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Gerald
® Gerald is caught between the older and younger generations and so
in his own right Priestly presents him as the middle-generation.
Gerald’s liminality (at a position between 2 boundaries) also extends
to his attitudes and ideology as well. Since Gerald’s only the middle
generation he is less flexible and impressionable (easily influenced)
than Sheila and Eric, in terms of his convictions, but he does accept
his responsibility
® Priestly does also portray Gerald to be deliberately ignoring and
suppressing his sense of morality as it’s bringing out his emotions as
denoted by the use of dashes. He intentionally chooses to react to
the visible injustice, rather than the institutionalised (establish
something as a norm) prejudice caused by the class system. This is
exemplified through Gerald helping Eva because it was visible to him
and couldn’t ignore it as ‘Old Joe Meggarty […] had wedged her into
a corner’
® Gerald represents the individualism of the upper-class. He disillusions
(disappoints) the audience, who hopes that by the end of the play he
would change his capitalist and selfish attitudes, but fails to do so. So,
Priestley uses Gerald’s failure to develop his sense of social
responsibility, to convey how entrenched (an attitude unlikely to
change) these upper-class attitudes are; even death won’t change
them.
® he is ‘easy well-bred young man-about-town’. This idiomatic phrase
suggests that Gerald is a fashionable socialite. Alternatively, this
phrase could have plural connotations; perhaps, Priestley is
foreshadowing the unfaithful nature of Gerald
® His social status contributes to his attractiveness as in 1912 British
society the only route to wealth for women would be to marry into it
as women were forbidden from opening a bank account and so had
none of their own money
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