'An Inspector Calls' Acts 2 and 3

Question 1

Key Theme: Sheila and Gerald- True Love?

Answer 1

Gerald says Sheila should leave the dining room because she has had a ‘long, exciting and tiring day’ sheila refuses; he suspects her motives.

Sheila’s shocked Gerald can think so badly of her.

She in turn assumes he must see her as ‘a selfish, vindictive creature’ because of how she treated Eva Smith in the shop.

All these doubts suggest neither knows the other sufficiently well and that the relationship is not founded on trust.

Question 2

Attitudes to women

Answer 2

Inspector’s comment ‘And you think young women ought to be protected against unplesant and disturbing things?’

Gerald’s reply that he does, displays different attitudes to middle-class Edwardian women.

Aside from Gerald not wanting Sheila to hear about his affair, he adopts the Edwardian view that women are not to be tainted by unpleasant, worldly truths/are not capable of dealing with them.

Question 3

Key Character: Sheila’s growing awareness

Answer 3

The Inspector’s bluntness and unsparing criticism of Sheila’s behaviour doesn’t influence the way she thinks of him.

She is drawn to him and stares at him, ‘wonderingly’.

His mysterious presence affects her and she finds that she agrees with his view.

The audience is witnessing how the Inspector is influencing the young.

Question 4

Key Context AO3

Attitudes to women

Answer 4

It was not uncommon for upper-class and wealthy middle-class Edwardian men to have mistresses or to meet women (as Gerald, Eric and Alderman Meggarty do) hoping that it did not become public and there was no scandal.

Question 5

Aiming High: Comment on the Inspector’s role

Answer 5

Moral Socialism: political belief that says there is a need for cooperation, community and social justice in society.

The play is a vehicle for Priestley’s views and an attempt to influence the 1946 auudience only just free of war and ready to build a new society.

Question 6

Key context: Inspector’s class

Answer 6

During the Edwardian period, a Police Inspector would be regarded as lower middle class.

Mrs B would see herself very much as a social superior.

A Chief Inspector, such as Mr B’s friend Colonel Roberts would be seen as thoroughly middle class.

Question 7

Mrs Birling when she walks into the room

Answer 7

Mrs B enters the dining room ‘briskly and self-confidently, quite out of key’ with the atmosphere

. While she is unaware of the conversation that has just taken place between Sheila, Gerald and the Inspector, she is also unable to sense mood in the room, suggesting she lacks awareness of other people.

Question 8

Key Quotation: Impressing the young

Answer 8

Inspector’s comment ‘we often do (make an impression) on the young ones. They’re more impressionable.’ Said in answer to Mrs B’s haughty observation that he has made on impression on Sheila.

Priestley is suggesting that the young are more open minded than the older generation about the society they want to live in.

Question 9

Key Language: Euphemism

Answer 9

Priestley uses euphemism such as ‘women of the town’ in act two. It is in correlation with the characters since they would use a less blunt way of referring to prostitution.

Sheila sarcastically repeats ‘women of the town’ when she asks Gerald to continue with his story. Inspector Goole is forcing the Birlings and Gerald to face the realities of Daisy Renton’s life.

Question 10

Key context: Edwardian respectability

Answer 10

Daisy Renton, though ‘fresh and charming’ was poor, working class and ‘a woman of the town’ and exemplified in Mrs Birling’s refusal to hear about ‘this disgusting affair’.

For Gerald and Sheila’s relationship to continue they would need need to confront these double standards and get ‘to know each other’ honestly.

Question 11

Key Quotation: The Inspector’s Power

Answer 11

‘As soon as I mentioned the name Daisy Renton, it was obvious you’d known her.’ not only reinforced Sheila’s comment but signals to the audience that Gerald’s relationship will be revealed.

Highlight’s the inspector’s increasing control of the situation.

Question 12

Key Language: Stage Directions (Inspector’s power)

Answer 12

Stage directions for Mr and Mrs B indicate that they should respond ‘angrily’, showing neither character is able to control the Inspector’s actions.

Contrast, Inspector either cuts across Mr B’s dialogue ‘massively’ ‘calmly’ or ‘severley’.

Reveal that the Inspector is paying little in regard to the Birling’s demands.

Question 13

Key context: Position and Principle

Answer 13

Birlings make money through business and would be thought of as ‘in trade’.

Inspector reminds Mr Birling that men who hold public office ‘have responsibilities as well as privileges’, duties to the wider community.

He is implying that Mr Birling has no right to regard himself as above others.

Question 14

Key Structure: Mrs Birling sees the photograph

Answer 14

When Sheila reinforces the Inspector’s view that her mother is ‘pretending’ not to recognise the girl, the audience is inclined to believe her.

Photo is a device Priestley uses to control the audience’s relationship with the characters.

Question 15

Key Quotation: Airs and Graces

Answer 15

Sheila is the only character who is able to grasp that lying to Inspector goole or adopting a superior attitude towards him will not prevent his interrogation, she stresses this when she says to her mother that

‘we’ve no excuse now for putting on airs and…if we’ve any sense we won’t try’

Words are also a plea for honesty.

She suspects that Mrs Birling has something to hide and that Inspector will find out what it is.

Question 16

Key Context AO3

Fallen Women

Answer 16

Most Edwardians would regard Eva Smith as ‘a fallen woman’, an unmarried woman who had lost her virginity.

When Mrs B holds the young man ‘entirely responsible’ she reflects the attitude that a woman’s place was under the authority of a man of any personal relation.

Most of society didn’t regard woman as independant citizens

Question 17

Aiming High: Class Prejudice

Answer 17

Mrs Birling cannot believe that Eva Smith, or ‘a girl in her position’ would refuse Eric’s stolen money.

Shows how class prejudice is evident in Sheila, the Birling character we are sympathetic to. Because of her display of anger at Milwards because she felt that Eva had been ‘very impertinent’.

Question 18

Key Structure: Dramatic Effect

Answer 18

Gerald has not seen Daisy Renton since ‘the first week of September’ and Eric is absent from the stage.

As the questioning continues it turns out that Mrs B had interviewed the girl (as Mrs B) at the charity committee only ‘two weeks ago’

Eric when last seen, was ‘excitable’ and the Inspector wishes to question him.

The audience can guess that Eric is likely to be a link in the chain of events.

Question 19

3 Key Theme: Family relationships

Answer 19

They are all ‘staring at’ Eric (except for Gerald)

Priestley puts Eric in the spotlight, the last of the Birlings to be held accountable for Eva’s death.

Distance between Eric and Mrs B is made clear as Mrs Birling protests that ‘There must be some mistake’.

Her inability to accept what Eric did with Eva and his drinking, which she denied previously, emphasises how little she knows her son.

When Sheila reveals that Eric drinks too much, ‘because it was simply bound to come out’, Eric interprets Sheila’s honesty as betrayal, calling her a ‘little sneak’.

Question 20

3 Key Context AO3

Eric notes about Eva Smith

Answer 20

He says that Eva ‘wasn’t the usual sort’

he is using a euphemism to refer to the prostitutes at the Palace Theatre bar.

Question 21

3 Key Language: Choice of words

Answer 21

Example of how the men behave differently when the women leave the room.

In front of his mother Eric avoids saying he had sex with the girl by commenting ‘that’s when it happened’.

While the men still use euphemism, Inspector now feels free to ask if Eric and the girl ‘made love’.

Mr B asks Eric if he ‘had to go to bed with her’.

Both would phrases would be considered strong language in 1912.

Question 22

3 Key Character: The further decline of Eva Smith

Answer 22

When we consider her hard work and potential at Birling’s factory where she could have become ‘a leading operator’ we see how much she had changed and how hopeless her life must have seemed.

Question 23

3 Key Context AO3: Use of Euphemism

Answer 23

Use of euphemism accurately portrays the custom and values of the Edwardian period.

However, the audience of 1946, when the play was first performed in London, would also have been shocked to hear the blunter word ‘prostitute’ used.

Question 24

3 Key quotation: The Inspector’s Warning

Answer 24

Priestley’s message is summed up in the Inspector’s warning to the Birlings:

That we all have a responsibilty in society to care for each other, and that ‘the time will soon come when, if men will not learn that lesson, then they will be taught it in fire and blood and anguish’

Question 25

3 Key Character: Eric’s contrary nature

Answer 25

We have seen his initial concern about Eva and his immaturiy.

His denial that he truly stole the money reveals his failure to face unpleasant truths.

Eric has a moral aspect to his character.

He is stunned by Mrs Birling’s behaviour and ‘nearly at breaking point’ accuses her of killing her unborn grandchild.

Question 26

3 Key Structure: Dramatic Tension and Climax

Answer 26

Climax: When Eric accuses his mother of causing the death of Eva and her unborn child.

It also prepares the way for the Inspector’s final, powerful polemic: the most important climax in the play.

Question 27

3 Key Context AO3: Critic responses to Inspector’s speech

Answer 27

Some think Priestley didn’t need to include the Inspectors’ final speech, because it felt as if the Inspector was preaching at the audience.

Others think he included the speech deliberately to make the audience think about theirselves as well as the Birlings’ responsibilities.

Question 28

3 Key Context AO3

Audience and international conflicts/revolutions

Answer 28

1946 audience would be aware of the first and second world war (which the inspector speaks of), as well as the russian revolution:

The Russian Revolution (1917) was when the Emperor was overthrown by people and replaced by Communism.

Mr Birling says in Act One ‘Russia, which will always be behind naturally’.

Question 29

3 Key Theme: The Generation Gap

Answer 29

Mr Birling remains untouched and still holds the values he had at the beginning of the play.

Generation gap is most striking when Sheila says to her father, ‘you don’t seem to have learnt anything’ and Mr Birling replies,‘I’ve learnt plenty tonight’.

Priestley is saying to the audience that if society is to change for the better after WWII it is the younger ‘impressionable’ generation who will make the difference.

Question 30

3 Key Quotation: The Inspector’s Identity

Answer 30

The audience is alerted to the possibilty that the Inspector is not who he says he is; possibly some kind of supernatural being who has come with a purpose: to teach these people a lesson about social responsibility.

Question 31

3 Key Structure: A pattern of mood changes

Answer 31

Priestley leads the audience to believe, as Mr Birling says, ‘no police enquiry…no scandal.’

Then, just as they think all is well, the telephone rings.

The characters ‘stare guiltily and dumbfounded’ as Mr Birling declares that a police Inspector is on his way.

Question 32

What is the inspector’s role between the Birlings and Gerald?

Answer 32

to peel away the self-assured layers of the Birlings’ and Gerald’s lives to reveal what lies underneath

Question 33

Inspector’s role with Sheila

Answer 33

The Inspector knows that Sheila alone is not to blame. When he says “we’ll have to share our guilt,’ he is referring to both a shared responsibility for Eva Smith’s death and to our collective responsibility for others like Eva Smith.

Question 34

Inspector’s role with Mr Birling and Priestley

Answer 34

Discuss Priestley’s beliefs embodied in the inspector, which are tied to moral socialism as opposse to Mr B’s individualism that focuses on himself.

Question 35

Sheila and Mrs B

Answer 35

Sheila’s attempt to warn her mother that she is ‘beginning all wrong’ is pointless.

Mrs B doesn’t grasp what Sheila means when she says ‘you musn’t try to build a kind of wall between us and that girl’because welfare of her husband’s employees are of no concern to her.

Question 36

Key context about prostitutes

Answer 36

Connection between theatres and prostitution was common in the Edwardian period and goes a long way, at least to Shakespeare’s time.

Question 37

3 Key language: Choice of words

Women being treated like children

Answer 37

Shows us middle class women like Sheila and Mrs B are treated as though they were children and we are reminded of the Inspector’s earlier comment to Gerald,

‘you think young women ought to be protected against unpleasant and disturbing things’.

Question 38

3 Key Character: The further decline of Eva Smith

Why did Priestley say that she used the name Birling?

Answer 38

Using the name ‘Birling’at the Brumley Women’s Charity Organisation was logical, since Eric was the father of her child.

It also gave her dignity.

This made Mrs Birling’s refusal to help seem even more petty and unjust.

Question 39

What is the significance of the ‘Fire, blood and anguish’ metaphor?

Answer 39

Metaphor ‘fire and blood and anguish’ is a powerful image that suggests conflict. They also have religious interpretation, as if the Inspector were a prophet or holy man.