| Tinker Bell | |
|---|---|
 | |
|
Real Name |
Tinker Bell |
|
First Appearance |
Peter Pan, the Boy Who Wouldn't Grow Up (1904) |
|
Created by |
J.M. Barrie & Ela Q. May |
Origin[]
Though sometimes ill-tempered, spoiled, and very jealous and vindictive (getting the Lost Boys to shoot arrows at Wendy), at other times she is helpful and kind to Peter. The extremes in her personality are explained in-story by the fact that a fairy's size prevents her from holding more than one feeling at a time, so when she is angry she has no counterbalancing compassion. Fairies cannot fly in the rain but can enable others to fly by sprinkling them with fairy dust. At the end of the novel, the suggestion is that Tinker Bell has died the year after Wendy and her brothers left Neverland, and Peter has no memory of her at all.
Appearance and Demeanor[]
Tinker Bell was described by Barrie as a fairy who mended pots and kettles, like an actual tinker. Her speech consists of the sounds of a tinkling bell, which is understandable only to those familiar with the language of the fairies. In the original stage productions, she was represented on stage by a darting light "created by a small mirror held in the hand off-stage and reflecting a little circle of light from a powerful lamp" and her voice was a "a collar of bells and two special ones that Barrie brought from Switzerland."
Notes[]
- The Peter Pan play is in the public domain in the United States (as of 2024), but not the United Kingdom. as Special legislation was passed that gave the play a perpetual copyright. The characters, however, are in the public domain (as are the novels).
- In an early draft of the play, her name was Tippytoe (or Tippy for short).
- "Jane Wren" was listed among the cast as playing Tinker Bell: this was a joke, helping with the character's mystique (and fooled Britain's Inspector of Taxes, who sent the non-existent "Jane Wren" a tax demand).