- Abusive Parents: Primary examples include Helen verbally abuses Jo throughout the play, such as by calling her "useless" and "a silly little whore", completely leaves Jo to look after herself to satisfy the sexual advances of the men she gets involved with, blames Jo for the divorce of one of her previous husbands, implies that she believes the day Jo was born was horrible as she admits she had always tried to forget it when asked by Jo when her birthday was, and kicks Jo's only friend, Geof, out on account of his implied homosexuality despite Jo directly informing Helen she wanted him to stay.
- Ambiguous Situation: Did Jimmie ever love Jo or was he just pretending to in order to take advantage of her sexuality?
- Bitter Sweet Ending: In the book, Jo is left alone in the same inadequate apartment, happily thinking about Geof as she hums a song he sang to her, unaware that Helen had kicked him out for good.
- Mandatory Motherhood: While Jo disapproves of the idea of getting rid of her baby before it's born, that doesn't stop her from making morbid comments about motherhood, claiming that babies were revolting and that breastfeeding is cannibalistic.
- Mistaken for Prostitute:
Word of God mentions in the commentary before the play that Helen should not be viewed as a prostitute, but as a "woman who enjoys life and goes about it in her own way". - Parental Neglect: Helen's implied long history of leaving Jo by herself for wealthy men which root back to when the latter was very young, confessing to Geof that Helen would even leave her by herself during Christmas.
- Teen Pregnancy: After a final night with Jimmie, Jo ends up pregnant. Given that teenagers in the 1950s typically finished school at 15, she may actually be 15 and not 17 as she claimed.
- Turn Out Like His Father: Jo already has subtle similarities to her mother such as getting engaged at the same time Helen did, got the same first job Helen did. By the end, their similarities are fully grasped as Jo is pending to become a single mother just as Helen was.
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