Myth, Symbol and Meaning in Mary Pappins

Myth, Symbol

and Meaning

in Mary Poppins

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Children’s Literature and Culture

Jack Zipes, Series Editor

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New York London

Routledge is an imprint of the

Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business

Myth, Symbol

and Meaning

in Mary Poppins

THE GOVERNESS

AS PROVOCATEUR

Giorgia Grilli

FOREWORD BY NEIL GAIMAN

Translated by Jennifer Varney

Routledge

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International Standard Book Number‑10: 0‑415‑97767‑3 (Hardcover)

International Standard Book Number‑13: 978‑0‑415‑97767‑8 (Hardcover)

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This book was originally published in 1997 as In Volo, Dietro la Porta by Società Editrice “Il Ponte Vec‑

chio” (Cesena, Italy). Translation has been provided by Jennifer Varney.

For Neil

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ix

Contents

Series Editor’s Foreword xi

Foreword xiii

Preface xv

Acknowledgments xxi

Chapter 1 The Strangely Familiar Mary Poppins 1

Chapter 2 Pamela Lyndon Travers 25

Chapter 3 Thematic Continuity of Mary Poppins 43

Chapter 4 The Governess at the Door 119

Notes 159

Bibliography 165

Index 169

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xi

Series Editor’s Foreword

Dedicated to furthering original research in children’s literature and

culture, the Children’s Literature and Culture series includes mono￾graphs on individual authors and illustrators, historical examinations

of different periods, literary analyses of genres, and comparative stud￾ies on literature and the mass media. The series is international in scope

and is intended to encourage innovative research in children’s literature

with a focus on interdisciplinary methodology.

Children’s literature and culture are understood in the broadest sense

of the term children to encompass the period of childhood up through

adolescence. Owing to the fact that the notion of childhood has changed

so much since the origination of children’s literature, this Routledge

series is particularly concerned with transformations in children’s cul￾ture and how they have affected the representation and socialization of

children. While the emphasis of the series is on children’s literature, all

types of studies that deal with children’s radio, film, television, and art

are included in an endeavor to grasp the aesthetics and values of chil￾dren’s culture. Not only have there been momentous changes in chil￾dren’s culture in the last fifty years, but there have been radical shifts in

the scholarship that deals with these changes. In this regard, the goal

of the Children’s Literature and Culture series is to enhance research

in this field and, at the same time, point to new directions that bring

together the best scholarly work throughout the world.

Jack Zipes

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xiii

Foreword

I encountered Mary Poppins, as so many of my generation and those

who followed it did, through the film. I saw the film as a very small boy,

and it stayed in my head as a jumble of scenes, leaving behind mostly a

few songs and a vague memory of Mr. Banks as a figure of terror. I knew

I had enjoyed it, but the details were lost to me. Thus I was delighted to

find, as a five- or six-year-old, a Puffin paperback edition of Mary Pop￾pins by P. L. Travers with a picture of pretty Julie Andrews flying her

umbrella on the cover. The book I read was utterly wrong—this was not

the Mary Poppins I remembered—and utterly, entirely right.

Not until I read Giorgia Grilli’s book on Mary Poppins did I under￾stand why this was. I am not sure that I had given it any thought previ￾ously—Travers’s Mary Poppins was a natural phenomenon, ancient as

mountain ranges, on first-name terms with the primal powers of the

universe, adored and respected by everything that saw the world as it

was. And she was a mystery.

Mary Poppins defies explanation, and so it is to Professor Grilli’s credit

that her explanation of and insight into the Banks family’s nanny does

nothing to diminish the mystery, or to lessen Mary Poppins’s appeal.

The patterns of the first three Mary Poppins books are as inflexible

as those of a Noh play: she arrives, brings order to chaos, sets the world

to rights, takes the Banks children places, tells them a story, rescues

them from themselves, brings magic to Cherry Tree Lane, and then,

when the time is right, she leaves.

I do not ever remember wishing that Mary Poppins was my nanny.

She would have had no patience with a dreamy child who only wanted

to be left alone to read. I did not even wish that I was one of the Banks

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xiv • Foreword

children, at the Circus of the Sun, or having tea on the ceiling, and per￾haps that was because, unlike many other children in literature, they

did not feel permanent. They would grow, Jane and Michael, and soon

they would no longer need a nanny, and soon after that they would have

children of their own.

No, I did not want her for my nanny and I was glad the Banks family,

not mine, had to cope with her, but still, I inhaled the lessons of Mary

Poppins with the air of my childhood. I was certain that, on some fun￾damental level, the lessons were true, beneath truth. When my young￾est daughter was born I took my two older children aside and read them

the story of the arrival of the New One. Philosophically, I suspect now,

the universe of Mary Poppins underpins all my writing—but this I did

not know before I read Professor Grilli’s work.

It would not be overstating the case to suggest that Professor Grilli

is the most perceptive academic I have so far encountered in the field

of children’s literature, and I have encountered many of the breed. She

understands its magic and she is capable of examining and describ￾ing it without killing it in the process. Too many critics of children’s

literature can only explain it as a dead thing in a jar. Professor Grilli is

a naturalist, and a remarkable one, an observer who understands what

she observes. We are fortunate to have her, and we should appreciate

her while she is here, before she too walks through a door that is not

there, or before the wind blows her away.

Neil Gaiman

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