The audience are made aware of the inspector’s arrival due to the change in lighting from a pink and intimate to a much lighter, and harder light causing the audience to be instantly curious of the arrival of this new character.
Sheila is the daughter of Mr Arthur Birling and Mrs Sybil Birling. Sheila is a young, attractive and sensitive girl but she does have her faults she is naive and acts quite spoilt at the beginning of the play. She is engaged to Gerald croft.
There are only two similarities between Sheila and Mr Birling and they are that they both selfish and full of self-importance. An example of this is behaviour, is when she gets Eva fired from her job at milwards, which was simply, as she admitted later, because she smiled at her. Sheila felt that she had a very high status in society, which gave her the power to be able to do this. This basically mirrors her father’s attitude.
The audience of 1946 would of seen Sheila as themselves now, repenting and learning from mistakes, but also they would of seen that she has some of the qualities which her father possesses to which is her weakness.
Sheila’s reaction, to the inspector is quite different to that of her father’s, as when Sheila enters the room to find out about the death Eva, Mr Birling is annoyed with the inspector for telling Sheila such a horrific story. Sheila finds out about the death and shows a lot more sympathy than her father had displayed. When she finds out about the involvement of her father, she is quick to be critical of him, and not to protect him. This shows that although Mr Birling may think they are a close family and protect each other’s interests, Sheila’s words contradict this “But these girls aren’t cheap labour they’re people” she is very quick to defend the girls rather than her own family. She does not try and protect her father who said this comment, instead she argues against it. She maintains this attitude throughout the play she is very quick to protect Eva smith and not any other members of her family. She is the only character who shows any genuine sympathy for Eva, “I can’t help thinking about this girl destroying herself so horribly and I’ve been so happy tonight”; she actually says this even before she learns of her involvement in Eva’s suicide, which basically summarises how sympathetic she is in contrast to unsympathetic father.
Unlike her father, when Sheila hears of her involvement with Eva’s suicide she is ready to admit to her wrong doings and express her guilt freely. She actually says, “So I’m really responsible” and does not try and excuse her actions to get herself out of trouble. This shows that she is extremely remorseful, unlike her father who is very unrepentant, is not for one moment to admit even part blame, whereas on the other hand Sheila accepts full responsibility.
When the inspector leaves the reaction from Mr Birling and Sheila are very different. Mr Birling is worried about his reputation and his knighthood “there be public scandal”. Whereas Sheila is very much remorseful and disgusted with her family as well as herself, but takes on the responsibility for her actions.
When they find out that the inspector was a hoax, Sheila is unable to accept her parent’s attitude and is both amazed and concerned that they have not learnt anything from the whole incident. She is one of the few to realise that even though the inspector was a hoax, the family have still committed their crimes. All Mr Birling can say to the attitude of Sheila, when he finds out that the inspector was a hoax, is that the famous younger generation who know it all, He amuses himself by thinking back to the faces of Sheila and Eric when they found out how Eva smith died, adding that they can’t even take a joke. This shows how Mr Birling continues to ignore the shameful things that his family has done.
Priestley’s intentions in creating characters like this was to show two sides of opinion, Mr Birling being cruel and emotionless towards Eva, whereas Sheila is there to express people’s views and guilt and to be every ones emotions towards Eva. In other words to show that the older generation will never learn from their mistakes and the younger generation will feel guilty and will want to learn from what they did wrong, so that they do not make the same mistakes again. The audience are shown this and would react towards each character differently; they probably reacted to Mr Birling in a way of disgust and they would be ashamed that he would even think to sack Eva just because she wanted a wage rise. They would think of Sheila as a kind loving girl who is mature enough to accept her responsibilities whereas Mr Birling thinks has got away with everything therefore does not accept his responsibility, until he gets a phone call from the real inspector.
J.B Priestley’s views are presented through the inspector; he uses the inspector as a kind of conduit to express how he thinks the way society should change. Priestly wanted to show us that we can change and that we should all respect each other, look after others, to act fairly to others and that we should not isolate individual groups into higher, middle and lower. The inspector is just something or some one that has come to a family who are very socialised and the inspector has come to the Birlings and Gerald croft to make them accept the responsibility for their actions towards Eva. We see Priestley’s views mainly at the end of the play “there are millions and millions and millions of Eva smiths and John smiths still left with us, with their lives, their hopes, their fears, their suffering and chance of happiness all intertwined with our lives, and what we think and do”, the inspector said this just before walking out, he was implying that there are thousands of people in the world who are treated like Eva smith was. Priestley uses the audience to promote his views by making Eva young and very attractive, Priestley also made Eva an orphan to make the audience sympathise over her to make them hate the people who hurt her most and who does not feel guilty, because the audience who watched this play in 1946 had just lived through two wars they are in a time of repent and they have started to look out for each other more. This is exactly why Priestley wrote this play, to put across his views of society at the time of 1912-1946.
We sympathise with Sheila more than Mr Birling because she is the only one who cared for Eva and how she contributed to Eva’s suicide.
The changes in Sheila and Mr Birling reflect Priestley’s concerns; Sheila is representing the younger generation who are the new hope for the future, the younger generation also the ones who will learn from their mistakes. Mr Birling is representing the older generation, he older generation are the ones who will not learn from their mistakes, as the old saying goes “you can’t teach an old dog new tricks”.
The message that it sends the post war audience is that we change, and start looking after everyone and not just yourself. We see this in his “fire, blood and anguish” speech. If men will not learn that lesson, then they will be taught it in fire, blood and anguish. That was Priestley’s main message to the post war audience; he was referring to the world wars. Priestley was just saying that if we changed in 1912 instead of treating others like dirt and then treating yourself like royalty. And that we could of changed and if we did the world would be a much better place now.
