Later on in the play, act 3 Eric comes back and is now the next victim of Inspector Gool, he is more or less forced to confess his relationship towards Eva. He met her first in the Palace bar as Gerald did and they had a few drinks with her, later on he was quite drunk and they went to her lodgings. After a few more dates, Eva was going to have a baby. She didn’t want Eric to marry, so he gave her enough money to keep her going, but finally she refuses even this because she had found out that it has been stolen. Eric got it from his father’s office without asking, he took around £50 pound; which was allot in those days. The inspector left with the family arguing and discussing until Gerald returns and exposes the inspector as not real. And after a call to the local Infirmary, no girl has been brought in this afternoon who had committed suicide by drinking disinfectant, it’s seems clear that the whole thing had been a bluff. The family is relieved, but right then the phone rings: it’s the police, a girl had committed suicide and an inspector is on the way to ask some questions
The characters in the play represent different reactions from people when dealing with their role in responsibility. For example, it shows the audience how the character Sheila goes from being a classic Edwardian girl, in ignorance,
“Oh – how horrible! Was it an accident?” I wouldn’t say she was ignorant here, more naïve to the situation; she did not want to suggest that someone could of done this to themselves. Then she begins to become this elegant, emerging modern woman: educated and inquisitive, when confronted with responsibility. ‘I hate to think how much he knows that we don’t know yet.’ This is to Gerald, It is Sheila, not Gerald who immediately sees the power of the Inspector and the significance of his visit, and she senses the inevitability and doom that he brings for the mighty Birling family and desperately but unsuccessfully tries to get other family to change before it’s too late. Priestley uses Shelia’s character to highlight the gender hierarchy and with that the role in which women were expected to play; this was before the wars later to come. However, the play is still very popular today because of it’s relevance to social responsibilities, as well as such issues expressed surrounding class division and the attitudes of the rich.
The opening stage directions to the play state that the ‘Birling family’ are feeling very ‘pleased with themselves as life, on the surface, appears to be going rather well. The family is celebrating the recent engagement of Sheila, to a young man named Gerald Croft from an extremely respectable upper class background- a step up from the Birling family’s upper-middle class status. Although the couple are engaged Sheila comments on the whereabouts of Gerald the previous summer, ‘Yes- except for all last summer, when you never came near me, and I wondered what had happened to you’: this comment implies subtly to the audience that perhaps Gerald was with another women; maybe the engagement has been rushed into? You would expect ones partner to be aware of such activities. It also tells the audience that perhaps Sheila isn’t as naive as she first appears.
When the Inspector arrives Sheila and Mrs. Birling are sent out of the room by Mr. Birling- almost as if they were children. Sheila take your mother along to the drawing-room – …go on Sybil.’ This really highlights the authority that men had over women in those times to the audience; also how women were made to be kept in ignorance from matters seen as important or official. In the absence of his wife and daughter Mr. Birling passes comment to Gerald about women, ‘Yes, but you’ve got to remember, my boy, clothes mean something quite different to a woman’, this comment reveals a lot to the audience about the generation gap: the fact that Birling refers to Gerald as ‘my boy’, even though he is supposed to be a man, suggests that elders really treated the younger generation a lot more similarly to how children are treated now-a-days. Also, what Mr. Birling means by this comment is that women were not only supposed to discuss un-intelligent, un-important matters such as clothes but because of their lack of intelligence they used clothes as a way of showing how respectable or important they are to one another. The audience gets a real feel of what it was like to be a woman in those times, and as Sheila is not only a woman, but a young one, the audience also feels for her as she is at the bottom of importance in the family (her marriage to Gerald is probably the only thing she is praised for).
Although Mr. and Mrs. Birling show little or no sympathy towards their part in the suicide of a young working class woman “if you don’t come down hard on these people they’ll soon be asking for the earth.” Eva Smith- the audience are made to feel sorry for her. Priestly deliberately made the character Eva an attractive young woman, similar to Sheila but just from an opposite less privileged background. This was to highlight the massive class division to the audience and show them the huge advantage in life that the more upper class families were given. The audience becomes very aware of how the Birling family, who represent a typical upper-middle class family of those times, treat and behave towards the less fortunate lower class. However, this again highlights the generation gap between Mr. and Mrs. Birling and Sheila and Gerald. Sheila appears to be very sympathetic to Eva ‘You mustn’t try to build up a kind of wall between us and that girl.’ This is where Sheila realises that there is an undeniable connection between her family and Eva Smith. She tries unsuccessfully to warn her mother about not lying about her- undeniable involvement with Eva Smith; again it is Sheila shows her new maturity and lack of ignorance compared to the other family members, especially her parents. Sheila is now entirely aware of what the Inspector is there to do and the extent of his power and omniscience: The Birlings are being given an opportunity to own up to what they did to Eva Smith, to accept responsibility for their arrogant and selfish actions “I speak as a hard-headed business man.” As Mr birling shows throughout the three acts, they should ideally then go on to become better people as a result. Mrs Birling, her husband and Gerald refuse to listen to Sheila’s desperate attempt to warn them, and eventually pay the price at the end of the play, when the real Inspector arrives and their lives are forever and feel bad for her despite her oblivion to her role in her death. Priestley cleverly names the character Eva Smith, as Eva means first women and her surname Smith is not only associated with working class people with jobs such as black-smiths etc, but it translates meaning first working women; of course the audience learn throughout the play this is very much her role in society.
Throughout the play Priestly uses entrances and exists as a key dramatic device, he especially relates re-entrances from Shelia with her changing reactions to the Inspector and his inquiries’. After the Inspector reveals Sheila’s part in the suicide of Eva Smith, she exclaims- ‘oh I wish you hadn’t told me’- I think that the audience learn that Shelia feels guilt for what she has done, so much so that she would rather be oblivious to it than know of the truth. This aspect to Sheila completely changes after her confession and dramatic exit and re-entrance from stage. Sheila asks her first question to the Inspector which not only shows that she has become more inquisitive but that she is learning to accept responsibility for her bad actions, ‘So, I’m really responsible?’. The next significant thing that Sheila says, ‘At least I’m trying to tell the truth’ shows the audience the level of maturity and independence Shelia has reached, and how important ‘truth’ has become to her since the arrival of the inspector; unlike previously when the matter involving Gerald’s whereabouts was an un-resolved one.
So far in the play it has been revealed that both Mr. Birling and Sheila were both indirectly involved in the young Eva Smiths suicide, however, I think that most audience members will have soused out that each character will have had some involvement that the inspector will slowly reveal. The Inspector carries on with the story of how Eva Smith then changed her name to Daisy Renton and went on to try and start new; Gerald shows a reaction that only Sheila and the Inspector notice to the name and he suspiciously exists stage. This is a key turning point in the play as Sheila joins Gerald, slowly she pressures him into telling her what the audience most probably have already guessed- that Gerald had been seeing this Daisy Renton the previous summer when he ‘hardly came near’ Sheila. The couple join the rest of the family and as the new Shelia is all for the truth she persuades Gerald into coming clean about his brief affair with Daisy. Before Gerald goes into detail about this he insists that Sheila and Mrs. Birling leave the room, as it is believed Daisy Renton was prostituting at the Palace bar where they met and such a topic of discussion was seen as far too inappropriate for women to hear in those days. However this prompts Sheila into refusing to leave, showing a much more modern attitude of standing up to men and taking her right to hear what Gerald has to say into her own hands.
It is after the responsibility that Gerald was faced with, about how after dumping Eva she became more depressed, that the audience see a dramatic change in Sheila; she almost joins forces with the Inspector and becomes equivalent to his side kick. She adopts a catch phrase of ‘You’ll see’ implying to the rest of her family that the truth will come out and they will be proved wrong and need to accept responsibility as she did. The inspector also adopts a pairing catch phrase of ‘We’ll see’ which unites him and Sheila as almost a team and makes their new relationship clear to the audience.
After Mrs. Birling learns that she refused help to this girl in a time of desperate need, she shows no remorse the same as her husband, showing the audience the huge generation gap and attitudes that have developed in Sheila, Gerald and Eric. The Inspector then reveals the twist in the story of how it was Eric who got Daisy/Eva pregnant and it was then that she took her and her un-born child’s life as she was far too poor to look after herself- let alone a baby. Mr. and Mrs. Birling are devastated and concerned for their family’s reputation-more than their responsibility in the whole thing!
Eric and Sheila unite as the younger generation- and of course siblings- against their parents and rebel against almost everything they say. They realise that they need to change as people as it is too late for their narrow minded; quite harsh parents and with this truth and acceptance of responsibility is the way to do this.
All of these important issues that Priestly based ‘An Inspector Calls’ around are very resonant to the society we live in today. Although we have moved on hugely from when the play was set in 1912 there are still severe un-equalities in the world surrounding class division as well as gender hierarchy and the relevance of shared responsibility will always apply to society; Priestley’s play will always very rightly remind the audience of the importance of such serious issues. The audience witness Sheila’s character go on a huge journey from being told what to do and say and even how to think and feel to becoming and independent more open minded confident women. Then main issue I feel is that class is not everything, Eva Smith and Sheila where practically the same person but just from a different class. But because of them being from different classes it made them out to be very different women, the classism is in fact dangerous, suffocating, retrograde thing that class barriers should be broken down in the interests of building a better, fairer society.
Adhum carter
