My immediate thought on your post may or may not be validated when I get the book. Although my memories go alongside it rather nicely.
Even in the 1930s Australians in England crossed class boundaries more easily than most visitors and the current call-by-first-name that's typical of Australia (which I always have to explain to help desks, for they're always in more polite countries and want to call me Miss, Mrs or Dr Polack, when the correct thing to call me is almost always Gillian - the formal name is only for very formal circumstances or when people are very, very, very rude and need to be put in their place) was happening for goodly sections of society back then. This means that it's natural for me to call Mary Mary and for her to invisibly to cross class boundaries because both of those fit my personal experience of the UK. And because class is/was a temporary personal position here, the apparently natural shifts between a match person and a pavement artist and a secret great magic artist is far more credible than in a society with more rigid class structures.
One thing I love about travelling in England is that people instantly identify me as from Australia and treat me as the same class as themselves, so since the 1980s (which is as far back as me visiting England has gone) England has validated what I'm thinking here, at least for me. In 2011 a bloke at Petticoat Lane said "You're one of us" in an almost-a-cousin way when I explained where my great-great-great-grandfather died, and when I was a student in the 80s I was taken to lunch in one of the Temple buildings. I was assessed quite differently as an Australian to the way my US friends were assessed - I was not judged on class.
I'm pretty sure that this is an older phenomenon, and I know that in the 20s and 30s here a lot of books referred to visiting the UK as 'going Home' and that people undertaking the trip expected to be treated as cousins or connections. When I read Mary Poppins as a child, it was, like Streatfield's work, stories about Home. I think we were the last generation to think this (other parts of the country didn't have this same attitude even when I was young), but I'm honestly not sure.
The simple summary is my memory and your report suggests that this chapter is informed by Mary's Australian experience of England more than a profound understanding of the British class system.
no subject
Even in the 1930s Australians in England crossed class boundaries more easily than most visitors and the current call-by-first-name that's typical of Australia (which I always have to explain to help desks, for they're always in more polite countries and want to call me Miss, Mrs or Dr Polack, when the correct thing to call me is almost always Gillian - the formal name is only for very formal circumstances or when people are very, very, very rude and need to be put in their place) was happening for goodly sections of society back then. This means that it's natural for me to call Mary Mary and for her to invisibly to cross class boundaries because both of those fit my personal experience of the UK. And because class is/was a temporary personal position here, the apparently natural shifts between a match person and a pavement artist and a secret great magic artist is far more credible than in a society with more rigid class structures.
One thing I love about travelling in England is that people instantly identify me as from Australia and treat me as the same class as themselves, so since the 1980s (which is as far back as me visiting England has gone) England has validated what I'm thinking here, at least for me. In 2011 a bloke at Petticoat Lane said "You're one of us" in an almost-a-cousin way when I explained where my great-great-great-grandfather died, and when I was a student in the 80s I was taken to lunch in one of the Temple buildings. I was assessed quite differently as an Australian to the way my US friends were assessed - I was not judged on class.
I'm pretty sure that this is an older phenomenon, and I know that in the 20s and 30s here a lot of books referred to visiting the UK as 'going Home' and that people undertaking the trip expected to be treated as cousins or connections. When I read Mary Poppins as a child, it was, like Streatfield's work, stories about Home. I think we were the last generation to think this (other parts of the country didn't have this same attitude even when I was young), but I'm honestly not sure.
The simple summary is my memory and your report suggests that this chapter is informed by Mary's Australian experience of England more than a profound understanding of the British class system.