It is all in the way you look at things. Topsy (left) and Little Eva, characters from Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin (1851–52); lithograph by Louisa Corbaux, 1852. Topsy is a minor protagonist in the film Mary Poppins Returns portrayed by Meryl Streep as the cousin of Mary Poppins, who seeks her out to fix a broken Banks family heirloom, but makes the mistake of visiting Topsy’s shop on the second Wednesday of the month, when gravity-challenged Topsy’s life flips upside down. Omissions? Spring: Disney's Easter Wonderland • Disney's Spring Promenade, Mary Poppins Returns: William Weatherall Wilkins • Jack • Topsy • The Balloon Lady • Clyde • Shamus • John Banks • Annabel Banks • Georgie Banks • Angus • Hamilton Gooding and Templeton Frye • The Park Keeper • Penny Farthing, Mary Poppins Returns: (Underneath the) Lovely London Sky • A Conversation • Can You Imagine That? Musical: Temper, Temper • Practically Perfect • Anything Can Happen Portrayed by Let us see, St. Clare seems to think, what she will do with this very real child. St. Clare purchases an eight- or nine-year-old slave with very dark skin named Topsy, so that Miss Ophelia might teach her manners. Topsy shares the honors with Uncle Tom, Little Eva, and Eliza (crossing the ice) as one of the book's headline characters, always pictured on early cover illustrations, pigeon-toed and googly-eyed, with her hair sticking up in a million pigtails, next to blonde and angelic Eva — the archetypal "pickaninny" standing beside the archetypal little white girl. and any corresponding bookmarks? And Topsy is a very real child, terribly abused but with enough resiliency to be good-natured despite her "depravity" (as Ophelia terms it; she lies, steals, gets out of tasks by throwing the materials for performing them away, leads the other children — except of course for Eva — into creative mischief), and with enough innate intelligence to be a very quick study when she wants to be. Are you sure you want to remove #bookConfirmation# Background information ""It is, as I have told to you, the second Wednesday of the month, when everything is turning turtle. Michael Banks, Jane Banks, Jack, John Banks, Annabel Banks, Georgie Banks There's Magic in the Stars • Disney Dreams! Books: Big Golden Book • Little Golden Book • Practically Poppins in Every Way, Entertainment: Disney's Believe • Disney Classics: The Music & The Magic • Mickey's Magical Music World • One Man's Dream II: The Magic Lives On • Once Upon a Mouse Quote Topsy, fictional character, a slave child in the antislavery novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1852) by Harriet Beecher Stowe. Goal Topsy Due to her name and the fact she speaks with a Russian accent, she is from Russia. Our editors will review what you’ve submitted and determine whether to revise the article. Also apparently, her house approves too because as the group leaves it turns itself back over, allowing her to work until the next second Wednesday rolls around. She is what our age would call a "survivor" — a little girl who will manage, with any luck at all, to land on her feet at all times. Home Topsy enters the book filthy, bruised, and scarred, dressed in a gunny sack, eight or so years old, and saved from a life as a tavern scullion by St. Clare, who sees her as a sort of gentle way of chiding Ophelia; his cousin "loves" slaves in theory but recoils from them in the flesh, and she preaches education for them without consideration of what this might entail. Updates? Physical and psychological resiliency is of value in people used as things; brains are not, especially in females who will never be expected to carry on a cultivated conversation or add a column of figures. Disney Wiki is a FANDOM Movies Community. Good Take your favorite fandoms with you and never miss a beat. Topsy Sinden (1878–1950), an English dancer, actress, and singer This article was most recently revised and updated by. The timeline below shows where the character Topsy appears in Uncle Tom's Cabin. © 2020 Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. Since children are more energetic and stronger than adults, she would probably have been resold at puberty (or traded in for a younger model). When a fight over their late mother's Royal Doulton Bowl accidentally leaves a crack in the family heirloom, Mary Poppins takes the Banks children into town to have it repaired by "her cousin."