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.

@DarkForces

I agree.

I am writing from the perspective of a parent of an opinionated modern empowered 14 year old who can't relate to the social position of yesteryear and the misogyny in those periods

It seems she misguidedly thinks the women weak or poor of judgment. 'why didn't the victim see the red flags? Was she stupid?'. Once put in context the victim's lack of choice becomes clear but you have to make teenagers understand the historical gender divisions.

I think imho it takes a bit of a 'push' to get girls (or at least my girl!) engaged with literature where women behaved in manner different to 21st Western women and were essentially subjugates. If course this is historically accurate but it does seem there can be :pushback' from some girls to full engagement (and joy of reading) when women are esentially the 'weaker' sex and having to follow social restrictions that are far from today's. It's obviously a really good thing gender imbalance has been eroded but does this not make a lot of our classic texts a little more remote for the modern school student (especially girls).

There are so many great books in our literature and so few to have to choose for children in a formative part of their education I think it would be great to have more female role models (or is that being a bit to woke?)

It does feel (hate the word) ‘woke’ to me, sorry. The point (or one of them) is to get your daughter to open her mind and engage with literature from other periods, to get beyond the popular shorthand of now around ‘red flags’ and learn more about humanity, history, language and lots more. Female role models are fine and good, but it’s not KS1 Amazing Women tales retrofitting Ada Lovelace and Florence Nightingale etc to be cool contemporary heroines. Nor is it Bridgerton precision tooled to go down easy and comfort. Not everyone will like every text and that’s fine, and a valid response, but I do despair a little at the idea that literature’s value lies in whether it’s got good role models for young women - or men. Personally, and although it’s not woke itself, I prefer Ray Bradbury’s take on what makes good writing: “The good writers touch life often. The mediocre ones run a quick hand over her. The bad ones rape her and leave her for the flies.”

@mids2019

I'd use it as a reason to get her to research the history of feminism and the fact her freedoms have been hard one at the expense of many other women. The witch trials are another example of the way women were punished for not fitting into the mould of what women should be. These women were not weak, they were doing their best to survive generally at a point in our history a lot was stacked against them.

That's a really interesting point above and I think the quandary is that great literature is great literature and opens perspectives on many aspects of the human condition but we do have to accept as stated there may be little provision for female role models given the antiquity of the works.

If we look at romance for instance it can be hard to get a girl to completely relate to some figures in literature due to 2025 life for women being much different and the question is can this be a barrier to an engagement when a lot of the non English curriculum is geared towards female empowerment and certainly doesn't highlight sexist gender differences.

There just seems to be a greater need for girls to make a greater leap of imagination to identify with women, many in subjugate roles that now seem remote.

For instance Juliet is effectively being forced into an arranged marriage to Paris by her father, Ophelia is subject to horrific misogyny by Hamlet etc. Many of George Emily's and Jane Austen's characters though nuanced and brilliantly written are still slaves to a patriarchy that may be unrecognizable today.

I take the point that this being 'woke' but shouldn't we also take opportunities in English to highlight heroic femininity from Bodecia to Marie Curie? I don't know, maybe I am wrong, but somehow it feels like countering the dominant male narrative of at least balancing it may not be a bad thing.

Bridgestone for example is not great literature but shows we have a modem appetite for maybe not wanting to over focus on times and attitudes we now feel let's face it wrong. Focusing on the enthralled state of women, though important historically maybe akin to having a lot of literature about slavery when you have children of afro Caribbean descent. We all know slavery existed but we wouldn't feel comfortable with all our literature focused onit.

You really don’t seem to get these texts or the point of Literature at GCSE to be honest.
Can you name a work of Literature written in English by someone from Great Britain (those are the rules) about Curie or Boudicca?
Our local girls school does Pride and Prejudice as their nineteenth century choice as it happens. Of those that join us at A Level some loved it, some hated it. Because not all members of a sex respond to texts in the same way. There’s no such thing as boy/girl friendly texts.

Regardless, your daughter needs to do some more work on this. Consideration of context is one of the Assessment Objectives and it doesn’t sound like that’s happening right now.

This is not ancient history though. It's very recent. I'd recommend a listen to the cruelty on bbc sounds if you want a modern example. Sex trafficking and slavery affects far more women than men and is still very much a feature of our times and happening in uk https://www.unseenuk.org/about-modern-slavery/facts-and-figures/. These examples are far more normal examples than heroines unfortunately

@mids2019

Personally I was bad at English literature but I do put this down to not relating to some of the characters I had to learn about. I don't necessarily think though I couldn't relate to English invasive per se but only to some of the books I had to read.

I do tell my daughter times were different and understanding of those times is important but not to feel that contemporary women's lives need to be constrained in the ways that are portrayed by the likes of George Eliot.

If you need it to relate to you think about it this way, these are women who could have changed the world, they could have been at the forefront of something that changed humanity and yet their potential was squandered by the society they were born into. You are incredibly privileged to have the opportunity to do the things you want when you want and that's due to stories like this helping change the context we live in. We are very, very lucky to be born at this time and in this place and I'm very grateful for it.

In did ask her about which Dicken's female character she liked and admired and she did struggle with that but I did as well.

Darkforces.

I think that is important and a message I will give my daughter. Context is key.

My daughter is not unintelligent but as I said earlier it is taking effort to get he engaged in older texts partly by her own admission she couldn't relate to many of the female characters.

Maybe we do have to look at English literature as creating a guiding light for the progression of female opportunity and liberty.

That's the message I'd share. If we just read about people like us we wouldn't learn a thing.

I loved cold comfort farm for a great heroine. It's ridiculous but I loved the characters and the order coming from chaos as they developed. It's an excellent palate cleanser after a heavy text. Wyrd Sisters is another great one I read at her age.

DarkForces

Thanks.

The frustrating thing my daughter is quite a voracious reader and did extremely week in her SATs but has disengaged to some extent at secondary school. The way the school teach English is that there is no distinction between language and literature so I do need to enthuse her about an inspector calls,Macbeth and A Christmas Carol.

There is a hurdle about relatibility but I hope it's not insurmountable. I do still think it's hard to get a teenage girl to fully appreciate some literature as as discussed earlier there is a disconnect in terms of the nature of romance/marriage/power dynamics for women in times that go by.

(Working on extending an analysis of Lady Macbeth which is slightly more expensive than power hungry psychopath with OCD currently...)

I'm not a PSHE teacher - there does seem to be a move towards making literature lessons PSHE topics and it is infuriating.

That being said, it's unfortunate your daughter's school stick to such a limited diet of lit texts, but I suspect upwards of 75 percent of schools do those three texts. (I don't have stats, but exam boards publish the number of candidates sitting each text, and I mark inspector!

The trick is to hook- so the relatability aspect isn't necessarily Eva Smith, it might be the issue of being looked down on for being a particular class, or for not having a voice, or for parental expectations. Or, your daughter might just hate it and that's ok 😂 she can read other things!

Traditionally (in my experience) girls prefer literature to boys, but that is absolutely not universal!

@mids2019 I think you could get her to think about other countries - Afghanistan (there was an amazing guardian article on how the men there have slowly become very good enforces of patriarchy and how it slowly gets embedded in culture). Look at the U.S and how abortion rights are being taken away - there are senators proposing bills for only married women to get the vote. A women in Georgia was brain dead at 9 weeks and was kept on life support till 24 weeks before her body just got too dead to hold the fetus and they took it out, the baby is only 1 pound. Look even in the UK - 1 is killed every few days by her partner or ex partner. Yes we have come so far in the progress of feminism but I think getting to think more critically will help - the gender pay gap in he UK is still 17%. Even in Iran in the 70s (they had female MPs) - we think these countries have never given women rights but they did and now think about how women get beaten in Iran by the morality police. It's always going to be a fight for women.
I've put some good books (mainly nom-fiction but also fiction) about Feminism across the world (I think she'd enjoy them and learn a lot).

• It’s Probably Nothing: Critical Conversations on the Women’s Health Crisis
• The Authority Gap by Mary Ann Sieghart
• The New Age of Sexism: How the AI Revolution is Reinventing Misogyny by Laura Bates
• Fundamentally by Nussaibah Younis
• Invisible Women by Caroline Criado Perez
• Difficult Women: A History of Feminism in 11 Fights
• We Should All be Feminists by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
• White Feminism by Koa Beck
• White Tears Brown Scars: How White Feminism Betrays Women of Colour by Ruby Hamad
• Hood Feminism: Notes from the Women White Feminists Forgot by Mikki Kendall
• Sexy But Psycho: How the Patriarchy Uses Women’s Trauma Against Them
• The Pain Gap: How Sexism and Racism in Healthcare Kill Women by Anushay Hossain
• Black Sisters, Speak Out: Feminism and Oppression in Black Africa by Awa Thiam
• This Bridge Called My Back, Fourth Edition: Writings by Radical Women of Color by Cherríe Moraga and Gloria AnzaldúaA
• Outspoken: My Fight for Freedom and Human Rights in Afghanistan by Sima Samar
• Until We Are Freeby Shirin Ebadi
• A Decolonial Feminismby Francoise Verges

TheLivelyViper

Really good post.

I was thinking about women and the patriarchy and I think with English literature we do see the world through a western historical lens. There are cultures where the attitudes that shocked my daughter do present themselves and it must be a question about how you criticise patriarchy when some cultures and religions actively embrace it.

I was talking to a Sikh young woman who was to have an arranged marriage and this is just simply a cultural expectation. The good match for Sheila in an inspector calls would seem dated for my daughter as a concept but other cultures may identify more readily with the confines of a semi arranged marriage.

It

Another thing my annoying daughter pointed out was that classic literature does not include any lgbqt+ characters. Of course none of the authors we study at GCSE would write about gay people as homosexuality was a massive taboo back in the day. It does appear to be a shock though (maybe for this generation) that they have to read through a series of texts without mention of homosexuality as they are brought up in a much more diverse literary and visual diet.

Honeslty this is so true, I really push schools to do in KS3 as this is the only time they have control of the curriculum. To be honest once you get into more critical theories like gender and queer theory at A-level it's so much more fun. Sometimes children who have real passion for books and English actually statt to disengage at GCSE because the texts are so archaic (not saying we don't need some 19th century or I don't love some of Shakespeare) but we need to mix it up. Many kids have really enjoyed the new Worlds and Lives poetry because they see themselves stories about Black people (a great poem on stop and search) and women and LGBT people. But I think get her to watch documents or do light research on the context of Inspector Calls and maybe getting to read some of those I recommend (which are really interesting. Fundamentally is a very good fiction if she thinks non-fiction is boring (I did in primary school and early secondary but I started and then realised how amazing it is to learn tangible things, but still love an escape). She may she the impact of feminism in her life now but it doesn't mean there is not a long way to go - think about paternity v maternity leave, or the pain gap in women's healthcare, or the rise of misogyny in young boys and men. That's just in the UK (where things are somewhat better) but even in Iceland rated number 1 for gender equality, there's still issues. So imagine the rest of the world; FGM, porn, violence against women, taking away bodily autonomy, the motherhood tax (leads to less promotions, less money, less pension contributions), the shaming of women's pleasure in sex - I mean the vibrator was created by dealing women as hysterical. Even think about the history of gynaecology - enslaved Black women were taken by Dr James Sims and others and he did experiments on them without pain relief or anesthesia (which existed) because he thought Black women didn't feel pain. Even now research among doctors and medical students has found they still think Black women experience less pain than white women for the same procedures - why do we think in the UK Black women are 4x more likely to die in childbirth. Even look at how despite how amazing England are - the hate against women for playing football (better than our men's team) is astonishing Sorry, I need to stop ranting, but once I start I can't stop 😅.

At A-level everyone is gay lol, we look at Gastby and Nick, The Color Purple is an amazing book on feminism, black women and queer characters as well even though it was written in the 80s. Also the Handmaids Tale is on the specification (I really recommend getting her to read this and watch it as well). Plays like Streetcar we look at sexuality of Blanche but rarely at GCSE unfortunately. So many books from that time actually do have same-sex relationships but you have to read between the lines, even in Shakespeare - with Othello at A-level we consider how Iago's obsession might be fuelled by a homoerotic bond with Othello (masked by a military bond) and thats why he's so jealous and even more. Some students by the end of it want to be done with English Lit, and I really think they'd enjoy the freedom of A-level but think it will be the same as GCSE.

Also @mids2019 I saw your post on analysis of Lady Macbeth. I have essay plans and notes on Macbeth I'd be happy to send to you if your DD would like. I unfortunately only have Macbeth, Lord of the Flies and Jekyll and Hyde so can't help with her other texts. I think Lady Macbeth is a much more complex character than the simple idea of she abandons her feminity and is weak - think of the depression she might have (losing her child). She also manipulates Macbeth, I always argued that she was stronger because Macbeth relies on her (I'll try and shorten it now) but essentially Macbeth in Act 1 S1 write to her straight after the war even though he will get back just a few hours after the letter - he needs her to encourage him to get the throne (and she is actually a massive driving force of ambition because she wants to be queen) she in a way control him but he doesn't notice because he underestimates her. Obviously lots more to it but I think she is misunderstood often as a witch or useless. She's also grieving her child and I've always said she's an amazing representation of female rage, often girls once they think about it can in some way relate. I think the way she mimics the trochaic terameter (type of rhyme scheme) of the witches at certain points - you could argue she takes that method of how the witches control, scare and mock Macbeths feebleness - she only uses it at certain quotes but it shows she isn't just a hysterical women. There's lots of very interesting Lit theories on her and I think she's such an amazing character.

Except a driving force in Jekyll and Hyde is paranoia around male homosexuality and the ‘Blackmailers’ Charter’.

I’m increasingly thinking the issue here isn’t the texts themselves but the approach school (and your daughter) are taking.

You shouldn’t need to relate to a character to empathise with them.

The school do definitely help with context and I get the impression this is missing and maybe I can help support my daughter with that.

I am just pointing out there may be barriers to literature as it appears 'white, heterosexual and male' . Obviously Dickens,Shakespere, and Priestly were all white,heterosexual and male.

We live in a world now that the younger generations expect to see a homosexual or person of colour within a text alongside heroic strong women. I don't think this is quite right personally by this a direction society has moved in.

The livelyviper

Any help would be grwat!

Lady Macbeth is an incredibly iconic character but is interesting that childlessness is brought into this. Are we meant to lift L McBeth for not having children and is there there the suggestion that having children would have significantly changed her character (compare for instance to Lady McDuff). There is a line as I vaguely recall from one of the 'good guys' that Macbeth has no children insinuating perhaps that having no children leads to existential angst and lack of empathy (or is this taking it too far).

Winter sting stuff anyway.

Then your problem is with Michael Gove and how he instructed the last curriculum review.
It’s all very well the boards introducing new texts now but with staff shortages there is no teacher time to prepare new texts and there’s no money to provide the new texts for classes. Class sets of texts are expensive.

Well it's quite clearly implied her baby was born stillborn and in such a society she almost attacks herself for being unable to do the 'prime role of a woman'. I'd argue even today when women are childfree, people still get shocked or tell them they'll change their minds because it's 'natural'. But then I think she almost realises a power in her rejection of gender roles (unintentionally) that she can have power and doesn't have to be tied down to a child. I still think that she still grieves that though especially at the start. There's lots of different theoretical approaches people have on her, lots of papers in JSTOR etc with various ideas. You could find a simpler one and get her to see what she thinks, I'll try and message you the notes later.