Employment Was An Issue After The War

Published Date: 02 Nov 2017

Those were the years when the "teenager" culture was born. There was a dramatic shift in the way kids from the United States grew up and the hobbies they engaged with. There was an increase of their free time and a decrease of their responsibilities. Many parents who had survived the war felt an increased desire for their kids to live a better life. As teenagers grew up more independent of their parents more conflicts between the desires of teenagers and their parent arose. This caused the term "generation gap" to enter into American English into the 1960s. John McKeon when recalling the 50s said:

What I remember most about the 50s were rules.  Rules, rules, rules... for everything.  Rules about clothes — which clothes you could wear when.  Rules about church.  Rules about streets.  Rules about play.

The film industry started introducing new sort of characters who were part of this new culture. "Rebel Without a Cause" (1955) with James Dean was one of the key films that contributed to the rebellious nature of the teenagers. People started refusing to accept things the way they were. They wanted a change and they were ready to rebel in order to get it. Another major cultural shift in the 1950s was centered around music and the creation of Rock and Roll. When speaking about Rock and Roll Michael Ventura said:

It was music that was made for teenagers and scared the hell out of adults; it was taboo-shattering music about–gasp–sex and racial commingling.  That's why records were burned, censorship laws were passed, and some lives were ruined.  Because this was the Devil's music, and it was threatening the status quo. 

The United Kingdom was copying and soaking up the American culture and way of living during the 1950s. Britain was flooded by the media with images of "the perfect family", "the American dream". The image of the woman being the good housewife while her husband goes to work, earning money for the whole family. Women were encouraged by their families, friend and media to marry and live a life like this. There was no equal access to education for girls compared to boys. Only a limited number of female students were allowed into the "elite" schools. And working class women were something media and theatre never engaged with.

Homosexuality was illegal in the 1950s and gay men and women had to hide their sexual preferences or else they would have been arrested and sent to prison and looked upon with disrespect by the society. This was also a key issue that was massively ignored by media and theatre.

Shelagh Delaney was born and brought up in the industrial town of Salford, Lancashire. By the time she was 16 she’s already lost any academic ambitions and dropped out of school at that age. With no special qualifications, she took any jobs she was offered, working for an engineering factory for a while, and at the age of 17 she began work on A Taste of Honey. According to her own account, she saw Rattigan’s Variation on a Theme and thought that if this was drama she could do better herself. She was the first working class female playwright. When she wrote her first play A Taste of Honey she was 18 and she finished writing it within two weeks time. With her plays she made many social comments. Delaney did not approve the stereotypical way of portraying characters on stage. She wanted change. In her work homosexuality is glossed in a way it’s pushed back and hidden. Delaney’s play A Taste of Honey produced political change and shocked the society. She tackled issues such as class, gender, race and sexual orientation.

August Wilson was an award-winning American poet turned playwright who chronicled the African-American experience through a series of ten plays. He was born Frederick August Kittel, Jr. on April 27, 1945 in the Hill District of Pittsburgh, PA. His father was a German immigrant named Frederick August Kittel and his mother was an African-American woman named Daisy Wilson. He is described by Lloyd Richards as:

One of the most compelling storytellers to begin writing for theatre in many years, he has taken the responsibility of telling the tale of the encounter of the released black slaves with a vigorous and ruthless growing America decade by decade. (Richards, 1986)

From a young age, Wilson began reading writers such as WEB DuBois, Langston Hughes, Ralph Ellison, and Richard Wright, which influenced his own writing. Mainly self-educated, and after holding various jobs, Mr. Wilson became involved with Rob Penny in Black Horizons on the Hill, a Pittsburgh theater company, in the late 1960s. Mr. Wilson is best known for The Pittsburgh Cycle of ten plays. Each play being set in a different decade of the 20th Century. It Chronicles the African-American experience. Nine of the ten plays are set in Pittsburgh’s Hill District, near Wilson’s childhood home. The only exception is Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, which is located in Chicago. Wilson is called ‘the African-American Shakespeare’ by both readers and critics. And his second major play Fences won him his first Pulitzer Prize.

Both Shelagh Delaney and August Wilson engage with serious political issues such as poverty and class and racial discrimination. The desire for rebellion and against the system and change is evident in the works of both playwrights and that exact desire continues to inspire people in our modern age.

In A Taste of Honey Delaney the issue of class is evident throughout the whole play. It is first seen in the very beginning of Act I Scene I from the play when Helen and her teenage daughter are moving into a shabby flat.

HELEN: Well! This is the place.

JO: And I don’t like it.

HELEN: When I find somewhere for us to live I have to consider something far more important than your feelings . . . the rent. It’s all I can afford.(Delaney, p.1)

Within a couple of minutes we learn that Helen and Jo have very little money and that the two of them live off Helen’s ‘immoral earnings’. Few minutes into the play we learn that Helen drink a lot and that her relationship with Jo is nothing like the stereotypical mother-daughter relationship that is commercialized by the media.

Delaney engages the issue of racism and discrimination towards immigrants in Act I Scene II for the first time when Jo and her black boyfriend and walking back to Jo’s home. After they stop in front of the house Jimmy (the boy’s name) kisses Jo and after she tells him "Don’t do that." the boy later asks "Afraid someone will see us?"(Delaney, p.22). During the late 1950s such a thing as an interracial relationship was shocking to the society and the growing tension between commonwealth immigrants and British citizens escalated so much that it lead to the famous Notting Hill riots during the summer of 1958 which is the same year A Taste of Honey was first produced.

Later in Act I Scene II Jimmy ask Jo to marry him and she accepts. He even gives her a ring which she carries around her neck under the clothes so Helen won’t see it. The boy is curious of what Jo’s mother will say once she sees he’s black and Jo convinces him that Helen will not object to it.

BOY: She hasn’t seen me.

JO: And when she does?

BOY: She’ll see a coloured boy.

JO: No, whatever else she might be, she isn’t prejudiced against colour.(Delaney, p.23)

But at the ending of the play when Jo tells her mother that her baby’s father was black we see that it’s quite the opposite.

HELEN: You mean to say that . . . that sailor was a black man? . . . Oh my God! Nothing else can happen to me now. Can you see me wheeling a pram with a . . . Oh my God. I’ll have to have a drink.

JO: What are you going to do?

HELEN: I don’t know. Drown it. Who knows about it?

JO: Geoffrey.

HELEN: And what about the nurse? She’s going to get a bit of a shock, isn’t she?

JO: Well, she’s black too.

HELEN: Good, perhaps she’ll adopt it.(Delaney, p.86-87)

We see Helen suggesting to drown the baby, have the nurse who will be black too adopt it. She’s looking of a way to get rid of the baby so she won’t have to deal the opinion that society will have about her if her daughter gives birth to a mixed-race baby.

The issue of homosexuality in ‘A Taste of Honey’ is suggested when we first see the character of Geoff in Act II Scene I. He has been thrown out of his flat and he and Jo are returning from a fair. Jo’s curiosity and the insensitive mocking manner she speaks to Geof offends him.

JO: Why did she throw you out?

GEOF: I’ve told you why.

JO: Come on, the truth. Who did she find you with? Your girl friend? It wasn’t a man, was it?

GEOF: Don’t be daft.

JO: Look, I’ve got a nice comfortable couch, I’ve even got some sheets. You can stay here if you’ll tell me what you do. Go on, I’ve always wondered about people like you.

GEOF: Go to hell.(Delaney, p.47-48)

Jo’s aggressive curiosity and her insisting on Geoffrey telling her the truth insults him and he is about to leave the place when she apologizes and changes the subject. Geof is so defensive about this because in the late 1950’s homosexuality was illegal. In October 1957, the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr. Geoffrey Fisher, defended the Wolfenden Report (published 3rd Sept. 1957), with the following speech:

There is a sacred realm of privacy... into which the law, generally speaking, must not intrude. This is a principle of the utmost importance for the preservation of human freedom, self-respect, and responsibility.(Fisher, 1957)

Sexual acts between two men were not decriminalized until 1967 with the "Sexual Offences Act" which is 9 years after ‘A Taste of Honey’ was written. Interesting fact is that sexual acts between two women were never illegal. Shelagh Delaney did not like the way homosexuals were portrayed on stage by other playwrights. She did not approve of the stereotypical approach and wanted a change. Geoff is shown as a loving and caring boy who consoles Jo in the time when he needs it. He is more responsible and is thinking about Jo’s future. His homosexuality is only hinted with Jo’s correct guess of the reason why his landlady threw him out.

The 1950’s was called the decade of ‘anger’ when speaking about theatre. Specifically the decade of ‘angry young men’ and John Osborne’s ‘Look Back in Anger’ (1956) was critical for the definition and characterization of this movement and generating the ‘New Wave" of British drama. In this decade of ‘angry’ male movement there were only two female playwrights who managed to achieve any prominence - Shelagh Delaney and Ann Jellicoe.

August Wilson’s ‘Fences’ tackles the issue of the African-American experience during the late 1950s. He tells the story of Troy Maxton, a reformed criminal with painful childhood. His father took his anger out on him when he was a child so he is forced to leave the farm he lived on and head to the city without a dime in his pockets. Troy is forced to steal to food and later he moved on robbing people because "…hell, if I steal money I can buy me some food. Buy me some shoes too!"(p. 54) and eventually he gets in trouble and ends up in prison for 15 years. This is where he learned to play baseball and where he met his best friend Bono.

Unlike black people in Britain, who came into the country as work immigrants Africans were brought to America as slaves. In the years after slavery ended black people in the USA were rejected by the cities "and they fled and settle along the riverbanks and under bridges in shallow, ramshackle houses made of stick and tar-paper."(Wilson, 1986) as described by Wilson. By 1957 black people lived in segregated communities. The men used their muscle for work and were paid very low wages while the white men were living the "American dream".

In Act I Scene I we are introduced to Troy’s problem. He went to his boss and asked "Why you got the white mens driving and the colored lifting" and he goes on later "Hell, anybody can drive a truck. How come you got all whites driving and the colored lifting?"(p. 2). He wants change and he is ready to fight for his rights. Later in the play he earns himself the promotion to a driver. Here Wilson makes a notion of change a desire for equal rights which come during the next decade later thanks to Civil Right Movement with key figures being Martin Luther King Jr., Malcom X and Rosa Parks.

Both authors deal with issues that were actual at the time their works were set and they are actual even now issues such as homosexuality and racism have undergone changes now being racist and homophobic is a criminal offence. More playwrights write about working class people and the stereotypes of media are less evident in many of the new plays produced after the changes. The authors may have different and contrasting approach but they tackle the same issues and promote the same thing: equality.