An Inspector Calls - F

Key Facts

 author · J. B. Priestley     type · of work Play     genre · Realism     language · Written in English; first performed in Russian translation     time and place written · England, 1945-6     date of first publication · 1946     tone · Social critique; solemn; fatalist; anti-hypocritical (critical of middle-class hypocrisies)     tense · Present     setting (time) · 1912     setting (place) · Brumley, Northern England     protagonist · There is no single protagonist, although Sheila is the play’s emotional centre     major conflict · Eva Smith/Daisy Renton’s death implicates the entire Birling family, who sort out their culpability in her downfall.     rising action · The Inspector arrives, asking questions about a girl’s suicide.     climax · Eric is revealed to be the father of Eva’s unborn child.     falling action · Gerald tells the family that, perhaps, the Inspector has “hoaxed” them to prove a point about social systems.     foreshadowing · Sheila wonders why Gerald was so busy the previous spring and summer, and it is because he was having an affair. Eric’s drinking increases over the course of the play and is brought up early on. The Inspector hints at global catastrophe, or world war, that might follow whole countries’ selfish behaviours.

Context

Born to a working-class family in Yorkshire (north of England), John Priestley, who published under the name J. B. Priestley, wrote plays, novels, biographies, travelogues, and assorted essays, many notable for their political engagement. He fought for England in the First World War, and the experience was formative for him. He later studied literature and political science at Cambridge, and on graduating began his career as an essayist, before branching out into other genres. He wrote quickly and thoroughly, producing dozens of texts, published treatments of the lives of Charles Dickens and George Meredith, and a broader historical assessment of literary art and its effect on people’s lives (Literature and Western Man). Today, his notoriety derives from his writing for the theatre. An Inspector Calls, the play with which he is most commonly associated, opened in the Soviet Union in Russian translation after the Second World War, and in London soon after. Reviews over the next decades of Inspector and his other works were mixed, but a production of Inspector in the 1990s in London revived interest. His plays continue to be performed in the US and the UK. The revival of An Inspector Calls in the 1990s demonstrates that the play’s preoccupations resonate beyond the Cold War period. Indeed, after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, the relationship between capital and labour, or between management and those doing the work, was of particular interest. So was the idea that democratic values might potentially have prevailed over the rigid bureaucratic governance of the USSR and its satellite states. The openness with which the play ends is, similarly, an opportunity for reevaluation, as Priestley never explains fully how individual crimes contribute to a more general guilt or innocence in the play’s main characters.

Context*

The play is > an example of immediate post-war drama, means that it was written after World War Two. Post-war dramas take up some of the economic, political, and social issues prompting that conflict, including socialism vs free-market capitalism, democracy vs fascism, and communal vs individual rights and privileges. It is also a historical drama, as it is set in the run-up to the World War One. This produces instances of dramatic irony throughout the play. Characters refer to the possibility of World War One, and of later calamities that would seem, to the post-World War Two audience, pivotal and lamentable landmarks in world history. The small-scale but devastating violence described in the play points to the slaughter of many thousands that will occur only a few years after its narrated action                                 > marks the beginning of a turn from the literary period of realism to what would later be called the postmodern, the absurdist, or the surreal. Priestley’s play considers realistic characters in a realistic upper-middle-class situation, and characters speak in “prose” rather than in “verse.” That is, the characters’ language is closer to dialogue in a novel than to the speeches of Shakespeare’s Hamlet or Othello, for example. In this way, Priestley draws on the familial conflicts found in the plays of writers like Henrik Ibsen, Anton Chekhov, and Eugene O’Neill. But the presence of the “Inspector” marks within An Inspector Calls the possibility of actions beyond rational reasoning. Priestley’s work can be viewed as a hinge between more realistic plays of the early twentieth century and the darker, less plot-driven, and more openly experimental dramas of writers like Samuel Beckett and Harold Pinter                                                                                                > the performance history of the play sheds some light on its possible meanings, both at the time of its composition and in later interpretations. The play opened in the Soviet Union in 1946, and therefore reached its first audiences in Russian. Priestley sympathised with socialism broadly, but was not a member of any one political party, as his biographers note. Although An Inspector Calls is set some thirty-five years before its first performance, its consideration of industrial power and human worth was still very much an issue at the time of its debut. Priestley weighs what blame belongs to whom, and how ill-considered actions on the individual scale can have fatal, if unintentional, consequences. Anyone watching the play in the 1940s might see the heedlessness of Arthur, the aloofness of Sybil, the outward guilt of Sheila, or the drunkenness of Eric both as personal flaws and as potentially allegorical statements about national responsibility in continental Europe, the UK, and the United States.

Arthur Birling

Primary concerns: Birling family's good name > ability to climb in early-20th century English society Aware that, although his firm is successful, not as successful as the Crofts'.  Does not yet possess a formal title as the Crofts do, gleefully tells Gerald in Act One that he is expecting a knighthood. Does seem somewhat upset at the idea that he contributed to Eva Smith's death, more upset that his family's implication in the sandal would become public. Would mean that the knighthood might be withheld, and that Birling would no longer continue his social ascent. His opinion: men ought only to look after themselves as individuals, a strictly capitalist mentality > in which owners of capital value only profits and do not care for workers' rights.  As Sheila says in Act Three, the Inspector calls just as Arthur tells Eric and Gerald that they must put their own interests before anyone else's, and that socialist ideas of human brotherhood are strange and not to be trusted. Sheila wonders if the Inspector's visit was meant to prove to Arthur that people's lives are actually very complexly intertwined.

Sheila Birling

The conscience of the Birling family. Realises very soon after the Inspector's arrival that her anger at Milward's resulted in Eva/Daisy's dismissal, and that, because Eva/Daisy went on to commit suicide, Sheila played a role in her demise. Wonders how she will live with the grief her actions have caused, for herself, and of course for Eva/Daisy. Seems genuinely upset and lost, and reminds the rest of her family that they, too, have acted wrongly. Wants her family never to forget what they have done, despite their desire to proceed as though nothing is amiss. Position: broadly, an empathetic one. Does not seem to care much for the Inspector's implicit critique of capitalism. Does believe that humans are responsible for one another's good will. Is despondent that she cannot undo what she has done, but is committed to the idea that the family can change going forward. Willing, at the play's end, to forgive Gerald for his infidelity > he appeared to have genuinely cared for Eva/Daisy, even if at Sheila's expense.

Eric Birling

Position: similar to Sheila's, in that he too is wracked by guilt after learning of Eva/Daisy's suicide.  His addiction to alcohol and his moodier, wilder temperament keep him from reasoning as succinctly as Sheila does at the play's end. Believes that he behaved justifiably in stealing from the family business to help Eva/Daisy. When he learns that his mother refused Eva/Daisy from her charity despite being pregnant, he is aghast at his family's lack of sympathy. Different characters interpret his alcoholism in different ways. Arthur sees it as a sign of weakness, an indication that Eric is lazy and was spoiled as a child. Sybil refuses to acknowledge that he has a drinking problem, despite Sheila's protestations. Gerald, though he wants to believe that Eric's drinking is ''normal'' for a young man, admits that very few young men drink the way Eric does.

Eva Smith/Daisy Renton

A character who does not appear onstage in the play, but who is the absent figure around which the action spins.  Referred to the names above and ''Mrs. Birling'' May be a combination of these young women/a different person/fiction. Whether she is real or not, Eva/Daisy is a stand-in for the girls that Arthur, Sybil, Sheila, Eric, and Gerald have wronged, either separately or together. Eva/Daisy worked for a low wage > Arthur fired her for attempting a strike. Sheila had her fired for impertinence. Eric and Gerald both had affairs with her. Gerald cared for her. Eric's relationship to her was more vexed, required him to steal money for her. If Eva/Daisy is a real person, as the last phone call suggests, then the family's guilt might really knot them together. If she is not one person, and rather a set of people, this makes her no less substantial as an organisational principle for the work. Priestley demonstrates how selfish/economically motivated/jealous behaviour can ruin people's lives. Eva/Daisy is the lesson each character must learn individually.

Sybil Birling

Matriarch of the Birling family. Described in the play's performance notes as ''cold''. Pleased her daughter Sheila is engaged to be married, tends to ignore any potential discord in the family. Serves on a charitable committee in the town. Busies herself with social events befitting a woman whose husband is a business success. Protects what she perceives to be the family's good image and standing in the community.

Gerald Croft

Fiancé to Sheila, son of another prominent manufacturing family. From a more socially-elevated family. Arthur worries that Gerald's parents believe he is making a ''poor match'' in marrying Sheila. The Inspector criticises Gerald's affair with Daisy and notes that Gerald is perhaps the least culpable, and most morally upright, of all the characters.

Inspector Goole

Physically imposing. Has no trouble articulating his frustration with the Birlings and Gerald. Over the course of his questioning, the Inspector reveals that each of the characters has, in some sense, contributed to Eva Smith/Daisy Renton’s demise. Implies that the other characters care primarily for themselves, that they are angry and impulsive, and that they cannot control their sexual appetites or their intake of alcohol. Also says that they cannot change what has happened to Eva/Daisy, because she is no longer alive and capable of accepting their apologies. A curt, direct man, and his motivations for grilling the other characters are not readily comprehensible. His apparent socialist sympathies at the end of the play might account in political terms for some of his anger, but the Inspector’s desire to see justice through, in this case, is left unexplained. ''But just remember this. One Eva Smith has gone - but there are millions and millions and millions of Eva Smiths and John Smiths still left with us, with their lives, their hopes and fears, their suffering, and chance of happiness, all intertwined with our lives, with what we think and say and do. We don't live alone. We are members of one body. We are responsible for each other. And I tell you that the time will soon come when, if men will not learn that lesson, then they will be taught it in fire and blood and anguish. Good night.''

Edna

Birlings' maid. Mostly sets the scenes in which the family eats and talks. Not, like the Birlings, of the upper-middle class. Makes money by virtue of her labour. Leaves the room at the end of the play without mention of her absence/whereabouts.

Theme 1

Guilt Arthur, Sybil, Sheila, Eric, and Gerald must come to terms with their guilt, leading to Eva/Daisy’s demise. The Inspector wants the family to accept the pain it has caused Eva/Daisy. In this way, guilt plays an important role in the Inspector’s politics. Although he does not describe his politics explicitly, he appears to be a socialist, and for him, socialism demands that human beings look out for one another, do their absolute best to avoid harming each other. When people do wrong, they must then explain, to themselves and others, the wrongness of their actions. Sheila is the most willing to see that she has erred, in having Eva/Daisy removed from her job at Milward’s. Gerald, too, understands that his relationship with Eva/Daisy has caused her pain, and that that pain might have brought her to suicide. Arthur and Sybil, however, are far less willing to accept their guilt. Arthur is more concerned with the family’s good name, and Sybil believes that in denying Eva/Daisy charity, she did what any person in her position should have done. Eric feels some version of Sheila’s guilt, but his drunkenness shades his emotions somewhat. He is disturbed to know, however, that there are parts of his relationship with the girl he does not even remember, on account of steady inebriation. The play’s final, perplexing scene, in which Arthur learns that a girl really has committed suicide, again raises the question of culpability among the characters. By the end of Act Three, Gerald and Arthur, for their own reasons, have convinced themselves and the other Birlings that the Inspector has fooled them completely. They think that, though they have done wrong individually, these wrongs have not added up to cause one person’s death. But if, the playwright implies, the dead person at the close of the play is the same person with whom each character has interacted, then their guilt is no longer individual, but instead collective, although only Sheila seems to understand this fully. Priestley leaves this question open as the play ends.

Suicide The act of killing oneself, or of losing oneself entirely, is central to the play’s events. The play’s predicament is the supposed death of a girl named Eva Smith, or Daisy Renton. Eva/Daisy has killed herself, the Inspector argues, because all society has abandoned her. Her only remaining choice was to end her life. The Inspector sees suicide as the response to a culture of selfishness, which he believes to permeate capitalist society. No one was willing to lend Eva/Daisy a hand, and the Birlings discarded her when she was no longer compliant or useful to them. She had no friends or family to fall back on. There is a larger “suicidal” idea in the play, not in the literal sense of one person’s death, but on the social plane. The Inspector implies that if men and women continue to behave callously to one another in the industrialised countries of the West, then those countries, as entities, will “commit suicide.” That is, the Inspector’s warning to the Birlings foreshadows the cataclysms of the World Wars One and Two, which the audience in 1946 would understand to follow quickly upon the events of the play.

Theme 2

Theme 3

Learning, Forgetting, and “Inspection” Throughout his questioning, the Inspector takes on the role of a professor or guide. He interrogates the Birlings and Gerald, and he wants them to admit culpability for Eva/Daisy’s death. Further, he wants them to learn what they have done wrong, and to change. His “inspection,” as Sheila realises in Act Three, is designed to encourage them to interrogate themselves, to consider when in their lives they have behaved immorally, and how they might improve as family members, friends, and citizens. Sheila, Gerald, and Eric have a different relationship to the lessons they’ve learned. Gerald admits that he was wrong to have an affair, but on further inspection realises that he does not exactly regret his relationship with Eva/Daisy. Sheila knows that she was wrong to have Eva/Daisy dismissed, but will consider forgiving Gerald, or at least forgetting his actions, and to think about ways their relationship might be reborn. Eric’s drunkenness causes him to forget much of what he does, even as he’s doing it. But the shock of the Inspector’s visit does cause him and his family to admit that his drinking has overshadowed his life.

Motif 1

“Calls” Calls, in-person and over the phone, announce important events in the novel. The Inspector, of course, “calls” on the family, and he does so in person, allowing the story of Eva’s death to unfold over many hours. As a bookend to the Inspector’s call, Arthur receives a phone call at the close of the play, informing him that a girl really has committed suicide, and that an Inspector will be coming to the house to ask questions. The audience does not know who this Inspector will be, and whether this girl is Eva/Daisy, thus making this last call the play’s most troubling. Arthur uses the phone, for his part, to verify information. He calls the police precinct in Act Three, to find out if there really is an Inspector named Goole on the force. There is not. He also calls the hospital to learn if a girl was brought in recently, as a suicide. The hospital has no record of it. Thus, when Arthur makes a phone call, the information he receives tends to verify what he hopes to be true. But when Arthur and the Birlings receive calls and phone calls, the lessons they learn are neither easy nor pleasant.

Motif 2

Alcohol Consumption The play begins with a party for Sheila and Gerald. Arthur offers everyone port, and they drink. Eric, accustomed to heavy drinking, has more than his fair share, and throughout the play the subject of his possible alcoholism arises. But every character has had at least something to drink by the time the Inspector arrives—except for the Inspector himself, who refuses because he is “on duty.” Eric’s and Gerald’s relationships with Eva/Daisy begin with alcohol consumption, and when questioned by the Inspector, Eric asks whether he might have another drink to steel his nerves. At the play’s end, Arthur might be reaching for the port once more if it weren’t for the final phone call informing the family of a suicide. Alcohol marks events of social importance in the family, and moments the family might rather forget. It is a means for the Birlings to interact with one another, and to feign intimacy when, as the audience learns, each family member has been leading his or her own life separately.

Motif 3

Rudeness, or “impertinence” Sybil believes that the Inspector has rudely barged in on the family’s celebration, and Arthur, too, wonders if the Inspector is obeying the rules of decorum the police department sets for its officers. To the Birlings, the Inspector’s behavior is the height of rudeness, because it upends the social norms on which the family operates. The Inspector asks questions the family would rather not answer, and he does not stop his questioning once he has begun. The rules that govern polite conversation do not govern the Inspector. But the Inspector demonstrates that the Birlings, who are so aware of social norms, violate social conventions on their own time, and in more serious ways. Arthur, Sybil, and Sheila are defiantly uncharitable to Eva/Daisy, even in her time of need. And Eric and Gerald alternately treat Eva/Daisy kindly and dismissively, eventually leaving her to fend for herself. The Inspector thus shows that “rudeness” is itself a construct, and that apparent politeness can be a mask for total lack of concern or morality.

Symbol 1 & 2

The engagement ring In Act One, Gerald gives Sheila an engagement ring as a symbol of their love and impending marriage. But after Gerald reveals his affair in Act Two, Sheila returns the ring to him and says they will need to start their relationship from the beginning, after the night’s events are over, to see if they can forge a life together. The engagement ring thus marks not only Sheila and Gerald’s relationship but the idea of romantic love in the play more generally. Apart from Arthur and Sybil, whose marriage appears both strong and romantically cold, the other love-relationships in the play are illicit, involving people who are not married. Thus the engagement ring follows only those relationships receiving general social sanction. Relationships that could bring on “public scandal” receive no ring at all, and are only revealed on the Inspector’s questioning.

Disinfectant The Inspector reports that Eva/Daisy has killed herself by drinking “disinfectant,” which has ravaged the inside of her body. This disinfectant should, symbolically, make her “clean,” but it destroys her. In the same way, the Inspector’s questions should “make clean” the family, by bringing people’s secrets into the light of day. But these secrets nearly tear the family apart, too. Even after Gerald and Arthur question the Inspector’s legitimacy, the last phone call and the renewed presence of disinfectant again bring up the idea that there is dirt that must be cleaned away by the asking of questions.

Symbol 3

The bar As a counterpart to the room in which the play takes place, “the bar” is a scene in the novel of secret activity, often relating to illicit romantic love. Both Gerald and Eric meet Eva/Daisy in the bar, and Eric reports that other men in the community stalk those same bars to pick up women, some of them prostitutes. Even when characters who do not normally drink heavily, like Gerald, frequent the bar, they become embroiled in events they will need later to explain or perhaps forget.

Quote Analysis

''... a man has to make his own way—has to look after himself—and his family, too, of course, when he has one—and so long as he does that he won’t come to much harm.'' - Arthur (to Gerald and Eric before the Inspector arrives in Act One) Shows his economic and moral worldview for the two young men > one of total individualism, where society is understood as a collection of persons and their families, each of which tries to maximise his/her own financial and social happiness. Important to note his beliefs are a radical form of capitalist thought. He seems to have morphed a basic capitalist principle into a moral one, believing that hard work is sufficient enough to allow a person to “get ahead.” This disregards many of the advantages that Arthur and his family have enjoyed, and leads him to believe that everything he has is a direct consequence of his own power and achievement.

Inspector doesn't merely view that as a problem in society, thinks that Arthur’s attitude is the very undoing of society and is responsible for disagreements between people generally. This attitude is what probably contributes to war itself. For the Inspector, human beings must care about those beyond their immediate social circle, in part because it is altruistic and representative of a kinder, gentler instinct, but also because this kind of broader caring ensures that the world can function at all. The Inspector’s questions > designed to show the limitations of Arthur’s worldview, and the other ways in which a world might be organised to better serve the people living in it. Only in this way might countries and the people within them live peaceably among each other.

Quote Analysis*

''No, that’s no use. You not only knew her but you knew her very well. Otherwise, you wouldn’t look so guilty about it.'' - Sheila (says to Gerald at the end of Act One, in regards to Eva/Daisy) Realises, as soon as the Inspector says the name “Daisy Renton,” that Gerald has known her, intimately. Encourages Gerald to come clean to the Inspector, because she understands at this point in the play that the Inspector seems to know everything about the family already. The Inspector is not so much inspecting the family as he is confirming what he already seems to know, and making sure that the family realises the consequences of their actions. Points out that Gerald already “looks guilty.” Means that, on top of hurting Sheila with his illicit relationship, Gerald also might feel some amount of guilt regarding his treatment of Eva/Daisy. It is revealed that Gerald was, largely, kind to Eva/Daisy, although he breaks off the relationship without much explanation, then returns to Sheila and says nothing of what has transpired.

Gerald, like Sheila, is willing to eventually accept that he is complicit in the events leading to Eva/Daisy’ death. Though at first Gerald believes the Inspector’s “unofficial” status with the police department might make the events of the evening a total hoax, Gerald does admit to Sheila in Act Three that his confession to the affair in Act Two is genuine. He reiterates that he realises the consequences of having an affair, even if Eva/Daisy did not actually commit suicide. Sheila’s relationship with Gerald is perhaps the most functional and honest in the play. It is an example of what happens when two people speak to each other about their misdeeds, and then attempt afterwards to reconcile. At the end of the play, Sheila and Gerald leave open the possibility that they might reunite as a couple, even after what they have learned about each other.

Quote Analysis**

''I don’t dislike you as I did half an hour ago, Gerald. In fact, in some odd way, I rather respect you more than I’ve ever done before.'' - Sheila (says to Gerald in Act Two, after the revelation of his affair with Eva/Daisy) Here she acknowledges that, at the very least, Gerald has been honest with her and with himself over the course of the evening. His relationship with Eva/Daisy has caused both Eva/Daisy and Sheila great pain, but Gerald seems willing to accept this. He doesn't refute what transpired between him and Daisy, offering that someone in similar circumstances might have acted the same way he did. This impulse is ambiguous. On the one hand, Gerald could be trying to rationalise and normalise his behaviour as a way of saving face in front of the family and his fiancee. But it could also be a forthright acknowledgement of what he has done, and what was motivating his actions while he was choosing to carry them out.

Sheila reserves her respect for Gerald’s admission here. She does not respect the other members of her family in nearly the same way, because these family members have not gone to Gerald’s lengths in attempting to make sense of what they have done, and to accept the culpability that arrives with that attempt. In particular, Sheila is aghast at the idea that Arthur might simply carry on as if nothing has happened. Sheila realizes that Arthur and Sybil’s primary concerns are their appearance and what might become of them in social circles. They do not care what they have learned about each other. For Sheila, this is genuinely shocking and seems only to give credence to what the Inspector is saying, that many people in contemporary society care only for their own personal advancement. In addressing Gerald, Sheila believes that perhaps there is more to him than this mere desire for money, adulation, and achievement

Quote Analysis***

''If you think you can bring any pressure to bear on me, Inspector, you’re quite mistaken. Unlike the other three, I did nothing I’m ashamed of or that won’t bear investigation.'' Sybil (says to the Inspector in Act Two as she discusses her charity) In this quote, a direct counterpoint to her daughter Sheila. Refuses to believe that what she has done in denying money to the Eva/Daisy is wrong. Instead, Sybil believes that she upheld the procedures of the charity of which she was the head. This resembles the justification that Arthur gives for protecting his profits above the well-being of his workers. Both Arthur and Sybil argue that it is for the businessman to protect his interests, and for the keeper of a charity to protect the “good name” of that organisation and its principles.

Because Eva/Daisy appears to lie about her circumstances due to prejudices against unwed mothers at the time, Sybil thinks that it is acceptable to refuse her request. Sybil has no guilt about this and does not seem to change her mind, even after she learns that Eric is the father of Eva/Daisy’s child. This revelation serves only to upset Sybil and to cause her to believe that the family’s good name has been irrevocably sullied. Sybil, like Arthur, thinks that the worst fate that can befall anyone is a loss of social standing, or of good grace in the community. This is the extent to which Arthur and Sybil think about a community at all. For them, a community is a collection of individuals who have very little by way of responsibility to one another, and who encounter one another only in limited ways. But the Inspector hopes to prove to the Birling family throughout the play that such a conception is not only fundamentally wrong, but deeply damaging to the very fabric of society in which all humans live.

Quote Analysis****

''We don’t live alone. We are members of one body. We are responsible for each other. And I tell you that the time will soon come when if men will not learn that lesson, then they will be taught it in fire and blood and anguish. '' - Inspector (final speech to the family in Act Three, just before he leaves their house) It is the most obvious crystallisation of his thinking, which he has developed throughout the course of the play, and which seems to have motivated his very presence in the household. The Inspector’s version of socialism is particularly utopian. It seems related to Marxist critique of capitalist labour practices, which argues that owners of capital are inherently unwilling to consider the plight of those who work for them. In the Inspector’s view, humans quite simply have an obligation to one another because it is right in the abstract to care for other people, and, more urgently, because a world that ignores the connections between people is not a stable world at all.

Thus the Inspector’s speech is the ultimate instance in the text of dramatic irony and foreshadowing. For the Inspector predicts that the clash between individual and collective interests will produce need for reckoning throughout Europe and the West. It will have to sort out what belongs to whom, and what people owe to one another. This reckoning, the Inspector says, will not be pleasant or easy. And perhaps it could be avoided altogether if people were more willing to consider those outside their immediate social or family circles. Thus the Inspector is both a hardheaded pragmatist who warns of what can happen to society, and a utopian idealist who wants people to improve because he fundamentally believes that it is possible and right for them to do so. This speech serves as the final word from the Inspector, and he leaves just after. The family, with the exception of Sheila, spends the rest of play not thinking about what the Inspector has said, but wondering about his legitimacy to say it.