My Mother Said I Never Should GCSE Student Guide by Sophie Bush

Author:Sophie Bush [Bush, Sophie]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781474251679
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Published: 2015-11-03T00:00:00+00:00

Props/objects

The props or objects used within the play are crucial to Keatley’s conception of it: ‘The objects written into the play are very ordinary ones’, she explains, ‘which take on extraordinary powers because of the way they appear and reappear’. A key part of this concept is that all domestic objects have a history, and whenever an object appears within the play, ‘it brings that emotional history onstage’ (Keatley 1994: xxx). For example, we first see Jackie’s red transistor radio, blaring out ‘All You Need Is Love’ in a sunny garden in Act One, Scene Four. This lends an added poignancy to the opening of Act One, Scene Six, in which the same radio reports freezing temperatures, further emphasizing the bleakness of the scene, and underscoring how quickly Jackie’s carefree life has fallen apart.

Another set of objects that acquire a pivotal emotional significance are Rosie’s baby clothes. In Act One, Scene Six, Jackie is packing Rosie’s clothes into a holdall, in preparation for giving her up to be raised by Margaret. Jackie’s ambivalence towards letting Rosie go is represented by her attitude towards Rosie’s clothes. As she panics over her decision, the stage directions instruct her to pull the holdall away from Margaret, only to return it to her a line later, resigned again to what she must do. But though she lets Margaret take the majority of Rosie’s things, she holds back a bag of Rosie’s first clothes. Whilst this is a practical matter – Rosie has grown out of these clothes and no longer needs them – they also represent the time Rosie and Jackie have spent together as mother and daughter, which Margaret can never take away from Jackie. ‘Our secrets’, Jackie calls them, promising to ‘take care of them’ (28). When the clothes reappear in Act Two, they carry the history of these emotional associations into the scene.

Another key moment that foregrounds the emotional weight of objects within the play is the sequence in Act Two where Margaret and Jackie clear the shelves of Doris’s dresser. Each object they take down provokes a memory: a photograph of Margaret as a child on Scarborough beach; a rose bowl Jack won in the 1949 Manchester Business Awards; a pottery duck Jackie made as a child. The object that causes the biggest reveal is a photograph of Doris’s mother. When Jackie wonders why she has never seen the picture, which was hidden away in a biscuit tin on the top shelf of the dresser, Margaret explains that Jack disapproved of the picture because Doris’s mother was unmarried.

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