A Taste of Mummy

Mother. Now there= s a word to conjure with. Apple pie, cuddling, kisses, fresh bread; these are images that come to mind when mother is mentioned. A quick glance through Brewer= s Dictionary of Phrase and Fable reveals many other terms tied to mother like Mother Church, mother country, and Mother Earth. The entry that most relates to Shelaigh Delaney= s play, A Taste of Honey, is A Mother= s ruin,@ a synonym for gin. Helen, the mother-in-name of Jo, has a weakness for alcohol and men. In fact, it seems much of the time that Jo is the mother and Helen is the daughter.

Helen does not fit any of the stereotypes of a good mother. She drinks, is promiscuous, and abuses Jo, both verbally and physically. Richard Hoggart, in The Uses of Literacy, describes what he sees as the typical working class mother:

How unlike Helen, who at the opening of the play is on the run from her latest flame. Rather than take care of Jo, she expects Jo to take care of her. She says, A Children owe their parents these little attentions,@ (Delaney 8). Rather than hold the household together, Helen seems to keep it in turmoil:

Later in the conversation, Helen makes her point even clearer:

Not only does Helen not keep the household together, she is actively encouraging Jo to go out on her own. Ironically, though characteristic of Helen, who seems to try to escape her problems, Helen is the one to leave, while Jo stays in the flat. Helen is the one who comes running back when her marriage goes sour. What could cause her to be so callous?

Perhaps part of the explanation could be Helen= s own early life. When Jo asks her about who her father was, Helen replies:

This father, it is revealed later, was not the man Helen first married, but, in Jo= s words, A You see her husband thought sex was dirty, and only used the bed for sleeping in. So she took herself an idiot,@ (73). Though she has clearly been used, and used hard, there was a time in Helen= s life when she was not a cynical harridan. Hoggart says of the typical working-class mother, A She went into the world earlier than girls of other classes, began going around with boys at sixteen and was probably > courting regular= at eighteen,@ (28). This sounds more like Helen, but somewhere in her life, she stepped off the path of normalcy. Where other women settle resignedly into marriage and childbearing, she struggles to hold onto her youth, even though it is long past, and not likely to return. This agrees with Hoggart= s appraisal of working-class girls, A Girls like these have only a brief flowering period, only a few years during which they have no responsibilities and some spare money,@ (31-2).

Another way Helen defies the stereotype of working-class mother is her treatment of Jo. Hoggart says, A It is a working-class tradition of long standing to indulge not only children but young people all the way up to marriage,@ (33). Jo is anything but pampered. When Jo tells her, A You should prepare my meals like a proper mother;@ Helen replies, A Have I ever laid claim to being a proper mother?,@ (35). Also, to suit her own wants and needs, Helen has shifted Jo and the rest of the meager household uncountable times. When Helen discovers Jo= s portraits and self-portraits, she proclaims that Jo should attend art school, but Jo will have none of it. Jo says, A I= ve had enough of school. Too many different schools and too many different places,@ (15). Hoggart goes on to say, A Parents expect and encourage the children, even in adolescence, to do little to support the house in labour or money,@ (33). Helen, on the other hand, expects Jo to wait on her hand and foot. There is no coddling of Jo by her mother.

Jo also contrasts Hoggart= s view of working class families, but she seems to be following a family tradition. After all, when telling Peter of her impending job at a local bar, Jo says, A I= m carrying on the family traditions,@ (Delaney 35). Hoggart adds, A Yet there is rarely any revolt against home, even though there may be little positive response to it,@ (32). When Jo is telling Helen to look after herself, Helen replies speaking, it seems to some unknown audience, A You bring > em up and they turn round and talk to you like that. I would never have dared talk to my mother like that when I was her age. She= d have knocked me into the middle of next week,@ (12). It is no wonder that Helen took the first available way out of her childhood home, the aforementioned A Puritan@ father of Jo that she eventually escaped through divorce.

In Carol Gilligan= s book, In a Different Voice, she examines the psychological theory behind women= s development. Her chapter, A Visions of Maturity,@ looks at the differences between male and female views of the transition from adolescence to adulthood. In A Taste of Honey, Jo is at this crossroads. She is an adolescent, but she is also on the verge of becoming a mother. Gilligan contrast the male= s search for success (152-3) to the female= s devotion to A the ongoing process of attachment that creates and sustains the human community,@ (156). Jo reflects this when she takes on Geoff as a boarder/helpmate. Even though Helen has abandoned her again, Jo struggles to create community. Also in her desire to create community, Jo carries with her flower bulbs, hoping some day to plant them, putting down roots, so to speak. But, much the same as her family seems to be forgotten the bulbs are found by Geoff as he cleans the flat:

Geof: Haven= t you shifted the sofa since then?

So, like her family, the bulbs rot amongst the filth.

Later in the scene, still talking of the vagaries of life, Jo says, A ...it= s chaoticB a bit of love, a bit of lust, and there you are. We don= t ask for life, we have it thrust upon us,@ (71), as if she has no choice in who she is becoming. This contrasts with Gilligan= s view that, A identity is defined in a context of relationship and judged by a standard of responsibility and care,@ (160). Jo does judge her relationships, however, and the one with her mother is found lacking. Helen drags her around like she is a rag doll, though at some point before the play begins, Jo has become the care giver. Defining the relationship, Jo says, A She had so much love for everyone else, but none for me,@ (Delaney 72). Gilligan, quoting one of her research subjects, adds, A You have to love someone else, because while you may not like them, you are inseparable from them,@ 160). Though the relationship between Helen and Jo is antagonistic, the fact that Helen returns indicates that there is some attachment to Jo. Also, her concern for the well-being of the unborn child shows the same.

There is a definite power struggle between Helen and Jo. This is fairly typical of relationships between parents and children. Gilligan says, A In relationships of temporary inequality, such as parent and child or teacher and student, power ideally is used to foster the development that removes the initial disparity,@ (168). In A Taste of Honey, the incongruity between Jo and Helen remains to the end. Jo says, in the closing scene, A So we= re back where we started. And all those months you stayed away from me because of him! Just like when I was small,@ (Delaney 81). Even though Helen wants Jo to take care of her, she still wants to assert her motherly power.

At the curtain, having driven Geof away, Helen is on her way out the door to yet another bar. Even though she claims to want to care for Jo and the unborn child, she cannot evade the desire to go searching for her lost youth. She seems to, again, put the needs of her child behind her own. She does not have what Gilligan calls, A the standard of moral judgement that informs their assessment of self (which) is a standard of relationship, an ethic of nurturance, responsibility, and care,@ (159). All Helen cares for is herself, not a quality of a A typical@ mother.

List of Works Cited

              Hoggart, Richard. The Uses of Literacy. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Pub., 2000.