction to the nightmare is to roll over and

fall asleep again; when he wakes the next day, he doesn’t remember the dream at all. Later on in the first novel, Harry discovers his dead parents alive in a looking-glass reflection; Dumbledore takes the mirror away, telling Harry that the mirror “‘will give us neither knowledge or truth. Men have wasted away before it, entranced by what they have seen, or been driven mad, not knowing if what it shows is real or even possible . . . It does not do to dwell on dreams and forget to live, remember that’” (265). But after Harry has encountered the mirror and to some extent walked inside it (much as Alice does in Through the Looking Glass), he begins to have nightmares (this time, retrospective ones) and to remember them when awake: “Over and over again he dreamed about his parents disappearing in a flash of green light, while a high voice cackled with laughter” (267). After he has almost been murdered by Voldemort (a masked figure drinking unicorn blood) in the Forbidden Forest, he starts having difficulty sleeping: “Harry kept being woken by his old nightmare, except that it was now worse than ever because there was a hooded figure dripping blood in it” (327). These 194 Amy Billone dreams consequently give Harry more and more information about forgotten traumas from his past. As a result of multiple encounters with the Dementors in Book 3,

Harry impossibly remembers all of the details of his parents’ deaths, including their last words (even though this event happened when Harry was only a baby, too young to speak). Now, when he sleeps, he sinks “into dreams full of clammy, rotted hands and petrified pleading, jerking awake to dwell again on his mother’s voice” (Azkaban 184). At the start of Book 4 (as he is turning fourteen), Harry has his first factual dream—a detailed nightmare about what Voldemort is in the process of doing. Although he is not sure if the dream is true, it seems “so real” (Goblet of Fire 17). When his dream/fantasy that he can compete in the Triwizard Tournament comes horrifyingly true (an evil wizard makes him a finalist so as to facilitate Voldemort’s plan to murder him), Ron stops being his friend, and “for the first time ever” (just as Alice comes to feel about Wonderland) Harry seriously considers “running away from Hogwarts” (339). After Harry has another amazingly factual dream about Voldemort, he confusedly asks Dumbledore, “‘So you think . . . that dream . . . did it really happen?’” (601). Dumbledore confirms Harry’s suspicions: “‘It is possible . . . I would say—probable, Harry’”(601). At the end of the novel, Harry’s life takes on all the nightmarish qualities of Wonderland: the rules of the game he is playing (the Triwizard Tournament) deceive him; the competition becomes no longer recreational but dangerously real;

he must observe (and help to bring about) his friend’s death; he nearly gets murdered; and he finds out he has been betrayed by an evil impersonator who took on the form of a trustworthy wizard (Alastor Moody). Because of the gruesome nightmare he has endured, Harry is furious from the beginning of Book 5 (at which point he turns fifteen), and his anger grows throughout the novel. His voyage to the headquarters of the Order of the Phoenix (accompanied by a group of flying guardians) initially resembles the Darlings’ first night voyage with Peter Pan: “Harry kicked off hard from the ground. The cool night air rushed through his hair . . . He felt as though his heart was going to explode with pleasure” (Phoenix 55–56). Harry loses track of time on this voyage just as the Darling children do on their way to Neverland: “He wondered how long they had been flying; it felt like an hour at least” (57). But completely unlike Peter Pan, and also unlike himself in earlier books, Harry takes progressively less pleasure in The Boy Who Lived 195 the flight. He grows so chilled his body freezes to his broom, and he yearns to land, thinking “longingly for a moment of the snug, dry interiors of the cars streaming along below” (55–57). As Book 5 advances, Harry’s nights grow “restless” and “disturbed” (9); it seems he no longer has any good dreams at all. He believes he is being attacked by many-legged creatures with cannons for heads (a

normal dream); he repeatedly thinks he is wandering down a windowless corridor and facing a locked door which he longs to enter (due to his own misjudgment these dreams will become prophetic); Hermione tells him to give Cho his Firebolt broomstick, which he can’t do because the evil professor, Dolores Umbridge, has locked it up (a normal— and psychoanalytically fertile—dream); he turns into a snake who bites and nearly murders Ron Weasley’s father (this dream is factual, although Voldemort was technically in the snake’s body, not Harry); he has a long conversation, speaking in Voldemort’s voice, and when he looks in the mirror he sees Voldemort rather than himself (another factual dream); he has a version of an epileptic seizure, and hears (even utters) Voldemort’s maniacal laughter (again, a factual dream); he suffers from a terrible nightmare/seizure during an exam, brought on by his lack of sleep and his inability to remember names and dates from the real world—in this implanted dream, he once again has merged with Voldemort and is in the process of torturing Sirius Black (Harry’s own godfather). The way in which Harry changes into a dreadful male adult figure in his fantasy life, translates the implications of these dreams into reality, and ultimately must abandon his faith in make-believe (as part of the process of growing up), strikingly resembles Alice’s journey

through Wonderland. Harry’s inability to distinguish implanted from factual dreams derives in part from his childishness. The Death Eater, Bellatrix Lestrange (Sirius’s murderer), cruelly mocks him: “‘The little baby woke up fwightened and fort what it dweamed was twoo’” (Phoenix 782). In order to protect himself from this mistake, Harry was supposed to have learned Occlumency: the magical defense of the mind against external penetration. Snape has repeatedly told him that in order to become good at Occlumency Harry must rid his mind of all emotion—“‘ empty it, make it blank and calm, you understand?’” (538). Strangely, Harry appears to have no skill at Occlumency— he cannot defend his mind against influence from the outside, and loses all ability to distinguish his fantasy life from the truth. So far in Rowling’s series, Harry’s voyages to and from dreamworld have been imitated solely by male characters. Voldemort inserts him196 Amy Billone self into Harry’s dreams; Snape enters Harry’s mind on multiple occasions (like Voldemort he is skilled at the art of Legilmency); Dumbledore seems to have this ability as well. Men’s power (both in its best and worst possible form) derives from this expertise—it is what enables Voldemort to take over Harry’s mind in Book 5 and what repeatedly brings Dumbledore to Harry’s aid. Harry’s male friends such as Ron and Neville have normal dreams—Ron tends to forget his, although once he remembers he dreamt he was playing Quidditch,

which is easy to understand since in real life he is secretly practicing to try out for the team; Neville embarks on “a long-winded explanation of a nightmare involving a pair of giant scissors wearing his grandmother’s best hat” (Phoenix 237–38). Unlike the male characters, girls and women have difficulty moving from real life to dreamworlds and back again. Instead, they seem to divide into two categories in the Harry Potter books. On the one hand, characters like Hermione Granger, Minerva McGonagall and Dolores Umbridge are bound to the real world (however magical this world may be)—they appear to have no dreams at night, they dismiss divination, they scrupulously follow the laws of reason, they do not/ cannot play games (McGonagall may love to watch Quidditch, but she herself does not play, and Hermione appears to have little interest in the sport; nor can Hermione play chess). On the other hand, the “loony” girl who gives “off an aura of distinct dottiness,” Luna Lovegood, with her “wide, silvery eyes,” and the Divination teacher, Sibyll Trelawney, exist in dreamland; they never make any voyage there (Phoenix 183, 199).15 These latter characters might be compared with the Duchess, the Cook, the Queen of Hearts, Tinker Bell, and Tiger Lily; they do not fall to Wonderland or fly to Neverland— they cannot distinguish between dreams and reality; they do not follow the rules of logic; they live only in fanciful realms.

While many people may feel that Rowling is giving them exactly what they want with respect to gender, perhaps these readers—just like Rowling’s protagonists—will discover that no matter how wellintentioned they were, they have accidentally misunderstood reality, betrayed themselves into believing what turns out not to be true. By phrasing the problem this way, I do not mean to imply that Rowling herself might be a traitor in the fashion of the “makebelieve” Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher, Alastor Moody, who reveals himself to be a servant of the Dark Lord in the fourth book. Nor do I mean that, like Sirius Black, Rowling may give us every reason to asThe Boy Who Lived 197 sume she is a maniacal mass murderer and then turn out to be the loving and protective “godmother” we never knew we had, even though all evidence points to the contrary. (The fifth book suggests that if we attach ourselves to this metaphor, we will eventually bring Rowling to her death due to our desperate efforts to protect her from torture and blame.) But I do not mean for us to forget these analogies either. Rather, I think we need to keep both constantly in mind, neither to accept one or the other, and to pay close attention to how Rowling’s books thematize our struggle to make sense of what they seem to say. Feminist critics split into two opposing groups—those who find Rowling’s work empowering for female characters and those who see

it as misogynistic. In keeping with my Sirius Black analogy, Ximena Gallardo-C. and C. Jason Smith offer a proactive feminist interpretation of Rowling’s work. They maintain that while “the novels do not actively critique gender stereotyping, the narrative does challenge standard constructions of gender and gender roles” (“Cinderfella” 191). Rowling achieves this effect by feminizing Harry through his association with Cinderella, through his symbolic actions (such as flying on a broom—an object associated with women, who use brooms to clean kitchens), and through the series’ growing obsession with understanding “otherness.” In her article, “Hermione Granger and the Heritage of Gender,” Eliza T. Dresang proposes a postmodern feminist interpretation of Rowling’s work. She points out that Hermione is immediately chosen for Gryffindor House, and even though her agency might be developing slowly, she is playing more and more of “a decisive role” in Harry’s adventures and adventures of her own (“Hermione Granger” 227). Furthermore, McGonagall seems to be “a strong, ethical woman . . . an empowered female” (235). On the other hand, in keeping with my Alastor Moody impersonator analogy, many dismiss Rowling’s work as dangerous, false, and misleading. In her article, “Harry Potter’s Girl Trouble,” Christine Schoefer concludes that the “world of everyone’s favorite kid wizard”

is “a place where boys come first.” Jack Zipes does not consider the Harry Potter texts to be “books of quality” precisely because (as “phenomenal” books) they are “driven by commodity consumption that at the same time sets the parameters of reading and aesthetic taste” (187, 172). Consequently, Zipes finds the Harry Potter books extremely “formulaic and sexist” (171). As Farah Mendlesohn argues in her essay, “Crowning the King: Harry Potter and the Construction of Authority,” the one “heroine” of these books, Hermione, “will never be per198 Amy Billone mitted to be anything other than a second in command”; the only time Hermione achieves separation from Harry (as late as the fourth book) she receives attention first through “the magical equivalent of plastic surgery” and second through her attractiveness to the only figure presented as more “exciting” than Harry Potter—Viktor Krum, the world-famous Quidditch player (174–75). Do the Harry Potter books ultimately eliminate gender stereotypes, or radically reinforce them? I believe that Rowling inscribes this question within her stories themselves. Her self-aware narrative strategy becomes clear at the start of the first book as soon as McGonagall tells Dumbledore that Harry Potter will “‘be famous—a legend . . . there will be books written about Harry—every child in our world will know his name!’” (17). When Rita Skeeter appears in Book 4 and sets out to

ruin Harry’s life in order to further her career as a reporter, Rowling encourages readers to laugh at the absurd real-life association between critical articles and the Harry Potter series. Later, Rowling makes the unusual point of stressing Harry’s inability to master Occlumency— his powerlessness when it comes to keeping control of his fantasy life. In so doing, Rowling may be acknowledging that like Harry, she cannot block her own fantasies from outside intrusion. In the book, Kids’ Letters to Harry Potter, girls say they identify with Hermione; that they “look, act and think” like her; that they dressed up as Hermione for Halloween, or wanted to play her role in the Harry Potter movies; that they wish they had Harry for a boyfriend; that they think about him all the time, love him and miss him and wish he knew who they were; that they (like Hermione) are not as “noble and brave” as he is.16 Children seem to believe in the Harry Potter series as much as Harry believes in his own dreams; one fifteen-year-old girl from the Philippines admits to Harry, “When I was a kid, I used to believe in fairies. Now that I’m older, I believe in you” (12). Like Harry, Rowling may inadvertently be leading us on a rescue mission to save the very person whose death we are helping her to bring about. Unintentionally, perhaps, we must now witness and facilitate the murder of the female dreamchild—the girl who could someday become as powerful as Dumbledore, Voldemort or Harry Potter himself.

How should readers handle their simultaneous adoration and fear of Harry Potter? I keep picturing Dumbledore’s words of comfort to Harry after he has brought about the murder of the one person he would have given his life to rescue: “‘In the end, it mattered not that you could not close your mind. It was your heart that saved you’” (PhoeThe Boy Who Lived 199 nix 844). Regardless of how dangerous her/our fantasy life turns out to be, it matters as little for J. K. Rowling as it does for her male hero that she has allowed her dreams to be penetrated by forces from the outside. The Harry Potter books are so full of love they burn us when we touch them; it is in their very skin. Notes 1Philip Nel draws connections between Rowling’s vision of education and Lewis Carroll’s. Like Alice, Rowling’s characters “learn only when they put their knowledge to use”; furthermore, “joy in learning finds expression through games with words, numbers, and ideas” (30–31). Nel uses such examples as the logical puzzle at the end of Book 1, the anagram “Tom Marvelo Riddle” in Book 2, the Sphinx’s riddle in the Third Task of Book 4, and the chess sets with living pieces. 2In the play version of Barrie’s work (which I will from now on term Peter Pan, as opposed to the novel, which I will call Peter and Wendy), Mrs. Darling is “startled to see a strange little face outside the window and a hand groping as if it wanted to come in”; she anxiously asks, “‘Who are you?’” (Peter Pan 89). Barrie alludes in this scene to Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights, where Lockwood sees “obscurely, a child’s face looking through

the window”; the little girl ghost’s hand clings to his as she cries “‘Let me in—let me in!’” (20). For evidence of Barrie’s admiration for Emily Brontë, see M’Connachie and J. M. B. Speeches by J. M. Barrie, where, in one lecture, Barrie claims that he has only one fault to find in Thomas Hardy, which is that out of fear the book would be “too depressing,” Hardy never read Wuthering Heights, a novel written by our “greatest woman” (149). The difference between Catherine and Peter Pan is that the girl reaches sexual maturity while the boy does not. Although Catherine returns to childhood at the end of her life, she does not tell Lockwood her name is “Catherine Earnshaw,” as it was when she was a child, but “Catherine Linton,” which is her name only after childhood has been lost due to marriage. The significance of this difference will become more apparent as my argument progresses. 3U. C. Knoepflmacher makes a similar claim about how Lewis Carroll uses Alice to gain access to an imaginative part of himself: “By ‘eternizing’ the child and converting her into an ever-youthful figure, Carroll’s artistic reconstructions can offer him and her a perennial field of dreams open to other players similarly eager for renovation” (157). 4The story of Peter Pan was first published in 1904, when it was included as part of Barrie’s novel The Little White Bird. That same year, the Peter Pan tale was converted into a play entitled Peter Pan, or the Boy who wouldn’t grow up. The Peter Pan section as it appeared in The Little White Bird was republished in 1906 as the novel Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens. In 1911, Peter Pan, or the Boy who wouldn’t grow up was turned into the novel Peter and Wendy, which is the version commonly read today. (Please note that whenever I cite

Peter and Wendy, I am referring to the Oxford University Press edition, Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens and Peter and Wendy, first published in 1991.)The name Peter and Wendy, however, was changed in 1921 to Peter Pan and Wendy. That title was later shortened to Peter Pan. In 1928 Barrie changed the script again, creating the first published version of the play (to which he attached his famous dedication). 5In his interpretation of Through the Looking Glass, Roderick McGillis reads the White Knight’s character sympathetically. Alice mistakenly wants to be Queen, while he alone sees the importance of invention and play: “For Alice, the desire to be Queen has something to do with her sense of herself as a person of position and power, but the Knight knows just how meaningless the designation ‘Queen’ really is” (117). I am arguing here that regardless of whatever the White Knight or the Cheshire Cat may know, Alice has 200 Amy Billone no alternative but to become Queen, however dreadful (and “meaningless”) this prospect may be. 6Alice is called a “serpent” by the Pigeon in the same way that Eve is called a serpent by Adam, who, lamenting his fall, repels her in Book X of Paradise Lost: “Out of my sight, thou serpent, that name best/Befits thee with him leagued, thyself as false/And hateful . . . But for thee/I had persisted happy . . .” (PL X:867–74). Milton’s sensual description of the unfallen Eve might mean that she is in effect already fallen from the moment of her creation. 7The association between girlhood and maternity is not limited to Barrie’s work. In her discussion of Francis Hodgson Burnett’s A Little Princess, Elisabeth Gruner stresses the importance of Sara’s maternal instinct: “But Sara, though she is only eleven, is repeatedly

characterized as maternal; as if to suggest that the allfemale setting requires a mother, as if to suggest that to mother is the ultimate expression of a girl’s, if not a princess’s, duties” (176). 8According to David Holbrook’s psychoanalytic reading, Wendy “cannot fly as she once did” because she “is growing up to adult sexuality, and the broomstick represents a penis. This growth to adult sensuality divides her forever from Peter, who died as a child and must remain a child” (77). 9See Barrie’s Dedication to Peter Pan (78). 10Historically, the pantomime originated in Italy, where it developed into a stylized form called the harlequinade. The first of these Italian performances came to Britain in the early eighteenth century. By the mid-eighteenth century the form of entertainment had been adopted by the famous clown family, the Grimaldis, and by the end of the nineteenth century, pantomimes were generally based on fairy stories such as Cinderella. For more reasons than simply practical ones, crossdressing contributed to the topsyturvy format both of Italian harlequinades and British pantomimes. Not only did grown women play the parts of boy protagonists in nineteenthcentury England, but men also played the parts of Cinderella’s stepsisters. 11Consult Roger Lancelyn Green’s J. M. Barrie for the performance history of Peter Pan (41–44). 12Harry Potter’s first night at Hogwarts differs drastically from Alice’s experience at the Mad Tea Party, a scene which begins with the March Hare offering her some wine, although there isn’t any in sight. 13Girls pose no challenge to Harry on the Quidditch field. When he first plays against Cho Chang, the Ravenclaw Seeker (and the only girl on the team) he is told she is

“pretty good”; nevertheless, she only rides a Comet TwoSixty, which does end up looking “like a joke next to the Firebolt [Harry’s new broom]” (Azkaban 254). Sure enough, Harry has no trouble beating Cho with his incredible skill and on his super-broom, even given the presence of three pseudo-Dementors. On the other hand, he does lose to Cedric (Cho’s boyfriend), the Hufflepuff Seeker (true, he is distracted by some real Dementors during the game). When Harry is replaced by Ginny Weasley as Seeker in Book 5 (because he has gotten into a fistfight in front of all the teachers), the team captain tells Harry that while Ginny is “‘pretty good,’” she is “‘[n]othing on you, of course’” (Phoenix 453). 14Unlike the boys, Wendy Darling does not/cannot forget the real world that she has left behind. It is Wendy’s fault that her brothers and the Lost Boys find their way out of the fantasy realm (and hence grow up). Alice also worries about home during her adventures in Wonderland, and at last both physically and mentally grows out of her dream universe so that she can rejoin her older sister on the bank. And in L. Frank Baum’s The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (1900), Dorothy spends her entire dream journey trying to go back to bleak, gray Kansas, a desire that makes no sense to the Scarecrow (the most intelligent character in the book). 15Rowling takes Trelawney’s name from Treasure Island— there, Squire Trelawney brings possible ruin to all his friends by dreamily failing to notice that he is in the process of The Boy Who Lived 201 hiring as shipmates the most dangerous pirates alive. Although Rowling’s female Trelawney does in a sense make two voyages to and from dreamworld when she formulates

her authentic prophecies, she has no memory of ever having made them. In this sense, she can be aligned with Ginny Weasley, who (unlike Harry) loses all recollection each time she is possessed by Voldemort. 16See, for example, pages 8, 12, 20, 25, 27, 29, 46, 49, 54, 66, 84, 130, 143, 176, 189, and 194. Works Cited Adler, Bill, ed. Kids’ Letters to Harry Potter from Around the World. New York: Carroll, 2001. Anatol, Giselle Liza, ed. Reading Harry Potter: Critical Essays. London: Praeger, 2003. Barrie, J. M. M’Connachie and J. M. B. Speeches by J. M. Barrie. New York: Scribner’s, 1939. _____. Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens and Peter and Wendy. 1991. New York: Oxford UP, 1999. _____. Peter Pan and other Plays. Oxford: Clarendon, 1995. _____. Peter and Wendy; Margaret Ogilvy. New York: Scribner’s, 1913. Braybrooke, Patrick. J. M. Barrie: A Study in Fairies and Mortals. Philadelphia: Lippincott, 1924. Brontë, Emily. Wuthering Heights. New York: Norton, 1990. Carroll, Lewis [Charles Dodgson]. Alice in Wonderland. New York: Norton, 1992. Dresang, Eliza T. “Hermione Granger and the Heritage of Gender.” The Ivory Tower and Harry Potter: Perspectives on a Literary Phenomenon. Ed. Lana A. Whited. Columbia: U of Missouri P, 2002. 211–42. Foster, Shirley, and Judy Simons. What Katy Read: Feminist Re-Readings of ‘Classic’ Stories for Girls. London: Macmillan, 1995. Gallardo-C., Ximena, and C. Jason Smith. “Cinderfella: J. K. Rowling’s Wily Web of Gender.” Reading Harry Potter: Critical Essays. Ed. Giselle Liza Anatol. London: Praeger, 2003. 191–205. Green, Roger Lancelyn. J. M. Barrie. New York: Walck, 1961.

Gruner, Elisabeth Rose. “Cinderella, Marie Antoinette, and Sara: Roles and Role Models in A Little Princess.” The Lion and the Unicorn 22.2 (1998): 163–87. Holbrook, David. Images of Woman in Literature. New York: New York UP, 1989. Hollindale, Peter. Introduction and Notes. Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens and Peter and Wendy. By J. M. Barrie. 1991. New York: Oxford UP, 1999. Kincaid, James. Child-Loving: The Erotic Child and Victorian Culture. New York: Routledge, 1992. Knoepflmacher, U. C. Ventures Into Childland: Victorians, Fairy-Tales and Femininity. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1998. Leach, Karoline. In the Shadow of the Dreamchild: A New Understanding of Lewis Carroll. London: Owen, 1999. McGillis, Roderick. The Nimble Reader: Literary Theory and Children’s Literature. New York: Twayne, 1996. Mendlesohn, Farah. “Crowning the King: Harry Potter and the Construction of Authority.” The Ivory Tower and Harry Potter: Perspectives on a Literary Phenomenon. Columbia: U of Missouri P, 2002. 159–81. Milton, John. Paradise Lost. New York: Norton, 1993. 253. Nel, Philip. J. K. Rowling’s Harry Potter Novels: A Reader’s Guide. Continuum: New York, 2001. Nelson, Claudia. Boys Will Be Girls: The Feminine Ethic and British Children’s Fiction, 1857– 1917. New Brunswick: Rutgers UP, 1991. Rose, Jacqueline. The Case of Peter Pan: or the Impossibility of Children’s Fiction. London: Macmillan, 1984. 202 Amy Billone Rowling, J. K. Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets. New York: Scholastic, 1998. _____. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. New York: Scholastic, 2000.

_____. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. New York: Scholastic, 2003. _____. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. New York: Scholastic, 1999. _____. Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone. New York: Scholastic, 1997. Schoefer, Christine. “Harry Potter’s Girl Trouble.” Salon. 12 Jan. 2000. . Accessed November 25, 2003. Whited, Lana A., ed. The Ivory Tower and Harry Potter: Perspectives on a Literary Phenomenon. Columbia: U of Missouri P, 2002. Zipes, Jack. Sticks and Stones: The Troublesome Success of Children’s Literature from Slovenly P e t e r t o H a r r y P o t t e r . N e w Yo r k : Routledge, 2000. 170–89. Economics focus