Priestley ends each act on a note of high drama. Write about the way he builds up the tension towards the end of each act. Describe how he leaves the audience with plenty to think about during the interval and after the play has finished.

The play “An Inspector Calls” written by J B Priestley, is a post 1914 play about a series of events that leads to the unfortunate suicide of the girl Eva Smith. The Birlings are interrupted during a celebratory meal by Inspector Goole who proceeds to question them about their role in Eva Smith’s death. While the younger members of the family accept responsibility for the girl’s death, the older Birlings refuse to acknowledge their input into Eva’s suicide.

Arthur Birling is a hard headed business man whose daughter, Sheila, is marrying into the rival family’s firm by getting engaged to Gerald Croft. Sybil Birling, Arthur’s wife, is head of a charity organisation, which helps young women when they have no money and nowhere to go. The son of the Birling family is Eric, who drinks heavily most nights and works at his fathers company. Throughout the play we get to see how all of these people added to Eva Smith’s misery and eventually led her to swallowing disinfectant to end her life of suffering.

Priestley’s play is set in the North Midlands in 1912. During this period, Britain was going through a difficult time. There were factory strikes, which resulted in people losing their jobs when they asked for better pay. This is significant in Priestley’s play because Eva Smith is sacked from Mr Birlings firm for protesting for twenty five shillings instead of her wage of twenty two shillings and sixpence a week. Mr Birling claimed that the Titanic was “unsinkable”, this is ironic because the Titanic sank during its first voyage.

However, Priestley wrote the play in 1946. This meant he could use a lot of dramatic irony. Dramatic irony is when the complete meaning of a speech or situation is fully understood by the audience but not by the characters on stage. This device adds tension in the play because one character could also know something that the others do not. In “An Inspector Calls”, Priestley wrote that Mr Birling said that Germany didn’t want war. This is an example of dramatic irony because the audience knows that a war against Germany began soon after the period when the play is set.

J B Priestley uses dramatic irony throughout the play, although he mainly uses it at the end of each act to build up tension. At the end of Act One, Gerald gives himself away when he realises his involvement in the suicide. Inspector Goole has just stated that Eva Smith changed her name to Daisy Renton. Gerald says:

Gerald: (startled) What?

(Page 24)

Sheila knows instantly from his reaction that this is confirmation that Gerald has had an affair.

The stage direction here also adds suspense at the end of the Act. Gerald is startled ...

This is a preview of the whole essay

Gerald: (startled) What?

(Page 24)

Sheila knows instantly from his reaction that this is confirmation that Gerald has had an affair.

The stage direction here also adds suspense at the end of the Act. Gerald is startled when he learns what he has done to the girl. This increases tension because the audience want to know why Gerald is so astounded. Upon finding out why Gerald is startled, the audience sees Sheila “laugh rather hysterically” when Gerald will not take responsibility for his actions. This implies that Sheila is out of control at this stage and is very upset at Gerald.

The audience now wants to know if the Inspector heard Sheila and Gerald’s conversation. They will also be wondering if any other characters have played a part in the suicide.

In the interval between Act One and Act Two, the audience is left thinking about why Gerald had an affair while he was with Sheila. The audience would also be thinking about how greedy and pompous Mr Birling is for thinking about his own gain when Sheila and Gerald marry, and not about his daughters happiness. It’s no wonder there were so many strikes when employers were so unreasonable. In addition, the audience now knows how spoilt Sheila is, she calls her mother “mummy” and was so highly thought of at Milwards that she was able to manipulate the manager into dismissing Eva Smith from her job.

At the end of Act Two, Priestley uses dramatic irony again. Mrs Birling is talking about the father of Eva’s child, and she describes him as:

“Silly and wild and drinking too much”

(Page 44)

The audience realises that this is the perfect description of her son Eric, while the other characters do not notice this yet. Sheila though, realises that Eric is the father much earlier than the other characters. She tries to prevent her mother from commenting on how the father should take responsibility for getting Eva pregnant.

Sheila: (with sudden alarm) Mother – stop – stop!

(Page 46)

The audience watches as Sheila acknowledges Eric as the father and tries to stop her mother from saying something she would regret. The stage direction here adds suspense as only Sheila realises Eric’s involvement and yet the audience wants Mrs Birling to realise so that Mrs Birling will stop insulting her son unknowingly.

In the last few lines of the play, Priestley uses silence to create tension. The stage direction used here is:

“They wait, looking towards door”

(Page 47)

This implies how much suspense there is at this moment in the play as everyone realises Eric’s involvement with Eva.

In the interval between Acts Two and Three, the audience will be left thinking about how many men had affairs in 1912. In that time, women who went to bars were not ordinary women, they were prostitutes. They were readily available for many men and that was why so many had affairs. The audience also discovers that when Gerald first meets Eva, he is a perfect gentleman. He feeds her and soon finds her a place to stay and provides her with some money to live on. But later the audience discovers that he had sexual intercourse with her while he was with Sheila, which isn’t very gentlemanly. We also discover that Mrs Birling has a very arrogant attitude towards Eva. Mrs Birling talks about how she isn’t to blame for Eva’s death and how she should not have to take any responsibility for it. The audience are also left thinking at this time about how Eric knew Eva. They’re wondering if she got pregnant after he paid her for sex when she was a prostitute.

Dramatic irony is used at the end of Act Three, like at the end of Acts One and Two. Here, the characters in the play begin to question if the inspector is really who he says he is.

Birling: …Somebody put that fellow up to coming here and hoaxing us

(Page 60)

The audience know that the inspector is a ghost by now but Mr Birling doesn’t, this is why it is dramatic irony. Priestley gave him the name Inspector Goole. This looks and sounds like two words that mean ghost – spectre and ghoul. The audience could therefore be thinking that the inspector might have been haunting the Birling family as a ghost because of all of the things they kept from one another. They wonder if Eva Smith really did call herself Daisy Renton. At the end, Mr Birling confirms that Inspector Goole was a hoax after having receiving a call from the police. The characters learn that a new police officer will be coming to interview them and the stage direction used here is

“stare guiltily and dumbfounded”

(Page 69)

This adds tension as the final stage direction of the play. It leaves the audience with many unanswered questions about what really happened and what would happen if the play continued after Act Three.

At the end of “An Inspector Calls”, the audience are left wondering if there really was an Eva Smith? Or does Inspector Goole make up the entire thing to trick Gerald and the Birling family into revealing all of the secrets they have hidden from each other? The audience may have realised that only the younger characters took responsibility for their roles in the suicide. Mr and Mrs Birling would not recognise their own part in the girl’s death.

Priestley makes the characters and the audience look at the social problems of unemployment and female inequality. In the play, in 1912, women were thought to be the weaker sex, less important than males. Women then, in 1946, and now want to be treated the same as men. They want equal opportunities to succeed which women didn’t have in Priestley’s time. Women were expected to stay at home and cook and clean while their husbands brought in the money. Now, in 2004, many women have better jobs and earn more money than their husbands. This shows how society has progressed since Priestley’s time. Priestley also causes his characters and audience to look at moral problems like selfishness and ignorance. In “An Inspector Calls”, the older generation would not accept responsibility for their actions while the younger characters did. This means that Sheila and Gerald realise their mistakes and will try not to make them again while Mr and Mrs Birling may cause someone else to kill themselves by making the same mistakes again. In 1946 there had been two world wars and Priestley was expecting there to be a third because nobody would take responsibility and admit that war was probably not the best option. This relates to the world today in 2004. President Bush went to war with Iraq because he thought that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction. Iraq was searched and no evidence and any weapons were found. President Bush is yet to admit that he was wrong to go to war without definite proof of weapons, and he probably never will, so the same thing could happen again. This is what Priestley was trying to show in his play – although accepting responsibility is hard; it is better for everyone in the long run.

Samantha Tresler