A Sheltered Life

Elizabeth Mainwaring (pronounced Mannering) was the wife of George, the Captain of the fictional Home Guard of Walmington on Sea as depicted in the 1968 to 1977 comedy classic- Dad’s Army. 

For all of the long running and still repeated episodes Elizabeth remained as an unseen character at the end of a phone conversation, heard moving about upstairs at her home, at best as a vague shadow or in the bulging shape of someone on the top bunk in the bomb shelter. 

Her influence over her husband and as a consequence his subsequent moods, attitudes and behaviour in relation to the members of the Platoon was nevertheless tangible and an important undercurrent to the adventures and antics of the principal characters. 

The writers, Perry and Croft did invent a back story for Elizabeth to give her depth and as an explanation for some of her later unconventional or illogical outbursts and acts. 

These regularly ran within the main scripted dialogues.

For example, Captain Mainwaring surprised everyone in his ability to play the bagpipes which he attributed to spending his honeymoon on a remote Scottish Island where there was nothing else to do. 

In conversation with the haughty and foppish Sergeant Wilson, Mainwaring tells him about his wife’s fondness for silent movies but only because she was so shocked to hear a character on a film speak a line that she refused to return to any cinema. 

Her regular criticism of George is attributed to a privileged fictional upbringing as the daughter of a Suffragan Bishop and that she and her family believe that she married below her own social standing.

George is very hard done by as he has attained the heady heights for a provincial town of Bank Manager through working hard at his education and banking exams. He does have her best interests at heart however and strives to provide goods and services even though these sometimes go against his own morals and sense of citizenship, especially in wartime. 

This is particularly evident in his turning a blind eye to contraband from the black marketeer spiv Private Walker or gifts such as an extra portion of sausages or offal from the good natured Corporal Jones, the town butcher. 

He is also protective of Elizabeth in saying that she had led a sheltered life in not even trying tomato sauce before she met him and a fondness shows through in his referring to her as the little woman and alluding to a blissful married life. 

His selflessness is to be admired as Elizabeth’s reclusive nature will have impeded any upward mobility that George may have hoped for within the hierarchy of the Bank at a time when socialising and hospitality were an essential part of getting ahead in commerce. The actuality of his domestic situation will have been behind his complete lack of hesitation in putting himself forward, uncharacteristically pushily, as leader of the Local Defence Volunteers, or as they became known, the Home Guard. 

Mrs Mainwaring’s persona is achieved, in her very obvious absence, by clever writing by which we assume that she is a larger than life woman ( described as being a bit bigger in physical dimensions that the effervescent Mrs Fox- a friend of Jonesy), a bit handy with her fists with George suffering a black eye in a hushed up domestic incident and always making an excuse on the grounds of health or fear of being bombed so as not to participate in the social functions of the platoon family.

One visualisation, conjured up in my mind, of the mysterious Elizabeth is of her in a siren suit, a sort of one piece flight or boiler suit so much trademark attire of Winston Churchill when out and about visiting his blitz affected countrymen and women. Unfortunately this produces the startling image of a character part Michelin Man and part Gas Engineer and hardly flattering.

Jokes at her expense are regularly inserted into the dialogue such as her not having left the house at 23 Lime Crescent,  “since Munich” or when George, excited at having obtained some scarce cheese rang Elizabeth to say that he might have a surprise for her that evening. This double entendre meant that he ended up eating the delicacy with Sergeant Wilson in the Vicar’s Office. 

Gradually we come to the realisation that she is always to be an elusive figure but then are shocked, as is George,  by revelations such as her playing the role of Lady Godiva on horseback riding through Walmington on Sea to raise funds for a Spitfire fighter plane. 

It is not all one way traffic in terms of who obviously wears the trousers in the Mainwaring household as in one series episode George has a platonic tea room and station platform liaison with one of the new female recruits to the platoon but is mindful of his married status and upholding his position of responsibility in the bank and town. 

There is an underlying melancholy to the relationship between George and Elizabeth but it works so very well in the cleverly woven story lines and characterisations that have made Dad’s Army such a loved bit of British television.