Sheila Birling Essay

Calls’ is set in the North Midlands, the industrial city of Brumley in 1912. The play revolves around the death of a young girl named Eva Smith and the wealthy, middle class Birling family. The Birling family consists of four main members. In addition, there is Gerald Croft who is engaged to the daughter of the family, Sheila Birling, and the maid Edna who plays a small role in the play. Throughout Priestley’s play, ‘An inspector calls’, a main theme runs about responsibility and differentiation between

stature. The people around the table consist of Arthur Birling (the father), Sybil Birling (the mother), Sheila Birling (the daughter), Eric

An Inspector Calls, JB Priestley uses the character of Mrs Birling to portray a typical higher-class woman. On multiple occasions in the play, Mrs Birling (Sybil) is presented as dismissive and a snob. This behaviour is evident from the very start of the play where she tells off her husband for thanking the chef in front of a guest, Gerald. She says “Arthur, you’re not supposed to say such things.” This authoritative tone from Mrs Birling shows that she takes pride in her social respectability and

This part of the play also shows that the family is not as happy as they first appear. Birling, Gerald and Eric are humorously blaming each other for the Inspectors visit. Gerald says: "unless Eric's been up to something." and Eric replies with "Here, what do you mean?" These comments show the audience that the atmosphere is uneasy because

Birling’s speech, where he says that the Titanic is ‘unsinkable, absolutely unsinkable’, of which a modern audience would know is false. Priestley uses this context to undermine Mr Birling’s capitalist views, because the audience would know that what Mr Birling says is false, and therefore project the views of socialism. Additionally, the play was written in 1945, after the second World War. 1945 was a great decision point for the UK, because there was a general election with a clear choice between Winston

wealth much like the Birling family. In the opening stage directions in page 1, we see that Gerald is introduced as a self assured character .Gerald is described as a “ young man-about-town” meaning he is part of the younger generation. The phrase “ about-town” suggests that he is trendy,sociable and he goes to a lot of different places. We see that Gerald is also a well mannered gentlemen. Gerald is interestingly the second person to speak in the play ,just after Birling, giving him a greater

mystery and intrigue that surrounds the character. Form, language and structure are all effectively used to create an interesting character. In this essay, I will explore numerous aspects of Inspector Goole’s character, from his relationship to Arthur Birling to his religious significance and omniscience. Inspector Calls was written in 1945 but is set in 1912, 2 years before the First World War. The play was also first launched in communist Russia, despite it being written as a social commentary on capitalist

society not as it was then. Birling refers to girls as being “cheap labour” and Sheila objects and tells her father that this is a foolish thing to say. The

power is to present the theme of authority. There is authority shown between Mr birling and his daughter Sheila. When Mr Birling talks to his daughter Sheila, he talks to her in a manner which suggests that he is a higher hierarchy status than Sheila. In the play Mr Birling says “Be quite Sheila!” This quote supports my point because Mr birling has more power because that’s her father. Also Sheila is a woman and Mr Birling is a man, women had fewer rights than men. During the time in which the book

Mrs Birling is one of the principle characters in An inspector calls – she is used to portray the idealistic views held by the upper-class at the time. Mrs Birling is presented by Priestly as the body of Capitalism – by portraying her in a negative light allows the reader to draw assumptions between the negative characteristics portrayed by Mrs Birling and the negative aspects of a capitalist society, which is what Priestly intended to do. Our first impressions of Mrs Birling come from the following