Book Review: Mary Poppins (yes really)

Mary Poppins is the whimsical, imaginative story of a manipulative, narcissist sociopath who should never be allowed anywhere near children, but is luckily[1]Luckily for her, anyway. hired by extremely irresponsible parents.

I learned two things from reading Mary Poppins. First, there is contraption Americans call a “baby stroller”. I call it a pram and I’ve been questioned as to why that is, to which I had no answer. It turns out that “pram” is a shortened version of Perambulator, which is what it used to be called.

The second thing is that being an English child, even a fairly well-off one, at the turn of the 20th century was hellish at best.

Mary Poppins was, at least in part, inspired by the real life of it’s author, P. L. Travers. Since the book was published in the 1930s we can assume that the non-magical parts are an accurate representation of her reality. In fact, the father in the story is supposedly modelled after her own father.[2]Not that the parents are more than a sidenote in the book.

So lets start with the family and home situation.

The Banks family lives on 17 Cherry Tree lane, a fairly well-to-do area in London. It’s mentioned right at the top of the book that Mr. Banks (who’s occupation is given as “making money”) told Mrs. Banks (who has no occupation) that she could either have a nice house, or four children. They simply cannot afford both.

They have four children,[3]There’s a pair of baby twins which didn’t make it to the movie so their living conditions should therefore be awful.

Except that they have a house big enough to require (and room) cook, and a maid, and a gardener, and a nanny. And I remind you at this point that Mrs. Banks has no job or other occupation whatsoever, nor is she expected to have one, but she still needs a nanny. Because only poor people actually raise their own kids.[4]In the movie, her occupation as a suffragette is somehow her excuse for not raising her own children.

The book starts with the old nanny leaving. Apparently the children are… not so nice. This is shown later in the book when one of the children (Michael) wakes up and decides he’s “bad”. More on that later. At this point none of the other household staff want to look after them even temporarily.

Before the family can advertise for a new nanny, Mary Poppins shows up.[5]And, while she is blown in by the wind, she does not at all use an umbrella at this point.

This is where the nightmare begins.

Naturally, Mrs. Banks asks her for references. Mary Poppins refuses to provide them, telling Mrs. Banks that they are just so old-fashioned. Mrs. Banks accepts this, because god forbid the lady you’re hiring to raise your children might think you’re old-fashioned.

I’d like to point out that The Simpsons did an episode that parodies Mary Poppins.[6]Simpsoncalifragilisticexpiala(Annoyed Grunt)cious And when she shows up on their doorstep, they actually ask Mary Poppins Sherry Bobbins a bunch of questions before hiring her. When Homer Simpson is a more responsible parent than you are, you have a problem.

Here, see for yourself;[7]Unless youtube has once again decided a 30 second video is not Fair Use. it’s the father who hires her in the movie, but close enough.

But Mary Poppins gets hired anyway and proceeds to immediately drug the children.

I’m not kidding. The first thing she does is pull out a bottle and go “Ok kids, it’s medicine time.” She doesn’t even know them yet, and there’s absolutely no indication that they’re sick, but she makes them all take a spoonful of her Magical Medicine, which looks and tastes differently for everyone. She even makes the babies take some. Then she has some herself. I’m almost prepared to dismiss the rest of the book as a drug-induced hallucination.

She then starts to play mind-games with them. There is a form of mental abuse known as gaslighting,[8]http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaslighting where you make the victim mistrust their own memory and/or sanity. Mary Poppins is the queen of gaslighting.

She carries a large carpet-bag, which the children look inside of and note that it is empty. Mary Poppins then proceeds to pull various household items out of it.

“But,” says Michael, “that bag was empty!”

To which Mary Poppins responds by calling him a liar and looking at him in disgust.

This is a theme throughout the book. Mary Poppins does something seemingly fantastic, or even magical, and when the children point it out she (at best) dismisses them, or claims they’re liars, and usually looks at them with scorn and disgust.

In fact, scorn, anger and disgust are her standard facial expressions. She smiles twice in the entire book, and I don’t think any of those times is appropriate.

She’s also obsessed with her own looks. Throughout the book, she can’t pass a mirror, or shop window, or any other highly polished surface without stopping to admire herself.[9]Hey, that reminds me of someone… Towards the end of the book, even the children realise this and use it to manipulate her a little bit.

At one point an innocent shopkeeper makes a remark that she misinterprets are a slight to her appearance. Oh, the hatred she unleashes on that poor bastard. While the children are watching. I’ve never felt that bad for a butcher before.

Some of Mary Poppins’ friends are equally bad, and she exposes the children to horrible scenes of abuse involving them.

At some point she takes the children to a Standard Magical Store[10]You know, the kind that disappears after you leave. to buy gingerbread. In the store are two women, who happen to be giants. They also happen to look and act terrified. Which is explained when their mother, described as very, very old [11]As in, hundreds or even thousands of years old. and tiny shows up and abuses them terribly, calling them names, telling them they’re useless and stupid, and so on. Meanwhile she’s super-nice to Michael, Jane and the babies.

…Or is she? Apparently back then gingerbread came wrapped in paper with a gold star on it. Or something. And this lady asks the children if they collect the gold stars. Which they do. She then asks them where they keep them, and the tell her they keep them in the cupboard and in the dresser.

That night Mary Poppins comes into their room and steals their gold stars. The children are awake and see her, but just lie there quietly, too scared to make a noise in case she hears them. They watch through the window as Mary Poppins and the old lady and her daughters go off with their stars.[12]They then make the giant women hold up a ladder for them and climb up and glue the stars in the sky, but that’s besides the point. Other than the heaps of abuse they pile on the giant ladies. The children are too terrified to ever bring this up.

Oh, I mentioned above that one day Michael wakes up and realises he’s “bad” that day. He does absolutely awful things, ranging from just being a jerk to kicking the cook to threatening to get the gardener fired. You know what Mary Poppins does about this? Absolutely nothing. Mrs. Banks apparently ends up hearing about Michael’s behaviour (and not from Mary Poppins) and makes him stand in the corner for a bit. And yet somehow these children manage to develop discipline problems!

Mary Poppins also hates birds. Especially sparrows, which she refers to as “sparrers” because apparently they’re just not worth it.

She’s Ok with other animals, though.

One night a friggin bear comes over, wakes up the children and has them follow it to the zoo. Why? Because it’s Mary Poppins’ birthday, and when her birthday falls on a full moon the animals have a party for her at the zoo. And for some reason someone thought it’s a good idea to send a bear to bring the children.

At this point you’re probably thinking “Oh cool, the children get to go to a zoo with talking animals, that’s cute!” But no, it wouldn’t be Mary Poppins if it didn’t take a turn towards Disturbing.

For one, on this night the animals have gone out and collected people to keep in the cages.

Now I know, I’m the huge animal advocate and I think keeping animals in cages is horrible and part of me enjoys the irony of the animals getting some revenge, but in the book the children get to see people — some of which are their own neighbours — treated pretty badly by these animals. And do they care? Of course not. They enjoy seeing their neighbours imprisoned and degraded.

And I just realised they never mention the people being released. That neighbour I just mentioned? That’s the last time he’s mentioned in the book.[13]In case you’re wondering, it’s Admiral Boom, the only neighbour who has a substantial role in the movie.

Next, they are taken to Mary Poppins’ actual birthday party, where all the animals gather around to wish her a happy birthday. Oh, I guess I learned something else from the book – King Cobra snakes used to be referred to as a Hamadryad. This is important because it’s a hamadryad who gives the main “toast”, because he is apparently the King of the Animals. He, uh. The way he treats Mary Poppins… I’m not really sure what’s going on there. There’s kissing and stuff.

Then he gives her his skin. Which is the one time I remember her smiling. The children see her wearing it the next day,[14]As an accessory. which is how they know they didn’t imagine it all. At that point in the book they know better than to mention it.

The book ends with the kids thinking Mary Poppins is going to leave, her telling them she’s not and saying they should stay in their room, then her getting all her stuff, telling Mrs. Banks “I’m leaving” and that’s it. The kids see her leaving from their bedroom window.[15]She does fly away on her umbrella this time. The last interaction she has with the children is lying to them.

Then again, I can only imagine they are relieved.

Or would be, if there weren’t seven more Mary Poppins books, with such imaginative titles as Mary Poppins Comes Back and Mary Poppins Opens a Door. Both of which sound vaguely threatening.

Now, despite all of this, I have to say I actually enjoyed the book. It’s very well-written, and it really is whimsical and imaginative. Just that based on the movie [16]Which, granted, I hadn’t seen in decades until last week. I didn’t expect Mary Poppins to be such a, well. Hardass. I’ve known people who aspire to be Mary Poppins based on the character in the movie, always walking around singing cheerful songs while making children do things they don’t want to do like wake up in the morning and go to school.[17]Hi, Mom! Much as I don’t like Disney movies and their disregard to the source material, I think they made the right call on this one.

Which is ironic, since P. L. Travers absolutely hated the movie, and was especially disappointed that they changed Mary Poppins into a warm and loving person. She resisted selling the rights to Disney for years, thinking he’ll turn her story into a “vulgar” movie with a lot of stupid songs with made up words[18]Supersomethingsomethingsomethingexpisomethingdocious.[19]Ok, I can actually say it. I’m not sure how or why. which she detested. She only relented because she really, really needed the money. But she hated the movie till the day she died.[20]The only thing she approved of was the casting of Julie Andrews. And who could really not approve of that?

There was a movie released last year[21]Saving Mr. Banks which tells the (somewhat fictionalised) story of this. That’s really where I got the idea that I should read the book. Not that I’ve watched that movie or anything.

I’d say, in conclusion, that the book is definitely worth a read. It is fun in and of itself, it’s always nice to see the source material for what has become a completely different cultural icon, and reading books written nearly 100 years ago can give you interesting insight into that period.

Most of all, though, the book lacks Dick Van Dyke’s horrific attempt at a Cockney accent.