At the beginning of the play, Sheila Birling is a typical wealthy factory owner’s daughter. She knows what she wants, but doesn’t work to acquire it. She is engaged to Gerald Croft of Crofts Limited, another factory in Brumley. She also shares the same outlook on society as her father and the remainder of her family. Perhaps this is because she has never been in any situations which would contradict it, or perhaps she is just too concerned with her own interests to bother thinking about it. She believes that if you look out for yourself and no-one else and if everyone did this life would be ideal, but in reality this can never be the case.
The arrival of the Inspector is quite exciting to Sheila as she is, in general, quite an inquisitive person. She wants to know what’s going on. She is, “rather distressed” when she hears about the suicide and she doesn’t like the fact that her father had sacked the girl from her job at his factory and began the chain of events that led to her suicide. Sheila first realises she is involved in the death when the Inspector, “produces the photograph. She looks at it closely, recognizes it with a little cry, gives a half-stifled sob, and then runs out.” She is obviously one of the characters in the play who doesn’t try to deny having played any part in the death of the girl. This is obvious from her reaction.
Sheila had not known Eva very well, but well enough to have had a very big influence on her life and death. Sheila had been in Milwards, the shop in which Eva worked after she was sacked from Birling and Company. It was a job she had only found after some difficultly. Sheila had gone to try on a dress. It had been an idea of her own. Her mother and the assistant had both been against the idea, but she had insisted. It hadn’t suited her at all and she looked silly in it. When Eva had brought the dress for Sheila to try on, she held it up to herself and it suited her. As it didn’t suit Sheila herself, she was jealous and when she caught sight of Eva smiling at the assistant while she was trying on the dress she was furious. She went and complained to the manager about the girl and threatened to have her mother close her account with Milwards unless the girl was discharged at once. Milwards, in jeopardy of losing one of their valuable customers, did exactly as Sheila wanted.
After realising the extent of her involvement with the girl Sheila feels extremely guilty. She wants to learn of other people’s involvement to soften the blow of the news she has just heard. In this way she feels she may not be completely to blame for Eva’s death. Sheila tries to convince her family to tell the Inspector about their own involvement straight away. She hopes that by doing this they will feel less guilty and shocked when the inspector breaks down their defences, which she knows he will inevitably succeed in doing. Sheila’s reaction to her contribution to the girl’s suicide indicates that she appears in a better light than she did at the start of the play. She seems to be more considerate towards others and feels genuinely sorry about what she did.
However Gerald informs the family that there is no Inspector Goole and that the whole thing is an apparent hoax. There is no Inspector Goole in the police force. We can see that Sheila has truly learned her lesson. She and Eric are the only two characters who take responsibility for their actions. She is ashamed of what she did and horrified at how the others are reacting by laughing the whole thing off, “you’re forgetting one thing I still can’t forget. Everything we said had happened really had happened. If it didn’t end tragically, then that’s lucky for us. But it might have done.” I think Sheila has now realised that community is important and that we are responsible for one another.
At the end of the play Priestly uses time recurrence of the Inspector coming to the house to question the family. This is to make it clear that if man does not learn anything from his mistakes he will be condemned to repeat them until he does. It also invites the reader to think about which of the characters might behave differently when the ‘real’ Inspector arrives. When the ‘real’ Inspector calls I think that Sheila will behave differently, because she has now changed her views on society and now feels more responsible for others and how her actions affect them. She might also own up straight away rather than trying to hide what she did unlike her mother, father and Gerald.
I think that Sheila has undergone a true change as a result of this experience. She has learned something and I don’t think that she is too keen to let it go, “whoever that Inspector was, it was anything but a joke. You knew it then. You began to learn something. And now you’ve stopped. You’re ready to go on in the same old way.” “ I remember what he said, how he looked, and what he made me feel.” I think this quote proves the change in her attitude and she has become a more admirable person at the end of the play than at the beginning. She seems to have broken free of the spoiled brat label. Explaining Sheila has taught me that you are a better person if you are watchful of others and take responsibility for your actions.
