An Inspector Calls by J.B. Priestley The play "An Inspector Calls" is about a family the Birlings having influence on a girl's death, Eva Smith. The family includes Arthur Birling, Sybil Birling, Sheila Birling and her future husband who is also involved Gerald Croft and Eric Birling. The play was first performed in 1947. Arthur Birling was the first to influence the life of Eva Smith. We know that Arthur Birling was a very proud man; he had his own company "Birling and Company". Arthur Birling knew Eva Smith through work as she was one of his employees. She had worked for him between August and September 1910. Until this went wrong when Eva Smith spoke out for her and her other working colleagues because they wanted their pay rising from 22 shillings and 6 pennies to 25 shillings. Arthur Birling even says that Eva Smith was a "good worker" and that they were going "to promote her into a leading operator". Mr Birling thought that the increase in money was wanted just because they had just got back from their holidays and it would blow over. Also Arthur Birling said that "if I'd agreed to this demand for a new rate we'd have added about twelve per cent to our labour cost". Unfortunately as she had too much to say for herself she gets the sack. And this is what the author is trying to tell us that unionisation can't sack you because they would be breaking the contract of the security of tenure. Eva Smith was still sacked and this was the last the Arthur Birling had seen of her. Sheila Birling was the next one to influence her life even though Sheila Birling didn't know what she was doing at the time. After being sacked from "Birling and Company" she had got a job in the Christmas rush around December 1910 in Millwards a department store in which the Birling family where customers. One day Sheila Birling and her mother Sybil Birling had been shopping in Millwards where Sybil Birling had
There would be more of an effect on the audience at the time, as it
Criticism in An Inspector Calls by J.B. Priestley "An Inspector Calls" has been called a play of social criticism. What is being criticised. Explain some of the dramatic techniques which Priestley uses to achieve the play's effects. "An Inspector Calls" has been called a play of social criticism as Priestley condemned the many different injustices that existed in the society between the first and second world wars.
...s, and why he writes them at all. Instead of judging him, she tries to understand and fix it her own way, and it affects how he sees his writing:
and say and do. We don't live alone. We are members of a body. We are
for each other. And I tell you that a time will soon come when if men
This coursework focuses on how each character contributes to the suicide of a poor girl Eva Smith/Daisy Renton.
The narrator’s insecurities unfold when it takes him almost five pages just to demonstrate how close the friendship is between his wife and Robert. It is as though he is justifying his irrational behavior or perhaps questioning if his wife could be secretly in love with Robert. The narrator assumes this because his wife only writes poems if something really important happens to her. He recalls that his wife never forgot that instant when Robert "touched his fingers to every part of her face...
talks with. He is a man who has come to the Birling's house to do his
especially for a woman. Even if a woman did get a job they would get
they have done even know they do not lead her to her suicide. But a
in jeopardy than how he may have driven a young girl down a spiral to
upon so many levels. On the surface it is a simple tale of how one man
Birlings, as they find out that they have all played a part in a young
To begin with, the narrator husband name is John, who shows male dominance early in the story as he picked the house they stayed in and the room he kept his wife in, even though his wife felt uneasy about the house. He is also her doctor and orders her to do nothing but rest; thinking she is just fine. John is the antagonist because he is trying to control
In order to rebel against her husband’s act, she chose not to sleep and express her own sense of self-worth and individuality. The next portion of the description talks about how she does not tell “them” that she is actually a week. Gilman’s language choice is clever and helps exemplify her argument in a couple of ways. In one sense, the “them” is referring to her husband, the male superior figure in her life. He decides all of the wife’s life choices.