J. B. Priestley’s classic temporal play about the enigmatic Inspector Goole prying the truth out of one unsuspecting Birling family member at a time to uncover their involvement in the suicide of young Eva Smith is nothing short of brilliant. Essentially, it is a play about selfishness. Each character seeks to preserve the status quo of their sheltered, privileged life at the expense of the invisible and dispensable Eva.
We see how various degrees of this selfishness, indifference, and straight up wickedness from the Birlings steadily destroy a confident Eva, until she sees death as the only way out. It’s a tragic, sobering story.
Although the element of time is central to the events on stage, it is, somewhat ironically, a timeless play that carries a universal message that cannot go out of fashion: society only functions if we help each other. Simple enough, one would think, but almost 80 years after it was first staged, the play and its titular character’s warning of the repercussions of how often and severely we fail to support those in need still ring true.
There are quite a few elements in An Inspector Calls that would not look out of place in a 21st century adaptation. Rich business owners or people with generational wealth today would be perhaps not much more sensitive to the struggle of those who stand lower in the pecking order – we only need to listen to landlords justifying exorbitant rent hikes during the cost of living crisis to know that. Cheating has also been around since people have been… well, people, and greed has been a characteristic of human nature for time immemorial – plenty of wars to prove that, especially those Mr Birling didn’t see coming.
But I will focus on Eva. Without ever appearing on stage, Eva is the central character, the heart and soul of the play, materialising vividly from each description; she is the one Priestley wants us to see despite her complete invisibility.
So let’s see the various ways in which women experienced hardship in 1912, which would be all too familiar to the audience in 1945, and sadly still a reality in 2024.
Women’s position in the workplace
Eva’s first offence is standing up for herself and others at work – a virtue that earns its rightful punishment in the form of Mr Birling’s swift dismissal. She forms a community of workers who ask for a raise and as a result, she’s “let go” together with the other “ringleaders.” The word “ringleaders” is a telling choice for Mr Birling because it implies illicit activity, as if asking for a marginally higher wage was a crime. Priestley thus makes it clear that Mr Birling would have easily dismissed Eva’s request if it was voiced individually. Eva’s real offence here is gathering support, leading a number of women in a cause that opposes Mr Birling’s profit-oriented agenda – this is a clash of the capitalist interest of the wealthy and the socialist community that Mr Birling rallies against in his dragged-out monologues to Eric and Gerald.
But being a leader wasn’t Eva’s only offence. Feeling perhaps somewhat flustered by the Inspector’s pointed questions regarding the dismissal, Mr Birling asserts that the reason Eva “had to go” from his factory was because she “had a lot to say – far too much.” The interjection of “far too much” is oddly menacing, as if the fact “she’d had a lot to say” was already an insult to Mr Birling’s upper-class sensibilities, but Eva didn’t stop there. Her transgression goes beyond what can reasonably fit into Mr Birling’s understanding of rebelliousness. In any case, the message is clear: outspoken women are not tolerated.
We’d think society (at least English society) has come a long way since 1945 and women are no longer penalised for the same qualities that help men get a promotion (like Eva’s leadership or assertiveness that upset Mr Birling so much). In Inside the Black Box of Organizational Life: The Gendered Language of Performance Assessment published in 2020, Shelley O. Correll investigates the correlation between the language used during performance evaluations in the workplace and managers’ gendered view of those words1. Correll states that “being described as truly exceptional—a visionary—leads to higher ratings for men” but women are rated down for the very same quality; in other words, double standards are good and thriving. According to this study, managers’ “gender beliefs subtly frame their observations, interpretations, and valuations of employee behavior”, which means women still face challenges in the workplace because of their gender in 2024.
Of course we don’t know whether Mr Birling would have acted with the same impunity had Eva Smith been Adam Smith, but having “a lot to say” is exactly the kind of accusation women have faced at the workplace (since they are allowed to work and before that) for hundreds of years. Think about all the jokes ridiculing women who are talkative, the stereotype about “old wives’ tales” that discredits women and their fears, or the image of the pointy-hat-wearing, broom-riding menace that is a witch, who could not be controlled and therefore had to be destroyed.
Or just look at a scold’s bridle.
Society has never been short of ways to punish independent, outspoken women. Eva’s character is one in an almost endless line of literary and real life victims to this trend.
Violence against women
Getting fired is the first metaphorical slap in the face Eva encounters, but it’s probably the least of the Birlings’ sins – when we put it into perspective. Throughout the last two years of her life, Eva slowly loses agency: her ability to take action and, more importantly, to choose what action to take, diminishes at the hands of the Birling family members. While Sheila’s jealousy is deplorable, Gerald’s entitlement is appalling, and Sybil Birling’s refusal to help a woman through her charity for women is borderline villainous, it is Eric who hammers the last nail into the proverbial coffin of Eva’s free will.
That Eric’s advances are unwanted is transparent even through the alcohol haze of his account on stage. He admits that the night he met Eva he drank so much alcohol that he was “in a state when a chap easily turns nasty.” The euphemism, similar to the others he uses to recount the events, lessens his personal responsibility – it wasn’t him, it was the alcohol. He also admits that after he (presumably) sobered up from the drunken night, “[Eva] told [him] she didn’t want [him] to go in” to her lodgings. The language is clear, no euphemism this time. Just pure rejection.
Even though we only hear what Eva wanted reported through Eric’s account, her intent is crystal clear from his words. The complete disregard of her rejection and Eric’s forceful, “nasty” state raise eyebrows today way more than it did 80 years ago – after all, it was a long and winding road to make rape a statutory offence in the UK. Nevertheless, the most serious sexual offence has not become any less prevalent in the past decades. In fact, violence against women has reached unprecedented heights recently, with the National Police Chiefs’ Council labelling the issue a “national emergency” and Alex Davies-Jones, the victims minister within the Ministry of Justice, calling it an “epidemic”. Only last year, a staggering 68,387 rape cases were reported, while more than one million violent crimes against girls and women were recorded across England and Wales. The UK is far from alone in this struggle: the WHO describes rape on a global scale as “devastatingly pervasive”.
While Eric seems sorry enough and tries to repent by stealing money from his father in a misguided attempt to make amends and support Eva, the truly harrowing aspect of the story is the Birling parents’ reaction to their son’s actions. Mr Birling’s disproportionate indignation at Eric’s theft from the office and the lengthy interrogation that follows stands in stark contrast to his single rebuke of “So you had to go to bed with her” which, let’s be honest, is more about the potentially scandalous fact that Eric slept with a prostitute, rather than that he forced himself on said prostitute.
Priestley really drives home that money is god to Mr Birling, but the parents’ misplaced priorities also highlight how violence against women takes the backseat in conversations about crime. Stealing money from the business is a grave insult in Mr Birling’s eyes, one that overshadows the real problem, and even Mrs Birling’s focus is on her own shattered image of the perfect son who “[doesn’t] get drunk.” The Inspector is the only character to emphasise that Eric treated Eva as if she was “a thing, not a person,” stressing the reality of how dehumanising it is to deny someone the right to determine what happens to their own body.
This, of course, goes over the Birlings’ head because grasping the depth of Eric’s transgression would necessitate considering Eva a human being, equal to themselves in her right to exist; and that would come dangerously close to “being mixed up together like bees in a hive.”
Cost of living crisis
Priestley sensitively handles the key social issue closest to his heart: the plight of the working class – those “millions and millions and millions” of exploited people who form the backbone of capitalist industrial production in Edwardian England. Eva’s surname, Smith, highlights the character’s narrative function in this context: the surname is one of the most common in the English-speaking countries, which is not by chance. She embodies those “millions” of workers who have no political voice and are invisible to the Birlings of the world (very much like Eva’s character which does not need casting in the play because she never appears on stage). What Priestley implies is that Eva’s emotional, financial and social struggle is not unique: she is the common worker, the masses who are at the mercy of their employer with virtually no rights enshrined in law to protect them.
Although we have come a long way in terms of workers’ rights – which means employers today cannot just fire an employee because they asked for a raise, – Eva’s struggle to make ends meet after she is dismissed from the Birling factory would be familiar to those living close to or under the poverty line. They were the ones especially hit by the cost of living crisis, for example.
We learn very little about Eva’s actual financial situation, but Priestley indicates a great deal about the depth of her existential desperation. After Sheila persuades Milwards to dismiss her, Eva is said to begin to “lead a different sort of life.” Sheila’s euphemism (a technique, as we have seen, most often used by the Birling family members to subconsciously reinforce, or at the very least desperately try to preserve, their upper class propriety) leaves little to the imagination: Eva had to resort to sex work to make a living. Prostitution is indeed a “different sort of life” from the respectable factory owner Birlings or the landed Crofts who don’t have to make money – others do it for them.
Few are so privileged, though. According to research, 3.8 million people lived in extreme poverty in 2022 in the UK, which means that they were not able to afford to cover their basic physical needs like housing or food. This isn’t just an incredibly sad state of affairs in one of the richest countries in the world, but also has serious knock-on effects on rising crime rates. Eva’s character showcases this link perfectly.
The speed with which Eva’s life unravels after her second dismissal is only paralleled by the Inspector’s effective dismantling of the “chain of events” (and family relationships) in the span of about two acts. Priestley masterfully shows us how transient really are the aspects of life we often consider permanent and secure: a workplace, a partner’s love, a child’s respect.
Or our ability to afford to live.
According to ONS data, 9 in 10 adults experienced the negative effects of the cost of living rising in March 2022 – a jump of almost 25% in just five months. In times of hardship like this – especially when one’s ability to secure basic necessities is restricted not by conflict or war or scarcity but prices – crime rates soar. A London School of Economics report recently confirmed this link which prompted the Mayor of London to call for a structural approach to tackling the source of crime, that is, among other things, poverty. So it’s no wonder that when Eva found herself without a stable job, with no money to buy food or pay rent, her only option was to become a prostitute. Short of joining a gang (which is, even today, a predominantly male approach to shoring up some cash), this was the only option left for her.
So what?
To the 21st century reader, J.B. Priestley’s An Inspector Calls will feel relatable. Mr Birling’s greed, Gerald’s entitlement and Eric’s violence are examples of human behaviour that haven’t died out since the post-war audience bought their first tickets to Priestley’s masterpiece. And we all know an Eva. She might be a close family member, or a friend’s mother, or the woman standing in line behind us in the supermarket checkout queue.
We might be her one day.
The Inspector’s closing words are a reminder of our duty as individuals living in society: “We are responsible for each other.”
That is a universal message that will always be relevant.
1 The article is behind a paywall, but a free review is available here.
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