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 1930s. 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 books, and sheds 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 world. Originally published in Italian, this is the first English-language edition of a fascinating introduction to the true literary life of a figure that many of us do not know nearly as well as we think. Grilli rescues Mary Poppins from the sentimental treatment she received in the hands of Disney, to restore her to her truly revolutionary character. Drawing on the social history of the governess in England, Giorgia Grilli 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 and values of that society-the very mores that Mary Poppins herself comes to unsettle.
