“I didn’t do it on purpose. How was I supposed to know that you’d materialize out of a little love affair that lasted 5 minutes?” this shows that Jo was a mistake and that Helen was an unmarried mother. However no matter how hard she tried Jo made that same mistake as Helen.
In the 1950’s and 1960’s Jo would be called illegitimate because Helen wasn’t married when Jo was conceived. However in today’s times Jo would not be called illegitimate because there are lots of people who have children before they get married. Helen doesn’t treat Jo with a lot of respect, as she doesn’t often tell however she is going. She also doesn’t support Jo when she needs her the most. Jo in this time left school at 15 because she didn’t have a full education so she wouldn’t have been able to get a properly paid job. This is typical of a kitchen sink drama because in those drama’s they were all about real people from the working class and what happens to them because of certain things. In this case when Helen leaves Jo the play shows what effect this has on Jo.
In this scene, when Helen leaves Jo, Delaney creates pathos towards Jo. This is to make the audience feel sorry for Jo and the situation she is being put in.
In the 50’s and 60’s the class system was very different from how it is today. In the play Helen and Jo would have been in the lower class as they had poor paying jobs and were living in bedsits. This means that people in the other classes viewed Jo and Helen as dirt on the street, like they didn’t belong there. They also had little education, Helen couldn’t provide enough money to give Jo a proper upbringing, so they had poor jobs however both Helen and Jo both seem quite intelligent.
At the start of the play we find out that Helen and Jo don’t like being in each other’s company. They do not like each other as they have different views on life. They also don’t act together as a mother daughter should we know this because Jo calls her mother Helen instead of mother or mom. We also find out that Helen doesn’t know much about her daughter.
“I didn’t realise I had such a talented daughter.”
Helen and Jo have many disagreements about in the scene about the flat that they have just moved into. We get the impression that Helen and Jo move houses a lot as Jo starts talking about previous houses that they have been in and different schools that Jo has been to. In the scene they ague about the flat they have moved into as Helen like it but Jo doesn’t
“Well this is the place”
“And I don’t like it”
Jo forms close friendships with people that cannot sustain a relation ship with her, the “boy” and Geoff. Geoff is a homosexual who in those times, homosexuality was illegal. We meet Geoff when Jo come back to her flat accompanied by him, she then offers him a bed for the night because he got kicked out of his flat, we presume this was because he was caught with another man, after this episode Geoff stays with Jo in her flat. Jo forms relationships with these people because they wouldn’t love he in return.
“I always want you to have you around me because I know you’ll never ask anything of me”
This show that Jo either isn’t ready to have a proper relationship with someone because she has a poor one with her mother or she is quite simply not ready to be loved.
Kitchen sink drama were set in places of working class e.g. Birmingham, Manchester London etc. this is no exception as this play is set in Manchester. The play is set in a bed-sit. This bed-sit is dirty, smelly and in a mess. Jo and Helen even have to share a toilet.
“It looks a bit ancient. How do I light it?” this show that everything that they own or use is do or broken. This makes their lives extremely hard. Most of the times when we she Jo she is in a one bedded room this shows that she is deprived of the most needy of things.
We also see in the play that Helen and Jo don’t talk in the “Queens English” as this was how most people in theatre and radio spoke at the time. They use slang and swear they also use language that would be considered to be discriminating by today’s standards. This would be a daring thing to do at the time because it was thought of as wrong.
“You dirty bastard” this is when Helen and Peter come back and see Jo and Geoff. This would have made people who spoke the Queens English think that there were other people who lived in the country and that not all people spoke in the Queens English.
We find in the play that kitchen sink dramas were all about people who live in the working class, and that the plays were about real things that could happen and not things that are made up for the enjoyment of the rich.