AIC-Gender

AIC-Gender

context
1. women had few rights
  1. Their main hope would be to marry
2. significant that Priestley chose to make a young woman the focus of his play
3. underlines the fact that working class women were perhaps even more exploited than men.
4. For working class women, a job was crucial
5. no social security at that time
  1. so without a job they had no money
  2. There were very few options open to women in that situation: many saw no alternative but to turn to prostitution
Mr Birling
1. Mr Birling is dismissive of the several hundred women in his factory
2. "We were paying the usual rates and if they didn't like those rates, they could go and work somewhere else."
Gerald
1. Gerald saw Eva as "young and fresh and charming"
2. someone vulnerable he could amuse himself by helping
3. He admits to being her ‘Fairy Prince’ for a while
4. it is clearly not a relationship of equals but one in which the man
Mrs Birling
1. Plays a traditional role in the family
2. Has no career of her own
3. She allows herself to criticise her husband at times
  1. but on the whole she accepts that it is a woman’s role to support her husband’s career
4. She tells Sheila that men with important jobs are often preoccupied with them.
  1. job more important than wife
5. couldn't believe that "a girl of that sort would ever refuse money."
  1. Her charitable committee was a sham: a small amount of money was given to a small amount of women, hardly scratching the surface of the problem.

Resource summary

	Created by bethan.a.william almost 9 years ago