Eva Smith in An Inspector Calls by J.B. Priestly The play, ‘An Inspector Calls’, was written in 1945 by J.B. Priestly who was a noted socialist. At the time he wrote the play, the Second World War had just finished leaving England and the rest of Europe in chaos, leading up to this time there had also been many years of economic depression after the First World War. People were now coming up with new ideas and had new hopes for the modern world and how they could prevent this kind of thing happening again. The idea of socialism was thought to be the way forward by many, believing the wars and depression had been caused by rampant capitalism. In the play Priestly portrays the ills of capitalism and gives a very critical opinion of it, the purpose is to make people aware of the consequences they will face if they don’t take into account more socialist views. These ideas are portrayed by giving just one incident of what can happen when capitalism gets out of hand; the victim of this way of life is Eva Smith. In this essay I shall be examining how priestly creates such a vivid picture of her although she never actually appears in the play. The play opens with the Birling family having a dinner party to celebrate their daughter’s engagement. It is set in 1912 at the Birling household which gives us a good impression of their wealth; “a fairly large suburban house, belonging to a prosperous manufacturer”. They have a “parlour maid”, who sets the table with, “dessert plates and champagne glasses” and “decanter of port, cigar box and cigarettes. Port glasses are already on the table”. Also the “men in tails and white ties, not dinner-ja... ... middle of paper ... ...we shouldn’t do them as they might happen to one person which could destroy them. This final idea shows that no matter how trivial we may think these little acts of capitalism are they could be fatal. Priestly is putting across the idea we must urgently become more socialist and we have to look out for each other. He is trying to appeal to every one of us to try and be more socialist to save all those poor people who end up worse off from our behaviour. The Inspector has already warned of war and a revolution, the audience know this has really happened and this play tells them why it happened, because of rampant capitalism by everyone. He is saying that everyone together with all their little acts of capitalism led to the war. This idea was meant to put people off capitalism, and put forward the new ideas of socialism.