Context

Priestley was a socialist he wrote the play to criticise the capitalist Edwardian system at the time

Priestley Ferguson, the lack of rights women had in the Edwardian time. Women needed the protection of marriage or a husband to gain some sort of stability for them. Women at this time do not get equal pay. Women did not get the right to vote until 1918, Priestley criticises the lack of rights through the woman characters in the play

Upper-class, people believed that the poor did not deserve aid or assistance because they were somehow immoral. They saw them as the undeserving poor.

The is set in 1912 and World War I was set in 1914 to 1918. The play was trying to highlight Edwardian society had the seeds of instability which inevitably lead to World War I breaking out.