Themes
Class
"I have an idea that your mother-Lady Croft- while she doesn't object to my girl-feels you might have done better for yourself socially"
"And so you used the power you had, as a daughter of a good customer and also a man well known in the town, to punish the girl just because she made you feel like that?"
Power
"And so you used the power you had, as a daughter of a good customer and also a man well known in the town, to punish the girl just because she made you feel like that?"
The Inspector creates at once an impression of massiveness, solidity and purposefulness.
Politics(Capitalism vs Socialism)
"I say, you can ignore all this silly pessimistic talk...The Germans don't want war...And I say there isn't a chance of war...the Titanic...she sails next week...unsinkable, absolutely unsinkable."
"But the way some of these cranks talk and write now, you'd think everybody has to look after everybody else, as if we were all mixed up together like bees in a hive-community and all that nonsense."
Gender
"Oh-Gerald-you've got it-is it the one you wanted me to have?"
"But these girls aren't cheap labour-they're people."
Responsibility
"Obviously it has nothing whatever to do with the wretched girl's suicide."
"Still I can't take responsibility. If we were all responsible for everything that happened to everybody we'd had anything to do with, it would be very awkward, wouldn't it?"
Generational Attitudes/ Attributes
"But take my word for it, you youngsters-and I've learnt in the good hard school of experience-that a man has to mind his own business and look after himself and his own..."
"It's a free country, I told them." "It isn't if you can't go and work somewhere else."