Must Know Flashcards
“community and all that nonsense… A man has to mind his own business and look after himself and his own” -Birling
Birling’s anti-community message is cut off by the bell announcing Inspector Goole’s supernatural being, whose job is to correct that worldview and also attack the rejection of community/socialism.
“The Germans don’t want war. Nobody wants war… And why? There’s too much at stake these days. Everything to lose and nothing to gain by war.” -Birling
Priestly is anti-war as we can tell from him being the founder of CND (Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament). Capitalism needs war for money.
Ironic as the audience knew how much of a national scandal at the time of how many British businessmen made money from war. Priestly shows Birling’s stupidity and his luck to have a business as he doesn’t know how business and capitalism works.
“Unsinkable, absolutely unsinkable.” -Birling
“It would do us all a bit of good if sometimes we try to put ourselves in the place of these young women counting their pennies, in their dingy little back bedrooms” -Inspector
This shows that the Inspector believes in community - we need to put ourselves into other’s shoes.
Play is obsessed with the role of women:
- Priestly says the biggest injustice is the treatment of women
-Different to WW1
“There are millions and millions of Eva Smiths and John Smiths…” -Inspector
Clear that Eva Smith is a symbolic figure -“millions”. She presents the working class.
The audience is full of middle and upper class.
“We are members of one body”
-Inspector
Vocabulary: 80% of Priestley’s audience is Christian and goes to church - Biblical allusion to holy communion /transubstantiation
Effectively asking: what would Jesus do? - Christian vote socialist
“you might be said to have been jealous of her.”
-Inspector
Priestley is pointing out how odd that someone with Sheila’s social and financial advantages is jealous of someone who is socially and financially at the bottom of the scale.
Presents society’s values and how society has damaged women by limiting them and educating women on the wrong values such as appearances as part of their marketable commodity to attract males.
Women are oppressed in opportunity and their ways of thinking.
Women in audience
“She only escaped with a torn blouse”
-Sheila
‘only’-lucky to have escaped Alderman Mcgarty with just a torn blouse and the abuse could have been greater.
Everyone knows about him and his actions, but society has done nothing about it.
“Don’t talk like that!”-Mrs. Birling would rather hide the truth than change it.
Sheila becomes a symbol for younger women for the audience
Contrast between the new and old generation
“It doesn’t make any real difference, you know”
-Sheila
The Birlings are not interested in their actions, only in their reputation. They are responsible for their actions - links to Inspector “members of one body”.
“Why shouldn’t they try for higher wages? We try for the highest possible prices”
-Eric
Eric presenting Priestley’s ideas, situation is unfair.
“I was in that state when a chap easily turns nasty - and I threatened to make a row.”
-Eric
Euphemism
Presents the abusive relationship, and Eva cannot leave as it is her only way to financial security.
Priestly focuses on Eric in this way to present that it is not her fault that Eva is in that situation, but the men around her fault (Gerald and Eric).
“I intend to pay it back.”
-Eric
Eric is deceiving himself (still drunk) - may not fully learn the lesson in the future due to his self-justification and self-deception.
Symbol of capitalism, a future businessman. Exploiting others for money is not seen as theft in capitalist society.
“It’s still the same rotten story”
-Eric
“You’ll have to get used to that, just as I had to”
Mrs. Birling
Women of Mrs. Briling’s generation had to turn a blind eye to their partner’s infidelities.
‘had’ - Birling no longer does it.
Transactional cost in order to retain your social status you have to marry a man of high status, but in order to keep that status, you have to let him do things that are unacceptable in a moral society.
Sympathize for Mrs. Birling as society oppresses women - has to teach her daughter.
Set in 1912 for effect on 1945 audience to change future.
“Girls of that class-“
-Mrs. Birling
Priestley presents the evils of the class society which stop seeing everyone from seeing each other as one body and even fully human.
Mrs. Birling presents the effects of class system whereas Birling presents the pernicious effects of capitalism.
