The book:

An Inspector Calls is a play in three acts, set in Brumley, an English manufacturing town, in
1912. Arthur Birling has convened a dinner for the engagement of his daughter, Sheila, to
her boyfriend, Gerald Croft. Arthur and his wife Sybil seem happy, although Sybil is reserved
at the meal. Eric, Sheila’s brother, drinks heavily and appears mildly upset. Gerald gives
Sheila her ring, and Sheila and Sybil leave the room to try on wedding clothes. Eric goes
upstairs. Arthur tells Gerald he knows the Croft family considers themselves social superiors
of the Birlings, but that’s easily remedied, he says, as he expects a knighthood for his
business successes. Gerald promises to relay the news to his mother. Eric returns, and
Arthur gives the two young men advice about professional life, saying that people ought to
look out for themselves and their families, and not fall prey to socialist propaganda about the
collective good. Edna, the maid, announces that an Inspector Goole is here to speak to
Arthur.
The Inspector, whom Arthur does not know despite his positions in local government,
announces that a girl named Eva Smith has died of an apparent suicide. The Inspector asks
Arthur if he knows anyone by that name. Arthur initially denies it, but after seeing a picture,
he admits to employing Eva at his factory, and firing her when she incites a failed strike for
higher wages. Arthur says he is not sorry for doing so, even though he is sad to hear of the
girl’s death. Arthur believes that his foremost obligation is to his profits. When Sheila returns
to the room, the Inspector begins interrogating her. It is revealed that Sheila got a girl fired
from Milward’s, a local shop, for giving Sheila mean looks as she was trying on clothing.
Sheila regrets to hear that the person she incriminated was none other than Eva Smith, and
that she and Arthur are responsible, in part, for Eva’s poverty and suicide.
The Inspector turns to Gerald and asks if he knows someone named Daisy Renton. Sheila
realizes, from Gerald’s expression, that Gerald knows this name. When all but Sheila and
Gerald leave the room, Sheila accuses Gerald of having had an affair with Daisy Renton the
previous summer. Gerald admits to this. He asks Sheila to hide this information from the
Inspector, but she says it won’t be possible because the Inspector probably already knows.
Act One ends.

Act Two begins with the same set. The Inspector questions Gerald about Daisy Renton, and
Gerald admits to the affair in front of Sheila and her parents, Arthur and Sybil. Gerald is
embarrassed by his indiscretion, but insists his concern for Daisy was authentic. Sheila
wonders if she can forgive Gerald enough to continue their relationship. Gerald tells the
Inspector he is going to leave for a walk.
The Inspector moves on to Sybil, who, on being questioned, says that she, as director of a
charity, refused assistance to a pregnant woman. The Inspector tells them that the girl Sybil
turned away was Eva Smith, or, as Gerald knew her, Daisy Renton. The Inspector also says
that Gerald was not the one who got Eva pregnant. Sybil says she feels no regret, as
Eva/Daisy had claimed she was pregnant but was not married to the child’s father. To this,
Sybil responded that Eva/Daisy should ask the child’s father for money. Sybil blames the
unnamed father for the situation, and for Eva/Daisy’s suicide. Sheila and Arthur tell Sybil to
stop talking. At this moment, Sybil realizes that her son, Eric, must be the father of the child,
since Eva/Daisy presented herself to the charity as “Mrs. Birling.” Eric returns to the room.
Act Two ends.
In Act Three, with the same set, Eric admits to an affair with Eva/Daisy, and to a drinking
problem that makes many of the details hazy. The Inspector demonstrates that each
member of the Birling family, and Gerald, has played a part in Eva/Daisy’s suicide, and that
all should consider themselves guilty. Before he leaves, the Inspector says that people must
look out for one another, and that society is “one body.” The Inspector departs. Sheila,
wracked with guilt, wonders aloud whether the Inspector is a member of the police force.
The family puzzles this out, and when Gerald returns, he says he spoke to a sergeant
outside who does not know of any Inspector with the name of Goole, the man who just
visited the Birling home. Arthur believes that the family has been hoaxed, and that this is a
good thing, since their misdeeds will not now result in public scandal. Sheila resents Arthur’s
rationalization of the family’s behavior, and she says they are still guilty for Eva/Daisy’s
death, even if the Inspector was not a genuine officer. Gerald, however, notes that no family
member saw the picture of Eva/Daisy at the same time, and that the Inspector might have
conflated the family’s stories by offering pictures of different women, and changing the
names from Eva Smith to Daisy Renton.

Sheila wonders whether this would excuse everyone’s behavior, but it does not, as Gerald
still committed his affair, Eric impregnated an unmarried girl, and Arthur and Sybil behaved
uncharitably to young girls in need. Arthur calls the hospital and confirms that no self-inflicted
deaths have been recorded for weeks. He says resolutely that Inspector Goole has tricked
the family and that there is nothing to fear. Sheila worries aloud that Arthur will ignore the
lessons the family was just beginning to learn. The phone rings, and Arthur answers. He
alerts the family that a girl has been admitted to the hospital just now, and that her death is a
suicide. As the play ends, Arthur relays to the family that a police inspector is headed to the
house to begin an inquiry.

Characters:

Arthur Birling: Arthur’s primary concerns are the Birling family’s good name and his ability
to climb in early-twentieth-century English society. Arthur is aware that, although his firm is
successful, it is not as successful as the Crofts’. Arthur also does not yet possess a formal
title as the Crofts do, so he gleefully tells Gerald in Act One that he is expecting a
knighthood. Although Arthur does seem somewhat upset at the idea that he contributed to
Eva Smith’s death, he is more upset that his family’s involvement in the scandal would
become public. This would mean that the knighthood might be withheld, and that Birling
would no longer continue his social ascent.
Arthur’s opinion, that men ought only to look after themselves as individuals, is a strictly
capitalist mentality, in which owners of capital value only profits, and do not care for workers’
rights. As Sheila says in Act Three, the Inspector calls just as Arthur tells Eric and Gerald
that they must put their own interests before anyone else’s, and that socialist ideas of human
brotherhood are strange and not to be trusted. Sheila wonders if the Inspector’s visit was
meant to prove to Arthur that people’s lives are actually very complexly intertwined.

Sheila Birling: Sheila is the conscience of the Birling family. She realizes very soon after the
Inspector’s arrival that her anger at Milward’s resulted in Eva/Daisy’s dismissal, and that,
because Eva/Daisy went on to commit suicide, Sheila played a role in her demise. Sheila
wonders how she will live with the grief her actions have caused, for herself, and of course
for Eva/Daisy. She seems genuinely upset and lost, and reminds the rest of her family that
they, too, have acted wrongly. She wants the family never to forget what they have done,
despite their desire to proceed as though nothing is amiss.
Sheila’s position is, broadly, an empathetic one. Although she does not seem to care much
for the Inspector’s implicit critique of capitalism, she does believe that humans are
responsible for one another’s good will. She is despondent that she cannot undo what she
has done, but is committed to the idea that the family can change going forward. She is also
willing, at the play’s end, to forgive Gerald his infidelity, because he appeared to have
genuinely cared for Eva/Daisy, even if at Sheila’s expense.

Eric Birling: Eric’s position is similar to his sister’s, in that he, too, is wracked by guilt after
learning of the Eva/Daisy’s suicide. But Eric’s addiction to alcohol and his moodier, wilder
temperament keep him from reasoning as succinctly as Sheila does at the play’s end. Eric
believes that he behaved justifiably in stealing from the family business to help Eva/Daisy.
And, when he learns that his mother refused Eva/Daisy from her charity despite being
pregnant, he is aghast at his family’s lack of sympathy.
Different characters interpret Eric’s alcoholism in different ways. Arthur sees it as a sign of
weakness, an indication that Eric is lazy and was spoiled as a child. Sybil refuses to
acknowledge that Eric has a drinking problem, despite Sheila’s protestations. And Gerald,
though he wants to believe that Eric’s drinking is “normal” for a young man, admits that very
few young men drink the way Eric does.

Eva Smith/Daisy Renton: A character who does not appear onstage in the play, but who is
the absent figure around which the action spins. She is referred to as Eva Smith, Daisy
Renton, and “Mrs. Birling.” She may be a combination of these young women, or a different
person, or a fiction. Whether she is real or not, Eva/Daisy is a stand-in for the girls that
Arthur, Sybil, Sheila, Eric, and Gerald have wronged, either separately or together.
Eva/Daisy worked for a low wage, and Arthur fired her for attempting a strike. Sheila had her
fired for impertinence. Eric and Gerald both had affairs with her, and though Gerald cared for
her, Eric’s relationship to her was more vexed, and required him to steal money for her. If
Eva/Daisy is a real person, as the last phone call suggests, then the family’s guilt might
really knot them together. But if she is not one person, and rather a set of people, this makes
her no less substantial as an organizational principle for the work. Priestley demonstrates
how selfish, or economically motivated, or jealous behavior can ruin people’s lives.
Eva/Daisy is the lesson each character must learn individually.

Inspector Goole: The Inspector is physically imposing, and he has no trouble articulating
his frustration with the Birlings and with Gerald. Over the course of his questioning, the
Inspector reveals that each of characters has, in some sense, contributed to Eva
Smith/Daisy Renton’s demise. The Inspector implies that the other characters care primarily
for themselves, that they are angry and impulsive, and that they cannot control their sexual
appetites or their intake of alcohol. He also says that they cannot change what has
happened to Eva/Daisy, because she is no longer alive and capable of accepting their
apologies. But the Inspector, too, is a curt, direct man, and his motivations for grilling the
other characters are not readily comprehensible. His apparent socialist sympathies at the
end of the play might account in political terms for some of his anger, but the Inspector’s
desire to see justice through, in this case, is left unexplained.