This paper purposes to treat of the works of James Matthew Barrie. Barrie’s works contain many common themes, elements, and inspirations. His most famous work, Peter Pan, contains each of his trademarks: a portrait of his mother as a character, courageous heroes and cowardly villains, an isolated island, and strong roots in his own family life.

As with most authors, Barrie's personal life had a major impact on the works that he produced. Whether inserting his mother's characteristics into the leading heroine or drawing upon the Davies children for inspiration, Barrie's work always has his unique thumbprint in his characters. Every female, however, that appears in Barrie's works in a younger version of his mother, Margaret Ogilvy.

Barrie's strong mother had such a profound impact on not only his work, but his life as well. Long after her death, she was still appearing regularly in his stories as the heroine. To fully understand Barrie, a naturally private man, one must look directly to his mother. His love and adoration for her lead him to write an entire book devoted to her in 1896 simply titled Margaret Ogilvy. In this book, he describes many of the charming characteristics of his mother. From the many clues in the book, we can quite clearly see that Barrie was indeed his mother’s primary object of affection. Barrie was actually quite disturbed by the amount of times he subconsciously included his mother in his body of work. Yet Ogilvy’s effect on Barrie’s work was so utterly entire that Barrie was often extremely dissatisfied with and work that he could not see his mother’s youthful girlhood image in. Barrie’s earliest works were, in fact, accurate retellings of the stories that his mother related to him about her childhood in Scotland.

Margaret Ogilvy was incredibly devoted to her son. Despite long-term illnesses, she still managed to read and correct whatever manuscript her son sent her, proving beyond a shadow of a doubt that she was a very courageous soul. Consequently, quite often courage is a very important element in Barrie’s dramas. While his protagonists possess it, his villains lack it. A quite controversial example of this would be A Kiss for Cinderella, in which a charwoman takes in a German baby during wartime. At the time of it’s writing, many critics had no qualms about starving a German, whether it be adult or child. The inclusion of this act by Barrie took great courage on his part. This controversy, however, did not stop the critics from praising Barrie’s ability to recreate human nature on stage.

It is said that Barrie fully understands human nature because of his ability to sympathize with men, women, and children of any social class or race. Barrie claimed, however, that his appeal was his inoffensiveness. He said that this quality allowed him to “steal into the hearts of his characters and of his audiences”. Barrie had a rather clever was of studying a character’s emotion: isolate them on an island.

One of Barrie's most common themes is the use of an island, either real or symbolized. He particularly liked using the island as a literary device because one could study the impulses of a specimen of humanity when isolated from the rest. One of the author's favorite works is The Admirable Crichton, which contains not one, but two islands, England and a savage one. Barrie's most famous work, Peter Pan, contains one of the most obvious islands in his works, the imaginary Neverland. Other, more skillfully hidden islands include Quality Street's town and Dear Brutus's enchanted forest. Perhaps one of his most abstract islands is the one that appears in Mary Rose. The island in that particular work happens to be an island with "the voices of eternity". "Barrie was indeed very good at slipping in an island; the islands of isolation, where the human heart can be studied under the microscope". This obsession with the reaction to isolation demonstrates Barrie’s love of humans.

Barrie's love and fascination with the human race eventually lead him to practically adopt the five sons of Arthur and Sylvia Llewelyn Davies. The Davies family had no blood relationship with Barrie or his wife. Barrie first met Sylvia Jocelyn Llewelyn Davies at a dinner party and immediately found himself infatuated with her. This infatuation lead Barrie to rather peculiar behavior. The first letter he wrote to Sylvia was dated by Barrie as being written two years earlier so that he might pretend to have known Sylvia prior to her marriage to Arthur. Unfortunately, Barrie's wife, Mary, knew of her husband's affections for Sylvia. This, coupled with a few other factors, including the couple’s inability to bear a child, lead Mary to take a lover and leave Barrie for good. Barrie never remarried. In 1908, the same year of Barrie’s divorce, Arthur Davies died of cancer. Sylvia Davies followed soon after, dying in 1910 of cancer, leaving the five children to be taken care of by the now unmarried Barrie. The five boys, Peter, John, Michael, Nicholas, and Arthur, were the inspiration for Barrie’s timeless classic, Peter Pan.

Peter Pan was originally written in 1904, included as a chapter in Barrie’s novel The Little White Bird. That same year, the chapter was converted into a play appropriately entitled Peter Pan, or the Boy Who Wouldn’t Grow Up. The original chapter 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. The name Peter and Wendy, however, was changed in 1921 to Peter Pan and Wendy. That title was later shortened to simply Peter Pan. Barrie thus ended up with three fairly different versions of the Peter Pan story, a fact that sometimes confused audiences.

The inspiration for Peter Pan as a character came from the five Davies children. The story was based upon a game played by Barrie and the children as they were growing up. The play Peter Pan itself was written as a tribute to the Davies children. Several of the characters were named after Davies boys, including Peter himself, as well as John and Michael Darling. Peter Pan, the character, was said to have been an actual composite of all of the Davies boys, despite the fact that his name suggests only being based solely upon Peter Davies.

Barrie himself actually made a list of the reasons that the story of Peter Pan has endured these many years. The reasons are three. The play, the flying, and Peter Pan himself are those reasons for the story’s constant endurance.

The story of Peter Pan lives on today, having been made into well over a thousand of stage and screen productions. One quite alarming stage tradition, however, still remains today. Ever since the first Peter Pan stage production that starred Nina Boucicalt as Peter Pan, the epitome of masculine boyhood, the role of Peter has invariably gone to a woman. Patrick Braybrooke all but demands that Peter Pan be played by a man instead of a woman. Braybrooke states that “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”.

James Barrie’s works will always be cherished by the young and old, as they have been since they were first published in the late 1800s. Despite the fact that most children have neither seen the play nor read the book, they still know of the mythic Peter Pan, a fact that has giving Peter the so-called “fourth dimension” of imagination. Yet it is still quite unfortunate that massive numbers of people are unaware of the enormous body of work Barrie produced in addition to Peter Pan. Even more unfortunate is the number of those who have never heard Barrie’s name. Yet, His charming way of slipping in his trademarks will without a doubt continue to captivate readers and theater audiences alike for many years to come. Barrie’s works truly have the ability to stand the test of time.