Women in An Inspector Calls ESSAY

Women in an inspector calls

Priestly wrote an inspector calls to promote social responsibility and to encourage society to become socialist. Throughout the play we see the patriarchy and the mistreatment towards women in the Edwardian era, this is presented through the character of Eva and how she got treated by capitalists men which leads her to her suicide.

In the beginning of the play Dickens demonstrates the idea that women are victims of capitalism. We are introduced to the Birling family who is a middle-class family in their “large suburban house” celebrating the engagement of Sheila Birling, the daughter of sybil and Arthur birling, to the upper-class citizen Gerald croft. During the engagement party, Birling is giving a capitalist monologue about the war and the titanic, however this is shortly interrupted by the inspector who has informed the family and audience that a girl named Eva Smith has “drank some small disinfectant”, we are also told that Eva was a former employee of Mr Birling but that he dismissed her for having “too much to say far to much” and that “she had to go.” This demonstrates how Eva sticking up for herself and other women’s rights for higher wages has backfired straight back on her and has ended up her losing her job. Women weren’t believed to have their own opinions and even more so verbally express those opinions, they were expected to stay in their homes and do all the domestic chores or if they had a…