How does Priestley present the theme of social class in ‘An Inspector Calls’?Disclaimer: This essay has been submitted to OxNotes by a student. Any opinions, findings or conclusions in this material are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of OxNotes.
Priestley presents the theme of social class through the way the different characters respond to Eva Smith. Onto the essay...The older characters, Mr and Mrs Birling, seem to care the most about class. Eva Smith was employed by Mr Birling at one time, but he refers to her as one of “several hundred young women”. This implies that Eva Smith and the hundreds of young women who worked for Mr Birling have no meaning or value to him, he doesn’t care what happens to them and doesn’t feel any sense of responsibility for them. Mr Birling then goes on to say that the employees “keep changing”; the idea of Mr Birling not caring about his workers is proven here. It could also suggest that Mr Birling sees Eva Smith as cheap labour. He shows the audience that he doesn’t care that he dismissed her, making them feel a slight sense of hatred. Similarly, Mrs Birling refers to Eva Smith as “a girl of that sort”. Mrs Birling has made assumptions about lower class women and she appears to be dehumanising them. She also assumes that girls like Eva have no morals by saying that “she was claiming fine feelings… that were simply absurd in a girl in her position”. This implies that Mrs Birling is small minded; having come in contact with a small minority of the lower class women around at that time, she assumes that all of them are the same. Mr and Mrs Birling both have the same attitudes towards the lower class; they both make the lower class seem like a collective, an identical group of people. They represent the ignorant capitalist generation that Priestley suggests was responsible for the inequality in society during the time when the play was written.
In contrast to this, Sheila has different views regarding class compared to her parents. When Mr Birling tells the Inspector about how he got rid of Eva Smith because she wanted to be paid more, Sheila says “but these girls aren’t cheap labour – they’re people”. She disagrees with her parents’ attitudes towards the lower class and she challenges them. This implies that she feels sympathy for girls like Eva and she wished her parents would change their opinions. It could also be suggested that the Inspector may have had a stronger impact on Sheila and her way of thinking, provoking more of an emotional engagement from her. However, as Sheila appears to be quite materialistic, a lot of her belongings would’ve been made by the “cheap labour” women, and a lot of her money was made by her husband exploiting women. During the time when the play was set (1912), lower class women weren’t important at all, and they were seen as cheap labour. Capitalists such as Mr Birling exploited the working-class, and socialists such as JB Priestley completely disagreed with this. Unlike the other members of the family, JB Priestley shows Sheila as a character who begins to understand and recognise the inequality to tell the audience that the younger generation are more trustworthy, and they will carry society in the right direction.
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Priestley uses the Inspector as a ‘mouthpiece’ for his own views on class. The Inspector is used as a figure of morality; he is there to make the family realise that they have an easy life resting upon the hard and difficult work of the lower class. As JB Priestley was a socialist and a founder of the Socialist Commonwealth Party, he wanted to see the collapse of the class system. The Inspector tries to make the other characters realise that there isn’t a class system, they are all “members of one body” and “responsible for each other”. “One body” relates to the idea of Mr and Mrs Birling unifying the lower class, except the Inspector is trying to make them realise that they are also a part of the one body, alongside the lower class. He also tries to induce guilt from the family with dysphemistic language when talking about how Eva “burnt out her insides” and died after “several hours of agony”. JB Priestley wants the other characters, especially Mr and Mrs Birling, to feel sympathy for the lower class and recognise where they have gone wrong, so he uses the character of Inspector Goole to do this. This may also teach the audience a moral lesson and make them consider their political beliefs.
To conclude, JB Priestley presents the theme of social class through the different characters and their attitudes towards the lower class. He criticises the views of the upper class; this stops the audience siding with the characters who have negative attitudes towards the lower class, allowing JB Priestley’s socialistic views to be put in the limelight.
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GCSE/IGCSE Notes > English Literature Notes > Mr Arthur Birling's Character - An Inspector Calls