We see Mr. Birling as being a dishonest, hostile, pompous character and don’t accept that in fact, he hasn’t done anything particularly out of line. J.B.Priestly has portrayed Birling to be like this so that it doesn’t matter that his role in Evas’ death was so minor and insignificant, the audience ends up hating Birling as much, if not more, than the other characters. He’s portrayed as the sort of person that everyone loves to hate.
Sheila is the second person that the inspector turns to, to question. Her part in the story began because she was in a ‘furious temper’, and was jealous of Eva because she was a ‘very pretty girl too – with big dark eyes’. As Sheila Birling tries on a dress at Milwards she notices Eva Smith smiling at an assistant as if to say “Doesn’t she look awful”, this enraged Sheila. She wrongfully used her position as an important and appreciated customer at Milwards to have her dismissed from her job there.
Although her actions here show her to be a bad-tempered, spiteful and jealous character the audience can’t help but like Sheila as the story continues and you realise that she’s learnt her lesson and feels terribly guilty about what she’s done. She seems to be an honest person as she admits straight away her wrongdoing. She even admits ‘it was my own fault’, ‘I was in a furious temper’.
Sheila does show empathy and feels for Eva which is more than can be said for her father, Arthur Birling. Sheila instantly regrets what she has done and almost breaks down while being questioned by the inspector. She states ‘If I could help her now, I would.’ She resents what she did and says ‘I felt rotten about it at the time and now I feel a lot worse’, she also promises to ‘never never do it again’. We feel less hatred for Sheila than we did for Mr. Birling, even though her act was a lot more selfish and a lot less understandable than Mr. Birlings’ was. She obviously feels guilty and is distressed hearing what eventually happened to Eva, that was maybe a result of her ill-tempered behaviour.
Gerald was the third person to come under the spotlight, the third person to be interviewed by the inspector. Gerald is unlike the rest as he gave her something in return, he took care of her for a while and he knew her personally. Gerald Croft used Eva as his mistress for a while until it was no longer convenient for him. Gerald met Eva/Daisy in a bar that was described by him as being ‘a favourite haunt for women of the town.’ He’s seen as almost a saviour of hers as he rescues her from ‘Old Joe Meggarty’ – ‘a notorious womaniser’. Gerald sees himself as her hero as well perhaps, as he says ‘The girl saw me looking at her and then gave me a glance that was nothing less than a cry for help’. He took her from the bar to a hotel and they spoke, and he bought her some food. They encountered again and again and she eventually became his mistress.
I believe that Gerald genuinely did care for Eva, or Daisy Renton as he knew her. He provided her with food, money, a roof over her head and above all company. He speaks kindly of her, regarding her as ‘pretty, warm-hearted’ and ‘intensely grateful’ so he obviously was fond of her, but of course, he wasn’t in love with her. Gerald implied this through saying ‘I didn’t feel about her as she felt about me.’ Eva/Daisy must have been very content during this period that she was with Gerald; she told Gerald that she’d been happier than she’d ever been before. But she wasn’t naive enough to expect it to last, she knew that this brief period of bliss would soon come to an end.
Gerald was fairly honest admitting their affair straight away, sparing few details. But on the other hand it’s hard to know whether he’s telling the truth or whether he’s behaving caring and loving to come across as well as he possibly can. Gerald seems to be a narrow-minded, old-fashion type of man, very alike Arthur Birling and his wife Sybil. Gerald would never have married Eva as she was of a lower class. In a way he simply used this young, lonely girl for his own needs, although he denies this saying ‘I want you to understand that I didn’t install her there to make love to her.’ He disposes of her as soon as the time comes and he no longer desires her, he uses her just like an object.
Gerald, along with Sheila does show signs of guilt, perhaps because he knew her on a personal note, rather than her being a complete stranger. ‘She didn’t blame me at all. I wish to God she had now. Perhaps I’d feel better about it.’ If he hadn’t have known her intimately, he probably would have felt untouched by her suicide, in the way Mr & Mrs. Birling are. And although Gerald never genuinely loved Eva, he did have feelings towards her as he stresses to the inspector ‘I’m rather more upset by this business than I probably appear to be’. Whether or not Gerald meeting Eva was a good thing it is hard to say. We’ll never know if the happiness and joy he brought her in that short period of time was worth the pain and misery that followed, and that pushed her over the edge.
Mrs. Sybil Birling is the next person to be interrogated by the inspector. Mrs. Birling shows characteristics that in some ways, are very alike her husbands’, Arthur. She denies any responsibility herself and instead puts the blame onto others, which we later discover to be a bad decision. Sybil, as a member of Brumley Women’s Charity Organisation, was the last member of the Birling family to have contact with Eva Smith. Eva appealed to the organisation for help, using the Birling name to claim to the organisation. Meaning that Mrs. Birling was biased against her from the start. She used her influence to reject Evas’ case, Sybil admits ‘I think it was simply a piece of gross impertinence – quite deliberate – and naturally that was one of the things that prejudiced me against her case’. It’s clear that Mrs. Birling disliked Eva from the moment she opened her mouth, she even admitted ‘I didn’t like her manner.’
Mrs. Birling is adamant that she did ‘Nothing I am ashamed of’, and that ‘I accept no blame for it at all’. Mrs. Birling refuses to acknowledge any responsibility for the suicide of Eva Smith at all. I think that Mrs. Birling, out of all the characters in ‘An Inspector calls’ comes off worst throughout the play. She’s shown to be a hard, cold-hearted and cruel person. She shows no emotions or sensitivity at all towards Eva. I also get the feeling that she’s fake and dishonest, as she tries to keep up appearances in front of the inspector, just as her husband did.
Throughout the interrogation she’s keen to direct the blame away from herself, blaming ‘First, the girl herself’, and ‘Secondly, I blame the young man who was the father of the child she was going to have’. She ironically tells the inspector, as she did Eva, to ‘Go and look for the father of the child’, she doesn’t realise of course that she’s speaking of her own son, Eric. She even says that ‘He ought to be dealt with very severely,’ ‘If the girl’s death is due to anybody, then it’s due to him,’ and that ‘He’d be entirely responsible,’ before she eventually discovers that Eric was that ‘drunken young idler’. It’s only at this point, when she realises that she helped kill her own grandchild, that she appears to break down.
Eric returns to the scene at the end of act two/beginning of act three, and confesses immediately to what he’d done. Eric met Eva for the first time in ‘the Palace Bar’, and ended up spending the night with her, because they were both a ‘bit squiffy’ (drunk). Eva ended up falling pregnant with Eric’s child, even though they’d only met a few times and they had no stable relationship like Gerald and Eva did. On describing the night with Eva Smith, Eric said ‘I was in that state when a chap easily turns nasty – and I threatened to make a row.’ This implies that there was an element of rape to their ‘encounter’. He even says that he didn’t even remember – ‘that’s the hellish thing’, indicating how drunk he actually was.
It’s also discovered that night that Eric had stolen money from the office to help support Eva, and that he was an alcoholic to some extent. This shows him to be immature, weak and naïve. His actions also reveal that he’s disloyal to his family and has an unstable relationship with his father, ‘you’re not the kind of father a chap could go to when he’s in trouble’. He, like his mother, tries to direct the blame away from himself claiming ‘you killed her. She came to you to protect me – and you turned her away – yes, and you killed her – and the child she’d have had too – my child – your own grandchild – you killed them both – damn you, damn you –’.
Although his misdeeds show him to be foolish, Eric behaves pretty much in the same way as his sister, Sheila does. He did try his best to help and support Eva after uncovering that she was carrying his child and he instantly feels guilty and is disturbed hearing what happened to Eva afterwards.
After hearing the facts on everybody else, the question must be asked, could Eva herself, have prevented ending up in these awkward positions time and time again. She could have controlled her own fate. Maybe if she hadn’t caused trouble at Mr. Birlings factory, became Gerald’s mistress, slept with Eric or used the Birling family name whilst applying to the organization, she wouldn’t have felt like ending her life, and she wouldn’t be lying on a slab with her insides burnt out. After all, she was the person who decided to kill herself, she could have tried for another job, she could have accepted the money from Eric and she could have made him responsible for the baby, when it came.
In conclusion, it would be unfair to put the blame onto one person, when each and every one of them helped contribute to Evas’ miserable end to life. It may be more accurate to blame society, her class, and the time in which she lived. No real crime has been committed in this play, but I believe that the Birling family should share the moral responsibility for this young woman’s pitiful suicide. Then maybe next time they are about to do something selfish they’ll think of the devestation they might bring to others, and not just the benefit they bring to themselves.
