Jo and Helen are mother and daughter but someone who didn’t know them, might think that they were strangers that abhorred each other. The pair are constantly bickering and Jo even says, “I’m sick of you. You’ve made my life a misery.” Jo blames Helen for her misfortune and, in truth; most of it is Helen’s fault. There is no typical mother / daughter relationship between them. They mainly communicate through bickering and rasied voices.
Jo is desperate to leave her mother as soon as she has the chance. The teenager is always criticising Helen and vice versa, although Jo does a lot more, for example, “You’re knocking it back worse than ever.” Jo never calls Helen ‘mother’. This is probably because Helen never acted like mother and cared for her daughter like a mother should. Even Helen says, “I know, I’m a cruel, wicked woman,” not using the word ‘mother’. Towards the end of the play, Helen comes back to live with Jo. The readers then think that she has decided to be a good mother before her child deserts her. Instead we see that Peter has thrown her out and Helen has become the dependant party, not Jo. There is total role reversal here as Jo has matured but Helen is immature – perhaps naïve – thinking that she can just move back in with Jo and return everything back to how it was.
Peter is a brash car salesman with an eye patch. Helen moved again to get away from him but he tracked her down. He wants her to marry him but Helen declines the first time but agrees when he persists. Jo seems to hate him and even asks if he’s already married. She seems spiteful and full of hatred towards Peter. They are both fighting for Helen’s love. Jo asks Peter, “Do you fancy me?” and he responds, “Not yet.” He also has photographs of all his ex-girlfriends. Jo teases him quite a bit, asking about his eye and why he’s marrying Helen.
Jo also has a fear of the dark, “I’m not frightened of the darkness outside. It’s the darkness inside I don’t like.” This could be that she is only scared of her future and not what’s happening to everyone else. Jo lives in a poor, sad life and her needs are not important to Helen and the terrible mother neglects Jo a lot, for example, leaving her alone for a weekend while she runs off with Peter.
Helen also makes no attempt to help Jo when she’s pregnant. Because of the lack of motherly love, Jo is determined to become independent. She plans to move out, get a job and marry a black sailor. Her mother disapproves but that makes Jo even more single-minded. She is only sixteen so we see that she is pretty independent for her age. She is growing less dependant on Helen, which is a good thing. Readers may think that she is doing this because she has realised that Helen will never love her as much as her many boyfriends.
Jo had a brief love affair with a black sailor. Readers never find out his name but Jo calls him Jimmie. It is a quick relationship as he has to leave but the relationship is quite odd. They both say that they love each other but are very relaxed with each other and Jo doesn’t seem to care that he doesn’t come back.
Jimmie offers quite a lot of comfort. He is older than Jo and they could move in together if he wasn’t always on the move. He also asks Jo to marry him. She jumps at the opportunity, probably because it means she can leave Helen.
As I said, Jo appears to love the sailor but doesn’t expect him to return and doesn’t panic when there’s no sign of him. This could be because her life is so bad anyway, that she becomes pessimistic and doesn’t expect her life to improve in any way. She has had her taste of honey and it has gone forever. Her ideas about him do change. Jo says, “Last Christmas I had him,” and she realises that she loves and misses him but only when the baby is due. It seems to her that it was all a dream and she can’t remember the reality. The trouble is, the dream left her pregnant with an unintended baby so it must be real.
While Helen’s away, Jo meets Geoff, a gay, art student and the pair move in together, without Helen knowing. In today’s society, there is nothing wrong with this but homosexuals were frowned upon in the 1950’s. Geoff is an ideal best friend for Jo. She is no longer dependent on Helen but is instead dependent on Geoff, probably more than she was on her mother. Jo even says, supposedly to the baby, “Let’s see what big sisters making us.”
Geoff is a friendly carer and is totally different from the sailor. Whereas the sailor wants a sexual relationship, Geoff is content with caring for Jo and making cakes. Geoff even asks Jo if they should get married and also asks her what she’d do if he started something. Jo replies, “In my condition, I’d probably faint.” He adores babies but Jo is less keen on them. Geoff seems to want, more than anything, to be the father of Jo’s child.
To begin with, Jo treats Geoff with little respect, joking around and saying things that could hurt him. As their relationship progresses and they get to know each other better, Jo respects Geoff more and more. Jo eventually realises that the baby will need a father figure and decides to let Geoff stay, but they wouldn’t get married.
Jo has mixed feelings about becoming a mother. She is intent on keeping the baby at first because she thinks it is cruel to have them aborted. She does, though, have some doubts. For example, she doesn’t want to breast feed her baby. Geoff brings her a doll to practice holds on. She says the colour’s wrong – the father being black – and explodes. She screams, “I’ll bash its brains out! I’ll kill it! I don’t want to be a mother,” which makes us think that she may have an abortion after all.
Previously though, the baby kicked her and she was overwhelmed. All of these details then leave us wondering if she is ready for motherhood. It is more likely that she is ready to become a mother because she has matured a lot since the beginning of the play when she was dependant on Helen.
As the play progresses, we see Jo turn from a naïve young girl to a mature woman. She is no longer dependant on anyone and, although she is probably destined to a life living in small flats and houses, the prospects are bright and, as she sings at the very end, a glimmer of hope shines through and we think she may have a happy life.
By Michael J. Ritchie
