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shewhomust) wrote2013-12-29 12:38 pm
shewhomust) wrote2013-12-29 12:38 pm
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Welcome to Cherry Tree Lane
So, the great Mary Poppins re-read.
Do I need to say that if there can be spoilers, there will be? Mary Poppins arrives; she departs; in between, things happen. This holds true for more than the first book.
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sartorias starts us off with a bit of throat-clearing. Even without going beyond the first few pages, she touches on two things that I wanted to talk about.
The first is the illustrations, line drawings by Mary Shepard (there are some examples here, as well as some interesting discussion); she was the daughter of the much better known illustrator E.H. Shepard. her obituary in the New York Times suggests that her father was P.L. Travers's first choice as illustrator, and her work has a certain resemblance to his. She has a lightness of touch, and a perceptive eye, which together convey both the fantasy and the domesticity of Mary Poppins's adventures.
sartorias is also taken aback to discover that the Banks family, apparently not just ordinary but quite modest, runs to four servants: she discusses the first appearance of the household, who live in the smallest house in Cherry Tree Lane, and the most dilapidated, the one that needs a coat of paint. Mr. Banks had told Mrs. Banks that "She could have either a nice, clean, comfortable house or four children. But not both, for he couldn't afford it." Not having things you can't afford is something that both of us, as children, recognised, and it is something that Travers expected her child readers to understand. But that smallest house contains, as I commented when I first wrote about the books, Mrs Brill the Cook, Ellen the parlourmaid and Robertson Ay, as well as Katie Nanna (Mary Poppins's predecessor).
I quoted then an article by Kathryn Hughes, who takes all this as social realism: "No 17 Cherry Tree Lane is clearly in the midst of what was known by the interwar period as 'the servant problem'. With young working-class people more and more reluctant to 'go into service', the middle classes were obliged to run their houses with the help of a dwindling cohort of increasingly bolshie staff who weren't about to put up with any nonsense from their 'betters'. And that, surely, is the point Travers is making when Mary Poppins turns up from nowhere and refuses to provide references. Hysterically grateful that anyone at all is prepared to work for her, a cowed Mrs Banks immediately agrees to waive the formalities." But this treats Mary Poppins as a symptom, rather than as the Great Exception, which can't be right. Even if we assume that Mr Banks's position at the Bank is not quite as lowly as he implies (he is, we later learn, sufficiently senior to finish work early enough to be taken out for tea and shortbread biscuits, as a Treat), his is an extablishment that Mr Pooter, writing his Diary of a Nobody some forty years earlier, would have envied: the Pooters have one "servant", Sarah, plus a charwoman who a quick dip into the book reveals to have finished off the cold pork. Mrs Pooter is sometimes seen doing unspecified things in the house, whereas there is no indication of who does the heavy housework at Number Seventeen (though Ellen dusts the books in Mr Banks's study).
valydiarosada suggests that since these introductory pages, like much of the book, are written from a child's point of view (the deadpan acceptance of how Mr Banks makes money by cutting out coins, the capitalisation of the Policeman, the Park, Next Door, each person and location unique, the description a personal name), the omission of matters like housework simply reflects that they don't much interest the children. More to the point, they don't much interest the author. What does Mrs Banks do with her time? She advertises for, and appoints, Nannies, she thinks about "the Laundry Bill and Michael's new overcoat and where was Aunt Flossie's address, and why did that wretched Mrs Jackson ask her to tea on the second Tuesday of the month when she knew that was the very day Mrs Banks had to go to the Dentist's?" She visits the nursery and deludes herself that she can comfort her children, she looks in on them when they are asleep. But when she is left in the lurch by a Nanny, it is Mrs Brill or Ellen who has to give the children their supper or put them to bed (Mrs Banks may have to go out to dinner).
How old are the Banks children? We know from the start that Jane is the eldest, then Michael, and the Twins have their first birthday in the course of the book. Trying hard to think sad thoughts, Michael "thought of school, and that one day he would have to go there." On first reading I took this to mean that he was not yet attending primary school, and must therefore be five at the oldest (and indeed, since school is never mentioned, Jane can't be more than five, and Michael younger); now I wonder whether school is just another of those things which are not interesting enough to be mentioned, and what Michael is thinking about is being sent away to school. Jane's sad thought is "I shall be grown up in another fourteen years!" But how old is "grown up"? Eighteen? Twenty one? From the pictures, Jane could be seven and Michael five or six. (There's another child in the Banks family, which is Mr Banks, but most of the evidence for this comes later.)
The blurb of my copy of Mary Poppins, which is the Puffin reissue with the film tie-in cover, says "Specially commended for mothers, and for children from seven to eleven." I am not convinced by this.
Do I need to say that if there can be spoilers, there will be? Mary Poppins arrives; she departs; in between, things happen. This holds true for more than the first book.
sartorias starts us off with a bit of throat-clearing. Even without going beyond the first few pages, she touches on two things that I wanted to talk about.The first is the illustrations, line drawings by Mary Shepard (there are some examples here, as well as some interesting discussion); she was the daughter of the much better known illustrator E.H. Shepard. her obituary in the New York Times suggests that her father was P.L. Travers's first choice as illustrator, and her work has a certain resemblance to his. She has a lightness of touch, and a perceptive eye, which together convey both the fantasy and the domesticity of Mary Poppins's adventures.
sartorias is also taken aback to discover that the Banks family, apparently not just ordinary but quite modest, runs to four servants: she discusses the first appearance of the household, who live in the smallest house in Cherry Tree Lane, and the most dilapidated, the one that needs a coat of paint. Mr. Banks had told Mrs. Banks that "She could have either a nice, clean, comfortable house or four children. But not both, for he couldn't afford it." Not having things you can't afford is something that both of us, as children, recognised, and it is something that Travers expected her child readers to understand. But that smallest house contains, as I commented when I first wrote about the books, Mrs Brill the Cook, Ellen the parlourmaid and Robertson Ay, as well as Katie Nanna (Mary Poppins's predecessor).I quoted then an article by Kathryn Hughes, who takes all this as social realism: "No 17 Cherry Tree Lane is clearly in the midst of what was known by the interwar period as 'the servant problem'. With young working-class people more and more reluctant to 'go into service', the middle classes were obliged to run their houses with the help of a dwindling cohort of increasingly bolshie staff who weren't about to put up with any nonsense from their 'betters'. And that, surely, is the point Travers is making when Mary Poppins turns up from nowhere and refuses to provide references. Hysterically grateful that anyone at all is prepared to work for her, a cowed Mrs Banks immediately agrees to waive the formalities." But this treats Mary Poppins as a symptom, rather than as the Great Exception, which can't be right. Even if we assume that Mr Banks's position at the Bank is not quite as lowly as he implies (he is, we later learn, sufficiently senior to finish work early enough to be taken out for tea and shortbread biscuits, as a Treat), his is an extablishment that Mr Pooter, writing his Diary of a Nobody some forty years earlier, would have envied: the Pooters have one "servant", Sarah, plus a charwoman who a quick dip into the book reveals to have finished off the cold pork. Mrs Pooter is sometimes seen doing unspecified things in the house, whereas there is no indication of who does the heavy housework at Number Seventeen (though Ellen dusts the books in Mr Banks's study).
valydiarosada suggests that since these introductory pages, like much of the book, are written from a child's point of view (the deadpan acceptance of how Mr Banks makes money by cutting out coins, the capitalisation of the Policeman, the Park, Next Door, each person and location unique, the description a personal name), the omission of matters like housework simply reflects that they don't much interest the children. More to the point, they don't much interest the author. What does Mrs Banks do with her time? She advertises for, and appoints, Nannies, she thinks about "the Laundry Bill and Michael's new overcoat and where was Aunt Flossie's address, and why did that wretched Mrs Jackson ask her to tea on the second Tuesday of the month when she knew that was the very day Mrs Banks had to go to the Dentist's?" She visits the nursery and deludes herself that she can comfort her children, she looks in on them when they are asleep. But when she is left in the lurch by a Nanny, it is Mrs Brill or Ellen who has to give the children their supper or put them to bed (Mrs Banks may have to go out to dinner).How old are the Banks children? We know from the start that Jane is the eldest, then Michael, and the Twins have their first birthday in the course of the book. Trying hard to think sad thoughts, Michael "thought of school, and that one day he would have to go there." On first reading I took this to mean that he was not yet attending primary school, and must therefore be five at the oldest (and indeed, since school is never mentioned, Jane can't be more than five, and Michael younger); now I wonder whether school is just another of those things which are not interesting enough to be mentioned, and what Michael is thinking about is being sent away to school. Jane's sad thought is "I shall be grown up in another fourteen years!" But how old is "grown up"? Eighteen? Twenty one? From the pictures, Jane could be seven and Michael five or six. (There's another child in the Banks family, which is Mr Banks, but most of the evidence for this comes later.)
The blurb of my copy of Mary Poppins, which is the Puffin reissue with the film tie-in cover, says "Specially commended for mothers, and for children from seven to eleven." I am not convinced by this.