Home Fires - General Discussion

[jordanpond]

I felt such satisfaction at the mother slapping the daughter, who has behaved like a stupid schoolgirl (and the wing commander is a cad).

Although I agree with you that Laura has been acting very foolishly, I wish Erica had not slapped her. Edited November 20, 2015 by jordanpond

[morakot]

This was a time when children were spanked though.

[jordanpond]

But, in any given time, there are always people who do not follow what the majority is doing.

Besides, Laura is an adult.

One thing that I dislike about scenes in which one woman slaps another woman in the face is that these scenes seem to occur rather frequently in shows with female-dominated casts. They seem to be some ugly stereotype that just mindlessly gets thrown in.

[JudyObscure]

One thing that I dislike about scenes in which one woman slaps another woman in the face is that these scenes seem to occur rather frequently in shows with female-dominated casts. They seem to be some ugly stereotype that just mindlessly gets thrown in.

I never thought about it before, but I think you're on to something, Jordanpond.  I'm watching "Breaking Bad," right now, several years late, and one sister just slapped her older sister and I remembered what you said here.  In both cases I think, in real life,  the slapper would have been more hurt , shocked and disappointed than angry. The angry slap just brings so much more drama. 

 

My mother was an old-school spanker, it's a wonder she didn't have to ice down her arm at the end of a typical day with me and my brothers, but she never would have slapped me in the face. 

[captain1]

I had breakfast this morning with a friend who has a prediction about good ol' Bob - she thinks he will be injured and come home to Pat, paralyzed and wheelchair bound, totally dependent on her. I like it!

[Brattinella]

I had breakfast this morning with a friend who has a prediction about good ol' Bob - she thinks he will be injured and come home to Pat, paralyzed and wheelchair bound, totally dependent on her. I like it!

Amen to that!!

[dcalley]

I had breakfast this morning with a friend who has a prediction about good ol' Bob - she thinks he will be injured and come home to Pat, paralyzed and wheelchair bound, totally dependent on her. I like it!

That still would really suck for Pat. I don't know what I want to happen in this story line. Of course, Bob getting his comeuppance and Pat being free would be great, but I would like it to be realistic. Now that he's involved in the war the chances are greater that something bad could realistically happen to him.

 

 

The book is a non-fiction history of the WI -- the show is stories based on that information, I'm assuming.

My library still doesn't have the book (it's "on order"), but I don't think the book and TV series are the same, and browsing through some reviews on Amazon indicates that they aren't the same. The book merely inspired the TV show, which is fiction.

[Ohmo]

The book Jambusters is the British title.  It's being published under the Home Fires title (with the Masterpiece logo on the cover) in the States.  I compared the excerpts side by side on Amazon.  The text was the same, and the Home Fires version has an introduction from the author about how the book came to be adapted to become the series.

 

Jambusters

 

Home Fires

Edited November 16, 2015 by Ohmo

[Ursula Parrott]

The very first thing I hope Pat does is buy herself a new dress to replace the one she has worn every day. It's clearly made with leftover material from the homemade curtains in the front room. Then I hope she changes the locks and finds a satisfying and ego-boosting job.

Bob has nice clothes and I hope he took them all with him. Then Pat won't have to clean his closet out in season 2 after the Bob-seeking missile lands on him with a big satisfying bang.

[Milz]

I had breakfast this morning with a friend who has a prediction about good ol' Bob - she thinks he will be injured and come home to Pat, paralyzed and wheelchair bound, totally dependent on her. I like it!

 

That has a Misery-like vibe.

 

the Bob-seeking missile

 

Ha!

 

It is very wrong of me to want the NAZI to capture and torture Bob, but I hope they do.

[magdalene]

I had breakfast this morning with a friend who has a prediction about good ol' Bob - she thinks he will be injured and come home to Pat, paralyzed and wheelchair bound, totally dependent on her. I like it!

I don't. Why should that poor woman have to wipe that abusive bastards ass and care for him like a baby. I want her free of him and him dead.  

[Driad]

Fanfiction.net does not seem to have any Home Fires stories. Anyone who wants to get into more detail about what happens to Bob, or anything else, let's get writing!

[7-Zark-7]

 

I'm finding it hard to believe that a married wing commander would so blatantly carry on with subordinate staff during a time of war in a small gossipy village.

 

I find it harder to believe that his wife would be allowed to just show up on a military base without his being informed.

[stanleyk]

It makes me less sympathetic to the butcher's wife than I should be. Because her son is probably dead, all young men should be, is that it? Would that help?

 

Are we even supposed to feel sympathy? Because I can't even with her. And, look. I have a son. It is heart-clinching to think, even just hypothetically, of sending him to a war. I get it. But she is a nutbar. I can't figure out if they think we'll find her delusions touching? Heart-breaking? Relatable? Ixnay on all, from my perspective. She gets on my last nerve.

 

I keep watching because I am An Old and will watch whatever is on Masterpiece, but Home Fires didn't do a lot for me, in the end. A lot of it felt very rushed and undeveloped; either too many stories and not enough episodes, or they were rushing to get through a certain amount of material, or something. I mean, I'm not even sure about the names of many of the characters, and that can't be good after six episodes. I either disliked the characters or didn't care enough about them to become invested. Except in Alison, a bit. And Pat. Eff your terrible husband, Pat! Run free! Bake free!

Edited November 17, 2015 by stanleyk

[AnnieBeez]

I have one child. I would break his knees with a cricket bat before I'd let him go off to war. When he was in high school, I told him I'd not only ask but tell the military if he even thought about it. And he was an Army brat for the first 8 years of his life! 

 

Bottom line, she's a nut bar, but I definitely identify with her.

[pasdetrois]

 

Are we even supposed to feel sympathy? Because I can't even with her.

I can't stand her. Her single-minded obsession with her child makes everyone around her miserable. It becomes about her and not about him. Maybe my reaction to her is because I come from a military family. And my close friend is bearing up under the recent loss of her child who is in the military.

 

Also, I just cannot stand hysterical female characters in television and movies. A little of that kind of thing goes a long way.

[Milz]

I find it harder to believe that his wife would be allowed to just show up on a military base without his being informed.

 

It's still early in the war, so maybe security isn't as tight as it later will be?

[attica]

Might there have been base housing for her? Or was that not a thing?

[AllAboutMBTV]

 

I keep watching because I am An Old and will watch whatever is on Masterpiece, but Home Fires didn't do a lot for me, in the end.

Me either, really. I like the period and a lot of the actors, but it either needed more episodes to concentrate on the characters more deeply instead of hopscotching around every five minutes or fewer episodes and a tighter focus on fewer characters. So basically, I was just watching it for the period details and the Coat Porn (tm The Fug Girls or Tom and Lorenzo, who can remember?). I mean I watched every episode, and I gave up on Indian Summers after two episodes because it looked all wrong to me and, really, it just made me want to watch The Jewel in the Crown again some more.

[kassa]

Part of it is because the Campbell family seems so loving and sensible that I find it hard to believe that Laura is entering this affair with little or no concern about the morality of it all.

 

 

In the first episode, though, didn't they kind of establish that the girls were a bit wild?  Might be one of those family dynamics where the parents are more into each other than minding what the kids are up to.

 

I'm not saying they were BAD girls -- just a handful and that the parents were kind of indulgent about it.   

[izabella]

Laura seems like she was jealous of her sister who found a husband, and wanted a romance of her own.  I feel like her affair was rebellious and more about impatience to grow up and be an adult with her own romance than her being a wild girl to begin with.

[Milz]

I keep watching because I am An Old and will watch whatever is on Masterpiece, but Home Fires didn't do a lot for me, in the end. A lot of it felt very rushed and undeveloped; either too many stories and not enough episodes, or they were rushing to get through a certain amount of material, or something. I mean, I'm not even sure about the names of many of the characters, and that can't be good after six episodes. I either disliked the characters or didn't care enough about them to become invested. Except in Alison, a bit. And Pat. Eff your terrible husband, Pat! Run free! Bake free!

 

With the number of characters on the program, it really needed more than 6 episodes, imo. Or it needed less characters. 

 

Posting my thoughts about the dramas in general in the small talk thread.......

[Driad]

 

Bob is working for a newspaper or something, rather than the army, right?  Is it his decision whether to send Pat any money to live on?  She could probably get more work at the telephone exchange though.

Edited November 17, 2015 by Driad

[kassa]

I forget the exact words, but I thought he was going to be coordinating/consolidating dispatches from the front or something.  So I thought it was a military recruitment.  But I suppose newspapers would also need somebody to do that.

[lucindabelle]

 

Oh goodness, the butcher's wife is going to have a baby?  That poor, poor child.  I can imagine her hovering over the child, freaking out if she has to be separated from him/her (for school, etc.), having a coronary if the child gets a little scrape or bruise, etc.  The woman has some major problems, and I'm not sure that a child to replace the one she lost is what she needs right now.  She needs therapy!  

 

And that is my sister-in-law to a T. She married my brother when she was 58 (five years older than he is), first marriage for both.

her mother lost her first husband and child in a car crash. Recently she mentioned at dinner that she cried so much the first day of kindergarten that they let her mother ride the bus with her, and that her parents never went to a function unless she could go to.

 

UGH. She is joined at the hip to him. He never goes to anything without her and vice versa. It's bizarre and weird. He was not brought up that way. She has no friends. At the wedding she had one guest, someone she knew slightly who lived in her apartment building. She's clingy and interprets love as hovering.

 

This Halloween, at age 61, they gave out candy; she dressed as a little girl and he would be her father. It makes me want to throw up.

 

 

Trying to remember my history -- as far as I could tell, this is the summer of 1940 and the end of the "Phony War."  Hitler invaded the Netherlands, Luxembourg, and then Belgium to scoot around the supposedly impregnable Maginot line and invade France.  Sarah's RAF lodger talks about the inevitability of France falling at one point.  He seems to have been psychic because it was a surprise to practically everyone else.  Including Churchill!

   

 

Downton abbey sundrome.

Yes, I have imagined that and I feel for the poor folks who had to endure it!  I think I would just be in a puddle of tears.

 

Actually-- see "Hope and Glory." Children in this period didn't necessarily remember it as all horrible. It was just a thing. John Boorman remembers happily climbing over bombed sites, his sister, going a bit wild, bringing home shrapnel from her dates with a handsome Canadian soldier...

I never thought about it before, but I think you're on to something, Jordanpond.  I'm watching "Breaking Bad," right now, several years late, and one sister just slapped her older sister and I remembered what you said here.  In both cases I think, in real life,  the slapper would have been more hurt , shocked and disappointed than angry. The angry slap just brings so much more drama. 

 

My mother was an old-school spanker, it's a wonder she didn't have to ice down her arm at the end of a typical day with me and my brothers, but she never would have slapped me in the face. 

 

If I tried to slap someone I'd probably miss and then start laughing. I get that it's supposed to be punctuation for extreme anger but in real life I've never slapped nor been slap. I do know enough from my days in theatre to know it doesn't make that sound in real life.

In the first episode, though, didn't they kind of establish that the girls were a bit wild?  Might be one of those family dynamics where the parents are more into each other than minding what the kids are up to.

 

I'm not saying they were BAD girls -- just a handful and that the parents were kind of indulgent about it.   

 

Yes, see the sister in "Hope and glory." Girls did go a little wild then.

Laura seems like she was jealous of her sister who found a husband, and wanted a romance of her own.  I feel like her affair was rebellious and more about impatience to grow up and be an adult with her own romance than her being a wild girl to begin with.

That's my take as well.

[kassa]

Hope and Glory was an AWESOME movie, and fans of this show would probably love it.  

 

[lucindabelle]

watched that longish trailer. My goodness I do love that movie so much I think I've memorized most of it. "Thank you Adolph!" heee. Just shows the difference between what people actually remember and what people born after the fact assume must have been the case.

[proserpina65]

Brattinella, on 10 Nov 2015 - 3:48 PM, said:

 

Yes, I have imagined that and I feel for the poor folks who had to endure it!  I think I would just be in a puddle of tears.

Actually-- see "Hope and Glory." Children in this period didn't necessarily remember it as all horrible. It was just a thing. John Boorman remembers happily climbing over bombed sites, his sister, going a bit wild, bringing home shrapnel from her dates with a handsome Canadian soldier...

A lot of children definitely didn't view it through the "Mrs. Miniver" lense, that's for sure.  An art professor I had when I studied in London was a small child during the war, and he talked about what fun it was to go into the Underground during air raids and that the first time he ever saw a banana, several years after the war ended, he hated the taste - mainly because he didn't know to remove the peel.  I suspect a lot of the adults viewed it rather differently, though.

 

[kassa]

George Takei has spoken really thoughtfully about living in an internment camp as a child.  His frame of reference was so small at that age (3-5?) that as far as he was concerned he was with his family and there were lots of interesting things to occupy his childish mind.  It was the adults who had been robbed of their autonomy and dignity who suffered, but as a child he was just living life under the circumstances he found himself in and didn't know any different.  

 

Did they give any backstory on the blind lady?  I mean, she just shows up, but we don't know anything about her.  Was she always blind?  Blinded as a child? As an adult? 

 

Francesca Annis just rocks - I hope she's not gone for the rest of the series.  I was channel flipping last weekend and caught some of Dune, of all things.  She was radiantly beautiful (but oh, such a bad film with so many great actors!)

[lucindabelle]

Going to see "Allegiance" next week speaking of George Takei. everyone says it sucks... I'd think living in an internment camp and growing up in wartime Britain have nothing in common but interesting.

Francesca Annis is still so lovely. I first saw her in "Lillie" when I was a child. Outstandingly beautiful in an old world way, not all angular but curvy even then.

If she's had any work done it's been done tastefully. Similarly Bernadette Peters at 67 has had to have something done (filler?) but she still looks like herself. Lovely.

[Driad]

 

George Takei also said (likely in a different interview) that he knew that he and his family were in jail, and as a young child he figured that it must be his fault.  There were probably children in wartime Britain who thought they had somehow caused the bombings.

[iggysaurus]

I mean, I'm not even sure about the names of many of the characters, and that can't be good after six episodes. I either disliked the characters or didn't care enough about them to become invested. Except in Alison, a bit. And Pat. Eff your terrible husband, Pat! Run free! Bake free!

 

This is how I feel, too. I watched every episode but not only can I not remember the names of some of the characters, I also can't really tell a few of them apart, visually. I get Erika mixed up with the one who I think is named Sarah? The vicar's wife? Some of the women just look really similar to me. And I love British period dramas so I'm surprised I couldn't get more into it. Pat is the main one who stood out to me.

 

Didn't realize this was the last episode of the series - it didn't seem all that dramatic or climactic.

[jordanpond]

I had a difficult time grasping just how unrealistic it was to have a fund-raising goal of 50 pounds for the village.

Is anyone able to clue me in as to how much that would mean in 2015 US dollars? And was 4-5 ambulances the village's goal? A combined goal for all WI branches across the country combined? The WI members seemed to think the goal was unrealistically high, while Nick seemed to treat the number of ambulances as too smallI to even botherIng pursuing. I was rather lost trying to understand how big of a goal this was.

[izabella]

From what I can tell, the lady married to the chaplain suggested that their village WI branch try to help the war effort by doing a fundraiser for ambulances.  They set a goal of $50 pounds, which, apparently, can pay for 4-5 ambulances.  I didn't catch if the other WI chapters were doing the same thing, or if they were fundraising for other things that would be needed.

[dcalley]

I had a difficult time grasping just how unrealistic it was to have a fund-raising goal of 50 pounds for the village.

Is anyone able to clue me in as to how much that would mean in 2015 US dollars?

 

From measuringworth.com:

 

When using the CPI/RPI, the (average) value in 2014 of £50 from 1939 is $3650.00. The range of values is from $2490.00 to $5110.00. This answer is better if the subject is a consumer good or something else of interest to an individual.

When using the GDP deflator, the (average) value in 2014 of £50 from 1939 is $3240.00. The range of values is from $2090.00 to $5050.00. This answer is better if the subject is a capital investment or government expenditure.

 

[dustoffmom]

The most common conversion I found was:  1940 GBP  =

2955.96526 USD

But that would make the goal of 50 equal to nearly 150,000!  An impossible feat I would think for a small village such as this is.

[attica]

They set a goal of $50 pounds, which, apparently, can pay for 4-5 ambulances.

 

No, that's not exactly right. Yes, the goal for their village was 50 quid, but it was the entire, nation-wide WI that was going to buy the ambulances, this town's contribution was only a small bit of that. The pilot scoffed at what a pittance even the national WI effort was. As if charitable donation was going to be the thing that funds a war effort, for pete's sake, rather than good old fashioned government spending.

[dcalley]

The most common conversion I found was:  1940 GBP  =

2955.96526 USD

But that would make the goal of 50 equal to nearly 150,000!  An impossible feat I would think for a small village such as this is.

I think this is 1,940 the amount rather than 1940 the year. So you're getting what 1,940 pounds today is in today's US$ rather than what a pound in 1940 equals today.

[dustoffmom]

Ah dcalley, I believe you are correct.  I searched for 1940 conversion but got the above, which as I said in the initial post made no sense.  Thanks for the clarification of my apparent error!

[jordanpond]

Thanks to all of you who gave input on this. So, from what I've learned from all of you, it seems that the fundraising goal broke down similar to this:

The local goal of 50 pounds would translate to about 75 US dollars.

A really rough estimate of both the above figures in 2015 figures would be somewhere around 500 pounds or 750 US dollars.

It appears that the local WI contribution would be added to other WI contributions around the nation to arrive at a figure that would enable the purchase 4 or 5 ambulances. Nick was dismissive of this because he felt that 4 or 5 ambulances would be next to nothing when even 1000 ambulances would probably not cover the need. (By the way, I thought Sara's response to him was excellent.)

I think that even a few seconds of explanation by the show could have gone a long way to clarifying the above, as the WI's fundraising goals were at times treated as unrealistically high, and yet not nearly sufficient. Both perspectives were actually accurate, but the show gave such little explanation that it appeared to contradict itself.

Edited November 20, 2015 by jordanpond

[dcalley]

Thanks to all of you who gave input on this. So, from what I've learned from all of you, it seems that the fundraising goal broke down similar to this:

The local goal of 50 pounds would translate to about 75 US dollars.

A really rough estimate of both the above figures in 2015 figures would be somewhere around 500 pounds or 750 US dollars.

I quoted a website's calculator above that gave a range of values. There is no exact answer, but based on that website, they were trying to raise the equivalent of a few thousand dollars now.

[jordanpond]

Dcalley, yes, both the lower estimate supplied by Dustoffmom and the higher one supplied by you cleared up my confusion about the value of their goal. Whether it translates to somewhere in the high hundreds or the low thousands in 2015 US dollars, the local WI would be contributing a small portion of the cost, not 4 or 5 ambulances.

I have one child. I would break his knees with a cricket bat before I'd let him go off to war. When he was in high school, I told him I'd not only ask but tell the military if he even thought about it. And he was an Army brat for the first 8 years of his life!

Bottom line, she's a nut bar, but I definitely identify with her.

MischaMouse, I'm glad you shared your opinion on this. Although I sometimes find Miriam delusional or even selfish in her thoughts and actions, at other times I think she is absolutely right. The thought of innocent young men getting maimed or killed because of Hitler's incredibly evil ways is horrifying. Although I respect all the sacrifices made by the troops and their families, I sometimes feel like Miriam's zeal is the sanest response of all. Edited November 21, 2015 by jordanpond

[lucindabelle]

The sad thing is her son would not have enlisted had he not found out she flat lied to keep him safe.

But he's only missing. Missing at sea would mean drowned but since this is TV, I bet he turns up.

[jordanpond]

It was very interesting (and in my opinion, very sad) to see that the two most powerful women in the village were not only rather powerless in their own marriages, but they didn't seem to mind their lack of equality. It was very clear from the way Joyce described her family's upcoming move was that the decision had been entirely her husband's. And although she wasn't happy about the move, she didn't express any objection to his making the decision without her input.

And although it was a much more subtle example, the empty place setting at Frances' anniversary dinner had her husband sitting at the head of the table, with Frances not facing him, but rather sitting on the side. And when Joyce told Frances anout her upcoming move, Frances did not seem to think it unfair for Joyce's husband to make such a major decision without consulting his wife.

Perhaps I wasn't so surprised that women who were leaders among other women could have marriages that were less than equal partnerships, but I was surprised that neither of these women seemed to mind those gender inequalities.

Edited November 23, 2015 by jordanpond

[attica]

they didn't seem to mind their lack of equality.

 

That is probably because they had no expectation of having equality in marriage. Marriage as partnership is a super recent development, and still isn't even a thing in many cultures.

[lucindabelle]

That is probably because they had no expectation of having equality in marriage. Marriage as partnership is a super recent development, and still isn't even a thing in many cultures.

I would be careful about a statement like your second one. Plenty of husband and wife teams owned businesses together and more from the 40s and earlier. On farms and in rural areas there might well be a gendered division of labor, but the marriage was still a working partnership (I am thinking of a story by Lorna Moon about a Scottish man who threw over his fiancee when she lost her arm in a threshing accident, because she wouldn't be able to be a real partner. In the end the woman he married was a lazy cow with two arms and useless).

 

But I'd agree that these women didn't have that expectation.

[attica]

That women were expected to handle their share of the work in the situation you describe is of course true. That they had any real (certainly not legal) say in decisions their husbands made, say if he wanted to sell acreage, or buy a cow, or pull up stakes and come to America, they just did not. Not as a class. Indiviiduals? Sure. But those certainly would have been outliers, and as such wouldn't likely have gotten any social support for not going along with their husbands' wishes.

[Milz]

I think the WI was a place where women who wanted to be the "big fish" could aspire to be it. It's no different than any type of group. Some people are happy to just be members because they like the social interaction. Some people want to be the president, vice president, secretary treasurer because they like that kind of authority.

[pasdetrois]

I just read three biographies/autobiographies that featured English middle-class and upper-class society between 1900 and 1960ish (they all became available in my library queue at the same time, so the common topic was coincidental). I was surprised at how much drinking and carousing and bed-hopping and divorce went on, especially in the supposedly conservative upper classes. The women were not home-bound and docile.

Edited November 26, 2015 by pasdetrois

[lucindabelle]

That women were expected to handle their share of the work in the situation you describe is of course true. That they had any real (certainly not legal) say in decisions their husbands made, say if he wanted to sell acreage, or buy a cow, or pull up stakes and come to America, they just did not. Not as a class. Indiviiduals? Sure. But those certainly would have been outliers, and as such wouldn't likely have gotten any social support for not going along with their husbands' wishes.

Sorry but I just can't agree... There's just too much evidence for each instance to have been an outlier whose friends wouldn't have approved. In many places women could and did inherit land and owned it, famous scottish ballad about a woman who wanted a divorce because her husband was impotent etc. etc. plenty of women owned business in the 40s and earlier.

In general the default was men as head of the household, sure. But you are overstating the case.

When you state that marriage as partnership is a recent development you're really making too large a statement. Not even true in my family, grandparents and great grandparents, and we are not outliers by any means.

Edited November 29, 2015 by lucindabelle