AIC - Social Class

Question 1

Priestley’s message/intended effect on the audience

Answer 1

Priestley is trying to show that the upper class are unaware that the easy lives they lead rest upon hard work of the lower classes.

Priestley clearly was interested in the class system and how it determines the decisions that people make

Question 2

Mr Birling sees Eva as just one of “several hundred young women”

Answer 2

By saying “they keep changing” he shows the audience he did not even care if he dismissed Eva as she was just cheap labour to him.

Therefore, by the victim of the play being a working class female, Priestley highlights the vulnerability of the working class in those times

Question 3

Mrs Birling’s snobbery develops to a point later in the play when she calls Eva a “girl of that sort.”

Answer 3

She represents the ignorant older capitalist generation that Priestley implies was responsible for the inequality of the society at that time

this led to the younger generation suffering in “ fire and blood and anguish.”