Barrie in Love VI

Barrie in Love VI

Hook disgusts Barrie precisely because he embodies certain of his own traits.

Hook is marvelously self-sufficient; he wishes to ingratiate himself with no one; he is an artist who completely understands and controls his art; he excites the admiration of his pirate crew.

Most painful, perhaps, is his homosexuality. He is not divided against himself, not at all tortured by remorse or conscience.

In Peter Pan, Barrie half-wishes he might rid himself of his soul, and Hook is presented as a creature without a soul.

It is interesting to note that the rat-like qualities in Hook are those that have attracted Barrie men like Captain Hook.

Barrie is attracted to a certain type of Cornish men with dark, fine, stiff hair and dark eyes like holes in their heads or like the eyes of a rat.

Barrie has felt the queer, subterranean, repulsive beauty of a young man with an indomitable manner "like a quick, vital rat."

The Nietzschean quality of Hook’s haughtiness and his loathing of other people, particularly women, remind us of Barrie’s pose of aristocratic contempt.

Men like Hook and ruffians like Peter Pan with his queer monkeyish face in its own way is almost beautiful appeal to Barrie.

They are sardonic, dry-skinned, coldly intelligent, mockingly courteous to the women in their company—creatures who strangely rouse Barrie’s blood.

There is no doubt but that Barry was physically and temperamentally powerfully attracted by males like Hook and Peter Pan.

There is an irresistible life to Hook and Peter Pan that makes Barrie feel the strength of their nihilistic charms.