Yes, yes. Horrible business. But I don't understand why you should come here, Inspector.
Neither does the audience at first, but Goole's slow unravelling of the connections between Eva Smith and every member of the Birling household forms the central fascinating strand of the plot.
The shape of his investigation is dictated by the needs of the audience rather than strict police procedure. His questions to each member of the family re-tell the events of the final part of Eva Smith's life in chronological order, whereas a more naturalistic approach would have been to start with the events immediately leading up to the suicide and work backwards from there. Goole's statement about his methods could just as easily be about the demands of the drama itself
It's the way I like to go to work. One person and one line of inquiry at a time. Otherwise there's a muddle.
The chronological approach is also echoed by deepening moral lapses on the part of the Birling household. Birling himself commits the mild sin of greed when he has a disruptive union organiser sacked. Sheila is guilty of little more than a fit of pique when she has the same girl dismissed from her job in a shop. Gerald and Eric both commit fornication, but Eric compounds his sin with drunkenness, theft and getting Eva (now known as Daisy Renton) pregnant. Mrs Birling adds hypocrisy to her lack of Christian charity when dealing with the despairing young woman. All of this storytelling is of course masterminded by Inspector Goole, who gives each character the chance to reveal his or her part in the sordid affair. Sheila begins to understand this when she remarks.
No he's giving us rope - so that we'll hang ourselves.
In the telling of the story then, Inspector Goole is a staging device. Without him and his apparent foreknowledge of the part played by each person in Eva Smith's life, the play would lack any shape or tension. However, we must also add other aspects to this central role.
Just as he is the centre of the plot, the Inspector is the moral centre of the play. During the course of the investigation it does not occur to anyone to ask what crime has been committed and indeed no crime has been committed by any legal definition. The Inspector, it seems, is a 'moral policeman' whose duty is not to uncover crime, but sin. In this role he is only partially successful. Eric and Sheila, from the outset, are visibly shaken by the news of Eva Smith's death, whilst their parents grow increasingly defensive about their involvement with the girl's death. The children show compassion and deep regret for what has happened to Eva. Eric's sensitivity is evident in
I understand a lot of things now I didn't understand before.
In contrast to Eric's understanding is Mrs Birling's arrogance and apathy in:
Well, really, I don't know. I think we've just about come to an end of this wretched business -
Mr Birling displays similar arrogance when the Inspector reminds him that
Public men … have responsibilities as well as privileges.
To which Mr Birling replies:
Possibly. But you weren't asked to come here to talk about my responsibility.
The moral poverty of the Birling parents is clearly demonstrated, as is that of Gerald, when it appears that Inspector might not be a real police officer after all.
By the end of the play Goole appears to be the embodiment of a kind of collective conscience. His investigations force each person to face up to his or her sins, no matter how they respond in other ways.
But each of you helped to kill her. Remember that. Never forget it.
Goole's departure presents the audience with one further possibility. It seems that the Inspector is not a real police officer and it is possible that the Eva Smith did not exist as a single person. The Inspector never showed her picture to two people at a time and for a time it seems to the older members of the household that Eva Smith's story has been constructed from that of a whole series of young women that the family had abused. As if this coup de theatre was not enough, Priestly turns the tables again when it is announced that a real policeman is on his way. In this case who is Goole? The spirit of Eva Smith? A moralistic busybody who found her diary? A socialist agitator wishing to strike a blow against the arrogant upper classes? All these are possibilities for the audience to discuss as the play closes.
J B Priestly has used the naturalistic setting of an Edwardian dining room to produce an old fashioned morality play, and at the centre of all of his achievements is Inspector Goole. He is a plot device but he is also a moral policeman, an embodiment of the collective conscience and some kind of agent acting on behalf of the troubled spirit of a suicidal girl. He is not the same kind of character as the members of the Birling household, but if he had been more 'rounded' he would not have been able to play the many roles assigned to him.
