Priestley's intentions Flashcards
(14 cards)
Why does he sets the play in 1912?
He wants to show how society has changed, but also how it is still similar and how it still needs to change, and therefore elect a socialist government
How does Priestley presents the Patriarchal society in the play?
- Consider how everything wrong in this society comes from the men ( the sexual exploitation of Eva by Gerald and Eric)
- Also true of the way that women exploited her ( Sheila exploited Eva because she was attractive - because in the patriarchal society, the only way to advance in society is by marring well- and for this you need income, name and attractiveness - so Sheila’s jealousy is not just created by her personality but they are created by the rules of patriarchal society, that don’t allow her to develop in any other way
- Mrs Birling too has had no root to authority and power in her life, and the only to ways she can do it is by consistently insisting on her position as an upper class women - and also in denying her charity to working class people because she is prejudice against ‘girls of that class’ - the only way for Mrs Birling to have influence in the world is th cling to the class structure, which allows her to influence as a women.
Priestley is extremely against war - This is a anti war play
‘The Germans don’t want war’
When Birling calls himself a ‘hard headed man of business’
- He is echoing an accusation made by the prime minister, about those business men that profiteered from the WW1
- Priestly is making a direct connection between capitalist exploitation and the impulse to go to war in 1 place
- Priestley links that to Birlings ignorance ‘The Germans don’t want war’
- Priestley is suggesting that the capitalist perspective is a ignorant perspective
Teases statement
Priestley adopts a morally authoritative tone throughout An Inspector Calls to expose to expose the dangers of capitalism, challenge rigid Edwardian class and gender hierarchies and promote the need for social responsibility. Through the Inspector’s interrogations, Priestley symbolically dismantles each character’s sense of superiority, using them as representatives of wider societal failings. The cyclical structure reinforces ideas that unless society learns from its mistakes, history will repeat itself. This has a powerful effect on a post-war audience, reminding them of the consequences of ignorance and division. Ultimately, Priestley uses the play not just for social change, encouraging his audience to build a fairer, more collective future.
What were the 4 purposes that Priestly had?
- Class system
- Capitalism and socialism
- Patriarchal society
- Anti-war play
Social responsibility
‘A men need to look after himself’
- This is the moment that summons the inspector
- This acts as a ‘supernatural incantation’ that makes the inspector appear
- So it gives the idea that he is there to teach a lesson about social responsibility
Supernatural
Priestley is writing following from great authors in the Edwardian era, where everyone everyone is his audience would have read Christmas Carol, therefore they would all be familiar with the idea that ghosts come to teach a lesson for someone who need to learn
- This is an exact parallel to the Birlings who need to learn social responsibility and a ‘Ghost’ is going to teach them
- Priestley doesn’t necessarily want us to believe that the inspector is a ghost, He introduces it with the possibility
Goole = ghoul
Edna - ‘he says his name’s Inspector Goole’
Class and social hierarchy
‘These girls aren’t cheap laborers, they are people’
- ‘These girls’ is a diminutive, it belittles them saying that they are not women, they are just girls, suggesting that Sheila will always fell herself social superior, even tho she learnt the inspector lessons, she won’t really believe in equality
Capitalist = Criminals
Gerald- ‘We’re respectable citizens and not criminals’
Inspector- ‘Sometimes there isn’t much difference as you think’
- There isn’t an actual crime that Croft and Birling are engaged in
- The crime is that they formed a Cartel, which is illegal because it undermines the capitalist system,
- Eric tells us - ‘It isn’t if you can’t go and work somewhere else’
- Priestley is criticising this kind of profiteering
Male sexual exploitation
Gerald- ‘It happened that a friend of mine’
Male sexual violence
Eric- ‘It happened’
‘I was in that state when a chap turns nasty’
- Priestley is saying that that’s actually how a man can be like
- He is challenging the patriarchal society, where he is saying that giving men all this power will automatically lead to corruptions - not just paying, how they sexually exploit women but also physically threaten women
Inspector- ‘Burnt her inside out, of course’
- He is describing Eva’s form of suicide
- The violence of this phrase reflects the horror that Eva has about what has been done to her
Capitalist exploitation leads to the sacrifice of upper class sons
Inspector- ‘If men will not learn that lesson then they will all be taught it in fire and bloody and anguish’
- ‘Fire’, ‘Bloody’, ‘Anguish’ is a direct reference to war
- Priestley is saying that the consequence of this capital exploitation is that you will exploit people, your own family
- This might be a well known fact to the audience because the upper classes lost a greater proportion of their sons than the working classes, because in Edwardian era if your where in upper class, you were promoted to officer straight away
- Priestley is making a direct link, that the generations of Birlings and Croft sacrificed their own sons to war, and that because they did not learn the lesson for social responsibility
A christian play
- Priestley say to the audience that their values as christian should prevent them to have capitalist values, because in a christian sense we have to look after our fellow man then in our politics we have to do the same, and that is called socialism
‘We are members of one body’
This comes directly from the christian eucharist
Priestley links these characters to the original sins in order to convey how they are all responsible for Eva’s death and they are all responsible for the lack of social responsibility in their class
Patriarchal society is too powerful for sheila
Sheila- ‘No, not yet, its too soon, I must think’
- Introduces the possibility that Sheila, that is on the inspector’s side, and so anti her parents, and so anti Gerald’s ideas, that this marriage might still happen
- Priestley is pointing out that Sheila is a tragic figure, she is powerless. Having learnt the lesson she cannot do anything with it, because as a woman she doesn’t have the power, she doesn’t have the influence.
- Priestley introduces it as a contrast because in 1912, women did not have the right to vote, however in 1945 when the play was published, every single women had the right to vote, and they could therefore choose not to marry Gerald, because they could have a job, and find other ways to be independent
- Sheilas only way to evolve in society is by getting marriage
