Before reading both Mary Poppins and Mary Poppins Comes Back by P.L. Travers, I only had a faint memory of watching the Mary Poppins movie as a child. What instinctively came to mind was an image of the sweet Julie Andrews singing “A Spoonful of Sugar” and being silly with her song, “Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious.” My preconceived notion of Mary Poppins as the ultimate dream nanny (I mean, what child wouldn’t want an adult to tell them that their problems would vanish by consuming sugar or make them laugh by creating ridiculously lengthy words?) was shattered as I began reading the novel. Instead, the questions that I kept asking—and now that I’m finished reading the book, have still annoyingly been left unresolved—are, “Why did the children love Mary Poppins so much when she was constantly rude and falsely accusing them of lying? Why did Mrs. Banks let Mary Poppins even come back in the first place, when she so disrespectfully left without warning? If Mary Poppins was so obsessed with her own image and with being superior to those around her, why did she lie about her magical qualities instead of flaunt them for the world to see?”
Like I said, Mary Poppins was far from the maternal, heroic figure I envisioned her to be. Instead, she was unnecessarily sharp to the point of being a tyrant, extremely narcissistic, and incredibly stubborn. We all know those arrogant people who think that they are always right and that just because they possess certain values, everyone must have those same values. In other words, they think that their truth is the only truth, that their opinion is actually fact—undoubtedly, Mary Poppins is one of those people. For some unfathomable reason, despite all her character flaws, Mary Poppins seemed to be worshipped by the other characters (especially the children) throughout both the books, though she seemed to show little respect in return. She literally made Jane and Michael wait outside in the freezing cold just so that she could look at her own reflection in the mirror, and yet, when she is gone, everything seems awry in the world.
Mary Poppins is undoubtedly a peculiar character. Perhaps we can’t really understand why Mary Poppins behaves the way she does because she doesn’t even know who she really is, grappling to find her own identity. I believe that Mary Poppins struggles to form a close attachment to the children because she really just doesn’t know how to connect to others. For her whole life, Mary Poppins has been alone in her oddities….She is the one child who didn’t forget how to communicate with the animals as she grew older. She is neither completely human nor completely mythical, so perhaps she just never gained that essential sense of belonging we all yearn for. Though she experiences other-worldly events such as kissing the sun and making London ready for spring, these magical occurrences always come to an end. Her life is full of uncertainty, the changing wind guiding her from place to place, hindering her from permanently settling down. In a way, I pity Mary Poppins—what is the point of having such amazingly magical qualities if you have no one you truly love to share them with? Michael has Jane, the twins have each other, Mr. Turvy has Miss Tartlet, and the Prime Minister has Lady Muriel Brighton-Jones, yet Mary Poppins is alone. She can’t even touch the one figure she seems to have a deeper, romantic connection with without getting burned. The last image we are left with at the end of Mary Poppins Comes Back is one of Mary Poppins riding away into the night sky on an empty carousel, a distant star millions of miles away from interpersonal contact.
Finally, the last thing I noticed was that the chapters became extremely repetitive, with the chapters in the second book closely mirroring those in the first book. For example, in the first book, there is a chapter, “Bad Tuesday,” where Michael is extremely naughty; in Mary Poppins Comes Back, the chapter “Bad Wednesday” is exactly like its earlier counterpart, except this time it is Jane who doesn’t listen. In the first book, John and Barbara have conversations with the wind and the bird, convinced they will forever be able to remember the language of nature; in the second book, it is Annabel who thinks that like Mary Poppins, she too will not forget how to communicate with the Starling. I wonder if P.L. Travers received any criticism for her seeming lack of creativity and inability to explore new depths from novel to novel.
In essence, Mary Poppins is a multifaceted, complex character—her cold exterior may be a product of the fact that she has had to go through the stages of her volatile life without anyone who can truly relate to her situation.
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