What was Mary Poppins by profession? Let's remember

2024 Author: Priscilla Miln | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 00:21

From early childhood, we learn the world from the books that our mother reads to us. At first, we remember only our favorite characters: Carlson, Mowgli, Rapunzel. As we get older, we learn that Carlson was “born” in Sweden, which means that it is there that people with difficult-to-pronounce surnames love meatballs and buns. Mowgli is hot, humid India, it has jungles and lost cities. And there is also the country of England, in which there are often fogs, and people are neat, prim, outwardly cold, but inside they are full of mysteries and mischief, like our favorite heroine of the eponymous book by Pamela Travers - Mary Poppins. A photo of actress Natalya Andreichenko, who played this role in the Soviet film adaptation of the classic English book, rises before your eyes when you hear the name of this famous character.

Mary Poppins Profession

The peculiarity of this story is that, unlike the characters in most fairy tales, the heroine of this story is not a princess, not a witch, not a genie frombottles. On the contrary, in appearance - this is the most ordinary person who is engaged in the most ordinary business. After all, what was Mary Poppins by profession? A simple nanny, besides with the smallest salary. Simple, but not quite, more precisely, quite difficult. In the course of reading a series of books about Mary Poppins, it turns out that she can fly, conjure, understand the language of animals and babies.

The author of these tales - Pamela Travers plunged the reader into the world of magic, dreams and children's fantasies. All this is so intertwined with reality that no one still can understand who Mary Poppins was by profession, a nanny for children or a fairy tale character, or maybe her job was to glue the stars to the sky or help the constellations fly to earth once a year and collect fragrant herbs? Who is this lady without age, who remained imperturbable in any situation, made friends or was related to most of the characters in English fairy tales, and most importantly, knew how to manage children, animals, as well as adults of any rank and position in society? In fact, who was Mary Poppins by profession, if on her birthday all the fish (from the royal salmon to the sprat) gathered, then all the animals from the London Zoo, led by the king cobra, and once shadows gathered to congratulate her on this event all of England? The answer was ready to break from her lips many times, but the question remained open.

Plot of Mary Poppins story

The main storyline of this piecequite simple: one day a new nanny comes to the Banks family living in London on Cherry Street. More precisely, it flies, holding the handle of an open umbrella, driven by the north wind. She takes care of two older children - Jane and Michael, and twin babies John and Barbara. (There are two children in the Soviet film - Jane and Michael.) In the last books of the series, the fifth child appears - baby Anabel. The new nanny deftly manages all this "company", plus she keeps their parents, servants and, in general, the whole Cherry Street under control. Even the stubborn park keeper eventually submits to her.

Children adore their nanny, despite her outward sternness, because they know that every day spent in her company will bring new amazing adventures.

It doesn't matter who Mary Poppins was by profession. Her dignity, intelligence, sense of justice and measure would be the envy of many royal cats, to say nothing of the kings themselves and their courtiers…