An Inspector Calls Context

Context should never feel like a list of random history facts bolted onto the end of a paragraph. To earn top marks for AO3, your understanding of context must be integrated directly into your analysis of Priestley’s literary choices and political intentions.

In this video, I cover all the essential historical, social, and political context you need for An Inspector Calls, tailored to meet the requirements of every major exam board. We’ll examine Priestley’s core socialist goals, the rigid class structure of 1912, and the restricted roles of women at the time. We’ll also contrast the historical setting of 1912 with the post-WWII context of 1945, showing you exactly how to use this knowledge to enrich your analytical essays.

Timestamp
0:00 Priestley's goals
2:14 The Class System
4:33 The Role of Women
6:30 Events from 1912
14:51 Events between 1912-1945
17:38 Priestley's writing
 

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There are also resources to help you in the Study Materials section:

An Inspector Calls Vocabulary Bank

The words in this vocabulary bank will help you to develop a more sophisticated and high level understanding of the key ideas and concepts in 'An Inspector Calls'.

As well as providing a range of words, their definitions and an example sentence, this book also suggests a number of activities that you can use to revise and put the vocabulary into practice.

Bonus - it's completely free!

An Inspector Calls AQA GCSE Model Answers (Coming soon!)

This resource will have model answers for multiple years of AQA past papers, giving you the ability to see what high grade essays look like for a range of essay questions.

An Inspector Calls Edexcel IGCSE Model Answers (Coming soon!)

This resource will have model answers for multiple years of Edexcel past papers, giving you the ability to see what high grade essays look like for a range of essay questions.

An Inspector Calls Flipped Learning (Coming soon!)

This resource is designed for teachers and students: it is a workbook designed to be completed alongside all of my An Inspector Calls videos. It is essentially a structured way for you to take notes and ensure that you are squeezing every ounce of advice my videos have to offer.

I fully intend to add more videos and study materials on this play. If there's something in particular you're looking for, then register and get in touch to let me know what would help you.

Lesson Transcript:

A lot of you out there will be writing for exam boards where you not only have to be able to analyze the language and the structure and the form of the play, you also have to show that you understand the context. Well, this video is going to make sure you 100% do, and you know all the best things that you could potentially talk about for this play. So, let's do this!

There are two sides to context. And if you're looking for more detail on that, go check out my video, What is context? And so we need to look at not just the influence on Priestley with the context of production, but also the influence on our audience as well: what are they thinking and feeling in that context of reception?

But we're going to start off with thinking about Priestley himself. What were his goals? What were his intentions? What was influencing him when he wrote An Inspector Calls? Now, for those of you who have already read and started studying this play, these goals are going to be really obvious, and I have no doubt that you already know them.

The first is that he intended to attack capitalism, specifically individualism. In his view, individualism and capitalism were selfish ways of behaving, and they led to the mistreatment and huge inequality of a large number of the British population.

Linked to that, he also sought to advocate for socialism. If you're not familiar with what the word "advocate" means, check out my video on the Grade 9 vocabulary that you can use for An Inspector Calls. And when he's advocating for socialism, he is specifically focusing his energy on advocating for social responsibility: the idea that we all need to look out for one another and support one another in society, and be more equal in society—essentially, in his view, the opposite of capitalism and individualism.

And a big way that he does that throughout the play is by highlighting the progress that Britain has had socially. The play is set in 1912, but it was first performed in 1945. So, he's really able to play with the dramatic irony of the historical information that our audience has in order to highlight to them how much has changed in Britain and how much things have improved.

Back in 1912, the class system had three distinct tiers:

• You had the working class down at the bottom. Now, they were about 80% of the British population, so the biggest class by a really, really long way. They typically worked in jobs that were very physically intensive, a lot of labor. They didn't tend to make very much money at all, they weren't very well educated, and for a long time, they also weren't able to vote. So, although their lives could be incredibly tough, there was still a lot of pride in the working class and a belief that their lives were absolutely better than they had been in the past in the Victorian era. And there was also an optimism that their lives would improve and get better in future decades. And we're going to see that determination and optimism for equality and more rights and more opportunities in the historical events we're going to look at in a bit.

• The next class up was your middle class. Now, they typically were working professionals: doctors, lawyers, factory managers, and so on. They made a decent amount of money. They perhaps had one or two servants, and they would typically have perhaps been to university, or at least been at school until around 16 because they would have likely gone to grammar school.

• Above them, you have the upper class. Now, they are what is known as the landed gentry. They don't necessarily have jobs; their money is inherited, and they gain it by passing down land that their ancestors have gained, and they are essentially large-scale landlords. The landed gentry would often have titles, and that would mean they were often also in some way connected to royalty or the House of Lords. So they were really powerful in British society, often really high up in our politics and government, as well as—if they weren't in politics—very influential on our politics.

Now, Priestley hates the class system, is against the class system. And his big problem about the class system and the inequality of the class system was how the working classes were so mistreated. And they were mistreated by the middle and upper classes, who used and abused their power in order to maintain these hierarchies and keep the working class down at the bottom, and ensure that they protected their own interests and their own money.

We also need to be aware, closely linked to the class system, of the role of women as well. Now, women were seen as second-class citizens in 1912 society. They weren't quite as much second-class citizens by 1945, but if we stick for the moment with thinking about women in 1912 when our play is set:

• At the very bottom tier, you've got your working-class women. Now, of course, the working class are the bottom tier socially, and women are below men. So, working-class women are your bottom of the bottom of the social hierarchy in Britain; the only way to go a step lower is to not be white. Our working-class women typically had really physical labor jobs as well, but only ones that were deemed appropriate for women to have, things like being a nanny and a cleaner. They often would stop work when they got married, and then they would become in charge of having children and raising children.

• Your middle-class women: very similar in the sense that their main job in life was to get married and have children. However, they weren't expected to do the cooking and the cleaning; they were expected to have servants that would do that. So, they were more of like a manager of the household. They were much more about being model Christians.

• Very similar to your upper-class women, who of course would not be permitted to work; it wouldn't be seen as appropriate in any sort of way for an upper-class lady to work, and therefore their lives were all about maintaining or improving the social standing of their families by getting married and having children.

So things for women: not so great. They don't have a lot of opportunity, there's a lot of sexism, there's a lot of inequality, and all of that inequality is further enhanced by the inequalities linked to class as well.

So that's the basic core principles we need to understand about our early 20th-century period. I'm now going to look at some specific historical events that influenced Priestley, and some of them get referenced in the play.

The first is Wilhelm II, the Emperor of Germany in the early 1900s, and I specifically referred here to his "Hun speech," but really it's about the general idea of German foreign policy in this time period. Germany were speaking in a very aggressive way; Wilhelm II was speaking in a very aggressive way, really talking about the military and trying to grow Germany's power, which of course made a lot of people very nervous. This did have a part to play in the eventual start of World War I as well.

Wilhelm II is alluded to in one of Mr. Birling's early speeches in the play where he says:

"Just because the Kaiser makes a speech or two, or a few German officers have too much to drink and begin talking nonsense, you'll hear some people say that war's inevitable. And to that I say—fiddlesticks!"

Of course, Mr. Birling was wrong: war is inevitable, war is going to happen not only once, but twice. And so, he is alluding to this German foreign policy of Wilhelm II there. So for our audience watching this with all their historical knowledge that they've got by 1945, what Mr. Birling is doing is on the one hand trying to make himself seem educated because he's aware of politics and what's going on in the world of politics; but actually, because of the dramatic irony that war did happen, his attempt to seem educated is completely undermined and instead we think: you're wrong, you're foolish, Mr. Birling.

In 1911, you had the Women's March (the Women's Coronation Procession). Now, this is part of our big push for suffrage. So, women were out there protesting, all about highlighting women's marches around the world and the push for the women's vote across the world, and there were over 60,000 protesters fighting for the women's vote. Now, this has already occurred at the point of Birling's speech, at the point of An Inspector Calls, and therefore it is a symbol of the fact that 1912 was a time that we were beginning to see a push for more equality, and I think that's part of why Priestley chose to set it in this time period. As you're going to see from the additional events I'm going to look at, it really was a time where women and the working class were starting to push for equality. And of course, by 1945, some amazing progress has been made in the amount of equality that they have.

The next event I want to talk about is the 1912 Miners' Strike. This was the first national miners' strike Britain had ever had, and it was also one of the biggest we'd ever had, with nearly 1 million miners taking part. The goal of the strike was all about getting the minimum wage, and after 37 days, the government intervened and passed the Coal Mines Act, which established that minimum wage for the very first time. So it's a real success story in British history for protest and for the working class and their fight for more equality.

This event is also alluded to by Mr. Birling in the opening of An Inspector Calls. He said:

"Last month, just because the miners came out on strike, there's a lot of wild talk about possible labour trouble in the near future. Don't worry. We've passed the worst of it. We employers at last are coming together to see that our interests—and the interests of Capital—are properly protected."

So, what's interesting about this is that he is alluding to a real event from 1912 that our 1945 audience are also going to remember as actually a really positive and successful step. But Mr. Birling is talking about it in a negative way, saying that this will be the last of it and there's not going to be any problem. He seems to be against the progress in society, and is instead trying to pull things away from progress and trying to revert things to how they were before, and is more about entrenching the power of the middle and upper classes. And so, of course, for our 1945 audience that has now had the minimum wage for multiple decades, as well as additional opportunities and rights for the working classes, when they see Mr. Birling expressing these kinds of views, he seems incredibly cruel and insensitive, overly traditional, stuck in his ways, and generally everything Priestley wants us to think about capitalism.

The sinking of the Titanic is a classic bit of context that people link to An Inspector Calls, and I have no doubt that you are very familiar with what happens to the Titanic. The Titanic was seen as a huge step in progress in the development of technology of the early 20th century. Of course, when the ship then sank, that was a devastating moment of reflection for British society on a few levels. First of all, our tech progressions were not as far as we thought; but also the amount of loss of life and how classism really affected that loss of life, because one of the things that came out afterwards was that for the people who had the third-class tickets on the ship, fewer than one-third of them survived the sinking. So, there was also a really big class disparity between who lived and who died.

Of course, Mr. Birling again alludes to the Titanic in one of his speeches, and at this point, the Titanic has not yet sunk, and he says this:

"Why, a friend of mine went over this new liner last week—the Titanic—she sails next week—forty-six thousand eight hundred tons—New York in five days—and every luxury—and unsinkable, absolutely unsinkable."

What Priestley is doing with his dramatic irony in that line is really deliberately echoing the hubris, the amount of arrogance and overconfidence people had about the Titanic, and using that to remind our 1945 audience of how Britain reflected and learned from that event, and also to make Mr. Birling appear incredibly arrogant as well.

The final event I want to look at from 1912 is the Fabian Society. Now, the Fabian Society was created in the 1800s, and it was basically a group of left-wing thinkers in the UK. But the key thing about 1912 is that around this time, they were really growing. Eventually, the Fabian Society would have an offshoot called the Labour Party, who would become a political party in the UK and our second biggest party. But at the point of 1912, they are just a group pushing for more equality.

And two of the names that were biggest in it—you can see the little writing in the bottom right of the picture there—was George Bernard Shaw and H.G. Wells. Now, they were both writers, and they were really influential writers of their time. And although they wrote fiction, they used their fiction to really push forward socialist ideas. And they also wrote a lot of non-fiction, and gave a lot of speeches, and did a lot of talks on their socialist views as well.

And guess who else Mr. Birling alludes to in his speeches? He says:

"We can't let these Bernard Shaws and H.G. Wellses do all the talking."

Now, this is important for a couple of reasons. What the Fabian Society represent, what Bernard Shaw and H.G. Wells represent, is socialist values in Britain. But notice how, first of all, he uses their names as plurals, as if there's lots of people like them, and he describes them as "doing all the talking." So what he's showing an awareness of is the growth of left-wing politics in Britain in 1912, because that is, again, part of why Priestley chose to set the play in this time period: left-wing thinking was absolutely growing. And by 1945, the offshoot of the Fabian Society, the Labour Party, they are the political party in power. Britain is arguably the most left-wing it's ever been at the point that this play is performed. And so by referring to the Fabian Society through Bernard Shaw and H.G. Wells and those big socialist thinkers, Priestley is reminding us of how far Britain has come in embracing left-wing political values.

So everything I've talked about so far is the political events from around 1912 that have really influenced the way Priestley presents the Birling family and everything going on there. But of course, the next important layer is our audience—our 1945 audience—and all the additional experiences that they and Priestley have had that influence how they view the 1912 events.

So, I'm going to give you a quick rundown of just some of the big things that happened:

• First of all, you had World War I.

• Then, you had the Russian Revolution, where they would become the Soviet Union.

• You also had women achieving the vote, and women being allowed to go to the University of Oxford for the first time.

• You also had the Great Depression, a time of huge unemployment and difficulty around the world.

• You also had the Jarrow Crusade: that was a group of men from the northeast of England marching down to London with the aim of highlighting the high levels of unemployment and the struggles of those in the northeast of England.

• You also had World War II.

• You also had the Butler Act, which made secondary school education required until the age of 15—again, improving those opportunities for working-class people by keeping them in school for longer.

• You also had the Labour Party gaining power for the first time on a principle they called "cradle to grave": the idea that the government would be there to help you and support you from the day you were born to the day that you died. They would build houses, they would have social care for the elderly, there would be good education for children, all that good stuff to ensure that British people had a decent quality of life. And they were really fighting for the working classes as well.

• And an offshoot of World War II was that women were seeing more rights and more opportunities as well. Don't get me wrong, things still had a long way to go, but there were more jobs available to them, more opportunities available to them to be able to work and earn a livelihood for themselves, and of course, they also have the vote.

So huge amounts of progress have been made in society between 1912 and 1945, as well as just generally huge events—the Great Depression and the two world wars—that drastically changed the fiber of Western society. Understanding the amount of change that happened is really important to remembering Priestley's goals in highlighting the progress of Britain. And so there is a lot of dramatic irony that is all about reminding our audience of the events that have occurred between 1912 and 1945, and how they have improved life in Britain.

The final thing I want to look at today is some things said by Priestley himself, because his words in his non-fiction really obviously highlight the values he's trying to explore in An Inspector Calls.

Now, Priestley had a really popular radio broadcast during World War II (Postscripts), and he was generally a popular writer at the time, so his views would have been really influential in British society. Let's have a look at one of the things he said:

"We cannot go forward and build up this new world order, and this is our war aim, unless we begin to think differently..."

I'm just going to pause there quickly to explain what he means. "The new world order, which is our war aim": what he's referring to there is the fact that a big part of World War II was democracy, with the likes of the UK and the US, versus fascism, with the likes of Italy and Germany. So he is arguing that one of the aims, if not the aim, of World War II is about protecting democracy around the world and ensuring that the spread of fascism is stopped. And he is saying we can't achieve that goal unless we begin to think differently:

"...One must stop thinking in terms of property and power and begin thinking in terms of community and creation. Take the change from property to community. Property is the old-fashioned way of thinking of a country as a thing, and a collection of things on that thing, all owned by certain people and constituting property; instead of thinking of a country as the home of a living society, with the community itself as the first test."

Doesn't that just sound like something the Inspector would have said? And what you can see here is his real, explicit attack on the capitalist focus on gaining money, on gaining power, on protecting that money and protecting that power; and his very explicit belief instead in social responsibility and community.

Now that you know this context, you are going to be able to use this to really deepen the arguments of your essays. And if you feel like you need help with understanding how to write a Grade 9 argument for an Inspector Calls essay, make sure you have a look at my video on that. If you feel like you need help now with understanding the characters themselves and how they help to push forward Priestley's goals, then also have a look at my playlist of Inspector Calls videos for the videos on all the different characters.