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Act Two Task 3 Summary

The

Inspector begins to uncover Gerald Croft’s relationship with Eva Smith a.k.a.

Daisy Renton. Gerald attempts to get Eva to leave the room but she insists on

staying. The audience learns the details of Gerald’s relationship with Eva, who

he met at the Palace, like Eric. This place is a place where women of the town

go. Eva Desperate, goes there and gets harassed by one of the town councillors,

“a notorious womanizer.” These are the kind of details about male life from

which women like Sheila and her mother would normally be excluded. The

Inspector insists that they should hear them. Discovering that Eva/ Daisy was

desperately “hard up”, Gerald makes her his mistress, despite his impending

engagement to Sheila. He is attracted to her, but for reasons of class, Eva is

not the kind of girl he would marry When the relationship reaches its

inevitable end, Eva, with the money she’s saved, goes away to “some seaside

place.” Gerald is clearly upset and leaves, but not before Sheila gives him

back the engagement ring. She tells him: “You and I aren’t the same people who

sat down to dinner here.”

When

the Inspector shows Eva’s photo to Mrs Birling, it is clear that she recognises

it. We learn that Mrs Birling, in her role as a member of the Brumley Women’s

Charity Organisation, turned down Eva’s request for help. By now Eva was

pregnant, but had refused help from the father of her child because he had

stolen money. Charity was all she had left but Mrs Birling turned her down. The

Inspector tells her: “I think you did something terribly wrong – and that

you’re going to spend the rest of your life regretting it.” Mrs B. digs herself

deeper and deeper into a hole, despite Sheila warning her, by insisting that

the father, Eric, should have paid and provided for Eva and the baby. At the end

of Act Two when we learn that Eric was the father of Eva’s child, making the

baby Mrs Birling’s grandchild, and we realise what the Inspector means.