Within ‘A Taste of Honey’ we as an audience see two key relationships, that of Jo and Geof and of Jo and her mother: Helen. Throughout the extract the relationships build we can see the similarities and differences between them. The maternal relationship viewed is not a classic mother-daughter, caring relationship, and the friendship from Geof to Jo is special due to the irregularity of the situation they are in. Whereas in ‘The Picture of Dorian Grey’, it is a far more personal and intense relationship that we are in on with a possible homosexual relationship. There is also a more spiritual and philosophical interpretation of love through this, with Harry talking of how he feels towards Dorian Grey.

‘A taste of honey’ has several taboo loves in it’s plot line: Jo sleeping with a black sailor and having his child, Geof being homosexual and Helen choosing the love of another man over the love of her daughter. There are similar idea in this through “The Picture of Dorian Grey” whereby there is an idea of Basil having homosexual feelings for Dorian Grey indicated in calling him a “necessity”.

In “A taste of Honey” love appears to be fickle to most of the characters with Helen coming back into Jo’s life so abruptly and expecting her to accept her back. We see her pat Jo’s hair as she is having a contraction, and say “all better now” as if such a small gesture on her part will make the entire situation better. We also see Helen clearly not having a maternal love within her as she tells Jo to sort the flowers out, and not caring about Jo’s feelings as she talks about her baby being black. Race becomes an issue for Helen when she has to be seen pushing around a black child, she is only concerned for herself, and in the modern era it would be social suicide to marry, or have a relationship with a black man let alone have a child with one. We get a similar situation in Shakespeare’s Othello, with Brabantio not allowing the marriage of his daughter to a “black man”. Opinions on racial interactions has always been taboo and has become a much more prominent feature in contemporary life however we can see from Othello and A Taste of Honey that ideals on different race relations has not changed a great deal.

In The Picture of Dorian Grey there appears to be a different form of taboo love with Harry becoming infatuated with Dorian Grey. Both are male characters and we only see one side of this relationship however it is clear Harry has different feelings to Grey than he does the other male in this scene. Claiming Grey is “all of my art now” there appears to be a different form of love, namely a homosexual kind, than that of his love for “dear old Basil” whom he loves as a “sort of brother”