Audience play family priestley’s birling’s items symbols immediately

Text	Setting the Scene The play opens with a set of detailed and specific stage directions and Priestley’s use of stagecraft, here, introduces the audience to some of the play’s key themes. The play begins in the Birling’s dining room, which is described as containing ‘good solid furniture’ (1) and of being ‘heavily comfortable, but not cosy and homelike’ The play begins in medias res with the family enjoying an ‘intimate’ (1) family dinner. A parlour maid is described as clearing the table of ‘dessert plates and champagne glasses’ (1) whilst also providing a ‘decanter of port, cigar box and cigarettes’ {{c4These items are all symbols of status and power: the Birling’s ostentatious display of wealth would have immediately introduced them to what would have certainly been a largely socialist audience as unashamedly upper class.}} This would have been especially galling for an audience who has just gone through rations and rejected the materialism that the Birling family now revel in. Thus, one might describe these items as symbols that embodies the materialistic values of Edwardian society, which Priestley sought to dismantle and challenge. There is immediately created an antagonistic distance between audience and Birling family, which would make Priestley’s subsequent critique of their attitudes all the more effective.

Text

Setting the Scene

The play opens with a set of detailed and specific stage directions and Priestley’s use of stagecraft, here, introduces the audience to some of the play’s key themes.
The play begins in the Birling’s dining room, which is described as containing ‘good solid furniture’ (1) and of being ‘heavily comfortable, but not cosy and homelike’
The play begins in medias res with the family enjoying an ‘intimate’ (1) family dinner. A parlour maid is described as clearing the table of ‘dessert plates and champagne glasses’ (1) whilst also providing a ‘decanter of port, cigar box and cigarettes’
{{c4These items are all symbols of status and power: the Birling’s ostentatious display of wealth would have immediately introduced them to what would have certainly been a largely socialist audience as unashamedly upper class.}}
This would have been especially galling for an audience who has just gone through rations and rejected the materialism that the Birling family now revel in.
Thus, one might describe these items as symbols that embodies the materialistic values of Edwardian society, which Priestley sought to dismantle and challenge.
There is immediately created an antagonistic distance between audience and Birling family, which would make Priestley’s subsequent critique of their attitudes all the more effective.

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