Key Quote
“"If you're easy with me, I'm easy with you"”
Eva Smith (as reported) · Act 2
Focus: “easy”
Eva Smith's reported words to Gerald reveal her dignity, pragmatism, and the impossible choices facing working-class women — she negotiates from a position of powerlessness with striking self-possession.
Technique 1 — CONDITIONAL SYNTAX / RECIPROCAL STRUCTURE
The conditional ('if... then') structure creates an illusion of reciprocity (a mutual exchange between equals): Eva appears to negotiate on equal terms with Gerald. But the power imbalance (unequal distribution of authority) is enormous — she is destitute, he is wealthy. What appears to be a free choice is actually constrained agency (freedom of action limited by circumstances): Eva 'chooses' Gerald because the alternative is starvation.
The repetition of 'easy' is deeply ironic: the word suggests lightness and comfort, but the situation is neither. Eva must make herself 'easy' — compliant (willing to go along with others' wishes) and undemanding — to survive. Priestley exposes how economic desperation forces working-class women to perform a version of ease that conceals their suffering.
Key Words
RAD — REGRESS
Eva's situation represents continued regression: from factory worker to shop assistant to the streets to Gerald's kept woman. Each stage involves a further loss of autonomy (self-governance, independence). Yet paradoxically, her dignity remains intact — she negotiates terms, maintains her self-respect, and ultimately leaves Gerald when her conscience demands it. Her moral character progresses even as her social position regresses.
Key Words
Technique 2 — REPORTED SPEECH / ABSENT PRESENCE
Eva Smith never appears on stage — she exists only through others' accounts. This absent presence (being central to the story while physically absent) is Priestley's most powerful structural device: Eva represents all the invisible working-class people whose lives are shaped by the decisions of the powerful. Her words reach us filtered through Gerald's memory, raising questions about reliability and perspective — do we hear Eva's real voice or Gerald's self-serving reconstruction?
By denying Eva a stage presence, Priestley mirrors her social invisibility: the working class are talked about, acted upon, and disposed of, but never given a platform to speak for themselves. This structural choice IS the political argument — the form of the play enacts the injustice it describes.
Key Words
Context (AO3)
WOMEN & ECONOMIC DEPENDENCE
In 1912, women — especially working-class women — had virtually no economic independence. Without family support, education, or legal protections, women like Eva were forced into exploitative (taking unfair advantage) relationships for survival. Eva's arrangement with Gerald is not a free choice but an act of economic coercion (control through financial power).
THE DOUBLE STANDARD
Edwardian society applied a sexual double standard: men like Gerald could have affairs without social consequences, while women like Eva were condemned as immoral. Priestley exposes this hypocrisy (pretending to have beliefs or standards one does not actually follow) by presenting Eva's behaviour as dignified and Gerald's as exploitative, despite Eva bearing the social stigma.
Key Words
WOW — SUBALTERN SILENCE (Spivak)
Gayatri Spivak's essay *Can the Subaltern Speak?* argues that marginalised people are systematically denied a voice within dominant power structures — even when they speak, their words are filtered, distorted, or ignored by those in power. Eva Smith is the subaltern (a person of inferior status whose voice is suppressed): she never speaks directly to the audience, her words are reported by those who have wronged her, and her life story is reconstructed by the very class that destroyed her. Priestley's structural choice — keeping Eva offstage — enacts Spivak's theory decades before it was written. The play's moral challenge is precisely this: can we hear Eva's humanity through the distorting filters of class, gender, and power? Or do we, like the Birlings, only hear what confirms our own comfort?
Key Words