Plus in those days, as now, car salesmen were looked on as sleazy,
Not if you aren’t happy with the person(s) providing the “fun” experiences. That’s what has always seemed to me the point of the song.
She had a secure home with loving parents who gave her all sorts of material things, but restricted her life too much (at least in her view), or just couldn’t understand what she wanted. In that sort of confining situation, life feels not-fun, no matter how much “fun” of an authority-approved variety they may be willing to buy you.
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Right, because heaven forbid a young woman make any imprudent choice without paying for it in unhappiness and lack of fulfillment for the rest of her life.
I mean, I’m not saying you’re necessarily wrong about how the Beatles themselves would have imagined this character’s trajectory: they were pretty soaked in mid-20th c. patriarchy mindset too.
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I don’t see any indication that she hates her parents, just that she (like every young adult) wants her freedom. Except for a few specifics like the man from the motor trade, the story is a nearly universal one. The child is naturally lured by the opportunities outside her parent’s world, and the parents feel betrayed that she prefers freedom to the comfortable sanctuary (prison) they have constructed.
I always assumed the song was sung from the omniscient POV of the main character’s dead mother. (Hence “We gave her most of our lives” but “Father snores as his wife [i.e., his second wife] gets into her dressing gown.”)
Speaking for the US, that’s bullshit. Banks were allowed to discriminate but that doesn’t mean that they all did. My mother and step-mother both got credit cards and mortgages in the early 70s without a man after their divorces. Do you really think that war widows couldn’t get credit? Single women in their 30s with jobs? Without a doubt legions of woman had issues that men didn’t but to to say that they generally couldn’t get it at all is false.
Please re-read what I wrote, and note the words I’m bolding here: “women generally couldn’t get credit,” and, in response to your “She qualified for a loan,” I wrote, “In 1967 England, no, she probably didn’t.” Note that I did not say, “women could NOT get loans,” and please don’t put those words in my mouth.
Even if a divorced, independent woman might have found a bank which wouldn’t discriminate against her back then, it was probably unlikely that a young woman, hypothetically in her late teens or early 20s, who still lived with her parents, and had no credit or bank history, could have.
It depends greatly on where in the USA you’re talking about. IIRC you’re a Californian by birth and for life.
My late wife was born and raised in CT. Her Dad died in 1965, leaving Mom & two pre-tween girls destitute. Mom could not get a job, rent an apartment, nor get credit in CT in 1965 without a male co-signer. Whether that was a matter of law or business “custom” I cannot say.
Mom immediately emigrated to Arizona where there were no such restrictions. Only later, in the 1970s, were all those differences swept away by Federal legislation.
I agree that the protagonist in the song wouldn’t have been able to do so. I was talking about the more sweeping statement. But @LSLGuy makes a good point about it varying by region. Bank managers had a lot more discretion back then and they could choose to be as bigoted as they wanted.
Again, I said, “generally” and “probably,” not “absolutely could not.” And it’s a well-established historical fact that women in the U.S. on the whole faced this sort of discrimination by banks and financial institutions in the 1960s, and even until the 1970s, until the laws changed.
And they generally could in Los Angeles according to my mom who I asked the first time I saw the claim. She said it wasn’t a problem. I should have thought more about regional differences.
I met my wife in my early 20s in the early 1980s. And until then had been in SoCal since birth except for the last 2 years in USAF. I was simply flabbergasted as I learned this bit of her family history.
It was beyond inconceivable to me that such a level of patriarchal discrimination had existed anywhere in the USA since the end of WWII, or more likely since the 1930s. Or so I thought. I was wrong.
Geeze, lighten up, Francis.
With that jump you made from the specif icto a broad, sweeping generalization, you should be on the olympic track team.
I’m pretty sure that was the implication. In British english of the time ‘man from the motor trade’ definitely conjures up a bit of a flash harry. A wide boy…
There there, didn’t mean to upset you.
In the Hunter Davies biography, there was speculation that it referred to an abortionist. While that could explain why she was leaving home, the euphemism and the occupation aren’t a good fit.
So that puts a different spin on the song. I always thought it was written as an ode to empowerment of the younger generation, a young woman asserting her independence and refusing to be held back by her parents. It doesn’t seem like that as you get older, as famously pointed by Alexi Sayle , but I always assumed that’s how it was written.
This seems it was written as something darker more akin to Alexi Sayle’s take on it.
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Though re-reading the article it’s not clear who is speaking there, is it Paul, George or the author of the article.
Edit: re-re-reading the article it definitely seems to be quoting Paul directly
No worries!
And, good on your mom and step-mother for being able to do so in that era, as well as on California for being more progressive.
Is my face red! Has it ever been British Motor Works? Are/were any cars made in Britain?