Priestley presents Eric, with the capacity for empathy and emotion deemed morally superior and an exemplary model for the audience to align themselves with. Eric exclaims his discontent with such hypocrisy “why shouldn’t they try for higher wages”. He comprehends that there is no meritocracy and that a “good worker” does not constitute better treatment, but that capitalism exists fundamentally to exploit workers and purloin profits for themselves

Initially Priestley explores the superficial nature of Sheila’s engagement with Gerald and the transactional purpose of their relationship to advance prosperity. Sheila’s and Gerald’s marriage is founded upon materialism and capitalism demonstrated when a physical token is requisite for Sheila ‘to really feel engaged’ underlining her conformity to patriarchal expectations of women to be submissive to their husbands

Mrs Birling is presented as the epitome of a 20th-century patriarchal conforming woman whose apathy and fundamentally elitist psyche consolidate her resistance to anything threatening her affluent status. Priestley describes Mrs Birling as a “cold woman” in the stage directions, oxymoronic in the sense that contemporary women were meant to conform to the expectations of their gender that being tender, maternal, and sensitive.

The character of the inspector is utilised as a proxy by Priestley to vocalize his views regarding the requirement for socialist change as well as interrogating the way the Birlings construct, construe and apply their moral values in relation to legality and illegality. The inspector divulges the reprehensible culmination of capitalist behaviour liable for the death of Eva smith having ‘burnt her insides out’ conveying the significance and moral weight class prejudice has on individuals.

An analysis of Gerald in An Inspector Calls, meticulously exploring his role in the upper-class and his percieved lack of responsibility. It further underlines how the initial protrayal of his character transmutes as the play continues and thus divulges the true belligerence of the capitalist society the play is set in.

Priestley uses the character of Mr Birling as a construct for capitalism who is firmly entrenched within 1912 antebellum English social elite. Being described as both ‘portentous’ and ‘provincial in his speech’ provides the reader with the impression that Birling’s wealth and status were hard-reached rather than inherited but although his grandiloquence appears forced, there can be no denying his materialistic and financial success.