Priestley then goes on about gender rights and how the men did all the hard work, earned the money and celebrated whilst the material-based women stayed at home to look after the house and buy things to keep themselves amused. There were double standards at the time, men were also allowed to ‘go about town’ whilst the women were at home, giving men more freedom and power over their inferior gender. This was a very touchy subject at the time; women were beginning to get more and more power and made differences to society such as in 1918 when they were first able to vote in a general election. However, with this event taking place after the play was set, this gave Priestley the advantage of hindsight and the opportunity to use dramatic irony. This is seen in Sheila’s character, she’s a spoilt, childish woman who is unable to make decisions herself, evident when she says, ‘Oh – Gerald – you’ve got it – is it the one you wanted me to have?’ This shows her inability to make decisions and how men are the more dominant gender, making women’s decisions themselves without consulting them. Priestley is showing how rude and immoral things were before World War I and makes the audience realise how things should never be like this again.
Dramatic irony is used very wisely by Priestley and makes Mr. Birling look like a fool. Birling makes a speech about conflict, how everything will be fine and free of violence and that the world will be free of problems. He says that strikes between workers and their bosses will come to nothing. But he’s wrong; in 1912 there was the Lawrence textile strike, the audience of 1946 having the hindsight of knowing this. He then goes on to say that the technologically advanced Titanic ship is ‘unsinkable, absolutely unsinkable’. Yet again, he is wrong. Priestley purposely made this character to emphasise the negatives of capitalism and how their beliefs are all wrong. This makes him look overconfident and stupid, a thought that sticks with the audience throughout the play with Birling being the most hated character of the play.
The mood swiftly changes from relaxed to tense once the Inspector makes an appearance. The lighting of the set changes from pink, relaxed ‘rose-tinted spectacles’ to bright, harsh, interrogative lighting. This lifts off the façade and puts the family under pressure, unseen previously and creates tension to see how the characters will react when things become serious. The audience are now able to see the bare truth of how the Birlings feel guilt and nervousness as soon as the Inspector arrives; the Birlings know they have done wrong and may possibly be punished upon interrogation.
Priestley presents the Inspector as an unusual policeman during this Act because firstly: he is unfamiliar to Arthur Birling (who is very knowledgeable of his local police force). The Inspector then refuses Birling’s offer of port, yet again unusual to Mr. Birling. This can be related to the Inspector’s unusual name, Goole – a ghost-like figure that is mysterious, unnoticeable and a messenger of the dead (Eva Smith in this case). His name is a play on words as Goole is also the name of a seaport town, Priestley implying that Goole is ‘fishing’ for information from the Birlings and ‘catching’ the criminals. The Inspector uses unorthodox methods which unnerve even the close friend of the Chief Inspector. He keeps his cards close to his chest, only revealing when is appropriate to get maximum efficiency from this case. He uses ‘perhaps’ and ‘possibly’ often to make the people being interrogated question his methods and to keep the audience guessing. Not a single one of the characters suspects that there might be anything ‘ghostly’ about him until after he’s gone and they’ve had a chance to recover, a very important part of the play as this shows how effective the Inspector was in revealing the truth of the family. To think that he’s only a regular man and not a police inspector is beyond belief; he had a very powerful/ mysterious stance above the suspects, something no ordinary person could do.
The Inspector never backs down to his social superiors and has a confrontational style towards the Birlings. Whatever they have to say, the Inspector fights back and always tends to win. This is seen when Arthur Birling tries to show he is a man of power and influence and tries desperately to win him over – he says he’s a ‘former Lord Mayor’. Birling also tries to put the Inspector down by boasting he knows about most of the town’s police officers. But the Inspector is not in the slightest bemused and just disregards all of Birling’s attempts to impress him, by saying ‘quite so’ then swiftly continuing. Arthur Birling is not used to taking orders from anyone – he controls the money and his family. The Inspector is a challenge to his authority, Birling only caring about this and not about the part he played in Eva Smith’s death. This again shows the façade that the family put on, everything has to be perfect and any interruptions will have to be dealt with, in this case the Inspector.
The Inspector is a key character in the play and is crucial to plot progression. He is the catalyst, the person who drives things forward, makes things happen and takes complete control of the situation, no matter what anyone else has to say. It is almost as if the Inspector is the puppeteer, he plays with the characters to find out what he needs in his own way The play is named after him, ‘An Inspector Calls’ showing the significance of his character. ‘Calls’ is a deceptive word to use about the Inspector. The way he operates may appear casual and spontaneous, but in fact it’s single minded and calculating. He is a very grave character, taking nothing lightly and killing the mood, helping to force the suspects to take him seriously. This is seen in the line, ‘It’s the way I like to go to work. One person and one line of inquiry at a time.’ Goole makes everything to go his way with no light-hearted actions.
Morality plays were typically religious plays written in the Middle Ages teaching the wrongs and rights in life. They tended to make reference to the seven deadly sins (pride, lust, envy, gluttony, anger, sloth and covetousness) and tried to teach people how to behave. They were mainly preaches and warnings about the perils of temptations and not for entertainment purposes. ‘An Inspector Calls’ follows the same kind of idea as these morality plays – it’s quite blunt in pointing out everyone’s sins, and tries to get them to confess and repent.
Without the Inspector, we would know hardly anything about the other characters and we would only see the ever-present façade. An example of this is when the Inspector traps Mrs. Birling into condemning her own son by allowing her to reveal all she had to say and delaying his questioning to the perfect timing (upon Eric’s arrival). Goole repeats her responses, as if to confirm them, such as, ‘MRS. BIRLING: He is entirely responsible’,
‘INSPECTOR: He’s the chief culprit’,
‘MRS BIRLING: Certainly’
He reinforces her statements and makes her aware, slowly but surely, that her son is the culprit, she has revealed all there is to say. The Inspector didn’t force anything out of her, his clever methods of reinforcing statements and not quite answering questions precisely (‘it might be’ being an example) tricked Sybil Birling into revealing all. She only realises too late that Eric might be the father of Eva’s unborn child. This is due to her being a braggart; thinking that the lower class people are morally inferior and that there is no way they would be related to anything the family does. They’re objects of scorn to her. She doesn’t even consider that her own son might be involved.
The Inspector holds many roles, the most important being the omniscient narrator (the word ‘omni’ meaning all in Latin) in which he is the all-knowing, all-seeing and all-doing character which enhances his catalyst role. Whilst he is a narrator, he is also a part of the play not just a descriptor of what is happening in each scene. He is pugnacious towards the other characters as he wants to fully control the situation and fulfil his ‘duty’, especially Mr. Birling. This commanding manner of the situation by the Inspector is seen right at the start when he makes his entrance; the Inspector immediately interrupts Birling whilst he is making a speech with ‘a sharp ring of the door bell’. This shows how he has an air of ‘massiveness, solidity and purposefulness’, he will only leave once his ‘duty’ is solely carried out.
The Inspector refers to this interrogation being ‘his duty’ more than once but he doesn’t mean a legal duty. By saying ‘It is my duty’, he refers to his moral duty to make things right and to punish those who have done wrong, not his legal duty to imprison the criminals. We see this towards the end of the play, when Eric says, ‘he was our police inspector all right.’ Both he and Sheila realise that it doesn’t matter whether Goole was a real police inspector or not, the inquisition wasn’t a legal one, it was a moral one. This represents Priestley’s strong moral and socialist views that people are responsible for how they affect others and that everyone should help each other as a community. The Inspector is used as Priestley’s voice and is Priestley’s way of communicating his socialist message to the audience without saying it himself; Priestley was already in a lot of trouble with the Conservative government during World War II after his weekly radio show was cancelled for being too left-wing so this disguise of using the Inspector was very cleverly thought through by Priestley.
At different points, the Inspector drops hints of what he is going to reveal. He plays a power game and it causes complete and utter chaos amongst the family. For example, he only shows the photo of the victim to one person at a time and hints that ‘there might be a serious reason for that’. This makes the family anxious – this is strengthened by Sheila’s suspicion that he ‘knows everything about us’. The others are confused for most of the play, but the Inspector never is, he is in complete command and knows exactly what is going on.
The Inspector doesn’t conform to any of the Birling’s ideas about class. He treats everyone the same. He doesn’t stoop to their level, not using terms like ‘of that class’ like the Birlings do – for him, Eva Smith was just ‘a young woman’, not a lower class, poor, begging, worthless, homeless girl as Mr. Birling portrays her. The Inspector is representing Priestley here; he knows there’s more to life than class.
The Inspector is also used as a conscience to most of the characters, especially Sheila. Sheila was a very childish, excited young woman towards the beginning of the play in which she was a stereotypical girl of the time. Yet upon Goole’s arrival and his interrogation of her, she begins to think for herself and regrets her silly behaviour. Her conscience develops as the play goes on, her mind growing up mentally and morally and she shocks her family by arguing back at them. An example of her honesty is when she confesses to getting Eva Smith fired at Milwards, she seems very sorrowful in saying it’s the only time that sort of thing has happened, and she’ll ‘never do it again to anybody’. She seems genuinely remorseful and does seem to have learnt a lesson; the Inspector dramatically changing Sheila’s behaviour and way of thinking. Goole has shown that Sheila seems to be the only human of the suspects; she can admit to her mistakes and reveal them, wiping away the façade that is covering them up.
Inspector Goole came into the house to stir things up and to show the Birlings the reality of life – to get a reaction. One way of doing this is to stir up his listeners with emotive language. His descriptions of Eva Smith do this. For example he describes Eva as a ‘pretty and lively girl who died in misery and agony – hating life’. Sheila reacts sorrowfully and sympathetically towards his disheartening descriptions, but after his final speech, everyone is affected. The Inspector’s leaving speech has a strange, powerful and prophetic quality about it, they summarise the play’s philosophy about how society is so uneven; the audience at the time were especially influenced by the line, ‘if men will not learn that lesson, then they will be taught in fire & blood & anguish,’ as they were just recovering from the devastation of World War II. The speech is the dramatic peak of the play, affecting every character significantly, leaving them ‘staring, subdued and wondering.’ Sheila is ‘quietly crying’, Mrs. Birling has ‘collapsed into a chair’, Eric is ‘brooding desperately’ and Mr. Birling ‘hastily swallows’ a drink. The Inspector leaves a lasting mark on the family but leaves them to solve their own problems, he has no interest. He’s the voice of morality in this play, pronouncing his judgement of society and disappearing, like the ‘ghoul’ he is.
To conclude, Inspector Goole is a very effective dramatic device used by Priestley in this play as the Inspector ultimately drives the plot forward, without him everything would be secretive (‘rose-tinted spectacles’) and bland. He provides mystery and uncertainty, creating tension amongst the audience and spreads Priestley’s emphatic message of socialism to the world, of how we must recognise and confess our wrongdoings and make our planet a better place, it is what we were put on this planet to do. Who knew a ‘tall man who is clean shaven’ could provide such intensity, power and righteousness to a ‘ghoulish’ role as a false police inspector? Priestley did of course, and used it to great effect, capturing audience’s imaginations worldwide and by creating one of the best mystery plays of the modern era. The Inspector is an influential character, changing the ways the characters lived their lives and shaping the world we live in today.