An Inspector Calls

“There’s a good deal of silly talk about these days—but—and I speak as a hard-headed business man, who has to take risks and know what he’s about—I say, you can ignore all this silly pessimistic talk.”

Arthur’s pompous speech operates on the premise of dramatic irony. The play is set in the past, before World War I and II, as well as before the tragic voyage of the Titanic. Arthur believes that war will not occur and that the Titanic will be a success; the audience knows that he is patently incorrect. Arthur uses his status as a “hard-headed business man” to establish his credentials (165); however, the audience views him as a boastful, self-important fool.

“They worked us hard in those days and kept us short of cash.”

Arthur revels in his own self-mythologizing. Rather than actually understand his son and his problems, he would rather construct an exaggerated version of history and then expect Eric to follow in these imaginary footsteps. His vague, self-congratulatory references to “those days” (168) function to excuse his exploitation of working-class people by claiming that poor people simply refuse to work hard. In Arthur’s version of his life, he overcame his own poverty through morality and hard work. As is evidenced by the rest of the play, this is simply untrue.

“Burnt her inside out, of course.”

Goole explains that Eva died by swallowing disinfectant which burned her from the inside out. This cause of death is a foreshadowing of what will happen to the Brimley family, whose immorality will fester inside them like a metaphorical corrosive agent. Their downfall will be self-administered through their own flaws, with the privilege and immorality at the core of the family bringing about its destruction as it corrodes all the way into the public sphere.

“If we were all responsible for everything that happened to everybody we’d had anything to do with, it would be very awkward, wouldn’t it?”

Arthur states his position explicitly. He does not feel a sense of responsibility for the rest of society because to do so would make him feel “awkward” (172). This awkwardness is caused by the nagging sense at the back of Arthur’s mind that he is exploiting people like Eva for his own personal profit. To confront the exploitation directly would be awkward, as he would not be able to continue to enrich himself, so he transmutes this awkwardness into a self-interested ideology of delusion in which he needs to only look out for himself and his family.

“The girl’s dead though.”

As Arthur and the others attempt to navigate the particulars of Goole’s investigation and their role in it, the inspector returns to the one salient fact: Eva Smith is dead. Her mortal status is the final rebuke to any qualm or objection that the family can raise; manners, etiquette, and expectation are rendered irrelevant when compared to what has happened to Eva. Goole’s status as a vengeful force is given power when he demolishes all petty objections with the reminder that the immoral people live on at the expense those moral people who they exploit.

“But these girls aren’t cheap labor—they’re people.”

While Arthur answered the inspector’s questions defensively, demonstrating his lack of empathy with the working-class people he employs, Sheila performs the empathy that she believes is expected of her. She defends the poor factory workers as “people” (177), contradicting her father, who regards them as exploitable machines. As the inspector’s questions will reveal, though, Sheila’s claim is hypocritical. She is able to perform empathy, but she is unable to act in an empathetic manner. She had Eva fired, sending her into poverty just like her father. Sheila may know which words to say to appear empathetic but, when her emotions are triggered, she is as brutal and as guilty as her father.

“And so you used the power you had, as a daughter of a good customer and also of a man well-known in the town, to punish the girl just because she made you feel like that?”

Goole’s role is not necessarily to investigate the death of Eva Smith, but to make the privileged Birling family and Gerald aware of the institutional power which they wield. He must be very explicit, as the wealthy characters barely discern the way in which their own whims and emotions have the power to change the lives of the less fortunate forever. Goole tells Sheila exactly the way she is implicated in Eva’s death, leaving nothing to the imagination. His clarity and his directness leave no room in which anyone can make excuses.

“He means that I’m getting hysterical now.”

Sheila may be culpable in the death of Eva, just like the rest of her family, but she begins to show signs of empathy with the dead woman after she is questioned by Goole. Sheila’s middle-class status means that she may be unable to understand Eva’s material marginalization but Sheila knows all too well the perils of existing in a patriarchal society. Just as Eva was mistreated by a string of men, Sheila feels mistreated by her unfaithful fiancé. This sense of mistreatment is vocalized at the sarcastic mention of her “hysterical” attitude; the notion of feminine hysteria was a patronizing means of downplaying and ignoring women’s suffering during this era. Sheila is accusing Gerald of dismissing her legitimate concerns, victimizing her with misogynistic, patronizing comments which are an echo of the misogynistic, patronizing way in which he took advantage of Eva.

“We all started like that—so confident, so pleased with ourselves until he began asking us questions.”

After her harrowing experience with the inspector, Sheila has begun to discern the guilty nature of the family. The confidence, the arrogance, and the dismissiveness of herself and her father were weaponized against them, making them feel the true weight of their role in Eva’s death. Sheila tries to warn her mother against this, suggesting that she is beginning to understand the reckoning which is taking place. Sybil dismisses her, however, suggesting that Sybil lacks her daughter’s capacity for empathy and understanding.

“No, he’s giving us rope—so that we’ll hang ourselves.”

Sheila understands the manner in which Goole’s questions implicate the person that he is interrogating. She subtly draws a comparison between Eva’s death by suicide and the self-destruction of the family. While Eva’s death by suicide is portrayed as the tragic consequence of various abuses, however, the family’s destruction is the product of their own arrogance and immorality.

“Well, really! Alderman Meggarty! I must say, we are learning something tonight.”

Sybil loudly declares her shock that a supposedly reputable man like Alderman Meggarty could have a reputation as a sexual predator in Brumley. Her words are a pretense; even her daughter knows about the old man’s reputation. Society is much like Sybil, ignoring the crimes of the rich and the powerful if they target poor people, women, or other marginalized groups. This conscious effort to ignore immorality becomes a veil behind which immorality hides, as all the family members learn during Inspector Goole’s visit.

“You were the wonderful Fairy Prince. You must have adored it, Gerald.”

Sheila’s sarcastic comment to Gerald reveals the similarities between Gerald and Arthur. Both men love to self-mythologize. Arthur’s rambling speeches about current events cast him as a hero of industry in a lazy, gutless world. Similarly, Gerald’s brief affair with Eva Smith allowed him to think of himself as the heroic “Fairy Prince.” In truth, both men are exploiting others for their own personal benefit and telling themselves an elaborate fiction rather than confronting their own guilt.

“You and I aren’t the same people who sat down to dinner here.”

The evening with Inspector Goole has fundamentally changed the way in which the characters see one another, but they are in fact the same people who sat down to dinner. The actions which Sheila now believes define them were committed in the past, by the people standing before her now. What has changed is the pretense; the veil of delusion has dropped and now they can recognize each other in their true forms.

“She had to admit, after I began questioning her, that she had no claim to the name, that she wasn’t married, and that the story she told at first—about a husband who’d deserted her—was quite false.”

In her recollection, Sybil frames herself as the equivalent of Inspector Goole. She is proud of the way in which she broke apart the young, desperate woman’s supposed lies to reveal the truth. Yet Sybil cannot recognize the truth. Not only does she fail to extract the truth from the young woman, but she fails in her comparison to Goole. Her interrogation was an attempt to deny help to a desperate woman due to a personal bitterness, while Goole is seeking to bring justice to the world. Sybil can never be like Goole because, while her actions may seem similar, the emotional and moral context in which she acts is the complete inverse.

“Don’t stammer and yammer at me again, man. I’m losing all patience with you people.”

Sybil’s obstinate refusal to take responsibility for her actions pushes Goole into an emotional outburst. Just as his questions expose the characters’ true natures, their responses gradually elucidate his own. Goole is not an emotionless agent of divine retribution. He is a frustrated, angry individual who feels compelled to show people the error of their ways. His brief outburst is telling of his true nature at a time when Sybil is refusing to confront her own self.

“If you’d had any sense of loyalty—.”

Arthur remains consistent to his worldview throughout the play. He is loyal to his family and his belief in helping himself at the expense of the wider society. In effect, Arthur has no “loyalty” to the law, to morality, or to anything else as abstract and as nebulous. Instead, he is loyal only to himself and his self-interest. He criticizes Sheila not because she is wrong, but because her honesty threatens his reputation.

“I was a bit squiffy.”

By saying that he was “a bit squiffy” (203), Eric is using childish language to undermine the true scope of his addiction and its consequences. In this passage Eric clings to the pretense and delusion that is used by all members of the family to avoid self-reflection.

“Then—you killed her.”

Even as the true is revealed, Eric clings to his desire to blame someone else for Eva’s death. He would rather blame his mother for turning away a desperate pregnant woman rather than himself, the man who impregnated her. Eric’s determination to blame others suggests that he still does not grasp the idea of collective responsibility that Goole is trying to impart.

“You’re offering the money at the wrong time, Mr. Birling.”

Arthur offers thousands of pounds to Inspector Goole, hinting that he wants the inspector to cover up the scandalous truth about Eva’s death. Goole rejects his offer out of hand, pointing out that Arthur is willing to pay a fortune now because he was not willing to pay a relative pittance when Eva and her co-workers first asked for money. Goole’s refusal shows that Arthur is still motivated by self-interest and that he has learned nothing.

“And who here will suffer from that more than I will?”

Arthur continues to avoid the true implication of Goole’s words. He still does not care about Eva, who has suffered more than any of the other characters. Instead, he can only view the evening through the lens of how it personally affects him. He has begun to lash out at his family in self-defense, as he cannot comprehend anything beyond self-interest, even in the context of a family collapse and a tragic death.

“He was prejudiced from the start.”

In his desperation to return the world to the way it was at the beginning of the play, Arthur projects his own faults onto Goole. He accuses the egalitarian Goole of being “prejudiced,” framing a criticism of the rich in the same terms as the marginalization of the poor. Arthur wants to make himself the victim, while ignoring his own prejudices, so he claims that the man making the accusations against him is, in fact, the prejudiced party.

“As Gerald says—we’ve been had.”

To privileged men like Arthur, being forced to confront reality can feel like abuse, so he is relieved when he decides Goole is not a real police officer. He feels as though an elaborate trick has been played on the family. He accepts the convenient delusion and ignores the inconvenient truth, as his ego insists that the only way in which he could be made to feel guilty about his success (or his exploitation of others) is through an extravagant practical joke.

“Everything we said had happened really had happened.”

Sheila and Eric alone acknowledge that their confessions are binding, even if Goole may not be a real police officer. Their past actions are what matter, not whether these actions are exposed. Sheila and Eric differ from their parents and Gerald in that they are regretful for their immorality, even if they are not facing any consequences. To the older characters, consequences are all that matter, as the only real aim in life is self-aggrandizement.