If the Inspector is the conscience of 'An Inspector Calls', then Eva Smith is the heart. Without the eighth ‘character’ – although absent throughout – there would be no catalyst for the Inspector’s inquiry, and no point to proceedings. Up until the Inspector arrives, the audience has been gently lulled into the false notion that 'An Inspector Calls' is going to be a gentle comedy of manners. The intrusion of the Inspector, however, soon trumps this assumption, as the Birling family and the audience are confronted with a catalogue of immorality and misdemeanours that lurk beneath the thin veneer their civilised, upper-class refinement. The Inspector bursts onto the scene like an unapologetically intrusive foghorn. He wastes no time in relating the hideous circumstances of the death of Eva to the unsuspecting Birlings and the audience is confronted with the deeply disturbing image of a woman dying in agony. It might have been a little early in proceedings for the shocked majority to note that a Police Inspector has not been dispatched to investigate an actual crime (although failed ‘self-murder’ was prosecutable until 1961, sanctions for procuring a suicide were still decades away). It is the Inspector who takes pains to inform everybody that Eva’s death was most definitely by her own hand – ‘of course’ - leaving them all suitably non-plussed, until Arthur recognises the photograph.
The genius of creating a central role for a character whose story has already ended is testament to J.B. Priestley’s tendency to bait and challenge convention to underline his message and control how it was received. He was no stranger to censorship. His 1941 BBC radio series was so popular that PM Winston Churchill reputedly had a hand in its unceremonious cancellation, betraying how intimidating he could be to the British Establishment. In correspondence with the Information Minister Alfred Duff Cooper, Churchill rebuked the Minister for allowing Priestley’s broadcasts to air arguments that were utterly contrary to his own views. He demanded that Duff Cooper edit future broadcasts and, despairingly, the Minister replied that he would try. Within weeks, Priestley’s broadcast (from a series known as Postscripts) that went out to millions, was history. While it has since been speculated that Churchill’s influence may have been overstated, there is little doubt that Priestley’s stance as a ‘dangerous leftie’ was controversial and contentious at a time when Britain was facing off enemies whose ideologies were radically opposed to capitalism.
Priestley was extremely specific about how he intended An Inspector Calls to be received - peppering his dialogue with an endless range of bracketed adverbs to ensure that performers knew precisely how he wanted his lines to be delivered. Even his stage directions are pedantically prescriptive suggesting that he would thoroughly disapprove of any kind of artistic licence being taken with this work. The 2015 television adaptation of the play, while faithful to the original narrative, makes heavy use of flashbacks to tell Eva’s story concurrent to events in the Birling household. We might imagine the playwright howling in his grave at this decision because the audience was most definitely not supposed to meet Eva. Although she dominates the story, she remains resolutely symbolic throughout by virtue of her death, suggesting that her absence from the stage was crucial to the writer’s intention.
Priestley deliberately creates the negative space left by Eva’s suicide to ensure that the audience is restricted to a perception of her that is controlled entirely by him – in his thinly veiled guise as the Inspector himself. Meticulously, the Inspector lays out the tragic catalogue of misfortunes that drove his ‘dark-eyed’ heroine to suicide and, while he’s at it, paints her as a paragon of virtue. Eva it seems, had it all: beauty, brains, scruples, oddly anachronistic chutzpah and was blessed with unfailing humility and a weary wisdom of the world far beyond the ken of an average woman of her age and education. She seemed almost too good to be true – elevated above the mortal in a way that could only really seem credible if the audience pictured her strumming a harp on a cloud somewhere in the heavens. Despite her social disadvantage, for men, she was irresistibly vulnerable and for women, she presented a credible threat. A demi-goddess made flesh. Crucially though, we do not get to witness her virtue for ourselves.
Priestley plays puppet master as any reference to anti-social habits, questionable views – anything at all in fact that might render Eva fallible - is removed using the neat device of silencing her before the curtain rises. The sense of it being too late for the Birlings to atone magnifying the immorality of their conduct is one probable reason for this. Similarly, by rendering her faceless, ‘Eva’ serves as a reminder to the audience that there were ‘millions and millions’ of Eva Smiths being preyed on by hundreds and hundreds of capitalists like the Birlings. Most importantly though, through having her transcend the mortal world, J.B. Priestley intentionally beatifies Eva which was important because, on closer inspection, the audience might give pause to reflect on how, in some ways, she was not an ideal Edwardian woman at all.
The terse and hardened Inspector himself winsomely eulogises her with unbridled sympathy, constantly excusing and spinning her iffier conduct with a highly sympathetic take on her tragedy – in the same way some might argue that her namesake was ‘framed’ by Satan in the Garden of Eden. Out of ‘Eva Smith and John Smith’, far more provocative purchase could be gained from the victimisation of a woman over a man, as a woman would present a more diverse range of ways to violate the duty he felt the upper classes had towards those less fortunate. A working-class woman, being the least advantaged in society, was infinitely more vulnerable for his purposes - both socially and physically. Unfortunately, that left the problem of how she would even appear on the radar of the Birlings for them to be able to abuse her in the horrible ways portrayed. Dissidence, pre-marital sex and pregnancy, and suicide causing the death of a foetus were all dangerous subjects to attach to a female protagonist in 1945. An agonising death might have been the only way to sweeten a very bitter pill for the conservative post-war audiences who would have deeply disapproved of some of the more nebulous aspects of her conduct – such as allowing herself to be kept as a mistress or putting herself in a position to fall pregnant out of wedlock, regardless of the circumstances. Priestley does away with this by killing her off before the audience has a chance to condemn her for her actions and neatly places the imposing Inspector as her protector to make sure that the focus of attention is on the things that suited his overall purpose – and nothing else.
This is daring and brilliantly manipulative on the writer’s part. He had to allow in just enough sin to trap the family, but gloss over the less salubrious aspects to keep everyone on track about socialism. Doubly slippery is his decision to have the majority of Eva’s life story told by the victim herself – in the private journal found by the Inspector in her rooms when she was gone. Priestley’s use of a journal to control our appreciation of the ‘facts’ allowed him to ensure they were received sympathetically. This could explain some of the Inspector’s stranger decisions such as his mawkish leniency towards Gerald shortly before his closing speech when Gerald is actually given credit for showing Eva a good time when she needed a break. Human beings do not think or feel without bias, especially when evaluating their own decisions – even in private. Eva was blinded by a passion for Gerald that a rational woman would have considered social death, were it not for the fact that he made her fall in love with him. Of course, he was going to come off better in her esteem than any of the others. Potentially, Priestley did not want to dwell on the likely content of the diaries of some of the women he had courted, so he lets Gerald off the hook a little to show that all’s fair in love and war and avoid any moral muddying detracting from his key message about social responsibility. In doing so, Priestley ensures that the audience received his message by presenting Eva’s story third-hand through the Inspector’s heavily biased second-hand testimony. Sealed and secure.
A common thread in the Inspector’s ‘inquiry’ into Eva’s death is the preoccupation of almost all of the characters with how strikingly attractive she was. With the conspicuous exception of Sybil Birling, most refer to her in the first instance as being ‘pretty.’ I wonder at this choice of adjective because its repetition would appear to be a deliberate choice on the writer’s part. He uses the term ‘pretty’ sixteen times - eleven in direct reference to Eva. The Inspector himself labels her ‘pretty’ FOUR times – and he never met her. Interestingly, Priestley does not use the word ‘beautiful’ once. Sheila does refer to Gerald’s redundant engagement ring as ‘a beauty’ and it is significant perhaps, that the only use of the term is for something symbolic of patriarchal ownership and material wealth. ‘Pretty’ is not the same as ‘beautiful’ and the awkwardness of its enunciation belies its definition. The former involves manipulating the whole mouth and ends with a lick of the lips. The latter involves pursing the lips as if chewing on a lemon and speaking through gritted teeth. It could have been intended to intimate her freshness, youth, and innocence. A common, wayside flower - for example - is ‘pretty’. But surely a woman who ‘stands out’ is beautiful?
Almost without exception, Eva’s prettiness is mentioned as the first thing to prejudice or stimulate each member of the household on first acquaintance. Birling begins by describing Eva as ‘lively and good looking’ (‘Country bred’ - whatever that means.) Then Sheila asks if she was ‘Pretty?’ to which the Inspector replies ‘She wasn’t pretty when I saw her today, but she had been pretty – very pretty.’ Later, when recalling the shop girl she had turned out of a job, Sheila muses about how she was ‘pretty too’, furthering her father’s capitalist sentiments that she was ‘pretty and looked like she could take care of herself’ - which was absolutely the last thing she could do. Sheila later owns her guilt by stating ‘I was angry, and she was pretty.’ The Inspector then explains to Gerald that Eva was ‘pretty’ and ‘lively’ before Gerald confirms that he was drawn to Eva in The Palace Bar was because ‘she looked young and fresh and charming and altogether out of place’ being ‘very pretty’ and attributes his subsequent actions to the fact that she was ‘pretty and warm-hearted’ confirming that if, as Sheila thought, she had been ‘some miserable plain little creature’, he probably would have left her ‘fresh’ body wedged underneath the rotten ‘carcass’ of the Alderman. Finally, Eric thought she was ‘pretty and a good sport’ which apparently justified his reckless stalking and assault of her while drunk. So presumably if she had been a ‘fat old tart,’ it is reasonable to assume that he would have left her alone and paid for it elsewhere.
The level of qualification that the characters attach to the adjective implies that Eva unwittingly contributed to her misfortune because she looked great. The use of the word ‘pretty’ is actually perfect for expressing a kind of patronising contempt. No self-respecting capitalist was going to give her ‘beautiful’ because it simply would not fit her station. Mrs Birling is conspicuous in her failure to mention anything about Eva’s looks but, by that time, a fortnight before her death she might not have been much to look at anymore, making the ‘ridiculous airs’ and ‘scruples’ Sybil said she ‘claimed’ seem even less credible. ‘Pretty’ fits very well therefore if we consider that her inapposite presence jarred with, confused, or even offended the family’s sense of the correct order of things. An aberration or something suspicious and out-of-sync with accepted norms. ‘Simply absurd,’ as Sybil remarks. A working-class woman should be base, carnal, and thoroughly immoral, not resemble an ingenue. In this way, Priestley seems to insinuate that Eva’s natural radiance worked against her, singling her out for punishment. Something else to pummel the poor girl into suicidal despair with. Poor Eva. Her tragedy would appear to have been compounded by something she could do nothing about - until she drank disinfectant and ‘wasn’t pretty’ anymore.
There is something that feels deeply sexist about the way Priestley has everyone – the Inspector included – drooling over this woman’s personal appearance and the way in which the excessive focus on this aspect of her overshadows all else. Although he was a spokesperson for the franchise, it is probably erroneous to think of Priestley as a champion of women’s lib as we understand it today because his personal life reflected the complete opposite. His obsession with writing – extending to up to 18 hours a day – left his life partners with little choice but to put up and keep the home fires burning. His long-suffering second wife, Jane Wyndham-Lewis, bore the brunt of the childcare responsibilities as Priestley left the upbringing of their six young children entirely to her. A complex arrangement: she had one daughter and Priestley’s two daughters from their first marriages as well as the care of their own two daughters. (Incidentally, two of the girls were named Barbara, so one of them was renamed Angela to avoid confusion.) The marriage was threatened temporarily due to Priestley’s infatuation with actress Peggy Ashcroft, but the couple reconciled and soldiered on before she divorced him in 1953. At this point, not being one to let the grass grow under his feet, he promptly married the prominent archaeologist, Jacquetta Hawkes, who later nursed him until he died. All three of his wives were extraordinary women in their own way, but still served a very traditional purpose for Priestley. He clearly appreciated clever women and enjoyed their company, but he still did very much as he pleased, conducting numerous affairs, and moving on as and when it suited him to.
Priestley’s self-confessed ‘lusty’ attitude towards the women in his life could be seen as something of a paradox until we consider the times. In 1945, while the first wave of feminism had seen its way through the early part of the 20th century, its focus was primarily on suffrage and legal rights. It did little to influence the general treatment of women
or challenge traditional roles. The second wave of feminism, where entrenched norms were to be challenged, was still a couple of decades away at the time. So, it is perhaps better to see him as a supporter of working-class rights and equality of the type that might seem quite primitive to us but was progressive in terms of the 1940s. Notwithstanding, Priestley used the character of Eva as much as a pawn as any other character did in order to serve his greater purpose – tearing his saint limb from limb and obliterating her identity to the point where, even after an agonising death, she wasn’t afforded the dignity of her own name. It is better to think of An Inspector Calls, not as the tragedy of women Iike Eva Smith, but as the tragedy of a society too possessed of its own greed and vanity to recognise that social responsibility is directly commensurate with social need.
In a bizarre way, Priestley sought to support women’s emancipation in a way that very much highlighted the problem itself. Women were a largely ‘invisible’ demographic in Edwardian society, so their needs and scant rights could as easily be ignored as their existences controlled and prescribed. Such was J.B. Priestley’s approach to the structure of his play where he controls the audiences access to decide matters for themselves at every turn – including his deliberate silencing of characters due to absence or death. We do not get to evaluate the nature of Sir and Lady Croft’s suspected disapproval of Sheila for ourselves because they are conveniently abroad. Similarly, we do not get to witness Gerald’s seduction of ‘Daisy’ or Eric’s alleged assault or Mrs Birling’s denial of aid. We are told ‘the truth’ by the Inspector (or it is heavily implied that they acted immorally) and the audience has no choice but to go along with it. Priestley had one purpose for this play: the promotion of the ideologies of Socialism. Everything else was secondary – including women’s rights – and, in this way, Eva Smith was very much a sacrificial lamb for the greater good of Priestley’s political agenda.
Comments