Taste of Honey by Shelagh Delaney :: Taste Honey Shelagh Delaney

"Taste of Honey" by Shelagh Delaney I am going to explain how Shelagh Delaney presents the changing facets of Jo’s character. The play was written in the 1950s and was first performed in 1958. The play is about a girl and her mother move to a grubby flat and area with no men in their life, but all changes when Helen meets Peter and Jo meet Boy. Then Jo gets pregnant with the black boy, and then meets and shares a flat with Geof, a young homosexual. He takes and the role as caring and protecting Jo and they get on well. Geof brings Helen back to visit Jo, and Helen kicks Geof out. Jo’s is the main character in the play; she is the daughter of Helen. She falls for a man called Jimmie who is in the navy, and then he makes her pregnant and goes way leaving her with this black baby. Then she meets Geof who takes on the role of caring for Jo, and then brings back her mother and he leaves. At the beginning of the play Jo is organized, capable and critical of her mother, we know because she says ‘ You’re knocking it worst than ever’. This makes us think that Helen has a drinking problem in the past. Also in Act one scene one Jo shows she is organized by saying ‘ I’m going to unpack my bulbs. I wonder where I can out them’. Then she changes when she meets Peter and becomes more jealous, quarrelsome and annoying. When Helen leaves Jo becomes more resentful and feels hurt and unloved. When she meets Jimmie she becomes much more flirtatious we know this because she says to him in the play ‘glad you like it. It’s my schoolgirl complexion’. She also becomes coy and likes the attention when she meets Jimmie. The play writer use dramatic devices to show the changes in Jo well, as in when she has quarrels and fights between the other characters. In the 1980s it was not common to be a single parent family, and Britain was not a multicultural society. Jo changes though the play one example of this is her opinion on poor housing. At the start of the play she say ‘And I don’t like it’ expressing her self about the