Myth, Symbol, and Meaning in Mary Poppins

The Mary Poppins that many people know of today--a stern, but sweet, loveable, and reassuring British nanny--is a far cry from the character created by Pamela Lyndon Travers in the 1930's. Instead, this is the Mary Poppins reinvented by Disney in the eponymous movie. This book sheds light on the original Mary Poppins, drawing important parallels between the character and the life of her creator, who worked as a governess herself. Myth, Symbol, and Meaning in Mary Poppins is the only full-length study that covers all the Mary Poppins book, and shed light, in contrast to the Disney film, on why the books are a literary success and continue to have such a strong popular reception throughout the demonstrates how subversive Mary Poppins truly was. The governess was a figure adopted during the Victorian and Edwardian Age to embody, teach, and pass on the most rigid and rigorous rules values of that society--the very ones that Mary Poppins herself comes to unsettle.

Giorgia Grilli teaches children's literature at the University of Bologna.