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Del (Delores) Matthews in Leave Taking — character analysis

Leave Taking · Winsome Pinnock · Set text on AQA GCSE English Literature (8702) — Modern texts option; not on Pearson Edexcel International GCSE (4ET1) · Grade 9 Notes

In one sentence. The rebellious daughter who walks out, and finds her way back through Mai

Del is Enid's elder daughter, born and raised in London. At the start she is angry, funny and restless: she stays out all night, mocks Mai's obeah as nonsense and tries to steal one of Mai's charms. She is pregnant, as her mother fears. Del feels the racism around her sharply, from the police to her boss, and she despises what she sees as her mother's meekness in the face of it. Her school did not help her when she struggled with reading. After Enid slaps her she leaves home and, surprisingly, moves in with Mai. In Mai's bedsit she grows curious about obeah, protects Viv's future more fiercely than Viv does, hears from Brod the truth about her father, and is recognised by Mai as having the gift. In the final scene she takes Mai's place and reads her own mother's palm.

Build your reading of Del (Delores) Matthews in Leave Taking, teach it to an AI pupil, then defend it in a marked debate — this study carries all three.

How Del (Delores) Matthews develops

The rebel at Mai's door

Del arrives in the play resenting everything about the visit to Mai. She mocks the obeah, laughs at Mai and her room, and refuses Mai's offer to talk. But the scene ends with a small, telling action: she tries to slip one of Mai's charms into her pocket, and Mai, without fuss, holds out her hand until Del gives it back.

Key moment. Del trying to steal a charm from Mai, and Mai simply holding out her hand for it (Scene One). Del's mockery says she wants nothing to do with obeah; the theft says she wants something from it. Pinnock plants the end of the play in its first scene, and Mai sees through Del at once.

Her anger is not aimless. In Scene Two she lists the ways Black people are treated in London: watched by the police, spoken to at work as if they could not speak English, and, in her mother's case, made to clean up after colleagues at a party. Her rebellion is a refusal to accept what her mother has accepted.

Leaving home

Key moment. Del walking out of the family home after Enid slaps her (Scene Two). Del's exit turns the family quarrel into a separation. From here she is only seen in Mai's bedsit, so the play's geography follows her choice.

When the play returns to her in Scene Five, weeks have passed and she is living with Mai, pregnant. The woman she mocked has given her a home. She is still sharp-tongued, but she is growing interested in Mai's practice.

Key moment. Del, furious that Viv has skipped an English exam, throwing her sister out of Mai's room and insisting she sit the rest (Scene Five). The daughter who rejected school fights hardest for her sister's education. Del knows what she was denied, and will not let Viv throw away what Enid has worked for.

The truth and the gift

In Scene Seven Brod, thrown out by Enid, wakes in Mai's bedsit and tells Del what her mother never has: that her father, treated with contempt at work every day, turned his violence on Enid, and that Enid left him to protect her daughters. Del does not want to hear it. She would rather keep her mother as the harsh one.

Key moment. Del refusing to listen as Brod explains what her father did to her mother (Scene Seven). Del has built her identity on resisting her mother. Brod's story takes that away, and her resistance to hearing it shows how much it costs to see a parent differently.

Mai, watching her, recognises that Del has the gift for obeah. By Scene Eight Del has cleaned the room, is trying out Mai's practice for herself, and passes Mai's test so well that she senses Mai's failing heart. Mai gives her the notebook of everything she knows and leaves her to see the next client.

Key moment. Del taking her mother's hand and beginning to read her palm as the play ends (Scene Eight). The rebel ends as the healer. Del inherits a tradition from Mai and uses it to understand her mother, so her growing up and the family's reconciliation happen in the same gesture.

How Pinnock builds Del on stage

Del's speech is quick, sarcastic and London, the voice of a second-generation daughter who will not be quiet.

Her actions speak before her words: she pockets a charm, walks out, cleans Mai's room and holds her mother's hand.

Structurally she leaves the family's space in Scene Two and the play follows her to Mai's for the rest of its length.

Del in context

Born and raised in London, she meets racism from the police and at work, and refuses her mother's way of enduring it.

Her school failed her when she struggled with reading, so her later learning from Mai is a different education.

Relationships

  • Enid — The mother she defies, blames and finally reads with new understanding.
  • Viv — The sister she protects, even from Viv herself.
  • Mai — The obeah woman she mocks, lives with and succeeds.
  • Brod — The family friend who tells her the truth about her father.

What Del (Delores) Matthews stands for

  • The stolen charm: what Del wants from obeah before she can admit it.
  • Mai's notebook: a tradition handed down outside the school system that failed her.
  • The palm: the final image of a daughter learning to read her mother.

Why Pinnock made Del (Delores) Matthews

  • To show a second-generation daughter who refuses to accept racism quietly.
  • To suggest that heritage can be chosen and learned, not only inherited.
  • To show a young woman failed by school finding a different kind of learning.

Readings you could defend

More than one reading of Del (Delores) Matthews can win the debate. These are the credible alternatives — argue one, and know the others.

  • A rebel who learns that her mother's meekness was a strategy for survival.
  • A daughter who finds belonging not in Britain or Jamaica but in a tradition she can practise.
  • A young woman whose anger at racism is right, and whose anger at her mother is misplaced.

Essay arguments

  • Pinnock frames Del's development between two acts with her hands: stealing Mai's charm in Scene One and holding her mother's palm in Scene Eight.
  • Del's anger at racism is justified by the play, but her anger at Enid rests on not knowing her mother's story.
  • Del's fierce defence of Viv's education shows the value she places on what she herself was denied.

Del (Delores) Matthews in theme essays

  • Identity: the charm, the gift, the palm.
  • Generations: the slap and the final reading.
  • Education: reading difficulties at school against Mai's notebook.

Questions that get asked

  • How does Pinnock present Del's development in Leave Taking?
  • How does Pinnock use Del to explore ideas about identity?

Think you understand it?

Reading is the start. On Incandio a topic counts as mastered only once you have taught it and defended it — the two things a revision guide cannot ask of you.

Incandio this topic → Prove it. Teach it. Defend it. What does “Incandio it” mean?

  1. Teach it — Explain your reading of Del (Delores) Matthews in Leave Taking to Ember, an AI pupil who has not made one, and answer the awkward question. Understanding is credited; wording is not required.
  2. Defend it — Hold your reading of Del (Delores) Matthews in Leave Taking against the writer in a short, structured debate marked against descriptors you can read first.
  3. Then the exam — exam-style practice, marked on Incandio.

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