Anderson Rearick III’s Reviews > Mary Poppins Comes Back > Status Update

Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting:
The soul that rises with us, our life's star,
Hath had elsewhere its setting,
And Cometh from afar;
Not in entire forgetfulness,
And not in utter nakedness,
But trailing clouds of glory do we come
From God, who is our home:

All human children come remembering their profound and mysterious origins but forget them. Only Mary Poppins remembers.

In “The New One” the fifth addition to the family Annabel arrives. It seems clear that Travers draws from the aromatic Wordsworth. In his “Intimations of Immortality,” he writes the following:

Chapter four, “ topsy-turvy” Is a lot like the adventure in the first book entitled “laughing gas”. Once again Jane and Michael go with Mary Poppins to visit one of her relatives. This time they go to meet a cousin who is a master repair person to fix the bowl that almost swept Jane away in her adventure. However they find when they arrive that everything in the man’s apartment is upside down.

Like Michael, Jane has a “bad day” in “Bad Wednesday.” The reason is never fully explained. However Jane inadvertently finds her self in a sub fairyland which threatens to imprison her forever. Again, the stakes in this adventure seem higher than anything that was in the first book.

The second chapter, “Miss Andrew’s Lark,” introduces us to the former nanny of Mr. Banks who trembles from his memory. He calls her “A Holy Terror” which Michael repeats when he meets her insulting her and causing her wrath to fall on Mary. When she arrives with a mountain of luggage to stay with them. Mary Poppins takes the most direct stance against any adult depicted thus far.

The return of Mary Poppins involves a kite and ties in with the Cisney film’s ending. Mr. Banks marching off to work with a hat polished like a shoe and announcing that he might go on a cruse rather than return Homs. Like all forces magical, Mary Poppins return has no explanation than her original exit. Magic is never explained.