Endeavour and feminism

I am too young (not many times I get the chance to say that!) to remember when Child Benefit was introduced.

The Family Allowance (as it was called until 1977) was introduced in 1945. Originally it was paid for children except the first one. I'm not sure if it was always paid directly to the mother, but I seem to remember my DM collecting it from the post office in the 60s.

I thought the woman that broke Morse was Thursday's daughter (sorry, I can never remember names).

I suspect Endeavour has yet to meet the woman that broke Morse. She/they were hinted at in Morse and the women in Endeavour have flirted with flabbering his gast. So we may get to see it yet...

... Not sure they'll drop it. They do seem to love all the creative time loop real life / fictional self referencing.

"Set in 1970 with references to women's feminist conference and Sally Alexander. In a typical example of Endeavour in-referencing Sally Alexander was John Thaw's first wife according to Twitter. "

"It's even weirder than that. Abigail Thaw, daughter of John Thaw and Sally Alexander, plays Dorothea Frazil. In the episode, Sally Alexander is played by Abigail Thaw's daughter, Molly."

That's amazing!!!

I LOVE "Endeavour"! I was binge-watching old episodes recently and was so impressed with one episode that I bothered to check who the Director was, the first time I have given that a second thought for any TV programme - Shaun Davies! He Directed from Series 6 and you can really see the difference from the earlier series'.

I could connect the characters (personalities) of Endeavour and Morse in the earlier series but it got harder with the later ones and I wonder if they just decided to stop trying?

"I've been re-watching older Morses recently too. I hadn't recalled how poor his attitude to women was - really quite angry and entitled when his advances are rebuffed. Other aspects of his interactions are so comical compared with how they seemed in 1990. It's not far off, "I'm sorry to have to tell you your husband has been murdered; but would you care to join me for dinner?"

Same here BiarritzCrackers! The first type of interactions just washed over me when "Morse" was first screened - the family reaction was always a piss-takey, "Poor old Morse, knocked-back again, never get's a legover!" Watching them again recently, the cumulative effect was of a creepy predator.

On the occasions when an indecently-recently bereaved widow takes him up on an offer it is just as shocking, "Hang on, one more shovel of earth on this coffin and . . . done . . . where are we off to? Opera?"

With "Endeavour", I love the "kitchen-sink/period drama" of the Thursday family.

The "family finances" aspect that hasn't been touched on yet was the common practice in working class homes of the "man of the house" handing over his unopened wage packet to his wife, who would give him back the "pocket money" that she determined he needed to get by.

I am personally aware of this practice persisting into the early years of this century. One thing that tolled its death knell was employers insisting on paying into bank accounts rather than issuing cash wage packets.

There is little scope for the hourly-paid to secretly hold back earnings when everyone knows the rates of pay. The middle-class taboo back then about discussing money ("so common!") coupled with secrecy about salaried pay rates made it easier for Salary-Man to control the purse strings.

It was a great source of pride that a man could afford to "keep" his wife and wives who did not need to work were as varied as those who did or who chose to work anyway.

A "kept" wife might be unhappily shackled to her husband due to being financially dependent on him. Another might enjoy the freedom to do pretty much what she liked with her time.

A "working wife" might be exhausted by "keeping house" on top of one or more jobs. Another might be glad of the chance to spend time outside the confines of four walls and have some money to call her own.

Whatever the circumstances, Child Benefit paid directly to the mother recognised that mothers were generally more reliable as parents than fathers. For too many women, their only financial independence or even ability to put food on the table for themselves relied on pennies squirrelled away here and there from Child Benefit.

My mother at one point in her life went hungry so her children could eat and saved pennies from Child Benefit for our shoes. (If my father had got his hands on that money it would have been drunk and gambled away. Thankfully, he had enough self-control to pay rent and utilities bills but reluctantly handed over any money at all for "housekeeping".)

I am too young (not many times I get the chance to say that!) to remember when Child Benefit was introduced. Given that wives and children had not so long before that been legally the property of their husbands and fathers, I wonder if it seemed revolutionary at the time? (Apologies if my history is "off" there - I stand to be corrected!)

The blanket, institutional oppression of women seems unfathomable now (inability to open bank accounts, take out hire-purchase agreements, etc. on their own say-so; being required to leave jobs on marriage; etc.). Is all of that "within living memory"? (Again, history is not my strong suit!)

There is a thread on telly addicts about this episode but not making these points.

But it is maybe hard to remember how many laws and rules there were that actually stopped women fully participating. As well as social attitudes. I was told it wasn't worth educating girls after 16 as they just got married, so why not take a typing course!

But I do think Endeavour, like others eg George Gently and Granchester make the heros talk and have attitudes that just weren't expressed at that time, not only about women, but homosexuality, race and so on.

I always thought Morse was if not an actual misogynist, fairly contemptuous of women unless they fulfilled some old fashioned notion of art and beauty.

Had to say I laughed outloud when the one woman who was name checked at the Oxford Women's Conference was Sally Alexander, as I was aware of her marriage to John Thaw, but hadn't realised until I saw a newspaper article that it was Sally's granddaughter playing her.

A bit to precious for me, but I know people like the in jokes that tv makers add in long running series.

There are a number of events in Oxford to celebrate the conference held in 1970 now known as the first National Women's Liberation Conference, although the spontaneous meeting of women at Essex University in 1968 in response to the sexism of the Revolutionary Festival should reallly be acknowledged as being that.

Short history of Oxford Conference (note the men against sexism running the creche - how young and niave!) www.ruskin.ac.uk/blog/on-this-day-at-ruskin-college-national-womens-liberation-conference/

And Sheila Rowbotham's memories of the events in Essex www.essex68.org.uk/comm4.html

And re her comments about mothers in the early days of women's liberation, it is worth remembering that the first local women's group was set up by the Two O'clock Club, a sort of mother's and toddlers group in Peckham, ie it grew out of women's lived experience.

Beware the re-writing of women's history which tries to centre academics and writers as being the origins of the politics. WLM was based on the lived experience of women's daily lives in a world that cast them as second class citizens (as describied by posters above).

Decades later, that child's disbelieving sense of horror that a man would withhold money from his wife still flares up in me whenever I come across this situation.

And why I was so horrified when they stopped CB for higher earners. You still get financial abuse in wealthy families, the money should still go direct to women no question.

Stories like those from nettie and Babdoc are really outrageous. The stuff women had to put up with back then. Not to mention the effect on patients of being treated by doctors who didn't have a particular aptitude for medicine but were accepted because they were a) male b) played rugby. It's amazing that there was ever a time when people thought these were desirable attributes for becoming a doctor.

Nettie, that was why I ended up doing my medical degree in Scotland! My uni took 30% women and was regarded as very modern in that regard.
Being good at rugger was almost an entry requirement for some of the London med schools in those days. Having a daddy who’d previously attended, ditto.
My own uni was not free of sexism though. One of our gynae consultants told us he was delighted at the rising number of female students as it meant “more women for us to sleep with”. Slimy creep.

I mean I hadn't recalled from twenty years ago, when I started watching them recently. My memory was more of, "poor old Morse, never gets the woman".

I've been re-watching older Morses recently too. I hadn't recalled how poor his attitude to women was - really quite angry and entitled when his advances are rebuffed. Other aspects of his interactions are so comical compared with how they seemed in 1990. It's not far off, "I'm sorry to have to tell you your husband has been murdered; but would you care to join me for dinner?"

I do mostly like Endeavour, but if I didn't already know, I wouldn't have considered that they were the same character - Morse has quite comfortable, long standing friendships that crop up all the time, whereas Endeavour seems much more of a loner (sorry, this is more the subject of a Telly Addicts thread).

But agree with how it is jarring, E's treatment of and attitude towards women being quite different.

I was born in the 1950’s, so I DO remember the 70’s!
Marital rape was legal. Women couldn’t get a mortgage, or any loan or credit agreement without a male guarantor, you had to pay for a private prescription for the contraceptive pill as the NHS didn’t cover it, it was legal to sack women who got married or were pregnant, until the Sex Discrimination Act of 1975. There was no statutory right to maternity leave. When I applied to study medicine in 1974, the London medical schools had a 10% quota for female admissions.
Abortion had only recently been legalised (1967).
The first women’s refuges opened in the 70’s (Erin Pizzey was one of the founders). Domestic violence was considered a joke. The judge at my cousin’s divorce hearing, on being told that her husband (a GP) had punched her, said “Well, you’ll have to learn to duck, won’t you.”
On the (small) plus side, there was no violent internet porn, and the young generation of males were more into gentle hippy culture, rejecting the old patriarchy, joining anti war movements and trying to please women in bed!
It’s very true that the past is a foreign country.

Set in 1970 with references to women's feminist conference and Sally Alexander. In a typical example of Endeavour in-referencing Sally Alexander was John Thaw's first wife according to Twitter.

It's even weirder than that. Abigail Thaw, daughter of John Thaw and Sally Alexander, plays Dorothea Frazil. In the episode, Sally Alexander is played by Abigail Thaw's daughter, Molly.

Yes, they started off very well, in the first series, showing how Morse's personality developed, and why the crusty older man was how he was. But young Endeavour is always far more 21st Century in his behaviour than older Morse, far more egalitarian and respectful. While I prefer the younger's attitude, it is jarring when you then watch a Morse episode. TBF Endeavour is almost equally likely as Morse to try and date a witness who turns out to be materially involved in the case.

I remember going to collect CB at the Post Office with my dm in the 70s. She explained it as some husbands won't let their wives have money of their own, so the government takes an amount from their salary and gives it straight to their wives to make sure they have enough to look after their children. I was appalled, and asked mum if this was the case for us. After all, my mum would often ask my dad for cash. This was when mum taught me about shared bank accounts, and showed me how she could write a cheque to cash whenever she needed some cash. But mum was nervous and didn't like carrying loads of cash, whereas dad couldn't be bothered with going to the bank whenever he wanted cash, so always had paper money in his pocket or desk drawer. He never asked mum what she wanted money for. They weren't loaded, they were comfortable if they were careful, but they trusted each other.

Decades later, that child's disbelieving sense of horror that a man would withhold money from his wife still flares up in me whenever I come across this situation.

This is interesting, I've wondered about Endevour with regard to women before. It seemed to me when I watched it that they very much glossed over Morse's way of relating to women.

It prompted me to rewatch the original Morse episodes, and indeed, he was a man of his time. It many ways it was more of a window on past attitudes than watching a tv show that attempts to look back from the present. There were a few episodes in the originals that dug into Morse's type of chivalry a little, and I thought they were well done. They didn't try and spoon feed you the answer, either, which I find is rather a problem with a lot of tv shows at the moment.

I'm watching too. It's always good (or depressing) to realise how recently women's lib was.