A Taste of Honey by Shelagh Delaney Essay -- English Literature

In writing A Taste of Honey, what impact did Shelagh Delaney hope to flip upon her audience? What techniques did she use to achieve theseaims?Shelagh Delaney wrote A Taste of Honey in 1958 when she was only 18.A Taste of Honey is a story about the affinity between a girland her mother. The mother, Helen, who is a semi-whore, leaves herdaughter, Jo, to get married to Peter. Jo has a relationship with asailor and gets pregnant. The sailor then leaves for duty. Jo meetsGeoff, they become friends and Geoff offers to help Jo choose up thebaby. Helen returns after splitting up with Peter and wants Jo back.The audience that Shelagh Delaney was writing for consisted mainly ofmiddle class and upper class people. Her audience were utilize to beholdingproductions about characters leading similar broods to their own. Thestereotypical dawdle was where the men worked and the women stayed athome, cleaning and cooking. A Taste of Honey did not earn thesequalities at all. Shelagh Delaneys aims were to jolt her audienceinto seeing what the real world could be like. The audience of thetime were relatively un-aware of the truth about working classes andtheir lives.This type of play was new to the theatrical performance stage, and could take timebefore the working class plays would be accepted and appreciated.The upper classes were mostly unaware that the lower classes wereleading such different lives to themselves. Shelagh Delaneys playbrought to light what the lower classes lives were like and thedifferences between the two classes. The plays of the time had verystructured, clear story lines, with stereotypical happy families.Shelagh Delaney challenged these ideas about the ideal play on withman... ... A Taste of Honey was inspiration for many writers.The writers of Soaps like Coronation Street and Eastenders will havebeen greatly influenced by the new ideas that Shelagh Delaney hadbrought into theatre. Shelagh Delaney will have influenced thesewriters because she had written a play about a topic that hadnt beenshown on television before and the producers were looking for newideas.Shelagh Delaneys work only has a pocket-sized relevance to todays audience.Most of the ideas and concepts in it are aimed to suit the audience ofthe 1950s/60s. The theatre audiences of today know that most modernworking classes do not live as the characters do in A Taste ofHoney.In A Taste of Honey Shelagh Delaney shocked her audience bypresenting them with situations that they were not used to. Thiseffect created a well structured and enjoyable play.