Themes

Social responsibility is the play's central idea: we all have a duty to look after each other.

• Mr Birling rejects it. He believes ‘a man has to mind his own business and look after himself and his own’ (Act 1).
• The Inspector argues for it. In his final speech he says ‘We are responsible for each other’ (Act 3).
• Sheila and Eric accept their share of the blame, while their parents and Gerald try to escape it.

The chain of events shows that each small, selfish act made Eva's life worse. No single person killed her, but together they did. Priestley wants the audience to see that society works the same way.

In 1912 British society was sharply divided by class. The Birlings and Crofts are wealthy and powerful; Eva is a poor working-class woman with no protection.

• Mr Birling sacks Eva for asking for fair pay, and calls it business.
• Mrs Birling judges Eva by her class: ‘As if a girl of that sort would ever refuse money!’ (Act 2).
• Sheila uses her status as a customer to get Eva sacked.
• Gerald and Eric use their money to take what they want from her.

Even within the family, class matters: Mrs Birling is her husband's ‘social superior’ (Act 1), and the Crofts seem to look down on the Birlings. Priestley shows how the powerful use the powerless, and suggests this is unfair.

The play contrasts the older generation with the younger generation.

• Mr and Mrs Birling refuse to change. Once the Inspector seems a fake, they relax, and Mr Birling mocks ‘The famous younger generation who know it all’ (Act 3).
• Sheila and Eric are changed for ever. Sheila says ‘It frightens me the way you talk’ (Act 3), and Eric accepts ‘I did what I did’ (Act 3).
• Gerald is young, but sides with the older Birlings at the end.

The Inspector says the young are ‘more impressionable’ (Act 2). Priestley's hope is in the young: in 1945, the people who would rebuild Britain after the war.

In 1912 women could not vote, and most depended on men for money and status.

• Eva has the least power of all: she is poor and a woman, so men can use her and then leave her.
• Sheila starts as a girl who is protected and kept from unpleasant facts. Gerald tries to have her excused from the questions to protect her, but she insists on staying, and becomes the most independent person in the room.
• Mrs Birling has power over poorer women through her charity, and uses it to judge them.
• Gerald assumes that women should be protected from unpleasant matters.

Priestley shows how women's lives depended on the choices of men, and how Sheila begins to break free.