In addition to Mr Birling, his cold-hearted, stubborn, naive and prejudiced wife Mrs Birling, is nearly on the same wave length as him. As a wife she is pretty successful: she is loyal to Arthur, despite telling him off now and again. She runs the household and is on her husband’s side towards the end, telling the children to be quiet while Mr Birling decides what to do with himself. Mrs Birling is a great believer in the rules of social behaviour. She tries to enforce these standards, which she thinks maintain the family’s status in society. Much to her regret, she has to keep telling the others off, pointing out that they are not behaving appropriately. The stage directions tell us she is Mr Birling’s ‘Social superior’. She reprimands her husband for going on too long in his incredible speeches about the state of the world. Throughout the play Mrs Birling doesn’t change at all. She doesn’t learn a single thing from the Inspector. She regrets only one thing, and that’s not having the chance to have ‘asked him a few questions’. In my opinion, I feel that Mrs Birling is a snob, very aware of the differences between social classes. She is irritated when Mr Birling makes the social gaffe of praising the cook in front of Gerald and later is very dismissive of Eva, saying ‘Girls of that class…’ She also tries to deny things that she does not want to believe for example, that a working class girl would refuse money even if it was stolen, claiming ‘she was giving herself ridiculous airs’. Yet, towards the end of the play like her husband, she refuses to believe that she did anything wrong and does not accept responsibility for her part in Eva’s death.
Throughout the play, the setting is taking place in the dining room so the setting is constant. The setting and lighting, are very important. Priestly describes the scene in detail at the opening of Act 1, so that the audience has the immediate impression of a ‘heavily comfortable house’. Priestly says that the lighting should be ‘pink and intimate’ before the Inspector arrives and then in contrast, ‘brighter and harder’ when the Inspector has arrived, it is like a spotlight has turned on in the Birling’s cosy world. The lighting reflects the mood of the play. There is a subtle hint that not is all as it seems. For example, early on we wonder whether the happy atmosphere is slightly forced. Shelia wonders where Gerald was last summer, Eric is nervous about something and Lord and lady Croft did not attend the engagement dinner. This arouses interest in the audience; we want to find out what is going on. The dramatic effects used in the setting are that the dinning room is more like a court room, as it does not change. Moreover, it is like a fly on a wall and we the audience, are watching over this great piece of dramatic tension, as to focus on them. The Birlings have chosen to shut themselves in their ivory tower, over looking from their coyness. Also the dinning becomes their prison, it that short space of time and the Inspector is interviewing them one by one.
Throughout JB Priestley’s play of ‘An Inspector Calls’ there is a lot of irony and this is another dramatic technique, and the stage directions are important in helping us, the audience, to imagine exactly what is going on; they can help us picture each character's actions and reactions. In the course of ‘An Inspector Calls’ the Birling family and Gerald Croft change from a state of great self-satisfaction to a state of extreme self-doubt, Priestley specifically wanted us to feel disdain fault for Birling. The audience knows how wrong Mr Birling is when he makes confident predictions about there not being a war and is excited about sailing of The Titanic, famously; the ship sank on her maiden voyage. This puts the audience at an advantage over the characters deliberately helps us feel Birling is a short-sighted fool. Another use of dramatic irony is when Arthur gives his speech about the state of the world. As this play was written in 1945 but set in 1912, the post war audiences would know that he was very very wrong. When Arthur is boasting to Gerald that he may be getting a knighthood, he says that all the family will have to do is ‘keeping out of trouble’. This is seconds before the Inspector enters with trouble for the family, this is the dramatic irony. The audience is able to sense that all is not well in the world. The audience knows stuff that the characters do not.
There is a lot of as each member of the family is found to have played a part in Eva's death. Each piece of evidence the audience is interested in how each character reacts to the revelations. The most central part of the play for Birling is the scene in which he learns that his own son is shown to be a thief, a drunkard and is responsible for fathering a child. When he learns of all this, he exclaims ‘You damned fool – why didn’t you come to me when you found yourself in this mess?’ We realise that Birling was not the kind of father Eric could have felt comfortable opening up to him. Timing of entrances and exits is crucial. For example, the Inspector arrives immediately after Birling has told Gerald about his impending knighthood and about how ‘a man has to look after himself and his own’.
Mr Birling continues to ignore the shameful things that his family has done. When it appears that the Inspector might be a fraud he is happy to believe that everything is as it was a few hours ago. He copies the Inspector and laughs when he remembers the faces of Eric and Shelia and accuses them of being ‘the famous younger generation who know it all’. This is an example of pride coming before a fall a moment later of course he is panicking as the phone rings again. Priestley uses this dramatic device, of timing, as a way of how things can change so quickly. It is like waking them out of their compact lifestyle, and now they have opened their eyes and they can see what their life is actually like and what is happening outside their personal life.
The ending leaves the audience on a cliff hanger. In Act 3, the Birlings believe they are now safe and everything is fine and they begin to settle down from their caught up tension, however, the Birlings find and discover that the Inspector was not real and that no girl had died in the infirmary. This releases some tension, and causes celebration and return of the smug attitude, but the final telephone call, announcing that a real inspector is on his way to ask questions about the suicide of a young girl, suddenly restores the tension very dramatically. It is an unexpected final twist. This narrative plot keeps the audience intrigued.
On the arrival of Inspector Goole, this brings such chaos to the scene. The Inspector is blunt in his questioning. For example, he asks WHY birling refused his factory girls a pay rise. Arthur can not believe it, saying, ‘Did you say ‘Why?’ he is not used to being spoken to like this. The Inspector ‘drip feeds’ the Birling’s and Gerald with information and drops hints, when he finds out who Gerald is and say, ‘Then I’d prefer you to stay.’ This keeps them on their toes, they can not relax. The Inspector melodramatically shows the photos to some characters and not others, and always one at a time. He even sticks himself between people so they can not see properly, this is visually striking. Everyone in the dinning room, and the audience, can hear this, they are left wounding whose coming and who’s going. The Inspector also communicates differently from the rest of them of the characters. He does not mess about, he specks his mind and he does not waffle he describes Eva/Daisy’s death as having ‘Burnt her inside out’. This contrasts with Birling’s long speech at the beginning of Act one.
J.B Priestley deliberately freezes the action between the Acts to create tension, I noticed this when we went to see the National Theatre production of it. Then end of Act one is a crucial moment. The Inspector returns, looks ‘steadily and searchingly’ at Shelia and Gerald and says ‘Well?’ Then the Act ends. When Act two starts, everyone is in the same position and the Inspector repeats the question. The audience is left hanging, wondering what Gerald has been up to, the audience’s imagination plays a key part in building up the suspense. Another moment when this dramatic technique is used is when the door slams. Everyone is in the dining room and suspects that Eric is the father of Daisy/Eva’s child. Eric enters ‘looking extremely pale and distressed’. When Act three begins time has not moved on, and they are all in the same positions. Priestley teases the audience again and makes them wait for Eric’s confession.
The historical content of ‘An Inspector Calls’ is that it was written in 1944 and it was staged the year the Second World War ended. This was when there was a social divided and now there is not. We could blame the Birlings for the war. The play might have been set in the past, however, it was the propose of the future. After Priestley had finished the play he sent it to Moscow, where it received a world premiere. Moscow was the home of Communism and an experience in the equality that Priestley believed in. The play fits the mood of 1945 in calling for major social change.