Theme and message

Identity

The short story “Through the Wardrobe” by Lucy Caldwell explores the theme of identity. The theme is illustrated by the main character, a boy who identifies as female and who struggles to come to terms with his gender identity. 

The boy struggles with his identity since he is little, and his earliest memory is one of him trying to hide his male genitals and to pee standing down, like a girl. Unaware of what is happening to him, the boy defines his inner struggle as sadness: “You are sad. You’re only six years old but you feel sad a lot of the time, a tightness in your chest that you don’t have words for”. 

As he grows up, the boy realizes that his body is “wrong” and that he feels “wrong in it”. The feeling of not belonging and not finding himself continues throughout puberty when the boy feels his body failing him: “You’re still small for your age but your growth spurt will come – your mum tells you, thinking she’s being reassuring – and you dread it. You have a hot, sickening feeling that time is running out”. 

Besides feeling like a stranger in his body, the boy lives under the pressure of matching society’s expectations of him. His father pushes him to do manlier activitie...