Inspector calls -Themes, Gender, and Age differences

Themes

Central themes is responsibility every human has his/her own responsibility for their own actions and the responsibility to the society. The play touches the effect of class, age and sex, attitudes and the responsibilities. Ranks of classes and the prejudices could prevent people from their responsibility. Also, the themes of morality lie and deceit had given significance

• Each member of the Birling family try to cover up
• Worried about social status
• Different attitude
• Don’t share responsibility of Eva’s death.
• J.B.Priestly wants the characters to take responsibility.
• Everyone is a part of “one body”
• We ignore our responsibility.
• Class
• J.B.Priestly shows that the upper classes are unaware that then easy comfortable lives depend upon the hard work of the lower classes.

 Gender

• Eva smith
• The time where women were denied voting rights
• Upper class women had few choices
• Rich can impress a person to marry
• For working class women, a job was significant
• No social security
• No job no money
• No choice, forced to turn with prostitution

 

 Quotes for example

“we were paying the usual rates……. they could go and work somewhere else”

(Mr. Birling) 

“Gerald saw Eva as “young and fresh and charming”

“a girl of that sort would ever refuse money” Mrs. Birling 

 Age

• Difference between the elder and younger generation in understanding the inspector’s message.
• Shelia and Eric accept their fault.
• Mr. & Mrs. Birling   are unable to admit their part in Eva’s death

 Old ((Mr. &Mrs. Birling) 

• Confident they are right
• They do anything to cover up their part.
• Old Attitude - They never tried to examine their conscience
• Fear to lose their reputation.

Young Shelia / Eric

• Open to new ideas,
• Young are honest and accept their faults
• Eric and Shelia see the human side of Eva’s story feel sympathy.
• No fear for the arrival of the true ‘real’ inspector as they admit their fault.
•  Gerald Croft is caught in between old and young. But at the end takes the side of the old generation. It is due to his upper-class influence.
• The hope is future generation will shape the future society.

 Conclusion:

 Highly successful play.  the play is now considered one of Priestley's greatest works, and has received variety of critical interpretations.

After the new wave of social realist theater in the 1950s and 1960s, the play fell out of fashion, and was dismissed. Following several successful revivals, the play was "rediscovered" and praised as a damning social criticism of capitalism and middle-class hypocrisy. It has been read as a parable about the destruction of Victorian social values and the disintegration of Pre-World War I English society, and Goole's final speech has been interpreted variously as a quasi-Christian vision of hell and judgement, and as a socialist manifesto.

The struggle between the rich Arthur Birling and Inspector Goole has been interpreted by many critics as a symbolic confrontation between capitalism and socialism, and demonstrates Priestley's socialist political criticism of the selfishness and moral hypocrisy of middle-class capitalist society in 1950s Britain. 

While no single member of the Birling family is solely responsible for Eva's death, together they function as a arrogant class system that exploits neglected, vulnerable women, with each example of exploitation leading collectively to Eva's social exclusion, despair and suicide. The play also acts as a critique of Victorian-era  of middle-class philanthropy towards the poor. 

The basic idea is Social superiority and severe moral judgement towards the "deserving poor". The romantic idea of rich towards "fallen women" is also debunked as being based on male lust and sexual exploitation of the weak by the powerful. In Goole's final speech, Eva Smith is referred to as a representative for millions of other vulnerable working-class people, and can be a call to action for English society to take more responsibility for working-class people in a war torn society.

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