John Boynton Priestley was an English world-famous essayist, playwright, novelist, social critic and historian. He was one of England’s last great writers. He was a member of the last generation of freethinking British sages who contemplated both science and philosophy in their literary output. Critics said he was a writer in Britain’s best ‘roast beef and pudding tradition.’ Talking about his literary career, Priestley once described himself as lazy, and he said he wrote simply ‘because I’m a professional writer, and I write.’
He was born in Yorkshire on the 13th of September of 1894 and died at the age of 89. His father was a successful school headmaster and his mother died when he was still an infant. Priestley studied at belle Vue grammar school but decided to drop out of school at the age of sixteen to work as a junior clerk for four years on a local wool firm. During these four years he decided to start writing at night and to publish articles at local and London papers. By this time, he also was an unpaid contributor to a labour Party newspaper.
Just after the outbreak of the great war Priestley joined the duke of Wellington Regime and was once very close to death. He also survived a poisonous gas attack. Just after ending war as an officer he went to Trinity Hall Cambridge, he qualified for a grant to go to university. He transcended academically, but decided to make a career as a writer.
In the 1930s, Priestley began a new career as a dramatist. His plays were impeccably crafted, and are characterised by pre-War settings and various perspectives on time, specially An Inspector Calls in 1945. In an inspector calls he wrote about his ideas about society. He shows his ideas about social inequality, which was growing in the 1930’s.
During the second world war J.B Priestley opened a new door in his career path as a broadcaster. He reached his peak of fame. He used his influence to ‘controversially’ call for a change in society but this time not through his plays and books, he did this through the broadcasts. He urged not to repeat the same mistakes that were committed during war.
In 1950 Priestley became very disillusioned with the political situation in Britain. He was never a member of the labour political party but he supported many of the party’s policies and was happy for their victory in the elections. His first step into the political world was when he wrote an article in the New Statesman attacking the absurdity of nuclear weapons, which later lead to the founding of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND). ‘Those damned, dirty nuclear weapons we never asked for.’ He called himself a leftist and told an interviewer at the age of 75, ‘I am a pink and a pleasant colour it is.’
He was influential in the establishment of the Arts Council, and lectured on the need for a properly organised Theatre. He was a UK Delegate for the UNESCO, where he met his third wife, Jacquetta Hawkes, and presided over an International Theatre Conference.
Priestley married three times. Priestley turned down a peerage and a seat in Britain’s House of Lords. But in 1977 he accepted the Order of Merit from Queen Elizabeth II, one of the highest honours, one that is limited to 24 persons at any given time.
In the meantime, Priestley has re-grown his popularity thanks to his production of “An Inspector Calls”. Now his books are being reprinted and academics are looking into him and his plays are being produced more widely than ever.
An Inspector Calls fulfils the criteria of a well-made play: it follows the features to achieve this, for starters it begins with a brief introduction of the play and its characters, it has an ‘obligatory’ scene (this is the one where a secret is revealed), and each revelation is more shocking than the last one. It contains a ‘dramatic curtain’ (this is when at the end of an act, the author decides to finish on a dramatic tone), it also includes a ‘mistaken identity’, the plot of the play focuses around one major storyline. The is no sub-plot, and last but no least it has the Dénouement (or ending), meaning that the ending it is both logical and credible. The plot is convoluted and intricate and the action builds to a climax. An inspector calls is a well-made play because the action is determined by what happened to Eva Smith before the drama takes place.
At first glance it seems to be an unambiguous detective thriller, but once the Birling family and Gerald are introduced, the inspector appears with a suicide report of Eva Smith (a working-class woman, that is modern and independent). As the play progresses and the drama grows, and we find out that each of the characters are involved in the suicide, the play becomes a ‘whodunit’ as the Inspector slowly untangles Eva’s suicide cause. The attention of the audience is at its peak throughout the whole play and not just because of the revelations but because that they want to know who drove Eva to commit suicide. Priestley uses many techniques to maintain this climax from beginning to end.
Throughout the play the audience as well as the characters of the play develop; their ignorance transforms into knowledge. In the play Priestley uses one of his main characters, Inspector Goole, to convey his message. At first glance it seems like the inspector, but really the character of the inspector is much more than a police inspector. Many think that it is an ‘avatar’ of the author, which makes sense considering both the author and this character share the same political ideologies, so, it could be said that he is using his character to express his opinion about society. Also, it is thought that the inspector could also be a ghoul as his surname suggests. He could be a ghost haunting the Birlings family with Eva’s suicide and is making them conscious of their consequences. All of the characters have done something to cause this woman’s death, each of them on different grounds, but all of the reasons link to one same topic, which is social inequality.
For starters, it is important to know the definition for social inequality. Social inequality is the difference in social status, wealth, or opportunity between people or groups. Social inequality in the play has many other groups inside of it, these are: Gender inequality, class inequality, (social) responsibility and age inequality.
An inspector calls is set in an evening spring of 1912. It is Edwardian England, just two years before war. It was a period of false security and could be said it all was a façade. It is made of three continuous acts which take place in the dining room of the Birlings household in Brumley, an industrial city in the North Midlands.
As said before the play is set in 1912, a time in which women had very few rights if any at all. Women’s main role was to stay at home, keep the house clean and dinner ready for when the rest of the family came home. Well, unless you were a working-class woman, if you were a working-class woman you worked for survival and surely you were going to be paid less than men. Usually women worked in some type of domestic area: maid, cook, cleaner, or any other job that was seen ‘suitable for women’. They didn’t have a right to vote and very few women divorced. The great majority of women who were in a bad marriage (even if the husband was abusive) remained in that same marriage, because women were economically dependent on men and because of a divorce woman ran the risk of losing her friends and place in society, which was a very important thing back then. Women had no right or voice in society, they were just like an accessory men could carry around that cooked and cleaned for them. As mentioned before, women had no right to a vote, they couldn’t own a property or if they were married they couldn’t work anywhere else than in their homes. Nevertheless, women decided that they couldn’t accept ‘their position’ as women and the suffragist movement occurred that same year. It could be said it was the year of change and the time women decided to start demanding for their rights and freedom, to hopefully put an end to this oppression and censorship that they were submissed to. It was their time to stand up and have a choice of their own, their bodies, minds and actions in society.
Priestley explores the impact of the incorporation of women into the workplace and the sexist approach of men toward women, in order to show the reader, he uses Eva Smith and the men of the play to do it. He uses the inspector and his female characters Sheila, Mrs Birling and Eva Smith to achieve this. Women are portrayed as vulnerable, distinctively, Sheila that is protected of practically everything that happens, including Eva’s suicide. Her father thinks that she should be protected from these types of things, this is shown when Sheila enters the room in which the inspector and Mr. Birling are talking and he says to her “Run along Sheila” and when the inspector tells her not, because he thinks that it is alright for her to remain in the room Mr. Birling jumps back and answers the inspector back “ I call this uncalled-for and officious.[…] and now there isn’t the slightest reason why my daughter should be dragged into this unpleasant business.” Here is clearly conveyed that her father sees her as too vulnerable to be able to listen and discuss about the subject matter. The inspector challenges the view that women had to be removed from nasty things and shows his disapproval with it, when he says to her father “Your daughter isn’t living on the moon, she’s here in Brumley too”.
In addition, we can see Priestley’s portrayal of women’s vulnerability, again, by the way Eva is treated by men, this is conveyed when the Inspector is telling Eric off for his behaviour towards her and he says “You treated her as an animal, a thing, not a person”. This quote shows us that women were treated like a material thing, and specially by upper class men, they would usually take advantage of girls. They had very little respect towards women, and even less respect for them if they were working-class women.
Referring to Mr. Birling again, we can see the poor treatment working-class women received, due to what he said when the girls started asking for more rights and a rise in their wages “We were paying the usual rates and if they didn’t like those rates, they could go and work somewhere else”. Priestley clearly shows what many businessmen thought at the time of working-class women and how they treated them as cheap labour through this quote that Mr. Birling says when the inspector asks about the reason for Eva being fired. “It’s my duty to keep labour costs down […] She’d had a lot to say- far too much- so she had to go.” Priestley uses Eva as a ‘graphic demonstration’ of what lower class women had to put up with. Mr. Birling is a character that is very snobbish about women. He also shows his disagreement with Mr. Birlings actions when he says “It’s better to ask for the world than to take it.”
Priestley also shows the superficiality men had toward women. For this he uses Gerald, when he says “I hate those hard-eyed dough-faced women.” This sexist comment was for the women he met at the bar that he didn’t liked or that didn’t comfort his ideas of how women should look. Further on in the play Gerald takes advantage of Eva, knowing the relationship wouldn’t last long and knowing she was in a desperate situation, causing her to be more vulnerable and tenant to do whatever it took for money. And at the end he proposes to Sheila again, expecting her to understand and forget about his affair with Eva.
Although, it should also be said that some women, like Mrs. Birling ‘assumed her position as a woman’ and even tried to make her own daughter understand that ‘a woman should accept her position as it’. “Now just be quiet so that your father can decide what we ought to do” “I think Sheila and I had better get into the drawing room and leave you men” “when you’re married you’ll realise that men with important work to do sometimes have to spend all their time and energy on their business”. From these quotes as readers we see that she accepts ‘her position as woman’ and is trying to teach her daughter the same. She performs old-fashioned female roles, she is supporting her husband in every decision and she does not answer him back.
Social position was far more important than nowadays. Many men came from humble backgrounds but their wealth (resulting from the massive expansion of industry) allowed them to climb the social ladder, and marriage between families helped to create and to secure new social positions. Britain was divided by class, these classes were: The wealth who owned successful land or factories and the exploited people who worked for them. War abolished these class separations because of war both classes had the same lifestyles, including what they ate and wore. Both classes learned to work and live together: men of both classes fought together in the battlefields and women from both classes helped with whatever they could back home (they covered the men’s day to day jobs). In this play Priestley highlights that there was still class division and that the upper class still looked to the working-class above their shoulders as if they were less.
Priestley explores this theme by the treatment Eva received from the Birling’s and Gerald croft. Throughout the play, we can see that the Birlings family made an abusive use of their power, they didn’t think about the consequences of their actions toward other people; first of all was when Eva worked on Mr. Birling’s factory, she was exploited and under-payed and when she demanded her rights she was fired, because according to Mr. Birling “If you don’t come down sharply on some of these people, they’d soon be asking for the earth”, on this quote it is clear that he thinks that it is better to come down his workers, instead of taking care of their rights and integrity, he thinks it is better to cut them off and punish them. We can also see an abuse of power from Joe Megarty, a friend of the family. We can observe this abuse of power when Gerald describes him to the inspector and his family “He is a notorious womanizer as well as being one of the worst sots and rogues in Brumley”. All of the family is shocked when Gerald tells this, because he is an alderman (a council member) and is very well thought of and they are surprised that someone of the higher status could act in such manner. We can observe Mrs. Birling is prejudiced when she is talking about when Eva when to the charity asking for help and she says “As if a girl of that sort would ever refuse money”. Again, we can take notice that she’s prejudiced and she sees her as moraly inferior. In addition, not satisfied with her confession, she talks about Eva’s feelings as “simply absurd in a girl in her position”, she thinks of her feelings as preposterous and she doesn’t see them justified due to her social position. In this as a 1945 audience would be able to have a sense of community or at least empathise with Eva due to the previous war in which they fought together. This comment shows the ignorance the Birlings had. Priestley wants to express the damage a capitalist society was causing the less lucky.
A further example of this type of ‘social abuse’ is when Sheila confesses to the inspector the following, “I went to the manager at Milwards and told him that if they didn’t get rid of that girl, I’d never go near the place and I’d persuade mother to close our account with them”. From this quote we can see that Sheila just from an act of jealousy got the girl fired, as she knew how much power and influence her family had. Furthermore, we can see another example of the same type, but this time is committed by Mrs. Birling. She decides over Eva’s life when she refused to grant her the money she ‘craved’ at that moment, “I wasn’t satisfied with the girls claim- she seemed to me to not be a good case- and so I used my influence to have it refused”. This quote really shows the abuse of power that was committed. Mrs. Birling spits it out with any problem at all and feels completely fine about it and felt that she had the right to do so. These aren’t the only occasions Mrs. Birling abuses/shows off her power and influence. When the inspector arrives at the Birling household she starts to talk about her husband and how much influence he has, just to try and intimidate him and scare him off, “You know of course that my husband was Lord Mayor only two years ago and that he’s still a magistrate” Priestley shows here how the higher classed people showed off their power and got away with anything they wanted by intimidating or blackmailing people. Priestley shows his disagreement with this type of actions using the inspector and showing that he wasn’t intimidated by someone’s position in society, the inspector continues talking about the reason of his visit and completely ignores Mrs. Birlings comment. Priestley reinforces the power abuse committed by the higher classes and shows the hypocrisy of these people.
In brief, Priestley explores class by showing how unfairly the higher classed people treated the working class, showing that he is completely against this type of actions and tries to send this message to the audience and urges to leave prejudices and superiority behind when the play ends. He also backs up the idea of how a capitalist society isn’t helpful at all.
Age difference is one of the main topics too in the play, it is important because it’s Priestley’s way of saying that there is still hope for change, because younger generations are more contemporary and aren’t as conservative as the previous generations, consequently they are more open minded. This is shown at the end; Sheila and Eric assume the consequences and admit their mistakes, the promise not to make the same mistake twice, but Mr. and Mrs. Birling don’t and they refuse to admit their mistakes.
These topic leads to probably the most important topic on the play, social responsibility. Priestley’s main objective was to make an impact on the audience and really make a change in society. In order to for being successful at achieving this he uses various techniques and uses his characters to show this, and as mentioned before he uses the inspector to tell them off, but also to be his spokesman.
