An Inspector Calls - Priestley’s presentation on society’s value of the play.
Priestley’s Presentation on Society’s Value of the Play Varun Gupta “An Inspector Calls” is set on an evening in Spring of 1912. J.B. Priestley set the play in 1912 because life before the First World War was exactly the opposite of how people wanted life to be like after the Second World War. It takes place in the dining room of the Birling’s house in Brumley, an industrial city in the North Midlands. The play is based around a mysterious inspector, who calls at the Birling’s house to investigate the suicide of a young girl. The Birlings represent a typical Upper Class family of 1912. Their house represents their own ‘small’ world and the walls surrounding them are their protection from the outside world and reality. Mr. Birling is a hard headed businessman and sees most things as an opportunity for a new business venture, for example his daughters engagement to Gerald Croft, an aristocrat. Gerald’s father owns a company that is a rival to Mr Birling’s firm, Birling and Company. Mr Birling is hoping that the two companies may eventually merge. “... and now you’ve brought us together, and perhaps we may look forward to the time when Crofts and Birlings are no longer competing but are working together- for lower costs and higher prices.” Birling also hopes to improve his social status with Gerald and Sheila marrying, as Gerald’s family, the Crofts, are aristocrats. In the opening scene of Act One, the family and their guest, Gerald, who seem to be pleased with themselves and are obviously celebrating a special occasion and are seated around the dining table. Despite this ‘perfect’ image, the audience may be given an underlying sense of unease and tension. This is most likely due to ironic references to subjects like the Titanic and the impossibilities of war. Moments before the doorbell rings, Birling is explaining to Eric and Gerald how “a man has to mind his own business and look after himself and his own.” The doorbell rings at that precise moment to break the barrier between the outside world, which the family are building. It reminds them and the audience that it is impossible to cut themselves off from the world around them. Before the Inspector enters the room, the men joke lightly about what the Inspector might want, trying to pass off any thoughts in their heads that they may have done something wrong. Priestley has done this because he was trying to show the audience that no matter what social class you are in, you can still get into trouble with the police and also that you can never totally isolate yourself from society, your actions will always affect somebody. When the Inspector enters the room , the mood quickly changes from the happy scene we saw at the beginning of Act One, to a serious and tense atmosphere, with Mr
Birling becoming more and more impatient, as the Inspector reveals how everyone fits together to contribute to the suicide of Eva Smith. In the opening scene, the play is very much a detective murder mystery, as the involvement of each of the members of the family is progressively established. The structure becomes that of a ‘whodunit’. The first exit of Act One is Edna. She leaves the room, taking out the used dinner crockery, to clear the table. Edna is the maid and the family treat her as the underdog. Edna represents the working class, and she is the only ...
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Birling becoming more and more impatient, as the Inspector reveals how everyone fits together to contribute to the suicide of Eva Smith. In the opening scene, the play is very much a detective murder mystery, as the involvement of each of the members of the family is progressively established. The structure becomes that of a ‘whodunit’. The first exit of Act One is Edna. She leaves the room, taking out the used dinner crockery, to clear the table. Edna is the maid and the family treat her as the underdog. Edna represents the working class, and she is the only contact the family have with people from lower classes. On Page 7, Eric, Sheila and Mrs Birling leave the dining room. Sheila and Mrs Birling leave the room to allow the men to be alone, talk, and have a cigar and a drink. Eric also leaves as Mrs Birling asks to have him for a minute. In the time that Mrs Birling and Sheila are out of the room, Mr Birling snaps up the chance to tell Gerald about his possible knighthood. Birling does so then because he knew that if he did it whilst his wife or Sheila were there, he would be scolded, just as he was when he was talking about the impossibilities of war. Eric enters the room again as Birling and Gerald are laughing. Birling and Gerald are laughing at the thought of themselves getting into trouble. This is dramatic irony, setting the audience up for what is to come later in the play. When Eric comes into the room, he informs his father and Gerald, that he left his mother and sister talking about clothes. J.B. Priestly has used this topic to set Eric up for ‘putting his foot in it’, when he eagerly tells Gerald and Birling “Yes, I remember -” but soon stops himself from carrying on. Looking back after studying the play, I can see that Eric was going to tell his father and Gerald about Eva Smith, but he soon stopped himself once he remembered that neither of them knew about his relationship with her. The doorbell rings shortly after Eric’s entrance into the room. The doorbell interrupts Birling mid-sentence. He is ‘preaching’ to Eric and Gerald about one looking after himself and his own. The significance of the interruption at that moment is to show that people on the outside world still exist and it is impossible to shut them away. Edna enters the room to inform Mr Birling that an Inspector Goole is at the door. She leaves to go and bring the Inspector in as Mr Birling had told her to do so. When the Inspector enters the dining room, he has a huge influence on the tone in the room. J.B. Priestley gives rather accurate and detailed instructions as to what atmosphere the Inspector must create. “The Inspector need not be a big man but he creates at once animpression of massiveness, solidity and purposefulness ... He speaks carefully weightily, and has a disconcerting habit of looking hard at the person he addresses, before actually speaking.” The Inspector doesn’t give much away in his opening lines as to why he is there. He creates a tension in the room, making Birling increasingly impatient. Mr Birling makes sure that the Inspector knows his political status before the Inspector reveals why he has visited their home. “I was an Alderman for years- and Lord Mayor two years ago- and I’m still on the Bench ...” Sheila enters on Page 16 just as the Inspector was coming to a close of interrogating Birling. When she enters the room, she doesn’t know why the Inspector has called. Sheila is very eager to find out why the Inspector is at their house. Priestley brings Sheila into the room now, to allow the Inspector to carry on with what happened to Eva Smith next, after being sacked from Birlings company. Once Sheila is involved in the questioning, she keeps ‘digging herself into a hole’. When the Inspector shows Sheila the photograph of Eva Smith, she runs out of the room, hysterical and crying, leaving the audience and the rest of the family wondering how she knew the girl in the photograph. Birling quickly exits, to go after Sheila, despite Gerald offering to go after her. Just before Birling exits, he turns angrily to the Inspector: “We were having a nice little family celebration tonight, and a nasty mess you’ve made of it now, haven’t you?” This proves that at this point, Birling is still wrapped up in his own life, and blames the Inspector for spoiling their celebration. At this point, obviously Birling has not learnt anything from the Inspector questioning him. When Birling leaves the room, the mood between the Inspector, Gerald and Eric goes from angry and heated, to rather uneasy, probably due to the Inspectors short and what seems to be cryptic replies and answers when asked questions. Right throughout the play but especially at this point, Birling keeps on trying to protect his daughter from the Inspector and his invasive questioning. This is very ironic as this is exactly the opposite to the way how he treated Eva Smith, who had no-one to protect her from the evil of the world and society. Sheila returns, calmer than she was before, after seeing the photograph. She comes back in as though she is prepared for the questions the Inspector has to ask her. When the Inspector first begins to question Sheila, she is very defensive in her answers. She soon realises that it is just better to be truthful and straight with her answers, as the Inspector seems to know everything. The next exit is the Inspector and Eric. It is the first time since the Inspector arrived that he has left the dining room. They leave when Sheila asks Eric to take the Inspector to the drawing room to see her father. Sheila and Gerald need to be alone because Gerald has just given away the fact that he knew Eva Smith, but as Daisy Renton. When he asks Sheila to cover up for him, she tries to explain to Gerald that they can’t hide anything from the Inspector. Right on cue, the Inspector opens the door. “Well?” The Inspector enters the room and repeats his question to Gerald. “Well?” Gerald tries to get rid of Sheila so she does not have to hear what he tells the Inspector about Daisy Renton or the girl we know as Eva Smith. Sheila at this point is hysterical but seems, in a sense, to know what she is doing and why the Inspector has come, not really to investigate a suicide, but to show the family that they absolutely cannot cut themselves off from society. Mrs Birling enters the room briskly and self confidently. Straight away the audience will know that she will not be able to keep the same attitude and confidence once the Inspector starts to question her. Sheila does warn her but her mother, having the attitude that she has, does not listen to her daughter. Birling comes in “rather hot and bothered” as he explains that he has been trying to persuade Eric to go to bed. He is annoyed because Eric has told him that the Inspector told him not to go to bed. Now that Birling and Mrs Birling are now in the room, along with Sheila, the Inspector begins to question Gerald, as if he were waiting for Sheila’s parents to be in the room so they could hear how and why Gerald knew Eva Smith. Gerald leaves once the Inspector has finished questioning him along with the engagement ring he had given Sheila earlier that night. Gerald leaves and goes for a walk. He needs to clear his head and think through everything that had gone on in that dining room away from the people in it. After hearing the front door slam, Birling exits the dining room quickly to go and see who has just left the house. He re-enters “looking agitated”. He tells the family and the Inspector that it must have been Eric. The Inspector tells Mr and Mrs Birling that if Eric is not back soon, he will have to go and look for him. They exchange rather bewildered and frightened glances, which would leave the audience wondering why they are so worried. Eric enters at the very end of Act Two. He walks in to meet inquiring stares. His mother, Mrs Birling, being so ignorant, had just stumbled upon the fact that Eric is the father of Eva Smith’s child, the man who according to her should be: “... compelled to confess in public his responsibility.” When Eric enters, he seems to have prepared himself for the intense questioning of the Inspector. Birling makes Sheila take her mother out, as she was getting rather distressed and upset as she learnt all about what her son had been getting up to secretly. When they are out, Eric admits to not only being the father of Eva Smiths child, but also taking money from Birling’s office. Mrs Birling soon comes back in, followed by Sheila as she says: “... simply couldn’t stay in there. I had to know what’s happening.” She becomes quite like Eva Smith here, inquisitive and wanting to know exactly what is going on. Mrs Birling walks straight into the shock that her son has stolen money from her husband’s office. The Inspector finally leaves. He has interviewed everyone who was in the room celebrating, when he first walked in. He has made them realise what part they have played in this girl’s death and that they can’t shut away the outside world. He leaves the family in shock and disbelief and thinking that their lives are in ruins and changed forever. The Inspectors final speech to the family is J.B. Priestley’s voice of what he feels is wrong, what has happened and what needs to be done. The speech is very powerful and the audience will now realise what the play is all about. Gerald comes back only a few minutes after the Inspector left. He comes back with the news that he believes that the Inspector was a fake. Once Gerald has confided his beliefs with the family, Mr and Mrs Birling go straight back to their ignorant ways. Birling gets straight on the phone, a connection to the outside world, to confirm that there is no Inspector by the name or description of the man who came to visit them that night. Sheila and Eric are the only two of the five adults there, whom have learnt anything from the ‘Inspectors’ visit. Birling and Mrs Birling, however don’t seem to have learnt anything, and try to make their children believe that they can go on living the same way as before. Birling is obviously still feeling the stress as he looses his temper with Eric and threatens to throw him out. When a debate arises over the fact of whether or not it was the same girl in the photographs and even if a girl ever actually committed suicide, Gerald decides to find out for definite. He phones the Infirmary who informs him that there hasn’t been a suicide for months. Birling, Mrs Birling and Gerald begin to celebrate and Birling even jokes about the Inspectors final speech but Eric and Sheila remain tense and frightened about everything that has happened that night. The whole play comes to a head when the phone rings for a final time. There is silence as Birling goes to answer it. There is a brief conversation before the other person hangs up. “Yes... Mr Birling speaking ... What? – Here? -” The family stares guiltily and dumbfounded as Birling tells them: “A girl has just died - on her way to the Infirmary - after swallowing some disinfectant. And a police inspector is on his way here - to ask some - questions -” The whole play is based upon exits and entrances of the characters and the importance of what goes on in-between them. J.B. Priestley has tried to show that if we do not learn from experiences of what is going on around us, it will continue to happen and will only stop once we have learnt to change our ways and live together as one large society or community.
