An Inspector Calls
Edna
With the character of Edna, Priestley demonstrates the mistreatment of the working class. It is Edna
who shows Inspector Goole into the dining room in Act 1, announcing that “an inspector’s called”.
This is the closest line in the play to the title “An Inspector Calls” and is clearly a significant moment
as Edna ushers in the Inspector, who is about to challenge the values and beliefs of the Birlings and
Gerald. Birling replies with “Show him in here. Give us some more light.” These two simple
sentences are bluntly short and monosyllabic, suggesting no attempt at politeness from Birling to
Edna. Both also start with clear imperatives, ‘Show’ and ‘Give’, as if Birling expects his orders to be
followed instantaneously. Such off-hand comments may appear insignificant, but they subtly add to
the dramatic force of Eva’s narrative, highlighting the pressure of working-class women to
unhesitatingly obey their middle-class employers even if working conditions are unfair. It is Edna
who changes the lighting in the room when the Inspector arrives. The change of lighting on the
stage, moves from “pink and intimate” to “brighter and harder”. Here, Inspector Goole has a
physical impact on the room, and the “pink and intimate” lighting can be seen as indicative of the
overly optimistic ‘rose tinted glasses’ through which the Birlings view their lives of middle-class
privilege. Inspector Goole brings with him a harder sort of light- a spotlight of interrogation which
will illuminate the truth. The fact that it is Edna who is the one who brings the inspector into the
dining room, and who lights the room is important, in that Priestley could be suggesting that it will
be the working class who will deliver the truth to the middle and upper classes. This is also what we
see in the play: the life of the working-class Eva Smith is used to challenge the Birlings and Gerald,
making them face the true consequences of their actions, and it is working class Edna who brings in
the Inspector and changes the lighting which signifies that challenge. In 1912 when the play was set,
the use of maids and servants in the homes of middle- and upper-class families was more common
than by 1945, when the play was first performed. To the 1945 audience, Edna’s very presence on
stage would feel old-fashioned, and Priestley’s deliberate inclusion of a maid would serve as a
reminder to the audience of the outdated practise of employing a working-class people on very little
money, to work for long hours completing jobs that could have easily been done by the owners of
the house. Edna is ordered to pour port, serve food, answer the door: none of the tasks she
completes require any special skill, and all could be done by the Birling family themselves. In fact,
when Mr Birling offers to answer the door himself late into Act 3, Mrs Birling casually remarks
“Edna’ll go. I asked her to wait up”. This intrusion into Edna’s life because of the situation the Birlings
have found themselves in demonstrates how the Birlings see Edna as merely an employee, and do
not care that their actions are impinging upon her wellbeing. Edna cannot sleep, because the Birlings
want her up to do more tasks for them, even though we can assume that typically she would have
finished work by this time. Also, the Birlings’ successes are never shared with Edna: for example she
isn’t invited to join in the toast for the engagement. Priestly seems to be condemning this
mistreatment of the working class, for an audience in 1945 would consider the treatment of Edna as
out of date, and overly formal. This would further alienate the Birlings from the audience, presenting
them as people whose views and attitudes you wouldn’t wish to replicate or repeat. Although Edna
only speaks a few lines on stage, she still has more of a voice than Eva. Both Edna and Eva are two
women from the working-class, and both seem to suffer in some way at the hands of the Birlings.
Eva never appears on stage, and yet her voice is channelled through Inspector Goole. When Goole
tells the Birlings that “There are millions and millions and millions of Eva Smiths and John Smiths” he
is advocating for the absent Eva, who is unable to speak up for herself. However, there is also no one
who speaks up for Edna. Edna’s silence could be interpreted as symbolic of the lack of agency that
, the working poor had. Edna would not have had the same freedom of movement as those in the
middle classes, and she would have been even more restricted due to living with the Birlings.
Priestley might not use Edna to say very much, but it is just as important to consider what isn’t said,
when viewing Edna’s importance in the play. The working poor suffered in many ways, and not all of
them are obvious at first glance. Through his depiction of Edna, Priestley encourages us to consider
how, even when they are being paid, the poor are being exploited.
Inspector Goole
He is used to present the Birling family and Gerald with the message of social responsibility. Priestley
employs the use of inversion of generic expectations: ‘An Inspector Calls’ is a work of detective
fiction, and Inspector Goole is the intelligent who will solve the case, however whilst a traditional
detective story focuses on the narrowing down from list of numerous suspects to just one, Inspector
Goole does the opposite and shows that not one but all are responsible for the death of Eva Smith
or, as he puts it to the birling family shortly before his exit, “each of you helped to kill her”. Priestley
inverts the generic expectations of detective fiction to present the key message that “We are
members of one body. We are responsible for each other”. This sense of equality and community is
seen not just through the message of joint responsibility of the inverted detective genre, but also
through sentence structure. Shortly after his arrival on stage in Act One, Inspector Goole tells Mr
birling: “Because what happened to her then may have determined what happened to her
afterwards, and what happened to her afterwards may have driven her to suicide.” Soon after his
entrance, the audience start to realise that the inspector’s investigation focuses on the surprising
links between different events and people. The inspector initiates this ideas of connections through
anadiplosis; by repeating “what happened to her afterwards” at the end of one clause and the
beginning of the next, the sentence structure itself cleverly emphasises how the content of these
statements is inextricably connected and leads on from one another. Priestley portrays the Inspector
as a mysterious character. For a playwright who goes into great detail in some stage directions,
Priestley tells us very little about Inspector Goole. Even Goole’s dialogue reveals often what he is
not, rather than what he is: “I don’t play golf” and “I never take offence”. This vagueness of
character is deliberate on the part of Priestley, as it creates a sense of ambiguity and mystery. This is
added to by the character’s name. It is often noted that the inspector’s name ‘Goole’ sounds like the
word ‘ghoul’, meaning ghost or spirit, and it is true that the Inspector does haunt Gerald and the
Birlings about their role in Eva’s death. It’s also true that the inspector at times seems to know too
much about a girl who died two hours ago, even though he has read her letter and ‘sort of diary’.
This leads who to wonder whether the inspector is some kind of supernatural being. Descriptions are
deliberately vague and ambiguous. The vague and ambiguous depictions of the character help us to
focus less on the character and more on the message he brings. That message is loudly declared with
no subtlety whatsoever. With most of Inspector Goole’s dialogue, Priestley uses question: he
interrogates the characters on stage, which is exactly what we would expect from a detective
investigating a crime. However, there are a number of moments when Goole delivers lines of
dialogue that seem to come directly from the mouth of Priestley, hammering home the message of
social responsibility. Priestley uses the character of Inspector Goole to speak directly to the audience
about social responsibility. The character of the Inspector Goole does seem to be the embodiment of
JB Priestley himself- a mouthpiece used to deliver the key message that Priestley wants the audience
to take home with them. Priestley enhances his message through his use of supernatural imagery in
the inspector’s final words about, “fire and blood and anguish”. This is an illusion to the Biblical
description of hell as being a “blazing furnace, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth”.
His message seems to be that people need to do good deeds to make their way into heaven, and
