The World According to Chandra D:
“An Inspector Calls” by J.B. Priestley is a real brain teaser
A few years ago, I added the play “An Inspector Calls” (1947) by J. B. Priestley to my college course (English Language and Culture). The play was released in 1945, post World War II, but the story is actually set in England in 1912 during the time of great factories using cheap labor and providing abominable working conditions. Unions weren’t allowed, and any protests against working conditions, or demands for a higher/fairer wage resulted in worker terminations.
My students were required to read the Three Act play, which is relatively short. I showed them a YouTube version of the play in class as well as a short excerpt of life in the early 20th century to bring the play to life for them.
In keeping with the attitude of many young people today, most of my 100+ students could not see any value in a play that was over 60 years old, set in England of all places, and post-Industrial Revolution. They groaned and complained when I informed them that they were expected to discuss the plot, the characters, and any social, economic, or political resemblances to life today.
I told them that the play was a small slice of history. It might seem unimportant or unrelated to their lives, but in reality, it dealt with universal themes like morality, responsibility (self- and community), family dynamics, and social structure.
The story revolves around a rich, influential family: the Birling family. Arthur Birling, the patriarch of the family, is a factory owner. His wife Sybil is the chairperson of a charity for women in need. Their only daughter Sheila is about to marry the son (Gerald Croft) of an equally rich, influential rival factory owner. The last family member is only son and heir to the Birling fortune, Eric, who is a drunk and a wastrel.
The play begins with the engagement dinner of Sheila and Gerald. An inspector Goole arrives unexpectedly with the news that Eva Smith (also called Daisy Renton) has killed herself by drinking disinfectant. The family is puzzled at his presence in their home because, tragic though the death might be, it has nothing to do with them.
As the play unfolds, we find out that every person at the Birlings’ home, including Gerald, has had some dealings with Eva Smith, and in their various ways, they have contributed to her fate; in one way or another, each person has been responsible for her slow descent into hopelessness and isolation, and this has led to her suicide.
I thoroughly enjoyed seeing my students discover the relevance of the play. Act by act, scene by scene, they found parallels between the play and life today. They identified with the injustices that the factory workers at the Birling Works endured, seeing similarities between factory workers in developing countries and those in the play. They enjoyed the personal drama of Sheila’s discovery of her fiancée’s infidelity with Eva/Daisy and her difficult decision to end her engagement, which meant destroying her father’s dream of a business merger with the Croft family.
The students were riveted to discover that the father of Eva’s unborn child was actually Eric Birling, and that Mrs. Birling had condemned her own grandchild to death by refusing Eva the help she so desperately needed. They spoke about such things being possible today, with pregnant teenagers and young women from a variety of ethnic backgrounds feeling that they have no options with an unwanted pregnancy, especially if there is no organizational help available to them. They wondered whether the social structures that exist today are inferior or superior to the ones portrayed in “An Inspector Calls”.
The final speech of Inspector Goole, where he declares that “We don’t live alone. We are members of one body. We are responsible for each other. [ … ] if men will not learn that lesson, then they will be taught it in fire and blood and anguish.” (Act III), incited many students to argue about self-responsibility versus community responsibility.
Was Eva Smith solely responsible for her ultimate decision? Had she given up too easily? Why hadn’t she done this or that? Also, could individuals like Arthur, Sybil, Sheila, Eric, and Gerald who did not know the consequences of their actions, be held responsible for Eva’s death?
All in all, I was quite satisfied with the addition of this play to the curriculum because it allowed these young adult students to realize that history is never irrelevant or unimportant, even if it is happening on another continent because history, like life, repeats itself.
Patterns re-emerge, political ideologies re-surface, social issues reoccur, and it is best to be prepared.
For example, fossil fuel-burning cars are now in the process of being phased out in many developed countries, to be replaced by electric cars that require lithium-ion batteries that need both lithium and cobalt. There are cobalt mines and cobalt cleaning sites in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) that reportedly use child labor. A report in The Epoch Times “States to Ban Gas-Powered Cars Despite EVs’ Human, Environmental Costs” by Katie Spence on September 12th, 2022, claims that children as young as 6 years old are forced to work in these mines in DRC.
The above situation is very much like the situation in “An Inspector Calls” where the factory workers in the early 20th century were being over-worked and underpaid, and even young children were pressed into service. Technological progress invariably leads to consumer demands that require cheap labor and lots of it. This in turn leads to a lot of social and economic hardships for the vulnerable people at the lowest rungs of society.
The past, when it is learned and respected, allows us to see these repetitions. It gives us the wisdom and knowledge to recognize those links between the past and the present. Ultimately, it provides us with the resources we need to decide collectively and democratically whether the solutions we choose for today’s problems are truly advantageous or detrimental.
And, if these solutions are detrimental, leading to severe negative consequences, we can then look for ways to combat these and to balance the good versus the bad for our local, national, and international communities.
Forewarned is forearmed.
Chandra deVita
September 15th, 2022