How the Stage Directions Can Give You Top Grades in An Inspector Calls
Use the opening stage directions for any Essay
This is an extract from my Guide to An Inspector Calls
A Character is a Construct
Ok, the most important thing to remember is that characters are never real people. They are made or constructed. Examiners refer to them as “a construct”, and students who understand this get the top grades.
But, English Professors and authors also see characters as “a construct”. This means that every character is created for a reason, indeed for lots of reasons. All of those reasons will involve influencing the reader or audience.
When you start asking, “How is the author trying to influence me?” you are becoming a proper student of literature. You get even better when you ask, “How is the author trying to influence people of the time?” as well.
In this play, the stage directions help the actors and the director show the audience what is wrong with each character. Their flaws are not personal to them, because characters are constructed. They are constructed to reveal flaws in society. So, each character represents an aspect of society which is similar to them.
Arthur Birling
What’s wrong with Birling?
Priestley wants us to question Birling’s authority, because he represents capitalism, not just wealth. For example, Gerald’s family are in the same business, textile factory owners. However, his wealth is probably inherited – his father knighted “Sir George Croft” and his mother “Lady Croft`’. Priestley wants to criticise his level of society, which he does through Gerald.
But Priestley sees the capitalists, the “hard headed man of business”, as much more of a social problem than the aristocracy, because there are more of them in 1945, and they affect more working-class people through their low wages and working conditions.
Priestley questions capitalism itself when he questions Birling’s authority. Structurally, it is why he chooses to start the play with Birling. He is showing that capitalism is the root cause, the start, of Eva’s problem.
But, we shall see that capitalism is not the main cause. This is because Priestley believes that capitalism can be made to work in moral ways, so that people still help each other. That’s what the play is about. Perhaps this is why he never joined the Labour Party. He does not want to destroy capitalism: he wants to make it work for a much fairer society.
How Priestley Constructs Birling
Remember, each character is not a real person. They are a construct. They are made. Examiners love you to use the phrase ‘a construct’, as in ‘Birling is a construct who represents the dangers of capitalism’.
Birling “is…heavy-looking”. This helps us see Birling as a construct:
1. It will work symbolically with his personification of ‘Greed’ as one of the Seven Deadly Sins. This will also signify all business men, and the capitalist system are greedy.
2. It will provide a contrast with The Inspector, who will have a “massive” appearance, not in size, but in impact, suggesting that the working classes can match the power of the ruling classes.
3. It can suggest that he is indulgent, self-satisfied, and slow. Slowing Birling down is actually the most likely way an actor could convey heaviness, and we would not just associate this with bad health, but also with stupidity. Priestley will emphasise this with Birling’s predictions, whose dramatic irony will reveal him as utterly wrong.
He is also a “rather portentous”, which suggests he is full of self-importance and trying to impress. We are therefore already critical of him at first sight, and also feel superior to him. This is another way that Priestley questions the authority of the rich.
He has “fairly easy manners”, implying how happy and perhaps confident he is of getting the knighthood he so craves, and how confident he is that Gerald will marry Sheila.
Priestley describes him as “but rather provincial in this speech.” Perhaps this suggests that he should not be so pleased with himself, he is nouveau riche*, and therefore looked down upon by those born into the upper classes. (*This was a phrase used to describe the wealthy who had earned their wealth. The implication was that this sort of wealth was nowhere near as desirable as that acquired through family inheritance, through breeding, through being part of the nobility, perhaps like Gerald.)
Alternatively, it can also help with The Inspector’s message that we are all the same, “members of one body”, and therefore class distinctions are an illusion. It might teach that class distinctions are a damaging social construct which only have power because we choose to believe in them.
Finally, Priestley also wants to contrast this with Birling’s wife.
Sybil Birling
“His wife is about fifty”. Priestley insists that Birling should be slightly older, “in his middle fifties”. This pattern will be deliberately echoed in the relative ages of their daughter Sheila and her older fiancé Gerald. This implies that the Birlings were once just like Sheila and Gerald, which will be important when we ask ourselves at the end of the play if they have truly learned The Inspector’s lesson. (If they share the same age gap as Arthur and Sybil, perhaps they are more likely to marry, and perhaps Sheila is therefore less likely to live out the lesson The Inspector teaches her).
What’s wrong with Sibyl Birling?
Sybil is “a rather cold woman and her husband's social superior”. This juxtaposition suggests that Priestley believes being socially “superior” also makes a person “cold” and unfeeling towards others. He wants to change this in his audience.
Another reason for this is to emphasise the division between husband and wife, so that there is an element of conflict which matches the seating arrangement.
Another ambiguity is also deliberately placed in front of us. Did she marry Arthur because she loved him, therefore ignoring his lower social status? This is a parallel with Gerald choosing to marry Sheila, who has a lower social status and is “not good enough” for Gerald in the eyes of his parents. After the end of the play, we ask if this parallel will continue, and if Sheila will therefore marry Gerald.
Sheila Birling
What is wrong with Sheila?
“a pretty girl in her early twenties, very pleased with life and rather excited.”
We can see that at the start of the play Priestley wants us to see Sheila as a “girl”, rather than a woman. This is surprising to a modern audience, especially as “early twenties” implies an age of around 23.
He also seems to be a bit dismissive of her: telling us she is “excited” would tell us that she is excited by the moment – she is going to be engaged tonight, and knows this because that is what the dinner is for. However, the modifier, “rather” also implies criticism, as though Priestley is suggesting she is too “excited”, and not in proper control of her emotions.
Sheila is a construct
He also links this directly to her class. It is her wealth and status which mean that she is “very pleased with life”. This interestingly echoes the description of Birling, as “portentous”, being very pleased with himself. At least at the start of the play she is very much like her father who, we will see, is also excited about a probable Knighthood.
When we get to the end of the play you will have to decide if she has crossed a threshold into womanhood, or whether she is still a “girl”, who will still follow her father’s wishes, and marry Gerald, partly for his status.
Gerald Croft
What’s wrong with Gerald?
“Gerald croft is an attractive chap about thirty, rather too manly to be a dandy but very much the well-bred young man-about-town.”
Gerald is described as “an attractive chap”. This is the same dismissive language he uses to describe Sheila. Instead of being called a man, he is a “chap”. Perhaps Priestley is suggesting that the upper classes are too privileged to face real life, and without the challenge of making their way in their world, they can never be considered true men.
Alternatively, it may be looking at Gerald’s self-obsession and self-interest, and suggesting that his inherited wealth prevents him from truly growing up. He never becomes a real man in Priestley’s eyes because he doesn’t accept responsibility for his actions.
Gerald is a contradiction
Priestley also suggests he is vain, “rather too manly to be a dandy”. The flamboyance of the word “dandy” suggests a man obsessed with his appearance. Whereas the “dandy” is obsessed with his clothes, Gerald is much more obsessed with work and sex.
This expression also suggests that Priestley doesn’t just want us to dismiss Gerald. “Manly” suggests we should also find things to admire in him. You may find this a bit of a problem – how can Priestley want us to admire a man who we discover straight away has been cheating on Sheila, who he loves and wants to marry? The answer, perhaps strangely, is that Priestley simply saw this is a “manly” way to behave. Priestley had a number of affairs, and even fathered a daughter with a friend’s wife:
“Priestley had a number of affairs and in later life he admitted he "enjoyed the physical relations with the sexes … without the feelings of guilt which seems to disturb some of my distinguished colleagues" (http://spartacus-educational.com/JPriestley.htm)
But, Priestley might also be troubled by his lack of guilt. He might describe Gerald as “too manly”, because he is working too hard perhaps to be attractive to women.
Certainly it is his vanity that Sheila will pick up on when she reacts to his affair with Eva as Daisy Renton. She accuses him of desiring to be flattered by Daisy’s worshipping of him. “You were the wonderful fairy prince. You must have adored it, Gerald.”
He has the ability to act correctly in all sorts of circumstances, as Sybil observes when he presents Sheila with her engagement ring, so that he is “very much the well-bred man about town”. Being well bred does not just refer to his behaviour, but also to what Priestley’s audience would call his breeding – the assumption that the upper classes were literally more refined.
Gerald represents the upper classes who inherit their wealth
Because they only married from within their own class, they become ever more perfect with each generation. This is what the word ‘breeding’ would have meant in 1945. It is literally genetic engineering, without science intervening – social selection did it.
Priestley, as you will have gathered by now, wants to attack this view of the upper classes. Again, he does this with his familiar technique of juxtaposition. Gerald is the “well-bred man about town”, which implies that he frequents fashionable places: theatres, art galleries, restaurants, or social events.
Gerald represents sexual exploitation
But, because the setting is “in Brumley, an industrial city in the north Midlands”, we question this cosmopolitan interpretation of “man about town”. This isn’t London. Instead of Shaftsbury Avenue, Gerald will frequent the Palace theatre, and indeed appears to go there mainly for the bar and the women he will meet there. And these women are mainly prostitutes. This “man about town” is searching for sex, rather than culture.
Priestley is already suggesting that Gerald is likely to be promiscuous (what today you would call – but not in your essays! – a bit of player).
Remember that Gerald does not just represent himself, he is a construct. He represents the other side of capitalism, those who have inherited their wealth for generations and therefore feel entitled from birth.
Priestley suggests that all those with titles, the aristocracy, living on inherited wealth, are like this – self-obsessed and immoral.
Perhaps Priestley wants us to dislike and admire Gerald at the same time. This would throw a light on how society admires those with high social status, even though we know they have done nothing to achieve that status, or to merit it. This is why Birling is so excited to get a Knighthood. It means he has arrived in society. His huge wealth alone can’t do that.
Eric
What’s wrong with Eric?
“Eric is in his early twenties” just like Sheila. Priestley makes them the same age, perhaps so that he can contrast the difference between them in how they have treated Eva. One argument I will put forward later is that Priestley believes Eric’s treatment of Eva is far worse than Sheila’s.
Another possibility is that Priestley wants his audience to consider that they are both equally damaged by their upper-class upbringing. Sheila was too “excitable”, and Eric is unbalanced by having two contradictory halves. He is “not quite at ease, half shy, half assertive”.
He is not described as a “chap”, boy, or a man, where Gerald was both a “chap” and a man, and Sheila was labelled a “girl”. This is curious. One possibility is that Priestley wants us to decide for ourselves about Eric – a “man” will have learned his lessons, but a boy will not.
Because of his alcohol abuse, Eric is possibly the hardest character to judge. It may be that Priestley wants us to think hardest about him. Remember, that’s why he insists that Eric must be seated “upstage”. You’ll see why that is significant now:
How Ambiguity is used to Introduce the Characters
The Birlings are separated:
“the four Birling's and Gerald are seated at the table, with Arthur Birling at one end, his wife at the other”.
This was not customary in Edwardian times. Although the host and his wife could choose to sit separately, they often sat opposite each other at the centre.
· Priestley instead chooses to symbolise a great distance between Arthur Birling and Sybil Birling.
· Possibly he feels that one is much guiltier in their treatment toward Eva – you will decide later.
· Possibly he wants to show that they are linked only by rank and position in society, and not by love.
· Possibly he wants to show that they are surrounding their children, either protectively, or as an attack, literally on their flanks.
Again, you will have to decide.
A contemporary audience would instinctively be on the lookout for signs of conflict between them, and between the parents in one camp, and Eric and Sheila on the other. This separation is obvious to a modern audience seeing the play, but even more obvious to Priestley’s in 1945.
Power Relationships
Priestley also wants the director and actor to think very carefully about the power relationships in the play. Which end is the head of the table? Normally this is quite clear in etiquette – the male host sits at the end. His wife does not. This emphasises quite clearly where status and power truly lie in a patriarchal society.
Priestley deliberately breaks this tradition by having two heads – Birling at one end, Mrs Birling at the other. He might be suggesting that Sybil sees herself as superior to her husband.
Or, he might be signalling that this moment, in 1912, symbolises the rise of female power, as it coincides with the birth of the Suffragettes. We shall see that in 1945, women were uppermost in Priestley’s mind, especially because they could all now vote, but in 1912, no woman could.
Why Eric is the odd one out
This seating plan is also obviously an odd number, and the odd one out will be Eric. This only works, however, if Sybil and her husband are at opposite ends – if she moves to the middle, there are four in the middle, and Birling is in his proper place at the head of the table. If Priestley staged it that way, we would not question his authority so quickly.
Eric becomes increasingly important in Act 1, and Priestley wants to make this inevitable “Eric downstage and Sheila and Gerald seated upstage.” “Downstage” means that Eric is closer to the audience than Sheila and Gerald, even though they are at the centre of most of the conversation at the start.
This is because Priestley wants us to decide what Eric has to hide. The director is allowed to choose whether we notice his drinking, and whether he is drunk. However, once he begins to interrupt, Priestley is determined we must notice this, so he sits him at the front. In this way he is already preparing us for the twist at the end of Act 2 where we find out that Eric is a drunk and Eric is the father of Eva’s child.