Mainwaring is generally ill at ease in social situations that require him to communicate with people on an equal social level and this is probably the main reason for his lack of promotion. Mainwaring is prudish and repressed and can be judgmental about people who do not share his moral outlook. Contrastingly Wilson is portrayed as flirtatious with women and has slightly more bohemian ideas about sexual morality (as he is in a secret relationship with Private Pike's mother.) We discover in "When You've Got to Go" that Mrs Mainwaring was the daughter of the (fictional) suffragan Bishop of Clegthorpe and her parents look down on Captain Mainwaring for "marrying beneath her"; which may go some way to explaining Mainwaring's extreme class consciousness and slight prudery. Mainwaring talks up his own social background by claiming that his father was a "Master Tailor" but in "My Brother and I" his brother reveals that he merely owned a draper's shop.