J. B. Priestley's Dramatic Irony

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An Inspector Calls is a play set in Spring 1912, just before the First World War, but written by J.B. Priestley just after the Second World War. In this time Britain had a capitalist ideal. Basically if you were well-off that was great, but the vast majority of people were poor and lived off tiny wages. Furthermore it was a sexist country, so women didn’t have the same rights as men. For example they were not permitted to vote until 1918, and even then they had to be over 30 until 1928 where the age was lowered to 21, equal to men. This is showed when Sheila and Sybil leave the room, so the men can talk business. Priestly may have written it at this time because he was trying to convey his socialistic views through the mouth of the Inspector,…show more content…
This is significant as it shows that the Inspector will change the mood completely and it indicates secrets coming to light. The audience is enticed to trust the Inspector over Mr. Birling because Mr. Birling says a lot of things which we know not to be true – dramatic irony. For example, he says that the Titanic is, “unsinkable, absolutely unsinkable.” The audience knows that the Titanic, of course, crashes during its voyage but Mr. Birling doesn’t know this and the repetition of the word “unsinkable” suggests his misplaced certainty. In addition, the audience at this point believes the Inspector to be a real inspector, so they automatically think he is a trustworthy person. Something else that makes the audience more wary of Mr. Birling is when he says, “Now, Inspector, perhaps you and I had better go and talk this over quietly in a corner” which reinforces our opinion that he places money over morality. It looks like he is trying to bribe the Inspector. We also get a clear message that the Inspector is not impressed or intimidated by the social status of Mr. Birling, as many people would in that time. It is shown when Mr. Birling says, “Perhaps I ought to warn you that he’s an old friend of mine, and that I see him fairly frequently. We play golf together sometimes up at West Brumley” followed by the response from the Inspector, “(dryly) I don’t play golf.” This excerpt shows that people would commonly threaten people of a lower class than them using their social status and contacts, which we find out Sheila does to Eva later in the play. The Inspectors response, “I don’t play golf” is a metaphor for saying “I’m not threatened by you” and ultimately “I’m not a capitalist”. This extract also voices Priestley’s views on capitalism, saying how corrupt it
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