Two Families in One House
📖 Two Families in One House
At the end of An Inspector Calls, there are not one but two families left in the Birling dining room. The elder Birlings — Arthur and Sybil — pour champagne to celebrate escaping the moral reckoning. Sheila and Eric refuse the glasses. They know the question does not go away because the Inspector does.
Priestley makes the generational divide literal and visible. The phone call closes the play with the same question: which family will be in the room when the next inspector arrives?
English Literature glossary
- What is dramatic irony? Give an example from the generational divide.
- Dramatic irony occurs when the audience knows something a character does not. Priestley uses it most devastatingly with Mrs Birling in Act 2: she condemns the 'young man' who got the girl pregnant and then abandoned her, calling for him to be punished — unaware she is describing her own son. A 1945 audience watching Birling's 'no war' claim knows two world wars have already happened. In both cases, Priestley weaponises the elder generation's ignorance of consequences they have already set in motion.
Priestley constructs Mr and Mrs Birling as the play's deliberate failures — characters whose worldview is shown to be catastrophically wrong before the Inspector arrives and remains wrong after he leaves. Mr Birling's Act 1 speeches — no war, Titanic unsinkable, every man for himself — are dramatic irony for the 1945 a
Earn the mark scheme marks
🧠 The Generational Divide in Three Words
OLD (REFUSE) → YOUNG (ACCEPT) → GERALD (THE TEST)
Old generation (Arthur and Sybil): refuse to learn, restore normality, focus on Inspector's identity. Young generation (Sheila and Eric): accept responsibility, refuse the champagne, "burn their boats". Gerald: the test case — same age as Sheila, initially honest, ultimately sides with the old. Priestley uses Gerald to show the divide is about choice, not age. The question the play leaves open: will the young generation hold to what they accepted, or will they become their parents?
Now try it yourself
Quiz · Question 1 of 12
Which of the following best describes how Sheila and Eric respond after the Inspector leaves at the end of the play?
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