Story Hangover Thoughts: Nanny McPhee

  Sometimes, I get a story hangover from a story presented another way. A good example of this, both the anxiety and the situation causing it is the Brown family from the cult classic, Nanny McPhee.
In Victorian England, following the untimely and apparently recent death of his wife, Mr. Cedric Brown, thinking his children are too young to understand “grown-up problems”, hasn’t explained that their maternal great-aunt, Lady Adelaide Stitch, who promised her niece she’d support her family until they were back on their feet, is adding a deadline. She’s cutting her financial support at the end of the month unless Mr. Brown remarries.
 This made me start thinking about how some people, especially those in power, seem to think that they can add whatever loopholes they want to an “act of charity”.
This is because for a start, Lady Stitch knows perfectly well that without her support, Mr. Brown would never be able to keep up with the bills and they’d eventually lose their house, and that her niece would never want her family split up, yet she refuses to help because she apparently feels it beneath herself. Even though the Stitch family apparently pride themselves on “always keeping their word”.  

I looked it up. Cedric would've fought tooth and nail for his children!

 Unaware of this, the kids think that he’s trying to replace their mother and the fact that he’s grown pretty distant from them with everything that’s going on isn’t helping. And the breaking point was when Lady Stitch decides that she’ll add custody of one of the kids, preferably one of the girls, as her own to the deal, supposedly to “ease the financial burden” and provide a more “privileged upbringing”.

Nobody has the right to tear apart a loving family just because they have the ability to do it!  And if parents have to be separated from their children, at least keep siblings together! It makes a situation that is understandably scary for kids a little easier.
 Anyway, the kids obviously don’t want to be separated and have to live with a stern great-aunt who has so little regard for them that she doesn’t even know their names.  After a near-disaster when it seems that Lady Stitch has decided on little Chrisianna, or Chrissie for short, because she’s admittedly adorable and Lady Stitch refuses to take a boy, Nanny McPhee informs Mr. Brown that the siblings have found a solution themselves. Which I really wish they’d told their father before we had to watch him try in vain to stop the stagecoach from leaving because he thought they were still taking Chrissie, who the second he saw that she was still there, picked her up in a hug and didn’t put her down until they were positive she wouldn’t be taken away. Even while he took a headcount to make sure he hadn’t lost anyone. It broke my heart. I have no problem with removing a child from an uncaring parent, but doing the same to a loving father who's desperately trying to protect his family? That's where I draw the line. Especially that night when Chrissie asked Nanny McPhee if her father would have really let them take her after the siblings had mistaken their father's stunned silence for silent agreement.

The kids’ solution, by the way, which was actually Simon’s idea, was actually brilliant. 
Remember how I said Lady Stitch hasn’t bothered to memorize her grand-nieces’ and nephews’ names or ages? They tricked her that Evangeline, their family’s maid, was their sister, knowing that she perfectly fit their great-aunt’s specifications and she’d take her instead.  Which turned out to be a win-win situation. The kids can stay together, and Evangeline is an orphan, so this means she can finally be officially adopted, and she gets the education she’s always wanted. She could barely read.

I like to call this mindset ”Supercilious Blindness”.  It’s terrifying to think that an authority figure can be so caught up in the influence they have, that they forget that others have feelings too, expecting them to mindlessly obey their every command and refuse to admit or acknowledge that any negative outcome of their decisions could possibly be their fault, so long as they get their way, essentially blinding themselves to the truth. 
Basically, it means “a person who doesn’t care what they have to do or who they have to step on to get what they want”.  You can see why that idea provokes stress, especially when it happens to those in power. Though in this case, she honestly seems to think it’s what’s best for the family, she just hasn’t considered the children or their father’s perspectives. No child should ever have to worry about or even question that sort of possibility. Especially not a five-year-old. 

Personally, I think Lady Stitch only decided she wanted a child because as a widow in a huge, empty house, she’s gotten lonely, because she did seem to genuinely try to be amiable to Evangeline. She called her “dear” and told her with a smile that she found her name pretty after she’d introduced herself. She could've solved both problems at once by simply inviting the entire Brown family to stay with her. She's got plenty of room and she'd be keeping her word.