About Shelagh Delaney

Although I mentioned and explored Shelagh Delaney within Authorship I think it’s important that I evaluate and look at why I’ve decided to choose her work to work from now.

When I first came across Shelagh’s work through looking at Kitchen Sink Dramas, I found it very different from her contemporaries like John Osbornes Look Back In Anger and John Braines Room At The Top. Shelagh’s first play ‘A Taste of Honey’ was written in 1958 one of the earlier British Kitchen Sink plays. In comparison to Braine and Osborne Delaney focused her play on the reality of what life was like for a young woman who didn’t aspire to be anything stereotypical to her gender. The women presented in the male authors plays are often portrayed as either a sexual object to be obtained or a hindrance on the protagonists’ lives. Jo Shelagh’s lead rejects everything that is expected of her and she is written as a young man would be, disillusioned with society at the time and too lazy to do anything about it but moan. Jo falls pregnant at the start of the play through a character who is unnamed he works on the ships as a chef and leaves before Jo knows she’s having a child.

Aside from how inspirational I find the plot of A Taste of Honey I think Shelagh herself is a bigger inspiration. She grew up in Salford and witnessed her father, crippled from the war become a hindrance on her mother who worked to provide for the family. Shelagh’s early love for books and reading led her to write, she listened to the conversations and worked from what she was used to, the poor areas of Salford. When reading Selina Todd’s biography of Shelagh, she paints the best picture of a woman who slept when she could, lazed on the couch quaffing wine and never denying herself anything. Shelagh was a kind and clever woman who surpassed critics and upper-class people’s expectations of what ‘common’ women were like from areas like Salford.

All of the Kitchen Sink pieces are great examples of how you can create something intellectual and cultural out of a life and surrounding which isn’t, I think it makes the work have a lot more value than writing from a place of rich culture and scenery. It is something that I’ll explore further in my master’s and possibly further.

I think even today these stereotypes still stand especially in the areas of writers and theatre; people still have a low expectation of working-class people. I do think that although A Taste of Honey was successful when it was produced it should still be talked about and commended.