An Inspector Calls - Essay 22

AN INSPECTOR CALLS
This was the period of the Russian Revolution, two appalling world wars, the Holocaust and the Atom Bomb.

This table describes what society was like in 1912 and in 1945
|An Inspector Calls is set in 1912                     |An Inspector Calls was written in 1945.                                       |
|The First World War would start in two years.         |The Second World War ended on 8 May 1945. People were recovering from nearly |
|Birling's optimistic view that there would not be a   |six years of warfare, danger and uncertainty.                                 |
|war is completely wrong.                             |                                                                             |
|There were strong distinctions between the upper and |Class distinctions had been greatly reduced as a result of two world wars.   |
|lower classes.                                       |                                                                             |
|Women were subservient to men. All a well off women   |As a result of the wars, women had earned a more valued place in society.     |
|could do was get married; a poor woman was seen as   |                                                                             |
|cheap labour.                                         |                                                                             |
|The ruling classes saw no need to change the status   |There was a great desire for social change. Immediately after The Second     |
|quo.                                                 |World War, Clement Attlee's Labour Party won a landslide victory over Winston|
|                                                     |Churchill and the Conservatives.                                             |

Priestley deliberately set his play in 1912 because the date represented an era when all was very different from the time he was writing. In 1912, rigid class and gender boundaries...