“Mary Poppins Comes Back” by P. L. Travers (post 6): Mary Poppins has a major memory gap for what has just happened in the chapter “Topsy-Turvy”

“What a funny family you’ve got,” Michael remarked to her [Mary Poppins], trying to make conversation.

Her head went up with a jerk.

“Funny? What do you mean, pray — funny?”

“Well — odd. Mr. Turvy turning Catherine wheels and standing on his head——”

Mary Poppins stared at him as though she could not believe her ears.

“Did I understand you to say that my cousin turned a Catherine wheel? And stood on——”

“But he did,” protested Michael nervously. “We saw him.”

“On his head? A relation of mine on his head? And turning about like a firework display?” Mary Poppins seemed hardly able to repeat the dreadful statement. She glared at Michael…

Michael leant toward Jane.

“But it was true — what I said. Wasn’t it?” he whispered.

“Jane shook her head and put her finger to her lip. She was staring at Mary Poppins’ hat. And presently, when she was sure that Mary Poppins was not looking, she pointed to the brim.

“There, gleaming on black shiny straw, was a scattering of crumbs, yellow crumbs from a sponge-cake, the kind of thing you would expect to find on the hat of a person who had stood on their head to have tea” (1, pp. 114-115).

If any reader had missed it or doubted it from previously noted examples, the author wants to make it very clear that, for Mary Poppins, memory gaps are typical. [Memory gaps are a cardinal symptom of multiple personality.]

But the question remains as to what memory gaps meant to the author. Did the author, herself, have memory gaps, and so saw them either as ordinary psychology or as something found in special people?

1. P. L. Travers. Mary Poppins Comes Back [1935]. Boston, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 1997.