Beyond Sexuality: A Queer Reading of the Plays ‘A Taste of Honey’ and ‘Mrs Warren’s Profession’.

Abstract

Although Delaney and Shaw do not explicitly confirm the existence of queer characters within their plays, A Taste of Honey and Mrs Warren’s Profession, this essay will argue they can nevertheless be read as ‘queer’ plays, using See’s assertion that it is possible to read plays as ‘queer’ regardless of whether they include a definitively queer character, if they ‘cleave, fracture, and re-mold conventional identity models’ (33). This essay will posit that A Taste of Honey and Mrs Warren’s Profession can therefore be read as ‘queer’ in their depiction of non-conventional, non-nuclear family units, their non-conventional female protagonists (Jo in A Taste of Honey and Vivie Warren in Mrs Warren’s Profession), and in each woman’s non-conventional relationship with her mother.