It broke new ground by treating poverty, race, pregnancy and unconventional families with humour and honesty.
A Taste of Honey by Shelagh Delaney is a play set for IGCSE and International GCSE Literature (Cambridge International 0475). The board decides the set texts and the years they are examined, and your school confirms them. Our teachers teach whichever text your child sits.
What it is
Jo and her mother Helen move into a shabby flat in Salford, and their relationship is a constant mix of affection and sniping. Helen is a hard-living, unreliable parent who leaves Jo to marry a well-off suitor, Peter. Alone, Jo begins a brief romance with Jimmie, a Black sailor who soon goes away, and discovers she is pregnant.
She forms a gentle, supportive friendship with Geoffrey, a gay art student, who moves in and cares for her. When Helen returns, the fragile home that Jo and Geoffrey have built is disturbed. The play ends with Jo facing the future on her own terms.
Themes and ideas to track
Mothers and daughters
Helen and Jo are bound by love and resentment, and their sharp exchanges reveal both closeness and failure. Delaney avoids simple blame.
Class and poverty
The shabby flat, cold weather and money worries are constant. The play presents working-class life without sentimentality or condescension.
Love, loneliness and independence
Jo longs for affection but must learn to rely on herself. Relationships offer fleeting comfort and lasting change.
Prejudice and difference
Race, sexuality and unmarried motherhood all attract judgement in 1950s Britain. Geoffrey and Jimmie are treated with sympathy, challenging the norms around them.
How the writer builds it
Delaney uses sharp, naturalistic dialogue with a lot of wit, much of it in teasing exchanges. Live jazz music is built into the staging, and the characters sometimes seem to step out of the scene into song or direct address, producing a lively theatrical style. The structure is episodic, covering time through short scenes.
Humour often masks pain, and the lack of tidy resolution reflects the characters' uncertain lives. Look at how stage directions and music change the mood.
How to write about it in the exam
Choose a few scenes between Jo and Helen and analyse the dialogue: how do teasing, interruption and sharp comments reveal feeling? Discuss the effect of music and stagecraft on an audience.
Place the play's social attitudes in context briefly, only to explain Delaney's choices. Keep references specific and short, and use your own words to explain, not summarise.
A teacher can practise essay planning on A Taste of Honey with your child in a one-hour trial.
An exam-style question to practise
How does Delaney present the relationship between Jo and Helen?
Plan three points before you write, with a short quotation for each. Then check your plan against the mark scheme section below.
More question angles
- Explore the ways Delaney uses humour in the play.
- How does Delaney present attitudes to race and sexuality in the play?
- Discuss how Delaney presents the idea of independence.
How this maps to the mark scheme
Examiners mark Literature answers against assessment objectives. These are the skills the paper rewards. For Cambridge International 0475, the objectives are summarised on our qualification page.
- AO1: Show detailed knowledge of the content of literary texts in the three main forms (drama, poetry and prose), supported by reference to the text.
- AO2: Understand the meanings of literary texts and their contexts, and explore texts beyond surface meanings to show deeper awareness of ideas and attitudes.
- AO3: Recognise and appreciate ways in which writers use language, structure and form to create and shape meanings and effects.
- AO4: Communicate a sensitive and informed personal response to literary texts.
- The four assessment objectives carry equal weight, about 25% each.
For A Taste of Honey, build your argument around “Mothers and daughters” and “Class and poverty”. Support each point with a short quotation. Then analyse the writer's method, using the section above.
Keep context about Shelagh Delaney brief and tied to the words on the page.
Read the text alongside these notes. This page is our own analysis and original teaching material. We quote at most a short attributed phrase where a point needs it, so keep your copy of the play open as you read.
Where to go next
Plan your essay with our guide to planning a literature essay, then see a worked answer in our literature essay structure model response. Browse more set-text notes or read about Literature in English tuition.
When you have written an answer on A Taste of Honey, a paid one-hour trial lesson lets the teacher who would continue mark it with you.