Inspector Calls Flashcards
Open Stage Direction: Meaning
“Dining room of a fairly large surburban house, belonging to a prosperous manufacturer”
- Opening stage directions are symbolic of a materialistic Edwardian society, which Priestly sought to dismantle ans challenege.
Naturalistic - “furniture of the period”
Edna & Hierarchy in Society
“Ma’am” and “Sir”
“Edna”ll answer it”
“Edna the parlour-maid is just clearing the table.”
Establised at the very beginning, Edna is treated as just another prop, Someone to be order around.
Dismissive attitude towards the working class (foreshadowing of later events of the play) would have been typical of the Edwardian age, but would have not been looked upon favourably by the now socialist post-war audience (lower and upper classes contributed to WW2 effort)
Mrs Birling & Patriarchy
“Important work to do” - clear patrichial distinction btween men and women and women must make themselves busy with some of far less importance
Said by Mrs Birling: she has interalised social norms of edwardian period. Not simply that men are telling women what to do but that Mrs Birling is complicit. Patrichial ideology is entrechted within society.
Sheila & Patriarchy
Sense of resignation: there is nothing that can be done about this and as such Sheila will just have to “get used to that”
Mrs Birling tries to further instill these ideologies down generations. Priestley seeks to end these cycles.
“I dont believe I will” (half playful, half serious)
She may only be half serious now, but by the end of the play she is.
Mr Birlings Speeches
Speaks with incredible derision to anyone that disagress with him:
“Fiddlesticks” - in relation to the war would have been particularly infuriating for an audience who had just lived through a war and almost certainly known people who had died in it.
To speak of war in a flippant manner would have aggravated them
Mr Birling speeches (2)
Polysyndeton - “there’ll be peace and prosperity and rapid progress everywhere”:
Abundance of conjunctions would have been only served to heighten the mounting anger as the audience is forced to listen to Birling list things that did not happen
Birling = caricature of typical edwardian captialist
Priestley undermines these values associating them with characters like Birling and as such disrupt the entrenched ideology that he represent and propagates.
Inspector & His message
“Looking hard at the person he addresses” :
He said to shine a spotlight on the actions of the Birling family and this is reflected by the way in which the light changes from “pink and intimate” to “brighter and harder” colour.
Inspecor role is impart a didactic message.
Mutual relationships:
The inspector exists because of the Birling family have abdicated civic responsibility just as the play exists because of the action of society at large.
Mr Birlings Interrogation
“Its my duty to keep labour costs down”
Lexical choice of “duty” highlights the disparity between Birling thinks is his responsibility is and what the inspector thinks it ought to be; for Birling, his own concern is his pocket and not workers such Eva.
Furthermore, Post war audience, “duty”, would have had connotations of war and as such birlings comment would have seemed even more trivial and heightened distance between him and the audience. Starting play = as figure to lampoon w misguided comments titanic. Now = figure of loathing
Gerald’s Interrogation
His reference to “fresh” implies a rather sickening recognition and awareness of her inexperience and the ability for this to be exploited and leveraged
Gerald knowingly and manipulatively “set her up” and in doing so, manufactured a situation where Eva depended upon him
The cruelty at the crux of the play is that different people held power over and has control of Eva, and perhaps none so as manipulatively and insidiously as Gerald
“Insisted”, “installed” and “kept”
At its most fundamental, the play is an attempt to provoke a reconfiguration of society where no one person has a monopoly over the life of another
Mrs Birling Interrogation
Complete lack of emotion for Eva: “I did nothing I’m ashamed for … I used my influence to have it refused. And in spite of what happened to the girl since, I consider I did my duty”
‘Duty’ of catalysing Eva’s suicide?
Preistley’s use of ‘duty’ in this context would have been especially jarring for a post-war audience: the conception of duty that Mr and Mrs Birling have is eternally different from the conception of duty that Priestley seeks to cultivate
Mrs Birling Interrogation (2)
Even more perverse is that Mrs Birling, by her own admission, uses her ‘influence’ to turn the committee against Eva
It was not the case that she was passive in her refusal, but, one assumes, actively sought to persuade others to reject her appeals
Cruel perversion of the kind of communal society Priestley tries to encapsulate where we are all ‘members of one body’
Mrs Birling Interrogation (3)
This section of the play also functions as a social commentary on the efficacy of charitable bodies
In the Edwardian period, if a person needed help they would typically go to a charity and rely on the ‘kindness of strangers’
Welfare State saw to put an end to this
The play might be seen as an attempt to justify the introduction of the Welfare State by denigrating the previous system of charity, teasing out its many flaws
Ending of play: Call from inspector
When the Birling family feel they have avoided their comeuppance, the phone rings and they are informed that an Inspector will be coming to talk to the,
Relates to Dunne’s theory of time in his book ‘An Experiment with Time” which the past exists in the present and the one continually shapes the other
History will repeat itself until all of the Birling family have learned their lesson
Class: Mrs Birling
Mrs Birling
“I don’t suppose for a moment that we can understand why the girl committed suicide. Girls of that class —“
Emphasises that all that matters to her is Eva’s class: her worth and value as a human is inextricably linked to her social class
Influence wielded by the wrong people can lead to a disastrous outcome
Priestley is suggesting, not to have power in the hands of prejudiced individuals, but rather an accountable government
Obsession with wealth and status
Inspector
“We are members of one body”
Priestley alludes to the book of genesis as “we are members of one body” is used in holy communion. Helps with omniscient presentation and speaking on the side of judgement/god
