An Inspector Calls was written by J.B. Priestley in 1945 but is set in 1912, just before the First World War. This deliberate time gap is central to the play's meaning: audiences watching in 1945 know that the Birlings' comfortable certainties were about to be shattered by events they could not foresee.
Why does the time gap matter so much?
By setting the play in 1912 but writing it in 1945, Priestley creates a dramatic irony that operates throughout. Arthur Birling's confident predictions — that there will be no war, that the Titanic is "unsinkable", that social progress will come naturally — are statements that a 1945 audience knows to be catastrophically wrong. Birling's optimism becomes evidence of his blindness.
Priestley is making a political argument. He was a socialist writing in the immediate aftermath of the Second World War, at a moment when the Beveridge Report (1942) had proposed the foundations of the welfare state. His play asks whether the attitudes represented by the Birlings — self-interest, class prejudice, moral complacency — will survive into the new post-war world, or whether Britain will learn from its catastrophic recent history and accept collective responsibility.
What are the key themes in An Inspector Calls?
| Theme | What it explores | Key dramatic moments |
|---|---|---|
| Social responsibility | Each person's obligations to every other member of society | The Inspector's final speech; Eva Smith's chain of exploitation |
| Class and inequality | How class hierarchies enable exploitation | The Birlings' treatment of Eva; Gerald's aristocratic ease |
| Gender and power | The vulnerability of women in Edwardian society | Eva's lack of any social protection; Sybil's contempt for "girls of that class" |
| Age and change | The contrast between older characters who refuse change and younger ones who accept responsibility | Sheila and Eric's responses vs Arthur and Sybil's |
| Guilt and responsibility | Whether admitting guilt is enough; what responsibility demands in action | Eric's shame; Sheila's self-examination; Arthur's denial |
| Appearance vs reality | What the Birlings' comfortable home conceals | Eva Smith's suffering hidden beneath the engagement party's celebration |
Who are the key characters and what do they represent?
Arthur Birling represents the capitalist class's complacent self-interest. His dramatic function is to model the worldview Priestley wants his audience to reject. His famous speech ("A man has to mind his own business and look after himself and his own") is not just a character trait — it is the philosophy the play systematically dismantles.
Sybil Birling represents class-based snobbery and moral complacency. She refuses to accept any responsibility and uses her social position to justify her contempt for Eva Smith. Her certainty that Eric cannot be responsible for Eva's pregnancy — sustained until the moment he confesses — is Priestley's sharpest satire of wilful blindness.
Sheila Birling begins the play as a naïve, relatively passive young woman, but her response to the Inspector's revelations is the most dramatically significant change in the play. By Act Three she has become morally clearer than her parents — and has accepted that realisation is not enough unless it changes behaviour.
Eric Birling is more genuinely culpable than Sheila (he is involved in Eva's pregnancy and has stolen from his father), yet he accepts responsibility. His guilt is presented as more honest than his mother's denial. He represents the possibility of change even from a position of genuine wrongdoing.
Gerald Croft is more complex. He did help Eva (as Daisy Renton) — genuinely, in his own way — before abandoning her. He also helps reinstate Arthur Birling's denial in Act Three. He occupies a morally ambiguous middle ground, which makes him analytically interesting.
Inspector Goole is not a realistic police inspector — his name alone signals this (Goole / Ghoul). He functions as a moral force, possibly symbolic of collective conscience or socialist judgement, arriving from outside the Birlings' comfortable world to expose what they have concealed from themselves.
What context is most useful for high-mark answers?
The most powerful contextual move in any An Inspector Calls essay is connecting the play's argument to its dual historical moment: the 1912 setting (Edwardian class rigidity, suffragette movement, labour disputes, approaching catastrophe of WWI) and the 1945 context of composition (post-WWII, welfare state debates, Labour landslide, collective hope and exhaustion).
Priestley himself was a prominent socialist broadcaster and writer who had argued publicly for a fairer post-war settlement. The play is a political act as much as a dramatic one — understanding this is what separates a good GCSE answer from an outstanding one.
How should I approach an extract-based exam question?
Most exam boards present an extract from the play and ask how Priestley presents a specific character or theme, first in the extract and then in the play as a whole.
In the extract:
- Look at Priestley's stage directions — they carry significant analytical weight (the Inspector's "massiveness" and "disconcerting habit of looking hard at the person he addresses" are key)
- Note what a character does NOT say as much as what they do
- Consider how dialogue reveals character through its register, certainty, or evasiveness
In the wider play:
- Choose two or three moments that develop the same idea differently
- Track how a character or theme changes across the three acts
Frequently asked questions
Is Inspector Goole a real person?
He is presented as a police inspector but is almost certainly not a realistic one — no police record of him exists in the world of the play; two characters arrive at the same time in different towns; and his final speech suggests a prophetic rather than investigative function. Priestley leaves the ambiguity deliberate. Analytically, the most productive question is not "who is he?" but "what does he do to each character and to the audience?" — he is a device for moral revelation, whatever his ontological status.
Why do Arthur and Sybil return to denial at the end?
Priestley uses their denial to show that moral change is not automatic — age and entrenched self-interest make it almost impossible for some people to revise their worldview, even in the face of direct evidence of the harm they have caused. Their return to comfort ("Probably a hoax!") is not a dramatic failure; it is Priestley's point: some people will learn nothing, and society must not be structured in a way that allows their indifference to harm others.
What is the significance of the title?
"An Inspector Calls" — the title tells us only what happens, not who the inspector is or what he represents. This deliberate flatness draws attention to the act of the calling itself: the arrival of moral scrutiny into a world that has successfully avoided it. The title's ambiguity mirrors the play's ambiguity about Inspector Goole's true identity and function.
How do I write about Priestley's message without it sounding like I'm just explaining the plot?
The key is to connect every observation about character or event to a technique and a purpose. Instead of "Arthur Birling refuses to accept responsibility", write: "Priestley constructs Birling as a figure of deliberate dramatic irony — his confident assertions about business and social order are ones that a 1945 audience knows to be disastrously wrong, so his refusal to accept moral responsibility is not merely stubborn but symptomatic of the ideology Priestley presents as dangerous." Analysis of how Priestley achieves an effect, linked to why in its historical context, is the formula for high-mark answers.
Professor Quill at aitutors.me helps you move from knowing the play to thinking about it — without writing your essay for you.