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.

AQA were the last board to join the push to diversify Paper 2 (and they handled it badly - removing the only diverse options already there!). Lit In Colour is a fab programme. I recommend applying to be an ambassador school. We were gifted 500 books (yes 500!) by Penguin to diversify our library.
OCR have had a good take up of their new texts actually. I’m hoping to move to Leave Taking in 2026-7 (would switch this year but teaching years 7-9 for the first time in a while so I have a lot to brush up.

I so agree, frankly students are bored of Shakespeare by Y10. Why wouldn't they when it's been rammed down their throats - I love some Shakespeare and he's a great playwright but there are so many amazing playwrights and students should get to be exposed to them to. I still feel like in many schools the English department is shocked at how much less and less students do A-level even those who have the potential and it's as if they haven't clocked that students are bored of the same old, same old. We shouldn't just be saying we'll a text about a different cultures aren't accessible so we must continue doing Inspector Calls and Lord of the Flies every year - because the canon is great and we must continue the canon because... we've always taught the canon. We can make these texts accessible if we start from Y7, more and more classes and schools are full of diversity and English is the only subject where we must look inwards and place ourselves in the characters shoes. There is a new anthology @Pieceofpurplesky called World and Lives, some schools have said no to that because they can't be bothered to put in the effort to teach different stories and make some new PowerPoints. It's absolutely not difficult to do this it would just be too challenging because we need to learn new context and the same old excuses, whilst English A-level and degree numbers continue to drop.

I meant 34% of students are BAME (not 4%) (and non-BAME students need to learn about different cultures etc) bit 0.7% study a book by a writer of colour at GCSE and 0.1% women of colour at GCSE. It just not good enough to consistently across the years only do 'canon' texts which are conveniently all by white authors, basically we repeatdly only teach canon texts because we've always done canon texts.

I think some of the words on the Lit in Colour page of students talking about how they feel so unrepresented in a classroom are more important than the constant push to do the most basic GCSE texts to ensure everyone can pass, when we are literally pulling children away from a love of the subject and further study of it.
https://litincolour.penguin.co.uk/
https://litincolour.penguin.co.uk/assets/Lit-in-Colour-research-report.pdf

But there are more book options which include 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). I've worked with AQA and they have added much more diverse texts across the last few years. They added these in 2022/2023 and they were assessed for the first time this year.

I know. However they removed a book by Kashuo Ishiguro, the play of Curious Incident (neurodiversity) and The History Boys (homosexuality). This was done as these were the least popular texts.
True diversity on this paper will only come when AIC is removed.
I stand by my point that AQA is behind both OCR and Edexcel on this.

I’ve worked with both AQA and OCR on this issue. I do teach Worlds and Lives (vast improvement on the tokenistic ‘inclusion’ in the previous anthologies).

I just think they could do so much better with texts. Shakespeare - why essays? He wrote to be watched so his plays should be studied as they were meant to be - watched. Analyse the presentation of a character by an actor instead. Scrap the anthology and make the question unseen - so we can teach analysis and appreciation rather than a memory test. Include more modern writers - get the kids enjoying reading … alongside books they enjoy like Animal Farm. Government should poll teachers to find out.

I find Pigeon English problematic. When the older girl doves him to touch her - if it was the other way around it would be sexual abuse. Too many kids have been there to make it possible to have that frank discussion.

O have had that discussion in class many times - I did Streetcar at A-level and had the discussion with the rape scene. I also did in Y9 with a book we did, I mean my GSSE English teacher (senior examiner for OCR) did lessons on bestiality with us and also in Sociology GCSE and History GCSE we have discussions about sexual assult, slavery, the history of gynaecology where enslaved women were experimented on (J personally don't think we should shy away from it as long as its done responsibility and senstively). Also in Of Mice and Men, there's rape and I did that in Y8 and we talked about it. I'll tell you that it was much worse that my teacher and other students said the n-word in a class with a few Black students, where we all sat together than the discussion about SA. Even in GCSE I did my language presentation in Y11 on the orgasm gap and the history of virginity and sex and SA being the foundation of it. We also did Jekyll and Hyde and we talked about prostitution, homosexuality and all of that and rape during the poem 'London' by Black and learnt it for context.

Plus there are still other texts to do if a school doesn't want to approach Piegon English for that reason, however I don't think this is the reason they don't do it as many English teachers and departments I've worked with have never even read it and don't know what it's about. Yes @GrammarTeacher I would take AIC off the spec (but I do think many schools would complain because they say its the most accessible). I personally am not a fan of Curious Incident or the History Boys but I did to Never Let me Go in Y9 and loved it so would have liked them to keep it. I'd also really like reform of Paper 1, I'd change the requirement for Shakespeare (just make it about plays), and then I'd do 20th or 21st literature prose instead of 19th century. I do quite like doing poetry anthology though, and I'd just change the unseen element in paper 1 to 1 question of a few more marks.

Yes plays are meant to be watched at @Pieceofpurplesky but I do still think essays can be useful because analysis of an actor and of writing techniques can compliment each other (and good teachers include this) but are still distinct and I do think there's still merit to writing an analysis of a play. I wouldn't want to just focus on how an actor portrays a character, as I do want students own ideas on a character in terms of what the playwright wanted emersed with the understanding of specific play techniques. I think good students often do this well in their answers and would still want to keep that personally.

I have no issues discussing all
of these things @TheLivelyViper- it’s just the nature of it in PIgeon English I dislike. Miquita is horrible.

I suppose if I could comment on an Inspector calls is that is primarily about class oppression in an era where there were very distinct class barriers in that it was more apparent who were the middle class factory owners and who were the factory workers in terms of general standing in society. The play is placed in an era before the Russian revolution and the beginnings of mass unionised labour.

As time progresses class distinctions have become blurred and other forms of oppression including race more apparent.

My imaginings if the characters in the play are that all the characters are white British (which would match the period). If we replaced the victim by a poc woman then the play would gain a whole new racial element.

I wonder if there are some poc students that would want to study a text that examined racial oppression as well as class oppression? We need to look to the US I guess (e.g. to kill a mockingbird) to get this narrative but I do see a benefit in offering the choice.

Again it's about balance we focus on white poverty, lack of power, suffering of injustice, misogyny when you could argue possibly poc generally in the world now or more prone to suffer from these.

True I'm not a fan of all the characters but still like the book overall. Though there's always one character to hate which can be fun, like Nick in Gatsby or Othello who is way too vain for my liking.

I was disgusted to find out pigeon English was written by a white man! I don't think it's an option on our exam board.

Highly recommend teaching Leave Taking- it's great.

Completely agree with posters who are saying genuine change won't happen until Inspector is removed from the exam board.

I don't think it's been said (apologies if I missed it) but it is on the national curriculum that students at Key Stage 3 must study two Shakespeare plays- that's why it seems like they do it in every year. My major gripe with this is the teaching can be poor, but also text choice can be really poor- I know a school who does Othello in year 7 and you can talk about ambition all you like, but the play is fundamentally unsuitable for key stage 3!

One thing that strikes me about teaching English literature is a multi cultural society is that the idea of romanticized love is actually quite a westernized ideal to a degree (of at least an idea that is fundamental to a lot of western literature e.g. Romeo and Juliet). The idea of people having free choice in love and marriage is one that acts as a theme for so much great literature and when societal constraints prevent the evolution of a relationship based on attraction there is a struggle for emnacipation.

However do we need to respect the fact for some cultures parental organisation of marriage is a norm and there is a deep seated cultural belief that love is something that can emerge slowly I we time from a good socio economic match based on parental connection?

Romeo and Juliet is the epitome of how such arranged marriages are viewed in literature as a constraint and in this play the intense, all consuming passionate, quickly entered romance of the star crosses lovers as an idealised form of love. We pity Sheila did to the social constraints that lead to her marriage of Gerald.

There is not much literature that portrays arranged marriage as a 'good thing' and often something to be broke away from yet there are cultures that do feel deeply about the strength of arranged marriage and the strong bonds formed by such areangments. Are we in a way, not quite disrespecting, but neglecting this view when we choose literature to teach our children?

I’ve seen Hamlet and Lear in KS3 as well. It’s ridiculous doing plays that aren’t age appropriate in the name of challenge when there are plenty that do work. We do a practical approach to A Midsummer Night’s Dream in Year 7, Comedy of Errors in Year 8 and Romeo and Juliet in Year 9.

That's interesting, I was recently working on adding some texts to A-level spec and two of the ones added are Brotherless Night (amazing book about Sri Lanka, the civil war, Tamil Tigers and love of communities and family). Another one is called The Island of Missing Trees which is about a relationship between Greek Cypriot and Turkish Cypriot in 1970s Cyprus which I think is a good example of a book showing complex relationships in the setting of an ethnic conflict. And another one is Mr Loverman which is a beautiful novel exploring the life of Britain's older Caribbean community, through the perspective of a 74-year-old Antiguan-Londoner and closeted homosexual, and his wife Carmel. I am aware this isn't GCSE but I think it could encourage more take-up of a broader spec with modern themes considering all books are 21st century.

Yes 100% I'm hoping the Curriculum and Assesment Review works to change this - the intermin report alluded to it. Yes I do feel that we must change that, I know so many children who have never studied another playwright than Shakespeare (espeically if they do a book not a play in Paper 2). I do feel that's fundamentally ridiculous when we know we could teach them the skills about plays, analysis of techniques with other playwrights. Also as someone who did Othello in 6th form, it's so difficult to fo that in Y7 even with the best will in the world, you can't say that's an accessible text. In fairness I have seen some schools that somehow bypass this, I'm not sure if it's about being LA or MAT but I know my 6th form (different school to my secondary) only did 1 Shakespeare across all of KS3. I love Shakespeare but I feel we can recognise that there are so many amazing plays we could study in KS3 which are diverse and accessible and that even if you want to do older playwrights we could do Marlowe (which students learn more about in history doing Elizabethan England) than English, we could do so many others.

Yes 100% I'm hoping the Curriculum and Assesment Review works to change this - the intermin report alluded to it. Yes I do feel that we must change that, I know so many children who have never studied another playwright than Shakespeare (espeically if they do a book not a play in Paper 2). I do feel that's fundamentally ridiculous when we know we could teach them the skills about plays, analysis of techniques with other playwrights. Also as someone who did Othello in 6th form, it's so difficult to fo that in Y7 even with the best will in the world, you can't say that's an accessible text. In fairness I have seen some schools that somehow bypass this, I'm not sure if it's about being LA or MAT but I know my 6th form (different school to my secondary) only did 1 Shakespeare across all of KS3. I love Shakespeare but I feel we can recognise that there are so many amazing plays we could study in KS3 which are diverse and accessible and that even if you want to do older playwrights we could do Marlowe (which students learn more about in history doing Elizabethan England) than English, we could do so many others.

Sadly, I’d agree with this. I’ve had some trainee teachers under me whose knowledge of the subject in general was abysmal. Unfortunately, until other areas are tackled we’re going to continue getting candidates who are under par and too many experienced staff leaving. Some of the exam responses also strongly suggest that some staff are teaching from YouTube and have woefully misunderstood the plays.