"You and I aren't the same people who sat down together before dinner" Sheila [to Gerald], An Inspector Calls, Act II

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M. Bovey 11B                                           16th-28th November 1998

”You and I aren‘t the same people who sat down together before dinner”

Sheila [to Gerald], An Inspector Calls, Act II

To what extent do you feel that the Characters are changed by the Inspector‘s visit? How do various attitudes, in your opinion, reflect

Social, Cultural and Historical values, both of the time in which the play

is set and in the time in which it was written?

An Inspector Calls, by J.B. Priestly, is the story of the visit by an Inspector to an apparently normal family, the Birlings. They are celebrating Sheila Birling‘s engagement to Gerald Croft, who is also present, when the Inspector arrives telling them of the suicide of a young girl called Eva Smith. At first they deny any knowledge of the girl, but as the play goes on the Inspector manages to show that they all helped kill her. Mr Birling had her dismissed from his factory for demanding a small increase in wages; Sheila ordered her to be dismissed from her job in a shop simply because of her pride; Gerald Croft kept her as his mistress before leaving her suddenly; Eric Birling (Mr & Mrs Birling‘s son) also had an affair with the girl and stole money to keep her living; and Mrs Birling used her influence to deny help to Eva Smith when she needed it most, driving her to suicide.

After the Inspector‘s visit we can see which of the characters have learned their lesson from what the Inspector has said and which are steadfastly clinging to their old beliefs. The differing attitudes between the older and younger characters are shown by their conversations following the Inspector‘s departure.

It is Birling‘s speech in Act 1 that sets the scene for the action in the play. Birling is confidently talking to Eric and Gerald about what he thinks about the future. He thinks of everything in business terms (for example, he says to Gerald that he hopes that his firm and Gerald‘s father‘s will become partners) and also is a man who thinks that a man should make his own way in life and does not believe in living in a ”community.• He disregards the people who preach this philosophy of everyone living together and looking after each other as ”cranks.•

It is at this point that the Inspector enters the play, interrupting Birling in his speech. In this way he can be seen as Priestly‘s response to Birling‘s opinions and he soon begins to tear down the ideas that Birling thrives on.

On hearing of Eva Smith‘s death Birling is at first dismissive of what has happened, saying that he does not see what the events have to do with him. Birling also repeats his earlier opinion on community, telling the Inspector that he ”can‘t accept any responsibility• for what happened to her, even though it may have been a chain of events. He believes that if everyone was responsible for each other, ”it would be very awkward.•

When asked why he dismissed Eva Smith for asking for a relatively modest wage increase, Birling tries to defend himself by citing financial reasons. He is surprised when the Inspector asks why he refused the increase as he is sure the Inspector will agree with him. Birling again shows his disregard for other people when he says that if Eva Smith did not like working at his company she could ”go and work somewhere else - it‘s a free country• This view is undermined when Eric points out that ”it isn‘t if you can‘t work somewhere else•.

As the Inspector‘s interviews with the other characters Birling becomes more and more agitated and stage directions to describe his mood such as ”bothered, angrily and sharply• show that he is not in a good frame of mind. He appears to be slowly learning his lesson but is getting very angry as he sees that all he believes in is wrong. As he discovers the revelations about Eric‘s theft of the money he becomes more and more desperate, and just before the Inspector‘s departure he says he will give ”thousands• to keep the story quiet. Birling is told by the Inspector that he is ”offering the money at the wrong time• and Eva Smith will make him pay ”a heavy price• in terms of emotion, not money.

After the Inspector‘s departure Birling admits that he has ”learnt a lot• from his visit. However, he immediately singles out Eric as ”you‘re the one I blame for this [the scandal]•, so he still seems to have little notion of community as he should, if he had learnt anything, be saying ”we‘re the ones to blame for this•. Instead he seems to be shifting blame from himself. We can also see that as soon as the characters begin to construct doubts about the legitimacy of the Inspector he tries to find a way out of his predicament. As the story unravels he becomes ”excited• on discovering that the Inspector is not real and soon he has managed to put the whole episode out of his head, despite protests from Eric and Sheila who try to tell him that ”you still haven‘t learnt anything.• Birling is far more concerned about what may happen if the news comes out in public than whatever he did to Eva Smith and makes fun of Eric and Sheila for ”not being able to take a joke•. However, the phone call he receives at the end of the play is not at all funny to him.

To sum up, from the play we can see that when Birling preaches his ”every man for himself• philosophy he is very assured that he is right. The Inspector‘s questioning manages to make him change his mind slightly although he is still sure of what he believes in. When he sees a chance to get out of the embarrassing situation he has been put into he grabs it with both hands and manages to forget the lesson he has learnt during the evening.

Sheila is probably the character who changes the most during the play. At the start of the action she is very happy about her engagement, ”pleased with life and rather excited•.  However, even at this point we pick up some of the qualities in her that are so marked later in the play, such as her clear stating of opinions which can be seen when she half-teases Gerald about his absence during the summer and her opinion of wine drinkers. Sheila‘s reaction on receiving her engagement ring from Gerald show her state of mind:

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”Sheila:  Oh - it‘s wonderful! Look - Mummy - isn‘t it a beauty? Oh - darling!•

Sheila appears to be inattentive over her father‘s speeches at the dinner table and has to be told to listen. This suggests that she neither find his opinions interesting nor agrees with them, which may point to her future conduct in the play.

Sheila‘s explanation of her conduct when interviewed by the Inspector shows how naive and thoughtless she was up to that point. However, unlike Birling she feels very upset about her conduct, shown by her running out of ...

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