Kensington Gardens

The complete map for Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens shows that, of all the Peter Pan texts, here specific identifiable places in the world and fictional spaces are the most interwoven. This can be seen in the toporefs which include: place names such as ‘the Broad Walk’ and ‘The Serpentine’ and imagined, subjective, place names such as ‘fascinating slide-down kind of place’ and ‘Paths that have Made Themselves’. This place-name division could also be seen to correspond to that between an adult’s and child’s sense of place.  All the names are given equal standing since all are directly connected via solid purple lines.

Unsurprisingly, ‘Kensington Gardens’ is the largest node. It is the starting-point and container of the story and its nested settings: a place that also functions as a site for spatial stories. It is, after all, Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens, suggesting that it is a text as much about place as it is about character. This aspect of the Gardens is further confirmed by the toporefs that, linked via predominantly purple lines, are directly or indirectly connected to the topoi. Save for a few, the subplaces/toporefs are self-referential, referring inwards to aspects of Kensington Gardens rather than outwards: ‘the seven Spanish chestnuts’, ‘the flower garden’. Despite this introspective characteristic, some spaces do foreshadow those of the Pan texts to come. So, the frequent references to houses and, in particular, out of place houses that represent an uprooted and repossessed domestic, pre-empts NeverLand’s house underground and the infamous Wendy house