Modern texts · GCSE English Literature
Gender in An Inspector Calls
How Priestley presents gender in An Inspector Calls: Eva’s vulnerability, Sheila’s awakening, Mrs Birling’s respectability, and men who narrate women they have used.
The men tell Eva’s story. The women on stage have to decide whether to believe them, become them, or break the script.
The important bits
What you need to know
- 1
Eva is sexualised, sacked, kept and judged: female working-class life is the play’s evidence.
- 2
Sheila begins as a fiancée with a ring and becomes a critic of male stories (Gerald’s “rescue”).
- 3
Mrs Birling polices other women: fallenness, names, “impertinence”. Female power here can still serve class.
- 4
Gerald and Eric use Eva differently; both rely on her having fewer choices.
- 5
Birling’s world of business and knighthood is a male public sphere; women are ornaments until they cause scandal.
- 6
The Inspector’s questions give Eva a kind of posthumous hearing the men would not have granted.
- 7
1912 double standards: a man’s affair is unfortunate; a woman’s pregnancy is a verdict.
- 8
A 1945 audience includes women who have worked in war: Sheila’s voice can sound like a future, Mrs Birling like a past.
Quotations worth analysing
Short evidence. Real method.
“She was very pretty — soft brown hair and big dark eyes.”
A male gaze introducing a woman who cannot describe herself. Beauty is how she becomes visible, and how she becomes usable.
“You not only knew her but you knew her very well.”
Sheila reads the euphemism. Female intelligence here is the ability to decode a gentleman’s story.
“As if a girl of that sort would ever refuse money!”
Gender plus class: working-class women are imagined as automatically corrupt. Eva’s pride is unthinkable to Sybil.
Go deeper
How are men and women given different kinds of speech?
Birling lectures; Gerald narrates a romance; Eric blurts. Mrs Birling pronounces; Sheila questions and then moralises; Eva is reported. Priestley makes dialogue itself gendered. The Inspector interrupts male fluency. When you analyse gender, look at who is allowed a long turn. Gerald’s Daisy story is almost a set-piece; Eva’s “lot to say” at the factory got her sacked. Speech is power. A paragraph on that will outscore a list of “sexist things people do”.
Go deeper
Is Priestley feminist?
He is clearer as a socialist. Women are central because they are economically vulnerable in his picture of 1912. He still uses Eva as a device to educate a family, which some readers find limiting. You can say that in a GCSE essay if you then judge the play: Sheila is written with a real arc; Mrs Birling is a type; Eva is a composite. The exam rewards a critical stance that stays on evidence. Do not write a modern rant that forgets the text, and do not pretend the play has a twenty-first-century gender politics it does not quite have. Its sharpest gender move is the double standard around sex and money.
Go deeper
How do I combine gender with class and generation?
They are braided. Eva’s gender is dangerous because of her class. Sheila’s gender is protected until she becomes inconveniently moral. Mrs Birling has class armour and uses it against a younger poor woman. Eric’s masculinity is entitlement plus immaturity. A single paragraph that follows Eva from strike (class) to Palace bar (gender) to charity (respectability) shows the braid without needing the word “intersectionality”. Examiners want the links, not the jargon.
See the idea in action
Contrast Gerald’s pretty-eyed portrait with Mrs Birling’s “girl of that sort”. One man idealises to possess; one woman degrades to refuse. Eva is trapped between romance and disgust — both stories that are not hers.
Exam technique
Turn knowledge into marks
If the question is gender, do not spend half the essay on the Titanic. Stay with Eva, Sheila, Sybil, and how men talk.
Common mistakes
Do not give these marks away
- 01
Writing “women were oppressed” with no quotation.
- 02
Treating Sheila as only a love-plot and missing Milwards.
- 03
Ignoring Mrs Birling because she is female and therefore “not sexist”.
What does Priestley mainly show through Eva’s treatment by men and by Mrs Birling?
AThat class and gender together leave her with almost no safe door
BThat only men are ever cruel in the play
CThat marriage solves poverty
Show the answer
That class and gender together leave her with almost no safe door. Work, sex, charity and respectability all fail her. Priestley designs a closed system, not a single villain.
Quick questions
If this is the bit you searched
How does Priestley present women in An Inspector Calls?
As workers, daughters, wives, mistresses and judges. Compare Eva’s silence, Sheila’s learning and Mrs Birling’s respectability rather than offering one “view of women”.
Is Sheila a feminist character?
She becomes independent of Gerald’s story and of her parents’ excuses. That is a limited, powerful shift, not a manifesto.
What quotation works for gender?
Gerald on Daisy’s looks and gratitude; Mrs Birling on “that sort”; Sheila on not building a wall — three female positions.
Should I mention 1912 women’s rights?
A sentence on limited work, no equal vote yet, and sexual double standards can help if it explains Eva’s options. Then return to the scene.