When the inspector finishes with questioning Birling he moves onto Sheila, it is revealed that Sheila’s involvement into Daisy/Eva’s death was that she had Daisy/Eva fired from her job at a local dress shop called Milwards after a little disagreement, but there was more, the way Sheila got her fired was that she used her family name “Birling”, as a sort of authority over the shop owners, which had a fairly large account at the shop to get her fired otherwise she would withdraw her account with the shop. This shows that by doing this she acted very childishly by using her family name as a sort of backing to argue her pointless point to get Daisy/Eva fired from the shop simply out of spite. After discovering this Sheila’s character becomes distraught about what she has done and realises how her actions and her acting so childishly over something so small has lead to the death of Daisy/Eva, this is very contrasting behaviour considering what she was like at the beginning. Another point in this part is also brought during this point of how stereotypically rich girls were like in them days, that they acted very bratty and most relied on there family name to fund their views and actions, what Sheila done was a prime example when she got Daisy/Eva fired over something small and petty and also used her family name.
In act two the plot begins to thicken as the inspector involves more people in this “inquiry” of his. Gerald Croft is the next person to be questioned who is Sheila’s fiancé, it is later on revealed in the questioning that Gerald had an affair with Daisy/Eva, Daisy Renton she was known to Gerald as then. But while Gerald is explaining the story to the inspector Sheila cuts in to express what she’s feeling, by saying “yes but why are you saying that to him? You ought to be saying it to me”; this shows in her language sort of where she uses a rhetorical question to state her point and shows openly what she is feeling at that point instead of bottling it up. Also soon as this news is broken to everyone, Sheila develops even more, piecing together what she had already known about Gerald, e.g. she had a suspicion something wasn’t quite normal when she noticed Gerald was spending a lot of time at “work” supposedly and spending a lot of time away from her but of course now its been revealed that Gerald had an affair, this shows that Sheila’s character has developed by showing us that she is more aware of what’s going on and is relying less on others to fill her in on all the information.
After this Sheila’s character differs a lot from what her character was like at the beginning, further into the inquiry the inspector swiftly moves onto Mrs B. (Sheila’s mother), the story with Mrs B. goes that she was the head of a woman’s organization which offers help to women in need or need help with a worthy cause, but its seems that Daisy/Eva went to the organization to plea for help but was turned down due to the fact that Daisy/Eva came to the organization under the name of Mrs Birling which offended Mrs B., while the inspector is questioning Mrs B. leading to the answer of what happened, Sheila rude and openly offers to answer for her mother when the inspector asks Mrs B. to confirm that she is indeed the head of the organization, answering “go on Mother. You might as well admit it. (To the inspector) yes she is why?” this shows that her character is truly beginning to play a more stronger role within the conversations and the play overall, its shows in her language with the short a quick responses, also her childish language of “mummy” she referred to her mum before as has changed to “mother” now shows that her language is maturing.
In act three where its known now after questioning from the inspector that Eric is also involved by getting Daisy/Eva pregnant and then stealing money from the family business, this is where Sheila probably takes the smallest role in the conversations since the beginning, but what she does do is accept what she has done and tries to tell everyone to do the same, she does all this while everyone’s arguing about Eric and what he has done by interrupting everything and saying “I had her turned out of a job. I started it” this shows her acceptance of what she has done, and also says once the inspector leaves “I have behaved badly too. I know I did. I’m ashamed of it”, this also shows her acceptance of the whole situation and what she has done but she also shows guilt and remorse when she says she’s ashamed of what she’s done.
After the inspector left the atmosphere begins to calm down, and everything is only just beginning to settle into everyone’s minds of what’s happened. While Eric, her father and her mother are arguing she then thinks to herself and only her accepts responsibility for what has happened. She later on during this part, while everyone’s arguing to go on and lecture everybody else to take into account what has happened and accept responsibility for it all, to show her disbelief in their behaviour Sheila says “the point is, you don’t seemed to have learnt anything” this shows her feelings to everybody and makes them understand why she is so keen on putting the point forward. Unexpectedly another turn of events occurs, it now seems that the inspector who questioned them all was a fake after Gerald came back from a little investigation of his own, now everybody relaxes thinking it was all some hoax, but Sheila still remains the same taking the whole experience as a lesson which she feels everyone should learn from even if the death of the woman was a fake but everything which has been revealed is still something they shouldn’t ease up on. After all this the play takes a final twist where they confirm about the fake inspector and phone up the infirmary to confirm there was no death of a woman there, it is confirmed much to everyone’s relief that there was no death, but after the another phone call comes through and what everyone was not expecting happened, a death had happened of a young woman at the infirmary.
In this last part shows that Sheila staying strong minded didn’t allow herself to seem weak and came across by being far the most strongest character at the end, with her staying focused with what she thought and trying to tell everyone else to do the same. By doing this Priestley can counter stereotype what people thoughts were on women’s mentality and how they are easily distracted from what they originally think and by giving Sheila a stronger role in the play which you would normally associate a male with.
Overall throughout the play Priestley successfully portrays Sheila as being the far most adaptive character and changes the most, varying in each situation and allowing herself to be actively involved in the conversations. Sheila also represents a lot of what Priestley actually was and what his beliefs were, for example when Sheila argued the point to her own father that the women weren’t a form of cheap labour, which represented the view which Priestley believed that everyone should have equal rights, but she also represented what modern day society was like back then and the people higher up in society what they were like also.
Sheila’s character overall was a very important role within the play, to not only use as a sort of puppet for Priestley to put across his socialist views and thoughts, but as a contrast to modern day society back then and show how society can changed by using herself as a role model, from the beginning where she was very bratty and unaware of how her actions could effect other people (note: a key socialist view of Priestley), and how towards the end she realised that she would have to come to terms with what she has done and change he actions in the future to make sure it doesn’t happen again.
By far in my own opinion, Sheila’s character changed the most throughout the whole play in all aspects, from the development of her use of language to her overall role in the play itself, conversational wise and acting wise.
