Mary Poppins and the Great Mother (original) (raw)
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Re-Storying P. L. Travers: Seduction, Betrayal, and a Fugitive's Fairy Tale
Southerly, 2017
While the Mary Poppins stories have been affectionately received as literature for children since they were first published in 1934, their Australian-born author, P.L. Travers maintained that she never intended this to be the case. Rather the stories reveal fairy tale as it pertains to those who have lost their childhood: "grown-ups" (Travers, "Complete Collection", 96) who wish to reconnect with the organically lived experiences of the child. This act of revisiting and revising one's childhood for the purpose of catharsis is a familiar one and a verifiable tool for many writers wishing to both expunge haunting memories and at the same time reconnect with a world of unfettered insight and impulse. Confusing the boundaries between memory and fantasy, writers continue to reinvent scenes from their childhoods that enter the collective imagination and become popular legends. The magical worlds of Alice's Wonderland, Peter Pan's Never Land and Mary Poppins's Fairyland epitomise and inaugurate this reworking of childhood fantasies. For Travers, however, at the heart of this seemingly formulaic phenomenon lies a series of curious and contradictory movements that this essay will investigate—contradictions between disclosure and disguise, divinity and law, lost and found, and memory and fantasy. Travers's movement is lateral, in terms of her association with both the child and the grown-up, but also retrospective, by way of her nostalgic impulse. We return to the scenes of her childhood only to find ourselves in the displaced home of Cherry Tree Lane in Edwardian London rather than the Australian landscape of her early years. Episodes of abandoned children and lost childhoods infuse Travers's literary anatomy, the author having been consumed by both the death of her father and a lifetime spent feeling displaced. In what follows, I emphasise Travers's act of storytelling supported by secrecy and how this impulse to "re-story" (Travers, "What the Bee Knows", 141) the narrative that dominated her formative years subsequently contextualised her entire writing career. This essay will examine the paradox that existed for Travers as she endeavoured to negotiate her shifting affiliation with the child and the nanny, a conflict that permeates both her biographical and fairy tale narratives. It is ultimately these contrasting movements and confused associations that allows one to be seduced and in turn betrayed by the fugitive natures of both P.L. Travers and her fictional nanny, Mary Poppins.
Mothers and Mother figures in British Literature, 1660-1789
Wiley Encyclopedia of British Literature, 1660-1789, 2015
As iconic figures of the home, mothers were beloved, idealized, and sentimentalized-and sources of concern, if not outright anxiety, for the havoc they could wreak if they failed to fulfill the expectations of their role. In an age in which domestic ideology became prominent, mothers and motherhood were a constant source of commentary and narrative in eighteenth-century literature.
_Narrative_ (January 2019)
This essay investigates the phenomenon of "embedded" mental states in fiction (i.e., a mental state within a mental state within yet another mental state, as in, "Mrs. Banks wished that Mary Poppins wouldn't know so very much more about the best people than she knew herself "), asking if patterns of embedment manifest themselves differently in children's literature than they do in literature for "grownups. " Looking at books for three age groups (nine to twelve, three to seven, and one to two), Zunshine finds significant differences in their respective patterns of embedment, while also arguing that a critical inquiry into complex mental states is not just a cognitive but also a historicist project. Drawing on research in developmental psychology, rhetorical narratology, and cultural history, as well as on digital data mining, this essay seeks to broaden the interdisciplinary and interpretive range of cognitive literary studies. REMEMBER the time when Ben Rogers left off what looked like a really cool gamepretending to be a Missouri steam ship-to take over Tom Sawyer's chore of whitewashing the fence?
The depiction of motherhood in picturebooks
Peter Rabbit and Voices In The Park are picturebooks which reflect a lot of ideologies and values, one of the most significant and obvious issues that peter Rabbit and voices in the park present is the different images of motherhood. However, in both picturebooks the mothers are different in their characterization, their relationship between them and their children as they have a big role in their growing up. Peter Rabbit and Voices In The Park have two different kinds of mothers. However, both books are different where Voices in the Park is postmodern book and totally different from Peter Rabbit, thus the two depictions of motherhood are different. In Peter Rabbit, the mother is portrayed nearly in a very natural and simple way even though she is humanized but she is still pictured as a natural rabbit living under the tree. Otherwise, Mrs. Rabbit is a care mother as she is powerful because she is only a mother with her children and the father is dead. Moreover, she is able to control over the home and the children with the ability to protect them. On the other side, the depiction of the mother in Voices In The Park is much more complex as the Gorilla reflects most of the women in the human world and their struggling with the social systems. In this postmodern book, the mother presents the upper class woman who cares about the appearances and formalities much more than what is beyond as the " hat " is everywhere in the book. In addition, this mother hasn't any sense of others as she is very shallow where the story ends as it has begun for her without any changing in her perspectives or her feelings. Actually, she may be considered as a caring mother but from only one side which is the materialistic side, as she finds herself in a higher layer than Smudge and her father, " Then I saw him talking to a very rough-looking child " (Browne, 1999). Indeed, font is one of the metafictive features in the postmodern picturebooks and can add more to our understanding, thus, the font that used in the mother's voice is formal and reflects the culture
2008
My thesis explores the world of the "imaginary" in Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and J.M. Barrie's Peter Pan and its connection to the world of the "mundane" experienced by the typical Victorian housewife and mother. Both are intimately connected within the texts, primarily in the characters' dual roles as dictated by the gendered expectations of Victorian society. While in the imaginary world, both Alice and Wendy experience mini-versions of their future lives. They exist as girl and mother simultaneously. Carroll, by creating a hostile environment, grotesque motherimages, and a confused, argumentative Alice, shows a negative portrait of motherhood, since he never wanted little girls to become women. In contrast, Barrie depicts motherhood as sacred, something to be desired and protected at all costs. By necessity, maternal ideology is connected to female sexuality but is far superior in value. Both authors created an escape from the mundane realities of Victorian life wherein the audience could contemplate its societal roles. Barrie's story elevates mothers and their connection to eternal childhood, and Carroll's elevates girlhood, questioning the absurdities of "grown-up" reality. I also explore the dual nature of the secondary characters, analyzing the females against the Victorian Madonna/harlot dichotomy. For example, Tinker Bell, the ii working-class, profane fairy to Wendy's middle-class angel, is allowed much more freedom of expression and power to control her life than Wendy, though this freedom comes with a price. Primarily, she seeks Peter's company and attention, but she must settle for second place when Wendy is around. Mrs. Darling, the representation of angelic motherhood, is Barrie's professed "favorite" character. Though she cannot go back to Neverland, she experiences it vicariously by "tidying up" her children's minds. Through her we see what Wendy is destined to become, as well as Barrie's expression of the pivotal, sacred role of the mother. The male characters also play dual roles-sons and husbands-though they mostly serve to further define the female heroines. Alice suffers an identity crisis throughout her time in Wonderland, particularly since her place in the hierarchy of power is constantly changing. Her relationships with the White Rabbit, the Caterpillar, the King of Hearts, and others are what she uses to understand herself within the dream. Conversely, in Peter Pan, Barrie's male characters are defined by their relationship to the dominant females within the story. Mr. Darling and Captain Hook illustrate the dual nature of the Victorian male, though neither figure embodies the typical stereotype. The authors' treatment of the male characters does show insight into, and even a forgiveness for, their multiple flaws, but they are most often depicted according to how their behavior affects the heroines. By creating these girl-characters in fantastic settings, both authors made an appeal to their audience to become (or avoid becoming) what seemed inevitable: adult females. By doing so, they also displayed how the institution of motherhood affected their own realities and, perhaps subconsciously, what they wanted to sustain or change about the gendered expectations of Victorian society.
Mary Poppins the Subversive Magic Helper
Renáta Marosi, 2020
The purpose of this chapter is to analyse several fairy-tale motifs in the fantasy stories of Mary Poppins, especially to examine several attributes of the magic helper, one of the essential figures of fairy and fantasy stories, in Mary Poppins's character. Fantasy literature has adopted and altered the fairy-tale formulae. Accordingly, for example, (supernatural) characters (crones, fairies, goblins, dragons), the presence of magic (flying, spell) and magic objects (invisibility cloak or ring, wand), which are considered essential in fantasy literary works, are all derived from the world of fairy tales. The Mary Poppins books, as examples of this mode, reflect the fairy-tale pattern in many ways. In the same way, I argue that considering Mary Poppins's role in the Banks family, she can be decoded as the (universal) magic helper. However, Mary Poppins is an unconventional, subversive helper regarding her outward appearance, personality, magic aid and attitude toward her protégés, the Banks children (particularly, Jane and Michael). The subversive magic helper acquaints Jane and Michael Banks with the fairy world: she introduces to them characters (crones), magic (act of flying, talking animals) and so forth. Jane and Michael's physical (external) and psychological (internal) journeys fascinate, influence and teach them at the same time.
2012
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License. Date of Award Spring 2012 Document Type Thesis Degree Name Master of Arts (MA) Department Department of English Abstract In this paper, I explore the evolving conceptions of childhood and motherhood as expressed in Victorian and Edwardian children’s literature generally, and specifically in Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women, Frances Hodgeson Burnett’s The Secret Garden, and J.M. Barrie’s Peter Pan. An overview of the history of children’s literature and its development with relation to the changing cultural concept of childhood, as well as a discussion of social, economic, and creative factors impacting the ideological position of women at the turn of the 20th century provide the necessary background for said exploration. A variety of primary and secondary sources relating to relevant social history, artistic and literary movements, and the specific authors were consulted to asce...
Rules and Rhizomes: A Mary Poppins Sampler
Papers, 2016
When the Disney movie of Mary Poppins was released in 1964, I was a teenager and far too cool to watch it under the aegis of my own identity. But as a long-term devotee of the books I was keen to see what Disney had made of this adaptation, so I borrowed the children of some family friends as camouflage and headed for the cinema. To my dismay, Julie Andrews was too pretty, too sweet, too twinkly, and too insipid to suit my sense of the stern nanny, and I found the story diminished as a consequence. Kathryn Hughes, on the other hand, was eight years old and already a huge fan of the movie when she first read the books by P.L. Travers. She was initially thrilled to unwrap a book of Mary Poppins but her delight quickly turned to deep dismay. Her first reaction was that she had been given some kind of counterfeit. The picture on the cover was simply wrong: This Mary Poppins looked nothing like the soft and lovely Julie Andrews. In fact, she resembled a stiff peg doll, thin and hard, with a peg nose and two spots of high colour on her wooden cheeks. This was the kind of nanny, magical or not, from which any sensible child would shrink. (2013, n.p.