Characters

Question 1

Eva Smith/Daisy Renton - Who is she?

Answer 1

• Her real identity is never revealed. She could be the same person, or different people who are treated as the same by the Birling family. They see one working-class girl as being the same as another.

Question 2

Eva Smith/Daisy Renton

Answer 2

Attractive - “young and fresh and charming”
Honourable - “she didn’t want to take any more money from him”
Working-class - “Girls of that class”, “a girl of that sort”
A prostitute - “There was some woman who wanted her to go there”

Question 3

Eva Smith/Daisy Renton - Birlings take away all her sources of income

Answer 3

• Worked under Mr Birling - got sacked for speaking up - “she had to go”
• Shop assistant at Milwards - Sheila got her sacked out of jealousy of her looks
• Prostitute and mistress to Gerald - he rescued her from a life of a prostitute but dropped her when it suited him
• Prostitute - she can’t make a living this way after Eric forced her to have sex and got her pregnant while he was drunk

Question 4

Eva Smith/Daisy Renton - A silent, offstage character

Answer 4

• In the play, she represents the silent, invisible and powerless members of society.
• Maybe didn’t feel that she had the power to make life difficult for people like Birling who “made her pay a heavy price” for challenging his authority. She was trapped by her situation.
• Inspector Goole speaks for her and uses her as a symbol of the powerless working class to teach the Birlings about social responsibility and to make them realise their mistakes.

Question 5

Eva Smith/Daisy Renton - Social Class (theme)

Answer 5

Eva/Daisy lost all these forms of support because other people used their power to move her on or have sex with her. Each of them felt superior to Eva because of their social class.

Question 6

Eva Smith/Daisy Renton - Were they the same person?

Answer 6

• Gerald claims there were lots of different girls - “We’ve no proof it was the same photograph and therefore no proof it was the same girl.”
• But he also says that Daisy Renton told him about having to leave a “job in one of the works here” after a strike and “something about the shop too” - so Eva Smith must be Daisy Renton?
• The phone call at the end confuses everything. Has Eva/Daisy just taken her own life? Was the inspector a ghost come to tell the future?
• Or is this phone call about a different girl? The inspector warned that everyone’s lives are “intertwined”, so the Birlings don’t know how many lives they have affected.
• Priestley makes sure that, even if you think you’ve sussed it, that phone call breaks up the girl’s identity again.

Question 7

Eva Smith - name

Answer 7

• “Eva” - a bit like Eve, the first woman and symbolic of all women.
• “Smith” - Very common last name, and it’s from the word for a tradesman.
• Eva Smith represents “millions and millions and millions” of ordinary, working-class women.

Question 8

Eva Smith - central to the play’s message

Answer 8

• Inspector says there are “millions of Eva Smiths and John Smiths still left” and that their chances of happiness are “intertwined with our lives”.
• Inspector is telling the Birlings, and the audience, to behave responsibly towards others
• So although the focus of the drama is the group of five people sitting around the dining table at the beginning, the focus of the play is the life and death of an unidentified and unseen woman. If they all met different girls, it doesn’t matter. Eva/Daisy is a mix of all the people they’ve ever treated badly.