JO: Which knob do I turn?
HELEN: Turn them all. You’re bound to find the right one
in the end.
In the play we also see that Helen is not teaching Jo the basic rights and wrongs of life. For example when Jo tells Helen that she has stolen some bulbs she doesn’t tell her off like any ‘normal’ mother would but she condones it.
HELEN: Where did you get those bulbs?
JO: the Park. The gardener had just planted about
two hundred. I didn’t think he’d miss half
a dozen.
HELEN: That’s the way to do things.
Helen doesn’t care what Jo does with her life and whether she gets proper education or not. For example when Jo tells Helen she is going to leave school, Helen just tells her to do what she likes.
HELEN: it’s your life. Ruin it your own way.
A ‘normal’ mother would have tried to persuade her daughter to finish school and get good qualifications.
When Helen recognises Jo’s talent as an artist she just gives her daughter a backhanded compliment, whereas a normal mother would praise her and push her to go to art school.
HELEN: I didn’t know I had such a talented daughter. Look
at that, it’s good isn’t it?
JO: I’m not just talented. I’m geniused
HELEN: I think I’ll hang this on the wall somewhere. Now
where will it be least noticeable…
The above quote gives me the impression that Helen maybe wants to encourage her but doesn’t know how to.
Helen has provided no stability in Jo’s life. Jo was always moving houses and schools.
JO: Too many schools and too many different places.
This was because Helen was always running away from one of her fancy men.
JO: Why did we have to come here anyway? We were
all right at the other place.
HELEN: I was fed up with the other place
JO: You mean you were running away from somebody
Helen is a bad influence on Jo and does not act appropriately in front of her. When Peter arrives she allows him to make sexual advances towards her and doesn’t really do anything to stop it.
PETER: Aren’t you wearing your girdle?
HELEN: Now Peter
PETER: Whoops!
HELEN: Well you certainly liberate something in me and it
definitely ain’t maternal instincts.
A ‘normal’ mother would do this sort of thing in private without the presence of her daughter.
Another example of Helen being a bad influence on Jo is when she encourages Jo to drink. When Jo refuses Helen almost tries to force it down her.
HELEN: …have some of this if you’re cold
JO: You know I don’t like it
HELEN: have you tried it?
JO: No
HELEN: Then get it down you
A ‘normal’ mother wouldn’t force her 15-year-old daughter to drink.
Helen doesn’t sacrifice her pleasure for Jo. For example she always throws Jo out of bed, every time one of her fancy men comes.
JO: You should have asked him to stay. It wouldn’t
be the first time I’ve been thrown out of bed to
make room for one of your…
A ‘normal’ mother would go somewhere else.
Another example of this is when Helen decides to go to Blackpool with Peter for the weekend. She just leaves Jo to fend for herself with only a quid to live on.
HELEN: Can you give us a quid, Peter? I’d better leave her
some money. We might decide to make a
weekend of it and she can’t just live on grass
and fresh air.
Jo is very insecure and is afraid of the dark.
JO: I’m not frightened of the darkness outside. It’s
the darkness inside houses I don’t like
This is probably because Helen left her alone a lot of times since she was a child.
Jo is very possessive about her mother.
JO: You leave me alone. And leave my mother alone
too.
This also shows she is insecure.
As I said at the start of the essay about Jo not having any respect for Helen, Helen also doesn’t have any respect for her daughter as she calls her names like a whore.
HELEN: You know what they’ve been calling you round here?
A silly little whore
Jo craves her mother’s love and affection throughout the play and for most of the time she doesn’t get it. Helen directs her love and affection to her fancy men and not to Jo, leaving her jealous.
HELEN: Can’t bear to see me being affectionate with
anybody
JO: You’ve certainly never been affectionate with me.
You have seen in the above examples about how Helen is not a good mother but Jo is not completely innocent. There are examples of Jo often trying to spite her mother deliberately and annoying her. One example is when she makes her mother’s coffee as weak as she can, as she knows she likes it strong.
PETER: What sort of coffee is this anyway? It an hardly
squeeze itself through the spout
HELEN: She always does that. Makes it as weak as she can
as she knows I like it strong…
Between Helen and Jo there are sometimes fleeting moments of affection shared. An example of Helen caring is when Jo tells her mother that she is getting married at her age. Helen tells Jo that she should learn from her mistakes and not ruin her life by getting married.
HELEN: Oh Jo, you’re only a kid. Why don’t you learn from
my mistakes? It takes half your life to learn from your own.
This is one of the few moments in the play where Helen is acting like a proper mother and giving the advice that she should give.
When Helen and Jo are having this conversation they are at the point of having a heart to heart when they suddenly start having the normal banter that they do. This has happened often in the play and it gives me the impression that they can’t communicate with each other properly and can’t talk about their feelings openly.
Throughout the play Helen often refers to Jo as ‘she’ as if there is a third person in the room. Helen most often does this when she is frustrated with Jo. At a point in the play when Helen is arguing with Jo and is really fed up with her, she says…
HELEN: You’re asking for a bloody good hiding, lady. Just
be careful. Oh she’d drive you out of your mind
A ‘normal’ mother would talk to her daughter directly.
Helen and Jo often have conversations a ‘normal’ mother and daughter wouldn’t talk about. They talk about things like sex. For example…
JO: He was thin, weak-chinned, with a funny turned
up nose.
HELEN: It wasn’t the nose I was interested in.
When Helen and Jo are in the same room together the atmosphere is always fraught and the pair are always making sarcastic comments to each other. For example…
HELEN: Do I look all right? Pass me my fur. Oh my fur,
do you like it?
JO I bet somebody’s missing their cat.
Helen has never given a second thought to Jo. As soon as a better offer comes along she would take off and leave Jo alone. This comes true when she gets married to Peter as she just leaves to go to live with Peter leaving Jo with no money and no support. Jo is all alone.
In the time that Helen is away Jo becomes pregnant. The boy is gone and she needs someone to look after her properly. She finds that someone when she meets Geoff. He is a homosexual boy and he looks after Jo throughout most of her pregnancy. In other words he became a mother figure to Jo. He did all the things Helen should have done like the cooking, cleaning and teaching her things about the pregnancy.
When Helen comes back she gets rid of Geoff. So as always a really good thing in Jo’s life has been short-lived and she is right back to where she started.
Helen comes back because Peter has ‘chucked’ her out. She has nowhere to go. This gives me the impression that Helen only sees Jo as a convenience.
In conclusion this assignment proves that Helen and Jo have an abnormal mother-daughter relationship. There is a lack of respect between the pair and they can’t communicate properly. They can’t express their feelings towards each other even though deep down they do love each other. The assignment proves that that Helen is not a good mother and doesn’t know any parenting skills. It also proves that Jo is a neglected daughter who craves her mother’s love and affection. Having said that, Helen is not a completely bad mother and has given her daughter worthwhile advice sometimes and Jo has done some bad things to her mother sometimes.
The title of the play is ‘A TASTE OF HONEY’ and it means a little bit of sweetness in life. In the play Helen and Jo have ‘A TASTE OF HONEY’ in their life. Helen got it from Peter. Jo got it from the boy and Geoff. It was short-lived and they ended up right back to where they started.
I thought that ‘A TASTE OF HONEY’ an interesting play and was quite sad reading about a daughter who was rejected for most of her life and a mother who didn’t know how to be a good parent.
