Plot overview

One evening, two connected stories

J. B. Priestley’s An Inspector Calls takes place on an evening in spring 1912, in the dining room of the Birling family’s house in Brumley, an industrial city in the north Midlands. Arthur Birling is a prosperous manufacturer. He and his wife, Sybil, are celebrating their daughter Sheila’s engagement to Gerald Croft, whose family also owns a manufacturing business. Their son Eric is present, and Edna, the parlour-maid, serves them.

The play brings together two stories. On stage, a comfortable family celebration becomes an uncomfortable investigation. Through the characters’ accounts, the audience hears about the earlier experiences of a young working-class woman, Eva Smith, also known as Daisy Renton. Eva never appears on stage, but the investigation makes her life central to everything that happens.

All three acts follow the same evening without a jump forward in time between them. Earlier events are reconstructed through prose dialogue rather than acted out as flashbacks. This makes the characters’ admissions, evasions and reactions part of the drama: the audience learns both what happened and how each person responds to being challenged.

Act 1: the celebration becomes an investigation

The family initially appears secure and pleased with itself. Birling welcomes the engagement partly because it could bring the two businesses closer together. Sheila is delighted with Gerald’s engagement ring, although her reference to his absence the previous summer hints at a problem beneath their happiness. Eric’s awkward behaviour and drinking also suggest that the family’s confidence is not the whole story.

Inspector Goole arrives as Birling is advising the young men to look after themselves and their own families. He reports that a young woman has died after swallowing disinfectant and begins to investigate their connections with her.

Birling recognises Eva’s photograph. He admits that he dismissed her from his factory in September 1910 after she helped lead a strike for higher wages. He defends this as a business decision. The Inspector challenges the idea that an employer’s decision can be separated from its effects on someone’s later life.

Sheila then discovers her own involvement. Eva found work at Milwards, a clothes shop, but Sheila’s complaint caused her dismissal in January 1911. Sheila had felt jealous and humiliated while trying on a dress and used her influence as a wealthy customer to punish Eva. Unlike her father, she acknowledges that she behaved wrongly.

The Inspector announces that Eva changed her name to Daisy Renton. Gerald’s startled reaction reveals another connection. When the Inspector briefly leaves, Sheila questions Gerald, who admits knowing Daisy and hopes they can conceal it. Act 1 ends when the Inspector returns and asks, “Well?” The question leaves Gerald’s story unresolved, creating a cliffhanger.

Act 2: private secrets and a dangerous accusation

Gerald explains that he met Daisy in the Palace bar in March 1911. He rescued her from Alderman Meggarty’s unwanted attention, gave her somewhere to live and supported her financially. She became his mistress. His help gave her happiness for a time, but she depended on a relationship that he ended in early September.

This revelation explains Gerald’s absence from Sheila during the previous summer. Sheila returns his engagement ring. Although she respects his honesty and accepts that he initially helped Daisy out of pity, she recognises that their relationship cannot simply continue unchanged. Gerald leaves for a walk.

Mrs Birling is questioned next. Eva had approached the Brumley Women’s Charity Organization two weeks before the evening of the play, seeking help because she was pregnant and without adequate support. She initially called herself Mrs Birling. Sybil took offence at this and used her influence to have assistance refused. She also dismissed Eva’s explanation that she would not accept more money from the child’s father because it was stolen.

Mrs Birling insists that the father should bear responsibility and be made to confess publicly. Sheila realises before her mother that the description points towards Eric. Mrs Birling’s confidence therefore becomes a trap: in condemning an unknown young man, she unknowingly condemns her own son. Eric enters, pale and distressed, and the curtain falls before he explains himself. This second cliffhanger turns suspicion into an urgent expectation of confession.

Act 3: confession, apparent escape and the final call

Eric admits that he met Eva in the Palace bar in November 1911. He was drunk and threatened to make a disturbance when she did not want him to enter her lodgings. His account exposes coercive behaviour, not simply a romantic relationship. He later learned that she was pregnant and gave her money stolen from his father’s firm. Eva refused further money when she discovered its origin.

When Eric learns that his mother refused Eva help, the family’s conflict reaches an intense climax. The Inspector takes control, reviews their actions and argues that they share responsibility. His final speech moves beyond this family and this one woman: “We are responsible for each other.” He then leaves.

Eva Smith can be read as an everywoman name: she represents ordinary people whose suffering the powerful overlook. The Inspector’s reference in Act 3 to “Eva Smiths and John Smiths” turns her individual story into a reminder of countless other lives affected by people’s decisions.

The play does not end with his departure. Instead, Priestley tests whether the characters will retain that lesson. Sheila and Eric remain ashamed of what they did. Their parents concentrate on avoiding public scandal.

Gerald returns with information suggesting that Goole is not a police officer. Birling telephones the Chief Constable and confirms that there is no Inspector Goole on the local force. Gerald also questions whether they all encountered the same woman: the Inspector never allowed them to compare the photographs together. Gerald then telephones the Infirmary, which reports that no girl has died there that day and nobody has been admitted after drinking disinfectant.

Birling, Mrs Birling and Gerald become relieved. Gerald offers Sheila the ring again, but she does not accept it immediately. Sheila and Eric argue that their conduct remains wrong, whatever the Inspector’s identity or the outcome of his story.

Then the telephone rings. Birling reports that a girl has just died on her way to the Infirmary after swallowing disinfectant, and a police inspector is coming to question them. The curtain falls on their guilty, astonished reactions.

Why the order of questioning matters

In Act 1, the Inspector explains his method: “One person and one line of inquiry at a time.” This gives him control over the pace of revelation. Each person initially watches someone else being questioned, only to discover that they too are involved. The family’s apparent respectability comes apart in stages.

The broad sequence of Eva’s experiences is:

Birling’s factory → Milwards and Sheila → Gerald → Eric → Mrs Birling’s charity.

The main questioning sequence is:

Birling → Sheila → Gerald → Mrs Birling → Eric.

These sequences mostly correspond, but Priestley deliberately places Mrs Birling’s questioning before Eric’s confession. The change creates suspense and allows her to demand punishment for her own son without realising it. Meanwhile, repeated links between the characters’ actions develop the Inspector’s description in Act 1 of “A chain of events.” Responsibility becomes cumulative rather than a search for one person who alone caused everything.

An ending that refuses comfortable closure

The final call echoes the Inspector’s original arrival: once again, an outside interruption threatens the family’s security with news of a death and an investigation. This gives the play a cyclical pattern. The characters who try to return to their earlier confidence find themselves facing questions again.

The ending can be read as a supernatural warning: Goole’s unusual knowledge and the later repetition of his reported events suggest that his visit anticipated what was about to happen. It also works as a moral judgement, whether or not an audience explains the mystery literally. Those who treat the investigation as a joke are immediately confronted with renewed consequences.

Priestley combines the suspense of an investigation with the teaching purpose of a morality play. The final curtain prevents a reassuring resolution and leaves the audience considering whether responsibility depends on being caught, or on recognising the harm done to others.

Turning plot knowledge into an essay point

For Eduqas Component 2 Section A, plot knowledge supplies evidence for an interpretation. You write one essay on the play, with a printed extract as a starting point. Your response should explain Priestley’s use of language, form and structure across the play. Context is not assessed in this section; include it only where it helps explain a particular interpretation.

The following paragraph practises the whole-play discussion in an essay about responsibility, using the order of questioning as evidence:

Priestley questions Mrs Birling before Eric so that her attempt to shift responsibility becomes a judgement on her own family. In Act 2, Mrs Birling insists that the father should be “dealt with very severely”, unaware that she is condemning her son. The force of “very severely” exposes her readiness to demand punishment for someone she regards as an outsider. Sheila’s warnings allow the audience to anticipate the truth before Mrs Birling accepts it, creating dramatic irony and suspense. Eric’s entrance at the end of the act brings the accusation home, while delaying his confession until Act 3 prolongs the tension. Through this order of revelation, Priestley challenges Mrs Birling’s belief that she can separate her family from the suffering of others.