3.2.1.4The text at a glance
Jo and her mother Helen move into a shabby Salford flat. Helen leaves to marry Peter. Jo has a brief relationship with Jimmy, a Black sailor, and becomes pregnant. Geof, a gay art student, moves in and cares for her. Helen returns and Geof leaves.
Written when Delaney was nineteen and first performed in 1958. Homosexuality was criminal until 1967 and the Lord Chamberlain censored the stage, so Geof's sexuality is handled through implication. Post-war migration made relationships like Jo and Jimmy's visible and controversial.
- kitchen sink drama
- a movement staging working-class life in realistic domestic settings
- direct address
- speaking to the audience, which Helen does to sidestep accountability
- the Lord Chamberlain
- the official who licensed plays and could demand cuts
3.2.1.4Characters
Jo alternates between adult defiance and childish need, often in one exchange. Her talk of art shows an imagination the setting gives her no way to use.
Helen leaves at the two moments Jo most needs her, and the structure emphasises the repetition. Her asides to the audience let her evade judgement.
Geof performs the nurturing role the play's women cannot manage, and is removed without a farewell scene, so his exclusion is enacted structurally.
3.2.1.4Themes
Motherhood is set up as a contest between biological and chosen care, and the second proves more reliable. Class and the single squalid room limit what is possible, so every character's plan to leave fails. Race enters through Jimmy, who is warm, articulate and gone within an act.
Common mistake
Treating Geof as a minor character. He does more caring than anyone else in the play and his removal is its most pointed structural decision.
3.2.1.4The writer's methods
The single room contains the whole play, so escape is discussed and never achieved. Direct address and music open the stage outwards and briefly relieve the confinement. Rapid comic dialogue keeps sentimentality out of painful material, and the humour is the characters' means of survival.
Worked example
Answer:
- Chosen care is more reliable than biological care
- Every plan to escape returns to the same room
- Geof's exclusion is enacted by the structure
- Comedy is a survival strategy, not relief
AO1-AO4How this text is examined
This text is examined in Paper 2, Section A. The question is worth 34 marks and two essay questions are offered on your text and you answer one; no extract is printed, so quotations must come from memory. Allow about 45 minutes.
The marks are divided as AO1 12 marks, AO2 12 marks, AO3 6 marks, AO4 4 marks. AO1 rewards a clear argument supported by well-chosen references. AO2 rewards analysis of how the writer achieves an effect, which means writing about choices rather than about events. AO3 rewards context used to deepen a reading of the text.
Common mistake
Retelling the plot. Narrative summary earns nothing under any assessment objective, however accurate it is. Every paragraph should be making a point about how or why, not about what happens.
Four of the marks are for AO4: vocabulary and sentence structures used to control meaning, and accurate spelling and punctuation. These are the cheapest marks on the paper and the easiest to lose by rushing the final paragraph.