At this point in the play, Sheila is confident because she is everything she’s been taught is good in a woman; beautiful, a good wife and ready to start a family. She is light hearted and unaware of the outside world, and her only aims in life were to look beautiful and to get married. As she has got engaged to a man who has an even higher status than her, she has achieved what would be seen as one of her main aims in life. Therefore, at this point in the play, she is extremely jovial.
She is pleased by small things and is rather excitable too. “Oh yes, it’s wonderful!” When she gets the engagement ring she wants, she needs to act extremely pleased. Her speech is split as she is unable to construct sentences to express her emotions properly, and this needs to be made clear to the audience so they can understand Sheila’s character better. As she is still quite immature for her age due to the way she’s been bought up, she needs to act almost like a young child. She should use lots of hand gestures and seem unable to control all her strong feelings of happiness.
However, when the inspector arrives, her whole attitude should change. For probably the first time in her life, she is made to feel guilty about what she’s done. She starts to think about the world outside of her environment, and can actually see that the things which she and her family do without a second thought can have an adverse affect upon other people less fortunate than her. She sees what life is like, outside of the protective bubble she has lived in for the past years.
Immediately she finds out about what happened to Eva Smith, she becomes rather distressed ‘I can’t help thinking about this girl’. She has never had to deal with anything similar to this before, but is able to empathize with Eva. She’s still young, as she says ‘I wish you hadn’t told me’ which shows her wanting to be able to go back to how she saw, however, she is able to understand the problems. She is able to realize, before anyone else in her family, just how much of a part they all really played in Eva’s death. Sheila needs to act upset, so you need to use a high pitched voice, tremble slightly and use suitable facial expressions. However, she also has to show how greatly she has matured in just a matter of minutes, so she needs to be able to control her emotions, in contrast to how she was before. Show this by having Sheila take a breath – a sign of trying to compose yourself- before speaking to ask questions on the affair. Also, look right into the inspectors eyes, to show how her concern is genuine.
Sheila needs to show how far she’s progressed when she says ‘These girls aren’t cheap labour – they’re people’. That is an obvious sign of Sheila’s changed view on the world, and the audience need to be able to notice this. When you say that line, say it very clearly and look at the audience so you can communicate the message to them well. Emphasize ‘people’ as it’s the key word in the sentence because it shows that Sheila is starting to see the world from a completely different angle than what she brought up to see it as.
Sheila was the one who was had Eva dismissed from her job so you must show what tremendous guilt Sheila feels for her part in Eva’s death. When Sheila is shown the picture of Eva, she needs to almost revert back to her old, immature and emotional self as she runs out of the room. However, she does return, which shows that she is able to face up to what she has done.
She asks ‘So I’m really responsible’, which shows that she is embracing the idea of responsibility. That line clearly shows Sheila being able to take her share of the blame for what happened, unlike most of her family. It shows the clear differences between them, as they deny any of it was their fault, whereas Sheila accepts it.
After finding out Gerald’s part in Eva’s (now known as Daisy’s) death, she reacts in a very mature way. ‘And now at least you’ve been honest’. Dramatic tension had been used to foreshadow this moment. At the start of the play, when the Birlings were celebrating the engagement, Sheila had mentioned ‘last summer’ when Gerald was not with her. It showed there were some underlying secrets, and now the audience discovered one of them. It makes the audience anxious to find out what really happened, and thereby foreces them to keep watching.
When she finds out, Sheila doesn’t become angry, but is able to understand that he did something wrong, just like she did. She says that she ‘respects him more’, because he has truthful about it, instead of trying to lie and cover up what he did. Sheila sees this as him also accepting his part in her death and accepting the responsibility for his own actions, which is a quality she thinks he needs to have. When Sheila talks about it, she needs to seem calm and earnest, not bitter about Gerald betraying her.
Sheila’s mother also played a big part in Daisy’s death, as she refused to help her, and Sheila is shocked by her mother’s attitude. ‘She just died a horrible death – don’t forget’. Sheila’s mother tries to blame Daisy, and will not accept that she was wrong to turn her away. She constantly speaks about all the things Daisy did wrong to make it seem like it wasn’t her own fault at all. Even when the inspector asks whose fault it was, Mrs. Birling says it was the girl’s. However, Sheila thinks her mother is being callous and cold in her manner, and she should show this in the way she speaks to her. When she speaks out against her mother blaming Daisy and instead says it was other people’s fault, she should sound bitter and quite angry about her mother’s behaviour. .
Her mother is trying to avoid blame, as is her father, and Sheila tries to help them understand that they have to accept some responsibility or they’re going to make the situation worse. When neither of them listens to her and continue to blame other people, she needs to sound desperate. It has to look like she is pleading with them to listen to her and to try and understand.
Once it is discovered that the inspector was not a real inspector after all, and that Eva did not really die, Sheila’s family think that they can forget it. However, Sheila sees that even though it didn’t actually happen, it could have, and that they still did the things which would have caused it. Her family just sees it as a joke, and Sheila needs to show that she’s disgusted by this. She says ‘It frightens me the way you talk’, because she can see that they’re ready to forget what happened. Only she and Eric are able to see that the way they behaved was wrong, and is still wrong, whether anyone died or not. She’s going to change the way she behaves because she now knows it can have consequences, but most of her family cannot see that, and are happy to continue the way they were before.
Sheila understands the message that the inspector was trying to give. People are responsible for others and even if you don’t see the detrimental effect something you do has, it still does have one. Just because you don’t know the direct consequences of your actions doesn’t mean that you should think there aren’t any.
Throughout the play, as Sheila’s attitude begins to change, she becomes a mouthpiece for Priestley’s socialist ideas. As the audience see Sheila develop, hopefully they will understand what she is saying and learn from it. Therefore, you have to remember to make clear Sheila’s transition from a girl unaware of the outside world to a woman able to understand that every action has a consequence. At the start, remember you have to act childish, and by the end, you have to have the assertiveness and awareness of the grown woman Sheila has become.
