期刊名称：E-Fabulations : e-Journal of Children's Literature
电子版ISSN：1646-8880
出版年度：2007
卷号：01
出版社：Universidade do Porto
摘要：This essay will focus on the adult/child as well as on the time/ space relationships in J. M. Barrie´s Peter Pan.1 Some parallels will be traced between two distinct worlds presented in the book: the real world, on the one hand, as reflected by the Victorian social background underlying the whole narrative; the imaginary world of Neverland, on the other. It is however extremely significant to point out briefly some relevant aspects regarding Victorian society. Generally speaking, it was a very strict society, though highly industrialized and hard working, ruled by narrow moral values and almost entirely submitted to a patriarchal social order. Children and childhood were beginning then to be sensed as particular problems of the time, with their own needs and demands to which there were no definite answers. Specially children from the lower, working classes were forced to work hard in extremely bad conditions, both human and sanitary, living short and dreadful lives with hardly any possibilities of finding a way out from their families’ long established misery. They worked usually eight to twelve hours per day, six days a week, had no access to education, and even playing with other children was scarcely allowed to them by parents or any other kind of adult tutor or teacher. Apart from their natural liveliness and willingness to live life in full, often assailed by illnesses that cut short their hopes and future prospects, these were unhappy children, often treated very much as slaves, earning little more than nothing to help with the household daily expenses.
