Practical session 4#

1. How does the setting of the play reflect the characters social class?
Helen and her daughter Jo are moving into a comfortless apartment in a Salford slum. Jo
complains about the place, but Helen says they can afford nothing better. So, their home reflects
the social class they come from, the working class. The new flat is cold, squalid, and damp.
2. Discuss the ways in which Jo and Helen differ from traditional standards of womanhood
(traditional skills and instincts associated with women).
The two characters are rough and talk and behave rudely to each other. They have been living a
hard life and that made them rough and strong.
3. Is Helen and Jos mother-daughter relationship conventional? Explain
Jo and her mother have a peculiar relationship, they are not attached to each other and they talk
very harsh, rough vocabulary. The daughter, Jo, is very badly educated and speaks in a way in
which some would find disturbing. She addresses her mother by her name, Helen, also.
4. Select passages from the play that show how Helen and Jo often criticize or contradict each
other. Select one that shows their bond or an example of Helen caring for Jo.
Jo criticizing Helen:
All through the play, she criticises her mother for marring Peter, or going out with him.
When she says that she has dreamt of her mother dead, buried under a rosebush.
Jo contradicting Helen:
When she says she doesnt want to live with her mother, she wants to be independent.
Helen caring for Jo:
When she says that Jo should go to a school and study drawing, because Jo is talented.
When she says she shouldnt see the black boy, and that she shouldnt marry, she should learn
from her mistakes.

Mother and Daughter Relationship

A central theme in this play is the nature of mother/daughter love. In the case of Helen and Jo,
there seems to be no real parent/child relationship in the traditional sense. Helen does not act
like a mother, nurturing and caring for her child. Jo does not act like a child, respecting and
obeying her parent. In fact, Jo does not address Helen as mother, preferring to call her by her
given name. Jo addresses her mother as Helen as a form of disrespect.
For her part, Helen has often hides the fact that she even has has a daughter, perhaps in the
hopes of creating an illusion of youth for herself. Jo is abandoned by her mother whenever a
better opportunity usually a man with moneycomes along. It is clear from her behavior that
Jo desperately needs a mother.
5. Compare Peter and Boy Jos boyfriend.
They have bad manners both.
Peter Smith
Peter Smith, a successful car salesman, a heavy drinker who is younger than Helen, his lover.
When he makes his offer of marriage to her, it is with the understanding that she will desert her
daughter, a source of shame to him. He is flippant and disdainful when drunk, wearing a patch
over one eye; he becomes vicious and dangerous when approaching sobriety, a state that he
never reaches. In his hatred for Jo, which stems partly from repressed sexual attraction to her
and partly from jealousy of the mother-daughter bond, he twice forces Helen to choose him over
her daughter.
The Boy
The Boy, a coloured naval rating, Jos boyfriend, who calls himself the lascivious Moor. He
is young, handsome, romantic, and caring. He has a poetic nature and an unrealistic impression
of their chances. On leave at Christmas, he courts Jo by carrying her books from school,
offering her a Woolworth engagement ring, kissing her hand, quoting Shakespeare, and reciting
nursery rhymes. He gives her the attention her mother never did. He dances with her, sings to
her, and leaves her pregnant after the Christmas fair.
6. Note the following exchange between Jo and Boy. What does it reveal about peoples attitude
towards race, or about peoples understanding of Englishness, in the society described in the
play?:
Jo: Sometimes you look three thousand years old. Did your ancestors come from Africa?
Boy: No. Cardiff. Disappointed? Were you hoping to marry a man whose father beat the tom-
tom all night?
Jo: I dont care where you were born. Theres still a bit of jungle in you somewhere.
Summary of Act I
Through a series of loosely related episodes, A Taste of Honey follows its teenage, working-
class protagonist through the process of her entry into womanhood. As the play begins, Jo and
her mother, Helen, have just moved into their latest dwelling, a dingy hole in a lower-class
neighbourhood that leaves Jo suitably unimpressed. Moving from place to place is an old story
for these two, but it seems to Jo that they are moving down in the world and from a position that
was hardly exalted. Helen refuses to be discouraged; the place will do, if only because it has to
do. The arrival of Peter terminates the tentative stability of Jo and Helens arrangement. An old
friend of Helen, he wants to renew their relationship. When he proposes marriage, Helen shows
an interest that catches her daughters sometimes-caustic attention.
Responding both to her desires as a young woman and to her mothers apparent indifference, Jo
becomes involved with a young black seaman. She fantasizes that he is an African prince; in
fact, he is from Cardiff, Wales. Wherever he is from, Jo finds him impossible to resist, even
though she probably at least half realizes that the ring he gives her does not commit him to any
permanent relationship. He must return to his ship, and Helens impending marriage to Peter
means that Jo will be alone. Before leaving, Helen tells Jo, whether truthfully or not, that Jos
father was a retarded man with whom Helen had an affair shortly after her marriage to her
puritanical first husband.
Act I Summary
Act I, scene i
The act opens with Helen and Jo in the process of moving into their new flat. It is cold, squalid,
and damp. Helen is sick with a cold, but not too sick to engage in bickering conversation with
her daughter, Jo. The two squabble effortlessly over minor issues, such where the heat is
located, making coffee, or even how often to bathe. In the midst of this activity, Helens
boyfriend, Peter, enters. He is much younger than Helen. It becomes clear that Helen has moved
to hide from Peter, who is very surprised to learn that Helen has a daughter. Failing to engage
the older women in sex, Peter asks Helen to leave with him and get a drink. He also asks her to
marry him, but is it unclear if he is actually serious about marriage or simply trying to get Helen
to sleep with him. When Helen continues to insist that she is too ill to go out, Peter finally
leaves.
Helen tells Jo to leave the unpacking, since everything is best hidden in the dark. The scene
ends with their exiting to go to bed.
Act I, scene ii
The scene opens on Jo and a young black man. He is walking her to her door and stops to kiss
her. He asks her to marry him, and when she realizes he is serious, Jo says yes. The Boy pulls
from his pocket a ring, but it is too large for Jos finger, and so, she places the ring on a ribbon
and ties it about her neck. The Boy is in the navy and will soon be leaving for six months at sea.
After he leaves to go out with his friends, Helen begins to quiz Jo about why she looks so
happy. Jo and Helen begin speaking of Jos father, and the audience learns that many years
earlier, Helens husband had divorced her because he was not the father of the child (Jo) that
Helen was expecting.
Helen tells Jo that she is going to marry Peter. At Jos shocked exclamation that he is much
younger, Helen reminds her daughter that at forty, she is scarcely old and dried up. Peter enters,
and the moment Helen leaves to dress, he and Jo begin to argue. When Helen enters again, she
tells Jo that Peter has bought a house in which they will live. As soon as Helen leaves again, Jo
begins to go through the photos in Peters wallet, accusing him of having many girlfriends.
When Helen enters again, they all begin arguing, and finally Helen and Peter leave, and Jo
begins to cry. The Boy enters and begins to sooth Jo. In her loneliness, she invites him to stay
with her during the Christmas holidays.
The lights fade down and Helen enters with an assortment of boxes containing her wedding
clothes. She finds the ring that The Boy gave Jo and seizes it, complaining that Jo is ruining her
life in choosing marriage at such a young age. After Jo asks her, Helen begins to tell Jo about
her father, whom Jo learns was an idiot. Jo immediately begins to worry that she has inherited
her fathers weak mind, and Helen recounts that Jo was the result of one brief encounter with a
man whom she really did not know. The act ends with Helen rushing out to her own wedding.