My mother said I never should Plot and Subplot My mother said I never should is a play which explores the lives and relationships of four generations of women from the same family living in Manchester

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Unit 1

My mother said I never should

Plot and Subplot

        My mother said I never should is a play which explores the lives and relationships of four generations of women from the same family living in Manchester and London in the 20th centaury , .Through snapshots and key moments in their lives , that are not shown in chronological order.

        The oldest of the four women, gives up a promising carrier in teaching as a young women to marry. Her daughter Margret, grows up in Manchester through the Second World War and marries an American (much to her mothers disapproval) and becomes a typist. She then has a child, Jackie, who is training to be an artist when she falls pregnant, with a married man. The young Jackie tries to bring up the baby (Rosie) but cannot cope so Margret takes her at a young age and growing up Rosie thinks Margret is her mum. Jackie continues her education and becomes a sleek art dealer. This is the background in which the action takes place. Every mother in this play has strong hopes and ambitions for their daughter and each daughter determined to go her own way and make her own mistakes.

        In our group discussions it soon became apart that the actual plot of the play is a very controversial concept; some people believed that the plot of the play was Rosie and the secret of who her mother is and Rosie finding out her sister was in fact her mother. However other’s believed that the plot of the play was in fact women growing and their relationships with each other. I believe is it the latter because the whole play and everything that happens has a theme of relationships or women in it. The time line is interspersed with short waste ground scenes in which the four women play together as children of different ages, some of the group felt these scenes were purely for comic value and light relieve. I think that in reality they were however much more fundamental to the play. I believe that the waist grounds scenes are the only time when we see the true characters, with out the masks that seemed to grow thicker as they grew older. The waste ground scenes are the only scenes were the audience get to see the characters exploring their inner selves and emotions. In these scenes Doris and Margret are the ‘babies’ perhaps reflecting the repressed innocence of there upbringing.

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I do not believe that Rosie’s birth is the fundamental plot of the play; in fact I believe it is more of an obstacle in women’s lives in the same way that cancer, and men are. I believe these obstacles are the subplots of the play as they affect the plot as they affect the women’s relationships but are not the story.

The main theme of this play is relationships and what children inherit from their mother. Mainly female relationships, not because this play counts male relationships as unworthy (this is not a feminist play) but because the relationships ...

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