Without your input, I would never have seen MP as Australian, though I was, I think, already wondering to what extent she was a certain kind of Englishness as seen by an Australian. I hope you will have time - because I know you have other things to do! - to explore this question yourself. Are you seeing any Australianisms in Mary's speech?
I'm not seeing class signifiers in the way she speaks - whether because Travers doesn't try to convey accent and dialect, or because those features just aren't there. There's nothing in what she is quoted as saying that is inconsistent with RP, but I am seeing class markers, as I say, in her tastes and attitudes. Even if we set aside the Day Out as anomalous, the constant assertions of respectability point this way - she reminds me of Eliza Doolittle with her "I'm a good girl, I am."
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Without your input, I would never have seen MP as Australian, though I was, I think, already wondering to what extent she was a certain kind of Englishness as seen by an Australian. I hope you will have time - because I know you have other things to do! - to explore this question yourself. Are you seeing any Australianisms in Mary's speech?
I'm not seeing class signifiers in the way she speaks - whether because Travers doesn't try to convey accent and dialect, or because those features just aren't there. There's nothing in what she is quoted as saying that is inconsistent with RP, but I am seeing class markers, as I say, in her tastes and attitudes. Even if we set aside the Day Out as anomalous, the constant assertions of respectability point this way - she reminds me of Eliza Doolittle with her "I'm a good girl, I am."