Gerald

• “She looked young and fresh and charming”

  • Gerald takes advantage of women who he believes are naive and innocent
  • demonstrates the male exploitation of women
  • he is trying to subvert social responsibility and uses sophistry by using innocent adjectives like “young, charming” to insinuate he had positive intentions towards her when he actually didn’t.
  • the use of polysyndeton reinforces this idea as it implies he is searching for words to deceive the inspector
• “She looked young and fresh and charming”

  • If he didn’t have ill intentions he wouldn’t have been in The palace bar in the first place and young men usually went there to meet “women of the town”
• “Some money to keep her going there” “sorry for her”

  • He may be an inherently good person but he is influenced by the chauvinistic, misogynistic behaviour of his class towards women.
  • therefore he’ll believe that this is the correct behaviour.
  • a victim of the capitalist, upper class society- he is compelled to exploit Eva smith as it was normal for men in the upper classes to do that
  • john lockes theory- the inspector leaves him as he knows he can never change- link to Eric
• “It’s a hoax of some kind”


  He changes after the inspector leaves

  didnt learn his lesson when the inspector leaves