MovieChat Forums > Mary Reilly (1996) Discussion > That Head butler Poole was a pompous too...

That Head butler Poole was a pompous tool.


Poor Mary couldn't even BREATHE without him lighting into her with a long-winded verbal beatdown.
And in at least one scene then turn and strutted away like he owned the world.

It's always the ones with a tiny bit of power to abuse it the worst.

Mind you I know it was a sign of the times.
The Hierarchy was more rigid in those days and you knew your place and kept it, especially if you were a woman.

But then again, there were also more uprisings, revolutions, civil wars and assassinations then than now.
Because the common folk then were the same as now...they'd take only so much BS before finally taking the aristocratic b@$T@rd$ down a peg or two.

Its just that in those days they weren't empowered with the ability to vote undesirable leaders out of office, they had to drag the nation into war to do it.

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I couldn't stand Mr. Poole either! He treated Mary like crap. But then, he's like most supervisors and/or bosses. Power happy when they have nothing in their own lives.
I think he had some deep-down lust for Mary, but probably knew that he couldn't express it because 1. It wouldn't be 'professional' 2. It would be showing feelings, something he didn't like to do 3. He likely knew she wouldn't give him the time of day, and resented this. He also seemed to know she had feelings for the doctor, and I think this jealousy was partly why he was so nasty to her.

I loved when he was going to fire her, and the doctor states "[Mary] I'm glad there's someone in this house I can count on!"
The look on Poole's face was priceless.



"I'd say this cloud is Cumulo Nimbus."
"Didn't he discover America?"
"Penfold, shush."

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He was a jerk, but then this is basically the way most butlers carried on. There's a lot of different reasons why Mr. Poole's character was so particularly picky with Mary. A lot of people think he's just written to be a fairly mean spirited character, I don't particularly think he's mean (he shows some softness at times), but it's more that it's part of his training and his respect for his job.

* Like you mentioned with the hierarchy, as far as the household goes, in the staff the Butler is top dog. He is considered to be the only liaison between the master/employer and the rest of the staff. Any discussions about any situations regarding what needs to be done in the house are meant to be directed to him, and only him.

* Like all Butlers, Poole takes on that rather personal relationship with his master, one of privilege and highest trust and he jealously guards this relationship (as so many of them often did). Mary infringes on this relationship with Jekyll, and Mr. Poole does not like being left out of the loop as everything in the house is his business. If Mary is taking orders that he is meant to be taking himself, this renders him particularly unnecessary.

* As mentioned, women were meant to know their place, as were the other staff members. A staff member conversing with Jekyll (unless being given a direct order) undermines Mr. Poole's authority in the household. He is the only liaison as mentioned above. Staff members not knowing their place could put Mr. Poole in the position of being sacked as he is meant to be the one responsible for their behaviour. Therefore, if perhaps Jekyll found Mary bothersome at any point, he could fault it with Mr. Poole who had clearly not taught the girl to know her place and respect her betters.

* Remember the discussion at the dinner table? The cook talks about how a maid was called up to see her master every day at exactly 9am, and eventually the girl ended up in the 'family way'. In other words, Mary's spending time alone with the master in his bedroom for any length of time is questionable. The master is a 'respectable' gentleman, but in Poole's eyes, he is a single man whom Mary is clearly attracted to, and she may be trying to seduce him into a relationship that could improve her situation. It wasn't exactly unknown in those days for young maids who disliked life in service to try and turn the heads of their masters (even the married ones) in the hopes that they would find themselves set up for life later (usually they only ever ended up pregnant and dismissed).

* As in the previous point, if Mary ends up 'in the family way' due to her 'private conversations' or 'errands' for Dr. Jekyll/Mr. Hyde, then it becomes Mr. Poole's responsibility to dismiss AND employ someone else. These weren't the days of the internet and telephones; it wasn't as quickly done as posting an advert on Gumtree and finding someone in a day or two by phone. Hiring service in these days meant putting in advertisements in the newspapers; the maids weren't permitted to just show up on the doorstep to look for an interview. Generally what happened is that correspondence was made via letters back and forth, not only between the butler and the maid, but also between the butler and the butler/housekeeper at her last known place of employment. Butlers had to make sure the maids were not only reliable, but trained and that the maid had never been caught stealing or doing anything untoward at her last job.


So there are a lot of reasons that don't necessarily make him the bad guy by how much he tries to prevent Mary from her time alone with their master, etc. It's just the way Butlers were trained and taught to run the household.


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
We've become a race of peeping toms.

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I do see what you're saying but I've read books and seen other movies and TV shows that showed Butlers holding their status in a kinder way that Poole did.

It wasn't his doing his job I hated it was his overbearing self-entitled arrogance that put me off of him.

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I know, right?! Ugh! Poole aggravated the absolute living hell out of me the whole time! Especially the way he treated Mary. And it was obvious that he became quite jealous of her bond with Dr. Jekyll. Geez, what an uptight @$$hole!

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