'An Inspector Calls' - exemplar essay
To help you prepare for your first Literature coursework essay, here’s one I made earlier! I decided to write on a 4th title which considers how Priestley explores the theme of ‘class’ in the play. Take a look at the text below and then listen to the complementary video clip to see how I planned and then wrote the essay so that I hit the Assessment Objectives for the task.
If you’d like a copy of the essay, you can download a PDF of the text here (right click and open as a new tab or you’ll leave the site which would make me very sad!).
Explore Priestley's presentation of class in ‘An Inspector Calls’
it is notable that Priestley set his play in a fictitious manufacturing hub in the Midlands, during the Edwardian period. This afforded him the opportunity to explore key themes such as social responsibility and the abuse of power more directly. While such injustices were still a part of the mid-1940s when he penned the play, the Edwardians had a much more rigid class system which had already started to erode following the Second World War.
The fact that ‘An Inspector Calls’ is also a ‘well-made play’, which observes the Greek Unities, means that the audience comes to experience the claustrophobia and social constraints that the Birlings and Crofts observe as part of their status as privileged members of society. The opening stage directions state that the household is ‘substantial and heavily comfortable but not cosy and homelike’. This sense of material wealth but impoverishment of spirit is also reflected in the characters who make up the cast list.
Arthur Birling is described as ‘rather provincial in his speech’ and we soon see that his ambition and drive run roughshod over all other considerations, including his daughter's engagement which he sees as a business opportunity rather than a declaration of love. The family’s prosperity is also reflected in their clothing (they wear ‘evening dress of the period’) and in the fact that they employ a maid and cook so that they may celebrate with an opulent meal.
Mrs Birling is identified as ‘her husband's social superior’ and thus the issue of class divide is highlighted even within the family itself. She is a ‘rather cold woman’ and much of her dialogue is given over to her haughty judgement of a husband's impropriety or the hysteria of her children. Sybil is a woman who status and sense of entitlement is so deeply ingrained with her identity that she seems utterly intractable, despite the Inspector's best efforts to help her see the duty she had to Eva Smith and girls like her.
Sheila and Eric, while less odious than their parents, are presented as vain, self-absorbed and naïve- traits which are arguably by-products of their class and privilege. Sheila is described as ‘very pleased with life’, a loaded term because it implies that her concern doesn't extend beyond her own comfortable frame of reference. Likewise, Eric whines that Eva “treated me as if I were a kid” by refusing his proposal of marriage because he was not in love or ready for commitment. They have both been infantilised by their class.
Sheila’s fiancé, Gerald, is described as ‘a man about town’ which is a term reserved for the upper classes and has darker connotations. He is, in my opinion, let off too lightly by the Inspector in his summation of the characters’ crimes because he ‘made Eva happy for a time’. In truth, he seduced a vulnerable young woman and then abandoned her. Gerald, Eric and those like them are presented as self-serving predators who give little thought to those they trifle with and then cast aside like spent toys.
Lord and Lady Croft, Gerald's aristocratic parents, are also noteworthy; although we don't see them on stage, they come to represent another facet of the Edwardian class system. If the Birlings have appropriated their social status by exploiting the working classes, the crofts inherited their power as part of the remnants of the feudal system. Arthur's desperate attempt to placate Lady Croft through her son, is distasteful and sycophantic. This fawning, coupled with his own self-satisfied claims to be in line for a peerage, seem anachronistic to Priestley's audience. We are invited to consider class to be as empty and out of step with progress as Arthur's assurance that there is “no chance of war” and that the Titanic is “unsinkable”.
No study of class in this play would be complete without acknowledging the way Priestley unapologetically champions the working classes. Eva Smith, the victim and linchpin of the play, kills herself in desperation but is offered up to the audience as a sacrificial lamb. She is the only character, other than the Inspector, who is morally congruent; she is ‘gallant’ when rejected by Gerald and refuses money from Eric when she realises it is stolen. The fact that she drinks disinfectant as a means of death is ironic; she is the only character who is clean and beyond reproach. Priestley, it seems, equates class and privilege with infection or disease!
Finally, it is no accident that Inspector Goole has more in common with Eva and Edna than those he investigates. He is a relatively junior policeman, speaks plainly and ‘dryly’ observes “I don't play golf” in response to Arthur's veiled threat that he is friends with the Chief Constable. He comes to investigate a crime but by the play's final curtain the audience is in no doubt that it is not the death of Eva that is in the dock but the class system itself which is the cause of “millions and millions and millions of Eva Smith and John Smiths” who suffer needlessly because those with privilege refuse to acknowledge “we are members of one body”. When the inspector leaves, his last comment is apocalyptic in tone. If the Birlings, the Crofts, and we by extension, do not learn that class is a failed social experiment, we will be taught our lesson “in fire and blood and anguish”.
(895 words)