lood Brothers Coursework
Blood Brothers is a fictional play, written for Merseyside Young People’s theatre company. The play is about two twins (Mickey and Eddie) who were separated at birth by their real mother Mrs Johnstone. Blood Brothers was written by Willy Russell, who was born just outside Liverpool. Willy Russell is famous for other plays such as: John Paul, George and Bert, Our Day Out and Educating Rita.
One of the characters from the story is called Mrs Johnstone who is a deserted wife with seven children and has fallen pregnant again. Her husband left her ‘for a girl, they say who looks bit like Marilyn Monroe’. The reason why he left her was because he thought she used too look like Marilyn Monroe until she started having children. As her amount of children increased, her social class decreased to a lower class Liverpudlian mother. Willy Russell is trying to say that single mothers are usually from working class backgrounds and don’t get on very well in life.
Mrs Johnstone works a minimum wage job cleaning for Mrs Lyons. When Mrs Lyons finds out that Mrs Johnstone is pregnant she persuades her to give up one of her twins (Eddie). Mrs Lyons says that if Mrs Johnstone gives up her child to her, he will ‘have a better upbringing’. Willy Russell tries to make Mrs Lyons seem like an evil manipulative woman by pressurizing Mrs Johnstone to go along with her plan because she cannot have children of her own. As Mrs Johnstone agrees to give up her child, Mrs Lyons fires her from her job. Nevertheless, she tries to thrust money into her hands. Mrs Johnstone did not accept the money because of her pride and dignity. I feel Mrs Johnstone didn’t want to take the money due to the fact that she did not want to fall into the prejudice views of single mothers, which was that they couldn’t support their families on their own wages.
The author (Willy Russell) felt unhappy about the resentment between social classes. In the 1980’s the working class resented...