The secret life of Her Indoors

‘Her indoors’.

The phrase alone is enough to strike terror into the heart of every loveable scamp and scallywag in sitcoms and popular dramas stretching all the way back to the very dawn of British television.

But who is this elusive figure?  And why is this type of unseen fictional character so popular in drama?

Most people these days know ‘Her Indoors’ as the delightful euphemism employed in Minder  by Arthur Daley to describe his wife.  Like Samuel Pepys, he prefers never to refer to her by her proper name, though like Elizabeth Pepys presumably she must have one.

For some strange reason, many of these women ‘feature’ in comedies.  Although you never actually see or hear them, they still interact with the characters that we do meet.  Sometimes they even manage to influence events in the current storyline.  Apart from Mrs Daley, other classic examples include  Mrs Elizabeth Mainwaring from Dad’s Army, Maris Crane from Frasier and Mrs Doomes-Patterson from The Good Life.

From time to time, Her Indoors is also encountered in popular drama.  It seems to be considered particularly funny if you have one of these characters in a radio programme.  Indeed, The Archers enjoys this type of joke so much that they’ve had several of these silent characters over the years.  (Well, there’s not an awful lot else to do out there in the sticks and the rural sense of humour appears to be a bit on the simple side, to say the least of it … )

Silence is the outstanding characteristic associated with Her Indoors.  She can never ever speak.  The scriptwriters on The Archers used to compete with each other to come up with the most outlandish and unlikely reasons why Pru Forrest never talked.  (Eventually, however, Terry Wogan’s guest appearance on the show in one famous episode aggravated her so much that she erupted into a positive torrent of words.  Game, set and match to whoever thought up that one.)

Mrs Mainwaring, on the other hand, prefers to exert control over her husband through frequent phone calls.  However, you never even hear her voice or side of the conversation, which means you are left to work out her likely words and attitude through her husband’s replies and body language.  This has the effect of making her even more formidable and frightening in the eyes of the viewer.

Probably the unspoken cultural equation says that the public sphere is the space for men and the private sphere the space for women.  A television/radio series/book is seen as a form of public space, while silence counts as the private space.

As well as not speaking, Her Indoors never goes out.  Just one of many examples, Mrs Mainwaring ‘hasn’t left the house since Munich’.

This does tend to make you wonder - WHY THE HELL DO SO MANY OF THESE WOMEN NEVER EVEN LEAVE THE HOUSE?  Are they all suffering from agoraphobia or what? 

If that is the case, then they are surely begging for more sympathy, understanding and support on the part of their husbands. 

If not, then perhaps something more sinister might be going on.  In one episode of Dad’s Army, Mrs Mainwaring has apparently accompanied the platoon on their  manoeuvres and is sleeping in the tent next door.  Despite being a cast-iron bitch on roller-skates, there is no mention of her suffering anything like a panic attack whilst there. 

Meanwhile, in an episode of Minder, Mrs Daley puts her husband in a panic by leaving the house.  Of course she has returned home safe and sound again by the end of the programme.  So maybe she has been making a sneaky and devious protest against social injustice, just like Mrs Tucker from Citizen Smith.  

Naturally the man is the one who enjoys the exciting adventures you see onscreen, while Her Indoors thinks there’s nothing better than being the good little housekeeper for the male characters.

While you watch them getting up to various jolly scrapes and wheezes in the programme, she is sitting at home ironing their paisley print nylon Seventies Y-fronts (this is PRECISELY why I sincerely hope that Harry Fenning doesn’t take his smalls and socks round to Joan Tofkin’s house to be washed instead of learning how to do it himself.  Knowing that Harry possesses something of a penchant for loud, lurid clothes already, it is sadly all too plausible to imagine him prancing about in tight red paisley print Y-fronts with navy contrast piping round the edges to Hot Chocolate albums whilst spraying himself liberally with Hai-Karate before hot-footing it down The Vigilante to threaten Wolfie Smith with extreme GBH for daring to use Blu-Tack to stick posters on the newly papered bog walls.).

(Wonder if Mrs Daley got up to no good visiting a gigolo on her single trip out of the house?   Hee, hee, hee ... ) Mind you, if Groutie the gangster from Porridge can still manage to keep running all his operations when he is banged up inside, there’s no knowing what type of businesses any of these so-called invisible women might be running from home on the quiet with the aid of modern technology …  

When Her Indoors lacks a proper name of her own, it suggests that she is not regarded as an important person by either the male characters or the scriptwriters of the  show.  If she does have a name, it shows the male characters respect and fear her enough to recognise her as an individual in her own right, but they still don’t like her very much.  Elizabeth Mainwaring and Maris Crane are the two perfect examples here.

Usually if she does have a name, you soon find out that the male characters probably fear her because of their own problems, weaknesses and personal deficiencies.  Some male characters find it easier to admit to their fear of Her Indoors than others.

Both Captain Mainwaring and Niles Crane are uneasily aware that the problems they have experienced with their wives are at least partly of their own making.  However, Niles can own up to this fact a bit more readily than Captain Mainwaring – partly because he is American, partly because he is slightly younger, partly because he lives in a more recent historical period in which it is more acceptable for men to admit to difficulties like these, and partly because he and his brother are both shrinks.

The main reason Captain Mainwaring is so keen to devote all his spare time and energy to the cause of the Home Guard is to gain a sense of purpose and comradeship so woefully lacking from his own marriage.  This went right down the tubes just as soon as it got started.  Indeed, Mainwaring learnt how to play the bagpipes on his honeymoon in Scotland ‘because there was nothing else to do’ – instead of wangsting on at great length and considerable wit about the lack of sex and love like Niles Crane would no doubt do.

So why do the male characters fear and dislike these unseen women so much?  Well, apart from being rampantly sexist gits, they seem to blame them for everything that is wrong in their marriages.  Okay, so Elizabeth Mainwaring seems to be pretty domineering, neurotic and withholding of affection, to judge from the way that her husband reacts to her phonecalls.  Yet it can’t be the easiest business in the world being married to Captain Mainwaring, I wouldn’t have thought.

Yes, Maris Crane is rather difficult and neurotic too, we gather.  But her ex-husband Niles can get too bound up in the many failures and shortcomings of their relationship to stop and consider just why he decided to get married to a woman so like himself in so many ways.

It’s usually men that fear these characters.  Women often seem to quite envy figures like Jenny Piccolo from Happy Days.  Margot Ledbetter’s unease with Mrs Doomes-Patterson seems to be an exception to the rule (although there still tend to be far more male than female characters portrayed in modern popular drama.  Perhaps if the gender imbalance was resolved, we would see more female characters who fear, loathe and detest unseen women).