An Inspector Calls is a modern morality play and Drawing room play written by English dramatist J. B. Priestley, first performed in the Soviet Union in 1945[1][2] and at the New Theatre in London the following year.[3] It is one of Priestley's best-known works for the stage and is considered to be one of the classics of mid-20th century English theatre. The play's success and reputation were boosted by a successful revival by English director Stephen Daldry for the National Theatre in 1992[4] and a tour of the UK in 2011–2012.
The play is a three-act drama which takes place on a single night on 5 April 1912.[5] The play focuses on the prosperous upper-middle-class Birling family,[6] who live in a comfortable home in the fictional town of Brumley, "an industrial city in the north Midlands".[5] The family is visited by a man calling himself Inspector Goole, who questions the family about the suicide of a working-class woman in her mid-twenties. Long considered part of the repertory of classic drawing-room theatre, the play has also been hailed as a scathing criticism of the hypocrisies of Victorian and Edwardian English society and as an expression of Priestley's socialist political principles. The play is notable amongst students as many British schools study it as a prescribed text for the GCSE English Literature course.[7]
Synopsis
The play is set in 1912, at the Birlings' large home in the industrial town of Brumley. Arthur Birling, a wealthy factory owner, magistrate and local politician, celebrates his daughter Sheila's engagement to a rival magnate's son, Gerald Croft. Also present are Birling's wife Sybil and their son Eric (whose drinking problem the family discreetly ignores). After dinner, Sheila and Sybil leave the dining room to go into the drawing room, while Birling lectures the young men on the importance of self-reliance and looking after one's own, and talks of the bright future that awaits them (which, he believes, will include a knighthood for himself on the next honours list).
The evening is interrupted when the maid Edna announces the arrival of a man calling himself Inspector Goole, who explains that earlier that day he had seen the dead body of a young woman named Eva Smith, who had died by drinking disinfectant. He has been given the "duty" of investigating her death and the Birlings' involvement in it. He has seen her diary, which mentions members of the Birling family.
Goole produces a photograph of Smith and shows it to Birling, who acknowledges that she worked in one of his factories. He admits to having dismissed her for leading strike action, with most of the female workers demanding equal pay to males. Despite admitting that he left Smith without a job, Birling denies any responsibility for her death.
Sheila (having been sent by her mother to bring Birling, Eric and Gerald to the drawing room) is shown a photograph of Smith. She explains that once, when she was out shopping with her mother, Sheila saw a dress she liked and tried it on, even though her mother and an assistant thought it wasn't right for her. Smith, now employed at this shop, also helped with the trying-on. Sheila realised that the dress didn't suit her; Smith held the dress against herself and Sheila could see that it looked much better on her. Seeing Smith smiling at the other assistant, Sheila took umbrage and angrily ordered the manager of the department store to fire her. Sheila's real motivation, which she ashamedly confesses, was the jealousy that she felt towards Smith, perceiving her as prettier than herself. Eric leaves the dining room.
Sybil enters the dining room. The Inspector mentions that Smith subsequently used the name Daisy Renton. Gerald is noticeably startled, and admits to having met a woman of that name in the Palace Bar, where Smith had resorted to prostitution to sustain herself. Seeing that Smith was hungry and struggling to cope financially, and was out of place there, Gerald gave her money and arranged for her to move temporarily into a vacant flat belonging to one of his friends. Gerald reveals that he began a relationship with Smith over the summer, but parted with her after a few months. Sheila, disheartened, returns her engagement ring to Gerald, who leaves the house, saying he will return.
The Inspector turns his attention to Sybil, a patron of a charity that helps women in difficult situations, which Smith (by then pregnant and destitute) had turned to for help, using the name "Mrs. Birling". Sybil, seeing this as a deliberate mockery of herself, convinced the committee to deny her a grant. She argued that Smith had been irresponsible and suggested that she find the father and get him to face his responsibilities; Smith said that she had refused to accept any more money from the father once she knew it had been stolen. Despite vigorous cross-examination from the Inspector, Sybil denies any wrongdoing. Goole plays his final card, forcing Sybil to lay the blame on the "drunken young man" who had got Smith pregnant. It slowly dawns on the rest of the family, except Sybil, that Eric is the young man in question, and "Mrs. Birling" was the first name that had come to Smith's mind because he had fathered her child.
Eric enters, and after brief questioning from Goole, breaks down and admits responsibility for the pregnancy: he had forced himself on Smith after a drinking spree at the Palace Bar. After finding out that Smith was pregnant, Eric stole £50 (some £6,900 in 2023) from his father's business to support her and their child, but she refused the stolen money and cut contact with Eric. Birling and Sybil are outraged by Eric's behaviour, and the evening dissolves into angry recriminations. The Inspector reminds the family that actions have consequences and that all people are intertwined in one society, stating: "if men will not learn that lesson, then they will be taught it in fire and blood and anguish". He leaves.
Birling's greatest worry is the scandal that will arise from Eric's theft of his firm's money, which will come out at the inquest. The family begins to question if "Goole" was a real police inspector. Gerald returns, and reveals that he had met a police sergeant he knew, who did not know of any police inspector named Goole. To confirm this, Birling makes a phone call to his friend, the chief constable, who confirms that there is no Inspector Goole on the force. Gerald points out that they could not be sure that Goole had shown the same photograph to the different members of the family; there could have been several young women, and they did not know that any of them had died. Gerald phones the infirmary, and they confirm that no one has died there that day, and they have not had a suicide in months. The family concludes that the Inspector was a fraud and that they have been the victims of a hoax.
Gerald and the elder Birlings celebrate in relief, but Eric and Sheila continue to rue their own and the others' actions. The phone rings: it is the police, who tell Birling that a young woman has just died on her way to the infirmary in a suspected suicide, and that a policeman is on his way to question the family. The Inspector's identity is left unexplained, but it is clear that the family's confessions over the course of the evening have all been true, and that public disgrace will soon befall them.
Characters
Eva Smith/Daisy Renton
The (deceased) young woman who represents the working class in a capitalist society. She is described as young and pretty, with dark eyes. Her parents were dead, and she had no one to turn to when she was unable to support herself through honest employment.
Inspector Goole
Apparently a police inspector, sent to investigate a suicide.[8] He seems to be familiar with every detail of the case already, interrogating the family solely to expose their guilt rather than to discover unknown information. Many critics and audiences have interpreted Goole's role as that of an "avenging angel" because of his supernatural omniscience and his final warning, and because of his name, which is a homophone of the word "ghoul". It is suggested in the final scene that a real investigation will follow Goole's, and his purpose has been to warn the family in advance and encourage them to accept responsibility for their wrongdoing. The inspector is the drive for Priestley's socialist views within the play.
Arthur Birling
Arthur Birling is "a heavy-looking, rather portentous man in his middle fifties". He represents the ruling capitalist class, repeatedly describing himself with pride as a "hard-headed businessman", and is arguably the main subject of Priestley's social critique. Dominant, arrogant, self-centred, and morally blind, he shows his stubbornness by refusing to take any responsibility for Eva's death. He remains unaffected by the suicide, and his concerns appear to be the avoidance of public scandal, the recovery of the money Eric stole from the company, and the resumption of Sheila and Gerald's engagement, which promises to effect a Croft-Birling merger (which looks likely to bring about a monopoly). Arthur Birling is used by Priestley as a dramatic vehicle to criticise capitalism, the arrogance of the wealthy middle class, and the ignorance of the older generation.
Sybil Birling
Sybil Birling, "a rather cold woman" of about fifty, is Arthur's wife, from a higher social class than his. As the leader of a charitable organisation, she assumes a social and moral superiority over Inspector Goole, whose questioning style she frequently describes as "impertinent" and "offensive". Like her husband, she refuses to accept responsibility for the death of Eva Smith and is more concerned with maintaining the family's reputation, even going so far as to lie and deny that she recognises Smith's picture. She derides women like Eva as immoral, dishonest, and greedy.
Sheila Birling
Sheila Birling is the daughter of Arthur and Sybil Birling, and the older sister of Eric. Sheila begins as a naive and self-centred young woman, but becomes the most sympathetic member of the group over the course of the play, revealing insecurity about her appearance, showing remorse for her part in Eva's downfall, and encouraging her family to do the same. By the play's end her social conscience has been awakened and she has a new awareness of her responsibilities to others. She represents the younger generation's break from the selfish behaviour and capitalist views of its elders. Sheila shows her naivety and lack of maturity in the way she reacts to her father. She is quick to apologise, it is clear that she is keen to behave well. She also refers to her father as 'Daddy', a childish term. As the play progresses, Sheila's character develops and she begins to stand up for herself.
Eric Birling
Eric Birling is the son of Arthur and Sybil Birling and the younger brother of Sheila. Eric is presented as a "Jack the Lad" character with a drinking habit, who forced himself on Eva and made her pregnant. He is distanced from the rest of the family and feels he cannot talk to them about his problems. With his sister, he repents of, and accepts responsibility for, the way he treated Eva.
Gerald Croft
The son of Sir George and Lady Croft of Crofts Limited, a friendly competitor of Birling and Company, and the fiancé of Sheila. The revelation of Gerald's affair with Eva puts an end to the engagement, though Sheila commends him for his truthfulness and for his initial compassion towards Smith.
Edna
Edna is the Birlings' maid.
Reception and interpretation
Highly successful after its first and subsequent London productions, the play is now considered one of Priestley's greatest works, and it has been the subject of a variety of critical interpretations.
After the new wave of social realist theatre in the 1950s and 1960s, the play fell out of fashion and was dismissed as an example of outdated bourgeois"drawing room" dramas, but it became a staple of regional repertory theatre. Following several successful revivals (including Stephen Daldry's 1992 production for the National Theatre), the play was "rediscovered" and hailed as a damning social criticism of capitalism and middle-class hypocrisy in the manner of the social realist dramas of Shaw and Ibsen. 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 embattled patriarch Arthur Birling and Inspector Goole has been interpreted by many critics as a symbolic confrontation between capitalism and socialism, and it arguably demonstrates Priestley's socialist political criticism of the perceived selfishness and moral hypocrisy of middle-class capitalist society in 1950s Britain.[9] While no one member of the Birling family is solely responsible for Eva's death, together they function as a hermetic 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 arguably acts as a critique of Victorian-era notions of middle-class philanthropy towards the poor, which is based on the presumption of the charity-givers' social superiority and on a severe moral judgement of the "deserving poor". The romantic idea of gentlemanly chivalry 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 called a representation of millions of vulnerable working-class people, and the speech can be read as a call to action to English society to take more responsibility for working-class people, prefiguring the development of the post-World War II welfare state.
Productions
An Inspector Calls was first performed in 1945 in two Russian theatres (Moscow's Kamerny Theatre and Leningrad's Comedy Theatre), as a suitable British venue could not be found.[10][11] Priestley had written the play in a single week and all Britain's theatres had already been booked for the season.[12] The play had its first British production in 1946 at the New Theatre in London with Ralph Richardson as Inspector Goole, Harry Andrews as Gerald Croft, Margaret Leighton as Sheila Birling, Julien Mitchell as Arthur Birling, Marian Spencer as Sybil Birling and Alec Guinness as Eric Birling.[13]
The play was produced and performed at the Ferdowsi Theatre in Iran in the late 1940s, based on the translation by Bozorg Alavi. It was staged in the first season of the Edinburgh Gateway Company in 1953.[16]
A revival of the play by British director Stephen Daldry (produced by PW Productions) opened at the National Theatre's Lyttelton Theatre in September 1992.[19] Daldry's concept was to reference two eras: the 1945 post-war era, when the play was written, and the ostensible historical setting for the work in pre-war 1912; this emphasised the way the character Goole was observing, and deploring, the Birling family's behaviour from Priestley's own cultural viewpoint.[20][21] It won the Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Revival of a Play, and was widely praised for making the work involving and politically relevant for a modern audience. The production is often credited with single-handedly rediscovering Priestley's works and "rescuing" him from the reputation of being obsolete and class-bound, although the production had some detractors, including Sheridan Morley,[22] who regarded it as a gimmicky travesty of the author's patent intentions. The success of the production since 1992 has led to a critical reappraisal of Priestley as a politically engaged playwright who offered a sustained critique of the hypocrisy of English society. A Broadway transfer of the production starring Philip Bosco opened at the Royale Theatre (now the Bernard Jacobs Theatre) on 27 April 1994 and played 454 performances.[23]
Sheila recognises a picture of Eva presented by the Inspector, as Gerald looks on. A 2012 production by OVO theatre company, St Albans
The Stephen Daldry production went on a tour of the UK in 2011 and continued to tour into 2020,[24] with Tom Mannion and Liam Brennan among the actors playing Inspector Goole.[25] The production returned to the Playhouse in London's West End in November 2016, with Liam Brennan in the name part.[21] Brennan once again starred as Inspector Goole in a 2022 tour of the UK billed as the production's Thirtieth Anniversary Tour.
Another production opened on 25 October 1995 at the Garrick Theatre and ran for six years until its transfer to the Playhouse Theatre in 2001.[26] In 2009 it reopened at the Novello Theatre for a year-long run, followed by another transfer to Wyndham's Theatre in December 2009, running for only four months.[27]
Adaptations
The play has been adapted to film or television at least eleven times, including:
A 1948 British television film, produced by Harold Clayton[28]
Priestley, J. B. (1947). An Inspector Calls: A Play in Three Acts (Firsted.). London: Heinemann. OCLC59564726.
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1 2 Priestley, J. B. (1947). Bezant, Tim (ed.). An Inspector Calls: A Play in Three Acts (1992ed.). London: Heinemann. pp.xi–xiv. ISBN0-435-23282-7.
↑ Gale, Maggie (2004). "Theatre and drama between the wars". In Nicholls, Peter; Marcus, Laura (eds.). The Cambridge history of twentieth-century English literature. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press. p.328. ISBN0-521-82077-4. the middle class family was at the centre of much of Priestley's work ... most clearly perhaps in 'An Inspector Calls'.
↑ "Inspector Goole Character Analysis". English Made Simple. England: englishmadesimple.org. 15 November 2020. Archived from the original on 7 February 2023. Retrieved 29 October 2022.
↑ Priestley, J.B. (1950). Introduction to the Plays of J.B.Priestly. Vol.III. London: Heinemann. pp.xii–xiii.
↑ "Remember Eva Smith: The Inspector's Russian Journey". 100 Objects from Special Collections at the University of Bradford. Yorkshire, England: University of Bradford. 15 June 2011. Archived from the original on 7 October 2015. Retrieved 4 October 2015.
↑ Nathan, George Jean (1948). "An Inspector Calls". The Theatre Book of the Year: A Record and an Interpretation. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. pp.113–115.
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