I recently went to New York and while there I saw the musical Mary Poppins. Of course there were many style changes between songs in the movie and in the musical and also aspects of the plot. I have not read the book, but I am assuming that the musical followed the book closer than the movie followed the book. Anyway, I was surprised to see that a major aspect of the plot dealt with the strained relationship between the mother and the father. In the movie the mother is made out to be a ditzy socialite who does not have the time to worry about her marriage let alone take care of her own children and she is fine with that. However, in the musical the mother is an ex-actress who wants nothing more than to take care of her own children and mend her broken marriage. The main question running through my head during the musica was, is this change in the mother's character due to the modern age or was it originally like this in the book? Do perceptions of people's roles change because society changes or do the actual portrayals change?