Leave Taking

Winsome Pinnock’s Leave Taking (first performed in 1987) is a landmark of Black British theatre. Set in Deptford, South London, in the mid-1980s, the play explores the lives of a Jamaican immigrant mother, Enid, and her two British-born daughters, Del and Viv. It is a deeply moving exploration of displacement, generational conflict, and what it means to find "home."

As part of your GCSE English Literature course (AQA Paper 2, Section A: Modern Texts), you will be expected to write a detailed essay about this play. This guide will break down the essential context, structural beats, characters, and dramatic techniques you need to achieve top marks.

What you'll learn:

• How the historical context of the Windrush generation and 1980s Britain shapes the characters' struggles.
• How to analyse the complex dynamics of the Matthews family.
• How Pinnock uses staging, dialect, and symbolism to present themes of identity and belonging.
• How to write a high-scoring analytical response under closed-book exam conditions.

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Context: The World of the Play

To understand the motivations and pain of the characters in Leave Taking, you must understand the world they inhabit. The play is set in 1980s London, but its emotional roots lie in the mid-twentieth century.

The Windrush Generation

In 1948, the HMT Empire Windrush arrived in Essex, carrying hundreds of passengers from the Caribbean who had been invited to help rebuild post-war Britain.

Enid and her friend Broderick belong to this generation. They left the warmth and familiar community of Jamaica for the "mother country," expecting prosperity and warmth, only to encounter a cold climate and a hostile white British society.

1980s Britain: Tension and Rebellion

By the mid-1980s, the children of the Windrush generation—including characters like Del and Viv—were young adults. This era was marked by high unemployment, political instability, and intense racial tension.

• Systemic Racism: Black British youths faced heavy-handed policing, including the infamous "Sus" (suspicion) laws, which led to widespread civil unrest, such as the Brixton riots of 1981 and 1985.
• The Identity Crisis: Unlike their parents, who still viewed the Caribbean as "home," these British-born children had never seen the Caribbean. Yet, British society often refused to accept them as fully English. This left them suspended between two worlds.

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Plot and Dramatic Structure

Leave Taking is structured around key shifts in relationships and understandings of home. Let's trace the narrative arc of the play.

[Exposition] ------------------> [Rising Action] -------------> [Climax] ---------------> [Resolution]
Enid tries to keep               Del rebels; Viv suffers        Enid visits Mai;        The daughters find
control. Viv studies;            academic breakdown.            family secrets are      their own paths; Enid
Del clashes.                     Broderick shows limits.        revealed.               accepts the "leave taking".

Exposition: The Clean, Safe Home

The play opens in Enid’s pristine living room. Enid has worked tirelessly as a hospital cleaner to provide a respectable, safe environment for her daughters. She is obsessed with respectability, believing that if her daughters work hard and speak "properly," they will escape the racism she endured.

Rising Action: The Cracks Appear

The pressure on both daughters begins to tear the family apart:

• Viv is suffocating under the weight of her mother’s academic expectations. She memorises dates and facts but feels completely disconnected from herself, suffering from severe anxiety.
• Del rebels against her mother's strictness. She moves out, gets involved in petty crime, and seeks comfort in her Black identity, rejecting the "white-ass country" Enid tries so hard to appease.
• Broderick acts as a warning sign. He is stuck in the past, constantly dreaming of returning to Jamaica but never actually making the leap.

Climax: The Visit to Mai

Desperate to save Del from her self-destructive path and heal the rift in her family, Enid takes Del to see Mai, an Obeah woman (a traditional Afro-Caribbean spiritual healer).

During this spiritual consultation, long-buried truths emerge. Enid is forced to confront her own unresolved grief over her mother's death in Jamaica—a funeral she could not afford to attend. Mai acts as the catalyst for the family's emotional breakthroughs.

Resolution: Acceptance and "Leave Taking"

By the end of the play, the traditional family unit has fractured, but a healthier, truer dynamic is born:

• Viv decides to pause her studies and travel to Jamaica to find her roots on her own terms.
• Del assumes a position of strength, helping her mother learn to read and write, reversing the parent-child roles.
• Enid finally lets go of her tight control, accepting that her daughters must make their own "leave taking" from her expectations to survive.

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Character Analysis

Understanding the characters is crucial because the exam will often ask you to explore how Pinnock presents a specific character or relationship to reveal her central themes.

Enid: The Protector

Enid is a complex mixture of fierce love and damaging rigidity. Her obsession with cleanliness, education, and "proper" English is her armor against a hostile white society.

• Methods: Pinnock presents Enid's language as formal and strict when dealing with her daughters, but we see her vulnerability when she speaks to Broderick in her native patois.
• Key Quote: "I don't want you growing up like me... I want you to be someone."
• Analysis: This quote highlights Enid's internalized shame. She equates her own labor as a cleaner with being "no one," driving her to push Viv to the brink of collapse.

Del: The Rebel seeking Identity

Del refuses to assimilate. She is angry at her mother's submissiveness and eager to claim her Caribbean heritage, even if she doesn't fully understand it yet.

• Methods: Del uses street slang and confrontational language to reject her mother's domestic ideals. Her messy, unstructured lifestyle acts as a foil to Enid’s immaculate home.
• Key Quote: "You brought us up to be polite to white people... You made us soft."
• Analysis: Del challenges Enid's survival strategies, viewing them as cowardice rather than the painful sacrifices they actually were.

Viv: The Dutiful Daughter

Viv is trapped between her mother's aspirations and her sister's rebellion. She is the "good girl," but her obedience is slowly killing her spirit.

• Methods: Pinnock structures Viv's dialogue with frantic, lists of historical facts (e.g., memorising the dates of British kings). This structural choice illustrates how her mind is cluttered with white colonial history, leaving no room for her own heritage.
• Key Quote: "I feel like I'm drowning... My head is full of other people's words."
• Analysis: This metaphorical drowning represents the suffocating nature of assimilation. Viv is forced to consume a history and culture that does not validate her own existence.

Mai: The Spiritual Anchor

Mai lives on the margins of society, practicing Obeah. While Enid initially views her as a last resort, Mai is actually the most grounded character in the play. She bridging the gap between London and Jamaica, the living and the dead.

• Methods: Mai's space is sensory, filled with the smell of herbs and the sound of rituals, contrasting sharply with Enid's sterile living room.
• Key Quote: "You have to remember who you are before you can know where you're going."

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Key Themes

When writing your exam essay, you must always link your analysis of characters and techniques back to the big ideas—the themes.

1. Identity, Belonging, and Cultural Heritage

The characters in Leave Taking are all trying to answer the question: Where do I belong?

• Enid tries to belong by erasing her past and blending in.
• Del tries to belong by aggressively claiming a Jamaican identity she has never personally experienced.
• Viv must physically travel to Jamaica to reconstruct an identity that combines both her British reality and her ancestral heritage.

2. Mother-Daughter Relationships and Generational Conflict

The conflict between Enid and her daughters is not just teenage rebellion; it is a clash of historical experiences.

• Enid’s parenting is shaped by the trauma of migration and the need for survival.
• Her daughters' reactions are shaped by the frustration of growing up Black in 1980s Britain.
• The play argues that healing can only occur when the daughters acknowledge their mother's sacrifices, and the mother allows her daughters the freedom to define their own lives.

3. "Leave Taking" as a Motif

The title itself is a rich, multi-layered motif.

In this play, "leave taking" occurs on several levels:

1. The physical migration from Jamaica to England (Enid and Broderick).
2. The departure from childhood and parental control (Del and Viv).
3. The emotional letting go of the dead and of unrealistic dreams.
4. The final "leave taking" of the play, where Viv departs for Jamaica to start her own journey.

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Dramatic Methods: Form and Language

AQA examiners are looking for your ability to analyse the writer's craft (AO2). You must show how Pinnock uses the medium of theatre to convey her themes.

Language and Dialect

Pinnock uses language as a battleground for identity.

• Standard English vs. Patois (Creole): Enid speaks to her daughters in precise Standard English to encourage their assimilation. However, when she is emotional, or speaking with Broderick and Mai, she slips into Jamaican patois. This linguistic shift reveals her true self and her deep connection to her homeland.
• Silence and Unspoken Grief: Much of the trauma in the play is found in what is not said. Enid's inability to speak about her mother's death or the pain of her early years in London creates a toxic silence that her daughters inherit as anxiety and anger.

Stage Design and Symbolism

The physical setting of the play mirrors the psychological state of the characters.

• Enid's Living Room: Immaculate, clean, and rigid. It represents Enid's attempt to control her environment and project a "respectable" image to the outside world. It feels like a cage to Viv and Del.
• The Contrast of Mai’s Room: Mai’s room is cluttered, organic, and filled with spiritual items. It represents the subconscious, the past, and the untamed Caribbean heritage that Enid has tried to lock away.

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Worked Analysis

Let us look at how to construct a high-scoring analytical paragraph on Leave Taking.

Remember the formula for high-level analysis:

$$Point\to Evidence\to Method\to Effect\to Context\; (AO3)$$

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Exam Strategy

When you enter the exam hall for Paper 2, you must be prepared to tackle a single, essay-based question on Leave Taking. There will be a choice of two questions—usually one focusing on a character/relationship and one on a theme.

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Check Your Understanding

Before you move on to essay planning, make sure you can answer these key questions.