Modern texts · GCSE English Literature
Class in An Inspector Calls
How Priestley presents class in An Inspector Calls: the factory, Milwards, the Palace bar, the Crofts, and language that turns people into “cheap labour”.
Class in this play is a set of rooms Eva is not allowed to stay in: factory floor, shop, flat, charity office, dining room.
The important bits
What you need to know
- 1
Birling’s factory is class as wages and “lower costs”: Eva is labour, then a lesson to the others.
- 2
Milwards is class as consumer power: Sheila’s complaint outweighs a girl’s job.
- 3
Gerald’s flat is class as secrecy: a working-class woman can be kept, not introduced.
- 4
Mrs Birling’s committee is class as moral judgement: “girls of that class”.
- 5
The Croft–Birling engagement is class as ladder: old money and new money shaking hands over the port.
- 6
Eva’s names and jobs show how precarious working-class life is without a welfare net.
- 7
Accent, manners and “impertinence” are class weapons as much as money.
- 8
The Inspector’s arrival is a class disruption: a man who will not be impressed by the chief constable.
Quotations worth analysing
Short evidence. Real method.
“If you don’t come down sharply on some of these people, they’d soon be asking for the earth.”
“These people” is class in a demonstrative. Asking for a living wage is recoded as greed.
“Girls of that class.”
Contempt as a social fact. Feeling, truthfulness and need are assumed not to apply.
“You mustn’t try to build up a kind of wall between us and that girl.”
Sheila names the family’s method. Class is segregation of sympathy, not only of income.
Go deeper
How does Priestley show class through setting and props?
The dining room is the fortress: champagne, cigar, the “good solid furniture” of the opening stage directions. Eva dies in an infirmary the family will never visit. Between those rooms sit the factory, the shop, the bar and the flat — a geography of class. The photograph is a prop that crosses the wall for a second, then is withdrawn. When you write about class, do not only quote “cheap labour”. Show the house as a designed space that the Inspector invades. Lighting that goes harder is the private interior becoming a public inquiry. That is class as stagecraft.
Go deeper
New money versus old money — does it matter?
Birling is provincial business; Gerald is the Crofts. Priestley lets Birling fawn and Gerald relax. Both still use Eva. The distinction matters because it stops you treating “the rich” as one cartoon: status anxiety (knighthood, marriage) drives Birling; ease drives Gerald. Together they are a system. A paragraph that contrasts how each man talks about work — Birling’s “hard-headed” employer, Gerald’s summer idleness — shows class as culture, not only as a wage packet. Mrs Birling’s marriage into business from a higher social tone adds another layer: she polices rank while spending Birling’s money.
Go deeper
What context actually earns marks here?
1912: weak unions from Birling’s point of view, Titanic as a classed disaster (but do not over-labour that unless you can connect it), women workers, no National Health or unemployment safety net as we later knew it. 1945: Labour victory, Beveridge, a public ready to hear “one body”. Use one precise link, then return to Eva’s wages or the charity door. “There were class differences in the past” is not context. “Mrs Birling’s voluntary charity is the opposite of a right to help, which is what Priestley’s audience was about to build” is context.
See the idea in action
Track Eva through workplaces. Factory: dismissed for asking. Shop: dismissed for a look. Bar: available to men with money. Each setting is a class lesson. The dining room is the last setting, and she is only a photograph there.
Exam technique
Turn knowledge into marks
Class essays still need methods. “Priestley shows class” is empty until you name irony, euphemism, staging or who gets dialogue.
Common mistakes
Do not give these marks away
- 01
Writing a history of the Edwardian class system with no play.
- 02
Forgetting Gerald and Milwards, as if only the factory counted.
- 03
Calling Sheila working class because she is young.
What is the “wall” Sheila talks about?
AThe family’s attempt to separate themselves from Eva’s class and suffering
BThe wall of the Inspector’s police station
CA wall Birling is building at the factory
Show the answer
The family’s attempt to separate themselves from Eva’s class and suffering. Sheila sees that sympathy is being segregated. Class here is who you are allowed to feel for.
Quick questions
If this is the bit you searched
How does Priestley present class in An Inspector Calls?
Through wages, marriage, charity, accent and who is allowed in the dining room. Eva’s chain of jobs is a map of class power.
Is the play only about rich versus poor?
That is the spine, but Priestley also splits old/new money, male/female power, and older/younger conscience inside the rich house.
What is a strong class quotation?
Birling on “these people” asking for the earth; Mrs Birling’s “that class”; Sheila on cheap labour and the wall.
How do I mention the Titanic in a class essay?
As Birling’s faith in an unsinkable elite. Keep it to a sentence of irony, then return to Eva — unless you can connect luxury and labour tightly.