Social Class

• Priestley explores the theme of class through the treatment of working-class Eva Smith by the wealthy Birlings and Gerald Croft when she is a factory worker, when she works in a shop, when she is effectively homeless and when she is potentially a single mother
• "There are millions and millions and millions of Eva Smiths and John Smiths" Inspector, Act 3

  Repetition of millions highlights the importance of all the classes(promotes socialism). Uses common names to speak for how many people are in the same predicament as Eva/how many people would be affected by capitalist families like the Birlings. It takes a didactic tone for the audience and presents the Inspector as omniscient(socialism is better than capitalism). Millions is never ending, signifying the never ending suffering of lower class people.
• "Girls of that class" "As if a girl of that sort would ever refuse money"

  Mrs Birling (and the whole of the upper class) dismisses Eva, showing snobbery and a lack of humanity. Shows people see the lower class as a "type" and not as individuals(rigid hierarchy). Mrs Birling strongly believed in the social system. "That sort" shows she wants to detach herself from the lower class.
• "You musn't build a kind of wall between us and that girl" Sheila, Act 2

  Displays an understanding of the Inspectors methods using the wall metaphor. "That girl"-Eva still isn't named and so shows the upper class have deeply rooted prejudices. "Musn't" conveys Sheila's moral certainty-she wants to convince Sybil. The wall metaphor could suggest the struggles that lower class people are forced to overcome, the ways the upper class attempt to present the working class as foreign/alien or represents the barriers put between the rich and the poor(firm Edwardian class boundaries)
• "If you don't come down hard on these people, they'll soon be asking for the Earth" Mr Birling Act 1

  "These people" gives a diminishing attitude and suggest he thinks that lower class are less important so they don't need to be named (audience won't like him). Hyperbole makes the workers demands seem too unreasonable(Earth is very vast). Birling wants to appear superior. Priestley wants the audience to realised the Mr Birling's attitude is the wrong one and that we should look after people, not distance ourselves from them.