Something completely different
Jan. 1st, 2014 12:12 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shewhomustChapter One of Mary Poppins ends with the household's reactions to the arrival of Mary Poppins: each for their own reason is glad of it. The last words of the chapter express a recurring theme: "But nobody ever knew what Mary Poppins felt about it, for Mary Poppins never told anybody anything..."
So I was surprised at the extent to which Chapter Two is told from Mary's point of view; inevitably, since the children are completely absent from this chapter, but that too was a surprise. I was surprised, too, that it is permissible to speak simply of 'Mary', this being how she is addressed by her friends. Clearly I had forgotten much about Mary Poppins's Day Out (every second Thursday, one till six, as given by the best people). My clearest memories of it, before this re-read, came from the film, and while those memories too may be inaccurate (is it as large a part of the film as I think?) they are vivid. I wonder whether they have blotted out the written version?
Like the most clichéd depiction of a domestic servant, Mary Poppins spends her afternoon off with her gentleman friend, the Match Man. His name is Bert (Herbert Alfred for Sundays: I was about to say that these are now irredeemably comic names, but fashions change - perhaps they are due for a come back?) but the narrative always refers to him as 'the Match Man'. He is also a pavement artist, and in fact only sells matches when it is too wet for his pictures. Am I right in seeing both of these occupations as barely a step above begging, the equivalent of selling The Big Issue? It wouldn't be hard to construct a narrative in which Bert is a shell-shocked veteran of the war, one of those who never quite managed the return to civilian life, and who is treated more gently on account of it; but Travers doesn't do it. Mary is socially inferior to the Banks family, and Bert in turn is Mary's social inferior; referring to him by his profession ensures we don't forget it.
What's more, on this particular Day Out, he has only earned two pennies, which is not enough to take his girlfriend out to tea (with raspberry-jam-cakes, which sound good, whatever they are). But it is Bert, not Mary, who comes up with a solution, that they should spend their afternoon in his picture, and he, not Mary, who makes it work, who takes her hands and draws her into the picture (yes, the verb used is 'drew' - is the pun deliberate?). I was going to argue that the man in the relationship must be allowed to take the lead, but on reflection, there may be a larger pattern: magical things happen wherever Mary goes, but she doesn't initiate them, and often seems quite put out by them ("Oh, Uncle Albert - not again? It's not your birthday, is it?" But I anticipate).
Reading the descriptions of Bert's pictures, I feel some sympathy for Walt Disney. With the exception of the "picture of two Bananas, an Apple and a head of Queen Elizabeth" (the first Queen Elizabeth, of course, though I have to pummel my mental image every time) on which Bert is working when Mary arrives, they are highly coloured landscapes which must have seemed overdue for the Disney treatment: "a mountain covered with snow and its slopes simply littered with grasshopers sitting on gigantic roses" is just waiting for the grasshoppers to go into their cheerful song and dance routine. How was Walt to know that this wasn't actually what Miss Travers wanted?
She may satirise the social pretensions of Mrs Banks, boasting of her children's nurse who is so fashionable that she doesn't believe in giving references, and of those like her who go to the Royal Academy, look at the pictures for a very long time and then say: "The idea - my dear!" But she is no gentler with the lower class pretensions of their employees: Mary Poppins is not just vain and smug, she is vain, smug and common. She would probably have loved the Walt Disney version. Her magical afternoon out is a visit to countryside, but "something that looked like Margate" is not far away. The Match Man's clothing has been transformed into bright colours (a green-and-red striped coat, a new straw hat) and even Mary, whose appearance is always practically perfect, has been improved by "a cloak of lovely articial silk", a hat with a long curly feather and big diamond buckles on her shoes. As well as the raspberry-jam-cakes, they eat whelks, with a pin, handed to them by a Waiter - whom Mary invites to sit down, because she is not accustomed to being waited on (the Waiter declines, but seems pleased to be asked). And so on.
For someone of my age and background, this profound class-consciousness is difficult to write about: I am aware of it but keep stumbling over taboos when I try to express it. I don't think I noticed it as a child - I would, I think, have read this chapter as wish-fulfilment, though the wishes being fulfilled were so much not mine (perhaps this, too, is why it washed over me leaving so little trace). I wonder how it played in 1934, when the book was first published? Would middle-class children then have been more aware of what P.L. Travers was up to? She apparently said that the books were for adults as much as for children: maybe this chapter (which is, remember, only the second chapter in the whole story of Mary Poppins) is evidence of that - or perhaps she is still feeling her way into the balance between the two.
So I was surprised at the extent to which Chapter Two is told from Mary's point of view; inevitably, since the children are completely absent from this chapter, but that too was a surprise. I was surprised, too, that it is permissible to speak simply of 'Mary', this being how she is addressed by her friends. Clearly I had forgotten much about Mary Poppins's Day Out (every second Thursday, one till six, as given by the best people). My clearest memories of it, before this re-read, came from the film, and while those memories too may be inaccurate (is it as large a part of the film as I think?) they are vivid. I wonder whether they have blotted out the written version?
Like the most clichéd depiction of a domestic servant, Mary Poppins spends her afternoon off with her gentleman friend, the Match Man. His name is Bert (Herbert Alfred for Sundays: I was about to say that these are now irredeemably comic names, but fashions change - perhaps they are due for a come back?) but the narrative always refers to him as 'the Match Man'. He is also a pavement artist, and in fact only sells matches when it is too wet for his pictures. Am I right in seeing both of these occupations as barely a step above begging, the equivalent of selling The Big Issue? It wouldn't be hard to construct a narrative in which Bert is a shell-shocked veteran of the war, one of those who never quite managed the return to civilian life, and who is treated more gently on account of it; but Travers doesn't do it. Mary is socially inferior to the Banks family, and Bert in turn is Mary's social inferior; referring to him by his profession ensures we don't forget it.
What's more, on this particular Day Out, he has only earned two pennies, which is not enough to take his girlfriend out to tea (with raspberry-jam-cakes, which sound good, whatever they are). But it is Bert, not Mary, who comes up with a solution, that they should spend their afternoon in his picture, and he, not Mary, who makes it work, who takes her hands and draws her into the picture (yes, the verb used is 'drew' - is the pun deliberate?). I was going to argue that the man in the relationship must be allowed to take the lead, but on reflection, there may be a larger pattern: magical things happen wherever Mary goes, but she doesn't initiate them, and often seems quite put out by them ("Oh, Uncle Albert - not again? It's not your birthday, is it?" But I anticipate).
Reading the descriptions of Bert's pictures, I feel some sympathy for Walt Disney. With the exception of the "picture of two Bananas, an Apple and a head of Queen Elizabeth" (the first Queen Elizabeth, of course, though I have to pummel my mental image every time) on which Bert is working when Mary arrives, they are highly coloured landscapes which must have seemed overdue for the Disney treatment: "a mountain covered with snow and its slopes simply littered with grasshopers sitting on gigantic roses" is just waiting for the grasshoppers to go into their cheerful song and dance routine. How was Walt to know that this wasn't actually what Miss Travers wanted?
She may satirise the social pretensions of Mrs Banks, boasting of her children's nurse who is so fashionable that she doesn't believe in giving references, and of those like her who go to the Royal Academy, look at the pictures for a very long time and then say: "The idea - my dear!" But she is no gentler with the lower class pretensions of their employees: Mary Poppins is not just vain and smug, she is vain, smug and common. She would probably have loved the Walt Disney version. Her magical afternoon out is a visit to countryside, but "something that looked like Margate" is not far away. The Match Man's clothing has been transformed into bright colours (a green-and-red striped coat, a new straw hat) and even Mary, whose appearance is always practically perfect, has been improved by "a cloak of lovely articial silk", a hat with a long curly feather and big diamond buckles on her shoes. As well as the raspberry-jam-cakes, they eat whelks, with a pin, handed to them by a Waiter - whom Mary invites to sit down, because she is not accustomed to being waited on (the Waiter declines, but seems pleased to be asked). And so on.
For someone of my age and background, this profound class-consciousness is difficult to write about: I am aware of it but keep stumbling over taboos when I try to express it. I don't think I noticed it as a child - I would, I think, have read this chapter as wish-fulfilment, though the wishes being fulfilled were so much not mine (perhaps this, too, is why it washed over me leaving so little trace). I wonder how it played in 1934, when the book was first published? Would middle-class children then have been more aware of what P.L. Travers was up to? She apparently said that the books were for adults as much as for children: maybe this chapter (which is, remember, only the second chapter in the whole story of Mary Poppins) is evidence of that - or perhaps she is still feeling her way into the balance between the two.
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