35 pages • 1 hour read
P.L. TraversMary Poppins
Fiction | Novel | Middle Grade | Published in 1934A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
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BetaSymbols & Motifs
Windows and Reflections
Mary Poppins enjoys looking at herself in shop windows: “Mary Poppins gave a quick glance into the window beside her. She saw herself shining back at her, very smart, very interesting […]” (149). While this habit certainly implies vanity, it also suggests that Mary Poppins is not completely of the earthly world. Mary Poppins is an ethereal creature, traveling with the wind with very little baggage, and she is not at all grounded to the earth in a physical sense. She has few possessions, and even these items seem to go invisible or somehow lose their corporeal forms only to reappear when necessary. The picture she gives Jane of herself at the end of the novel is one of Bert’s paintings, not even a photograph; this detail is meaningful because most of Bert’s paintings wash away with the rain, a natural phenomenon similar to the wind in its ability to clear the air. The fact that Mary Poppins checks her appearance in windows implies that she herself needs some assurance that she is still present in the world that humans like Jane and Michael inhabit without much existential anxiety.
Animals, Cages, and the Zoo
The role reversal between humans and animals at the zoo on the night of Mary Poppins’s birthday is rife with symbolic meaning. When Jane and Michael wander around the zoo with the zoo animals, they observe humans from every walk of life in cages. When Jane proclaims, “Why, it’s all upside down!” (122), she indicates her shock at the symbolic role reversal. Babies and young children, elderly ladies in raincoats, gentlemen in top hats, and even the Banks’s wealthy neighbor Admiral Boom are all reduced to the same position, waiting for food, and trapped by circumstance. Much of Travers’s satirizing of social hierarchy points out the dangers of such rigid class structures, but in this instance at the zoo, the structures no longer exist; everyone suffers in the same way and are subject to the generosity of others and incapable of escape. Travers indicates here that the class system forces people into figurative cages. On some level, however, her critique suggests sympathy for members of society who are trapped by the expectations of their class; after all, she gives voice to the resentful animals who have been freed from their cages, a tacit acknowledgement that the resentment they feel is warranted.
Stars and Celestial Beings
Stars appear at various points throughout the novel: A star falls on the Red Cow; Mrs. Corry decorates her gingerbread with stars that she and Mary Poppins later paste into the night sky; and Maia, one of the seven stars from the Pleiades cluster of stars in the Taurus constellation, takes human form in order to make an appearance in a shopping mall in London. All of the stars that appear have a positive effect on the people who witness them or come close to them. For example, the star that falls on the Red Cow inspires her to dance and to let go of her rigid outlook on life, while Maia inspires Mary Poppins to an unlikely gesture: “[Mary Poppins] whipped off her new gloves and thrust one on to each of Maia’s hands” (148), a gesture of generosity and kindness. Moreover, the stars from Mrs. Corry’s gingerbread encourage teamwork as Mrs. Corry, along with Mary Poppins, must rely on her daughters Fannie and Annie to help her place the stars where they belong.
