A Taste of Honey

A Taste of Honey Summary | Act 1, Scene 1 Summary

The scene opens in a shabby apartment in Manchester, England, in 1956. Helen and her teenaged daughter, Jo, enter loaded with bags. Helen is described as a semi-prostitute, but her men are her only known source of financial support.

She and Jo start bickering immediately. Jo is angry that they are moving again and suspects that her mother is running from somebody or something. She hates the apartment and bitterly complains of how poorly they live on Helen's "immoral earnings."

Helen is suffering from a bad cold. She drinks whiskey while Jo inspects the apartment, which is freezing and has only one bedroom for the both of them. Helen offers Jo some whiskey to help her warm up, but Jo turns it down. When the roof begins leaking, Jo scolds her mother for not thinking when she makes choices. Jo speaks as though she were the adult, calling her mother by name. Helen's responses are witty, but immature and not motherly at all.

Jo tries in various ways to improve the apartment. She tries to use her scarf to decorate a bare light bulb that hangs from the ceiling. She also has some flower bulbs, stolen from the gardener at the park, and she wants to find a window box or pot in which to plant them. Helen's attitude is that there is no point in all this effort.

It comes up that Jo plans to quit school at Christmas. It is unclear why she chooses that date, although perhaps it is just that she will be old enough by law to drop out then. Jo says she wants to leave her mother as soon as she can put some money together. When Helen asks how she plans to make money, Jo says she plans to waitress at a bar or some similar job. Helen regales her with old songs she used to sing when Helen herself worked in bars as a young woman.

At first, Helen seems not to care about Jo's plans. She claims not to believe in interfering in people's lives, even her daughter's. However, when Jo leaves the room to see if her coffee is ready, Helen finds some drawings Jo has done. She is surprised and impressed by the drawings and tries to talk to Jo about going to art school. Helen even says she would pay for art school, but that only starts another round of bickering. From Jo's perspective, Helen's interest in Jo education is too little, too late. In the midst of this discussion, Jo tells Helen about a dream she had, in which some policemen found Helen's dead body under a rosebush.

Jo is just about to go down the hall to take a bath, while Helen complains that she bathes too much, when Peter enters. Peter is described as a brash car salesman. He is also another very heavy drinker, as well as a womanizer. He has asked around and followed Helen here. He is surprised to learn that Helen has a daughter, and he is very crass in communicating that he wants Jo to leave so that he can have Helen, although Helen moved here to get away from him.

Things shift when Peter asks Helen to marry him. Jo, who has purposefully tried to annoy Peter to make him leave, now becomes truly alarmed. Helen, on the other hand, knows Peter has money, and it is clear she might marry him for it. For now, Helen sends Peter away, saying she and Jo need to unpack. As soon as he is gone, though, Helen tells Jo to leave the unpacking until morning and come to bed.

Jo postpones her bath, too, until the morning, because it has gotten dark. Helen teases her for being afraid of the dark at her age. Helen jokes that she prefers the dark, because she looks her best there. Jo explains that it is not the darkness outside of houses that bothers her, but the darkness inside.