During the last century there had been a mass movement of people from agricultural work in the countryside to industrial work in the cities. Many people lived in unsanity and squalid conditions with very poor wages and little education.
Through the complacency of the characters Arthur Birling and Gerald Croft, we see the attitude of the wealthy classes towards themselves and the rest of society. It was an attitude of looking after oneself and expecting others to look after themselves. This attitude became very common in the 1980’s under Mrs Thatcher’s Tory party. The central message that Priestly was trying to get over was that we are all responsible for each other in one way or another.
At the beginning of the play the Birling’s are celebrating their daughters engagement to the son of their business rivals. Priestly shows us that these people are very wealthy with very descriptive stage directions, such as the fact that they dress for dinner, drink champagne and port, smoked cigars and have a maid. The mood is very light hearted until the Inspector arrives and tells them of the suicide of a young girl named Eva Smith, who worked in one of Mr Birling’s factories. The Inspector questions each of them in turn.
Through the first 2 Acts they all realise how they are implicated in the girls death. The mood at the end of Act 2, when Eric enters the room, is one of extreme tension, by the end of Act 3 all the members of the Birling family have revealed their true natures under the Inspectors interrogation.
In Act 2 when Mrs Birling enters the Act, multitudes of previously unknown truths have already been disclosed. Mrs Birling is one of the last members of the family to be ‘interrogated’ by the mysterious Inspector.
From her entrance to the end of the act, we see a rainbow of feelings, starting in the bright cheerful colours of the emotional spectrum and ending in the dark murky unhappy ones. As Mrs Birling enters and is cheerful, arrogant and blissfully ignorant as is shown in her second speech in the act: “I am Mrs Birling. My husband has just explained why you are here, and while we’ll be glad to tell you anything you want to know, I don’t think we can help you much”
As a whole, the piece is a miserable one. When Mrs Birling enters her mood is above that of the others. However the Inspector drags Mrs Birling’s spirit down to the same level as the others if not lower.
Priestly shows Mrs Birling to be a very hard, cold, unfeeling woman. She shows no remorse in what she has done. Unlike the others she does not see a problem in how she treat Eva and she is not sorry for it either. Mrs Birling’s tone throughout the scene is one of high standard she will not accept that the Inspector has come to HER house to speak to her and her family about a lower class girl who has committed suicide. She does not she how this could have anything to do with her family. Sybil does not like the idea of her family getting a “bad name” both her and Mr Birling are worried about what will happen when “this all gets out”. Further on as she learns a lot more about her family she begins to get more and more defensive towards the Inspector.
I think that Priestley’s description of Mrs Birling at the beginning of the play corresponds to that which shines through, throughout the play. The way he has perceived Mrs Birling is very accurate to how a woman in her position in that period would both act and react towards the Inspectors questioning and the reputation of her family. I think Priestleys message in this play is one of ‘equality’ and that Mr Birling’s theory “each man for himself” is completely wrong.
