Character Analysis
Enid Matthews
Enid is the play's central character — the person whose choices, fears and history drive the action. She is a first-generation Jamaican immigrant who came to England as a young woman as part of the Windrush generation. She works as a hospital cleaner — sometimes at two jobs simultaneously — and has devoted her life to her daughters' security. Enid's defining strategy is assimilation: she speaks 'proper' English, dismisses Obeah as superstition, and suppresses any reference to Jamaican culture that might mark her daughters as outsiders.
Enid's backstory is gradually revealed across the play. Her husband subjected her to domestic violence — cruelty rooted in the racism and humiliation he suffered at work — and Enid ended the marriage to protect her daughters. Brod discloses this to Del in Scene 7, overturning the assumption Del has carried for years that her mother drove her father away. Back home in Jamaica they called her 'Miss English', and she and her mother became estranged; Enid sent money home but kept emotional distance. When her mother dies in Scene 3, Enid's grief is compounded by the estrangement that can never now be resolved. Her controlling behaviour is not cruelty — it is a survivor's response to racism, poverty, abuse and loss.
Enid's controlling behaviour has three roots: (1) her abusive marriage — she will not allow her daughters to experience what she endured; (2) her mother's death and their estranged relationship — she cannot bear to lose her daughters the same way; (3) her experience of racism as a Windrush immigrant — she believes assimilation is the only protection she can offer. Understanding these three drivers is essential for top-band analysis.
Del (Delores)
Del is the elder daughter, aged 18. She is the play's most instinctive character — rebellious, sensory, drawn to things she cannot fully articulate. She stays out late, loses her job after arguing with her manager, and initially refuses to have her palm read by Mai. But she is drawn irresistibly to Mai's world. She later discovers she is dyslexic, which reframes her educational struggles: she was not lazy but struggling with an undiagnosed barrier. She becomes pregnant — the father absent — and eventually moves into Mai's Deptford bedsit, beginning her training as Mai's spiritual successor.
By the final scene, Del has been transformed. She reads Enid's palm — a spiritual act she once refused — and in doing so offers Enid the bridge to her own heritage that Enid could never build alone. Del's arc is about discovering her true identity: not the respectable English daughter Enid wanted, and not simply a rebellious teenager, but someone with a genuine gift and a genuine heritage to inhabit.
Viv is the younger daughter, aged 17. She appears to be Enid's success story: educated, articulate, preparing for A-level exams. She has adopted English culture more fully than Del and seems comfortable in it. But Pinnock complicates this apparent conformity through Viv's educational rebellion. She walks out of one of her exams — an act of defiance against a Eurocentric curriculum that, she says, has no place for her. She feels invisible within it: 'But no matter how much I search for myself in them books, I'm never there.' She plans to study Black Studies at university — a subject that acknowledges her existence — and the play ends with her leaving for precisely that future.
Viv's rebellion is intellectual rather than physical. Her crisis is not a pregnancy or a departure from home but a crisis of educational identity — a recognition that the path Enid mapped for her was built on a curriculum that erased her. Both daughters ultimately reject Enid's assimilation strategy, but they do so in ways that reflect their different personalities.
Mai
Mai is an Obeah woman who lives in a Deptford bedsit. She is physically declining throughout the play — a dizzy spell in Scene 5, and a health problem Del senses in Scene 8 — but her spiritual authority is undiminished. She has an estranged adult son. She charges no fee for Enid's final reading, out of sympathy. Pinnock presents Mai not as superstition to be overcome but as a figure of genuine wisdom and cultural continuity. She sees clearly what each character needs: Del needs to be recognised as a healer; Enid needs permission to reconnect with what she suppressed. Mai does not impose — she offers.
Brod is Enid's childhood friend from Jamaica, a fellow Windrush immigrant. He appears on stage in Scenes 2, 3 and 7 — he is not an absent or offstage character. He has a serious drinking problem, has a wife and children still in Jamaica, and is deeply disenchanted with life in England. He describes a friend, Gullyman, who achieved financial success but still suffered a breakdown — arguing that England's racism corrodes everyone eventually, however successful they appear.
Brod's most important dramatic function is in Scene 7, when he tells Del about her father's abusive treatment of Enid and about the racism that drove it. He is the only character who can deliver this truth — not because he is wise, but because he was there. Pinnock uses Brod to show that the truth about the past must eventually be spoken, even if imperfectly, by imperfect people.
Understanding the playwright's specific choices — structure, language, staging and context — is essential for top-band analysis. Make sure you can discuss how form and content work together to create meaning for the audience.
Effective drama analysis requires attention to stagecraft — considering not just what happens but how the playwright shapes the audience's response through every element of performance and text. In your exam response, identify specific techniques and explain their effect precisely.