A Taste of Honey Literary Elements

Dramatic Comedy; Kitchen Sink Realism

English

The play takes place in a rundown flat in an industrial district of Salford, Manchester, England; the play is contemporary to the time it was written in 1958.

There is no narrator.

The tone is comedic and sarcastic; the mood is both lighthearted and bleak.

Jo is the protagonist; Helen is the primary antagonist.

The major conflict in the play is that Jo longs to establish her own life independent of her dysfunctional mother but simultaneously craves her mother's affection and attention.

The play reaches its climax when Helen leaves Jo alone during her labor because Helen doesn't know how to deal with the news that Jo's baby will be mixed race.

The fact that Jo notices photos of several women in Peter's wallet foreshadows his eventual infidelity.

At two points in the play, Geoffrey and Jo recite lines from "As I was going up Pippin Hill," an English nursery rhyme from the early 1900s.

Delaney uses auditory imagery when a tugboat horn interrupts Helen and Jo's conversation in the first scene. The sound of the tugboat signals to the audience that the flat is situated near a river.

Helen asking Jo how to light the stove at the end of the play parallels when Jo asks Helen how to light the stove at the beginning of the play.

In her stage directions, Delaney has her characters dance in dream-like sequences to transition between scenes or establish that time has passed.