An inspector calls - does the suicide victim lack agency with her relationships with Eric and Gerald?

[mids2019]

My daughter has just read this play for GCSE and though it is a great morality lesson I did have questions about some of its relevance in 2025.

The suicide victim is definitely an innocent when it came to being fired for unionising and allegedly mocking a client in dress shop but with the interactions with Eric and Gerald I do question whether there is a slight misogyny or unnecessary vitimhood?

In both cases the victim engages with sexual activity with both men and one point of view is that the cut in has a choice in entering those relationships so does not have the same degree of powerlessness as in the sackings. I found it maybe a little derogatory that there is an implication that a woman reduced to poverty would naturally resort to comfort sex and relationships where she was undervalued. I personally found this quite strange as the victim initially was an incredibly strong beautiful woman who was prepared to lead courageously in strike action.

I can see perhaps the narrative is that the victim is systematically degraded by her experience with the Birlings and maybe she has reached a point of having reduced esteem but I do possinly.question whether the inference of 'young beautiful woman in the slide drinks and has one night stands' is a good one from a gender perspective.

What should a GCSE student under from the victims relationships ? My daughter for instance was wondering about the availability of contraception in the 1910s and whether in fact the audience were meant to sympathise with the victim in her choice of relationship as they were a result of her impoverished state and possibke.poor mental health.

For clarity, I love Macbeth and Romeo and Juliet, but there’s a time and a place, and served up along side the others…they’re a lot.

@BlueEyedBogWitch - my favourite Shakespeare is Macbeth BUT after doing lots of student voice where the relentlessness cropped up I’ve changed my texts (we have free choice). I do Much Ado About Nothing (still lots of meaty discussions but also a lot of humour), A Taste of Honey (still dark, but again some humour and takes my middle class southern students out of their comfort zone), the new Worlds and Lives anthology (which has small moments of joy) and then Frankenstein. The nineteenth century choices are all pretty dark to be honest.

The texts haven’t changed in ages. They need to. I
They used to rotate regularly.

Leave Taking is a decent little addition to the texts, but most schools are frightened/too lazy/complacent to change texts.

I think ‘too skint’ comes into it, too.

Yeah that's fair @BlueEyedBogWitch but for example the Penguin Lit in Colour has supported schools by providing free texts for the entire cohort. I think sometimes cost is a convenient excuse too.

Part of the learning is to look at the play through the lens of the time that it was written. The choices women had available to them:

no benefits system
No nhs
no ability to take out a mortgage, open a bank balance etc
no birth control/abortion options etc etc

what choices might a young girl make against that backdrop?

I’m waiting to hear the results of the curriculum review at the end of the year. If the timetable for reform makes it worthwhile I will switch to Leave Taking. It’s a great play.

I thought for a minute you meant Reform the political party 🙈 end of term brain clearly still in motion!

It's interesting that my daughter has 3 set texts, an inspector calls, Macbeth and a Christmas Carol.

I wonder if such a selection may not engage girls as strongly as other texts. As people have pointed out there is no particular strong woman role in an inspector calls and Lady Macbeth isn't exactly a role model (though very strong). A Christmas Carol doesn't really feature women as major characters (if I recall correctly).

Would it be good to include texts where women overcame adversity or had a more heroic role?

I do take the point about the darkness of the texts when we live in age of trigger warnings. Drinking bleach as a means of suicide to my mind is simply there for shock value and is quite gratuitous as surely hanging would be a more straightforward choice? Indeed the victim of an Inspector Calls sees no hope in life and decides to end it yet the play is fielded to a group of young teens who may have struggles of their own.

Beloved was one of my A level Eng Lit texts, and has a very strong female lead, who overcomes extreme adversity - but is so bleak and dark that AIC is light-hearted social commentary by comparison.

There are options with stronger women (although Lady Macbeth is fab - women can be evil too you know).
Just as I don’t choose texts because they’re boy friendly there’s no such thing as girl friendly either (not all girls identify with Jane Austen characters).
The consumption of bleach instead of hanging is in keeping with methods chosen based on sex (where data exists). There’s an interesting sociological study by Durkheim.
The main issue is nothing will change until the exam boards are forced to. And schools are now scared of change. We used to rotate texts regularly that hasn’t happened in a long time. There are English departments who are unaware of this as they all qualified after. And in trusts where departments can’t choose what they teach there’s already been a major deskilling. I’ve been raising this as an issue for at least 5 years!

The bleach is meant to be symbolic

Lady Macbeth is an incredibly strong character but again doesn't Last Macbeth draw her strength from laying aside femininity (unsex me now......etc). I also feel the witches though obviously iconic within literature characterise old women as manipulative evil spinsters. The post menopausal hair growth (you have beards) would be a contemporary slur. Also Lady Macbeth though incredibly complex as a a character meets her death by suicide....so much female suicide in the syllabus!

I am not criticising the literature as such but making the point that there could be more balance and maybe more thought into getting some less tragic women to the forefront. (Not Tess of the Durbervilles then).

The men are tragic too in the Lit GCSE spec. Macbeth effectively gets Macduff to kill him, Romeo (well, that’s obvious), Jekyll is destroyed by himself, Eric sinks into destructive alcoholism from the very beginning of the play (seriously, he’s the one genuinely feeling guilt). The issue around sexism within the spec is the lack of women writers when the most popular board can find space for two novels by Dickens!
That board were also the last to work with Penguin on the Lit in Colour programme and to ‘improve diversity’ simply replaced three of the most ‘diverse’ texts with others.

There are serious issues with the texts chosen, but Priestley realistically representing the world of upper and working class women at the time is not the issue.

I am not an English teacher but female characters by George Eliot seem to be a bit deeper and complex than the ones in the texts my daughter has to read (Lady Macbeth excluded). I get that the oppression and ultimately cruel thoughtless destruction ruin of a young woman was important in an inspector calls but the women in the play are ultimately victims (though this a result of patriarchal oppression). I think it's a hard read for a 14 year old girl personally who is wrestling with their own sense of identity as a female. To my daughter part of the play is about how badly women can be treated and how make dominated the world was which is both shocking to her (quite rightly) but also a bit of a turn off as girls now are empowered to challenge gender oppression.

Schools don't need to choose it. Our school studied Animal Farm instead. - same exam board.

But also a ridiculous option for a modern text. You’re right of course. But most departments are no longer given the choice. Parents prefer the option that there are the most resources for. We have a generation of teachers now who were probably taught it themselves and are now repeating it. It’s beyond time that we went back to the regular text rotations.

I don’t teach it. Of the 5 classes in my school, 2 do choose it. We are very unusual in giving staff a free choice.

I prefer animal farm as it is pure allegory. There is no exploration of male pigs dominating female pigs so it removes the gender question from the overriding the of the elites oppressing the masses and the unchanging nature of human power and privilege (great stuff). Why not reach this?

an inspector calls brings in the addition of gender oppression which obviously was a fact of the 1910s but is a difficult theme with early teen boys and girls. There were boys in the class who apparently didn't see the actions of Gerald and Eric as that problematic (smirkingly suggesting those were the days). I guess there is an element of immaturity there with the class but it seems a teacher would be drawn into emphasising how wrong this societal position was.

It’s not a difficult theme for years 10 and 11. They live in today’s world. They are well aware of the issue.

@GrammarTeacher

I think there is awareness and I think the question is how aware girls should be of women's position in the past.

From a positive point if view girls can see how much has been gained in terms of equality in 100 years e.g. right to vote. There is obviously a need to present history in a true way.

I think for a lot of literature there is a gender perspective that isn't present in say maths (no real consideration of gender when solving an equation) and this needs thought in a syllabus. It appears to my mind we have PHSE lessons in schools that are very much about female positivity and opportunity but English literature that focuses on female oppression and what we would now describe as lack of role models due to the age of the texts.

I think there is an argument girls and boys receive English literature in a slightly different way.

I teach only boys at this level. There is a huge difference in how each boy responds to Literature. I can assure that teachers think this through and discuss it. At length.

OP there are more books with female authors or character but schools choose to not teach them.
Paper 1 English Lit is Shakespeare play and then 19th century text most schools do Christmas Carol or Jekyll and Hyde, you can do Jane Eyre, Pride and Prejudice and others.

Paper 2 is either a modern play or a modern book. Most schools do Inspector Callsz or Blood Brothers (if they do a play). But amby of the book options are now more diverse including women, and different ethnicities: Pigeon English and My Name is Leon and Anita and me are good books. And if they want to do a play instead Princess and the Hustler and Leave Taking are on the list to choose from. These are all much more modern etc. Then for poetry they recently added a Poetry anthology called World's and Lives (more modern and diverse authors/context).

But schools choose the same old books and play because 1. They have powerpoints made years ago they can repeat 2. Teachers may not know where to start with new texts, they need to read them etc, it requires training about new texts, new contexts teachers may not be familiar with 3. Some texts like Christmas Carol are much simpler to understand and so students who struggle can do well. It's a shame because it often puts kids off books, because they don't relate to them, find them archaic and boring. AQA (likely other exam boards as well) have been trying to upgrade modernity and Diversity but they can't force school to teach those books. Hopefully with the new Curriculum and Assessment Review (as alluded to in interim report) will focus on a lot more diversity and inclusion, modern texts and teaching in a range of subjects which kids will actually feel represented by.

Absolutely. There was no social security or safety net and poverty was absolute. My nan was brought up in the slums of London with a father who drank every spare penny and a bloke upstairs who was well known as a paedophile with no consequences. This isn't ancient history and it's so important to remember why we introduced benefits. Women were judged as undeserving of help if they were unmarried mothers and were rejected for financial support by panels of people so far removed from their reality that they couldn't see men's culpability in the situation. Thank fuck we've come on since then.

I studied Wuthering Heights and think Catherine was an absolute eejit for putting up with Heathcliff's nonsense, far more so than Eva who had very few options and those she had were taken away from her.

In 2025 K think a young woman would be a lot more vocal about the affair and be unashamed of an emotional reaction. My daughter's less than considered opinion was why Shells didn't simply tell Gerald to f off.

Just a casual glance at the relationships board or aibu board on MN shows that women disclose their partner's affairs on here every day, because they are too ashamed to talk to anyone in real life. Women who are 'working through' years long affairs of their husbands?
Women who've caught their partners doing the most vile things who then are posting things like 'shall I call off my wedding?' etc. This is also my experience of women in IRL, women often take men back who've done abominable things.

Do you really think in the 1900s a young woman like Sheila would have the choice of breaking her engagement over Gerald's affair, which would be seen as a minor indiscretion at worst? Most young men were almost expected to behaviour similar, just look at Eric!

Some things haven't changed at all in that respect.

Eva Smith was a young poor woman navigating a man's world, what on earth do you mean by implying she wasn't powerless? She was fainting with hunger when Gerald met her, and they had a brief relationship. I cannot imagine what choices you think a woman like that might have had? she did what she could to survive. She probably fell for Gerald, who was a total gentleman compared to Eric who essentially forced himself on her and continued to abuse her when she was at her lowest.