Eva Smith

Question 1

How does Priestley present the character of Eva Smith and why is she significant?

Answer

The audience does not encounter Eva Smith but her character is presented and developed through what the Inspector elicits from the family.
Priestley presents her as having a ‘nice little promising life’ but ‘a nasty mess somebody’s made of it.’
Although she may be several different characters, she represents the victim of Edwardian double standards.
Her name is symbolically significant. Eva refers to the first woman and Smith is a common name which could mean any woman.
During the years leading up to the First World War there was much industrial unrest with workers demanding higher wages and better working conditions. As she was a woman demanding higher wages, in a time of increased Suffragette militancy, Smith would have been seen as a trouble maker, and as such Birling dismissed her.
She gains employment in a shop but on the whim of a spoiled rich girl who asserts her class based power, Smith is dismissed again and has no choice but to turn to prostitution where she is used by Gerald and Eric and becomes pregnant and turns to Mrs Birling’s charity for help and is rejected again.
As she refuses Eric’s stolen money she illustrates more moral integrity than Eric, and indeed, his entire family.
The suggestion is she subsequently committed suicide and society, in the symbolic form of the Birling family, is to blame.

Log in