As the daughter of a middle-class business man, Sheila has lived a life of comfort, ease and luxury. She has never been exposed to the ‘outside’ world, which has caused her to be naïve.
At the start of the play, we are invited into her family’s dining room, where Sheila is celebrating her engagement to Gerald Croft. Her attitude here is somewhat child-like. The opening notes describe her as a ‘young girl’, even though she is in her early twenties.
We also get the impression that she is naïve when Priestley adds, ‘very pleased with life’. She is ignorant to the world of the working class, and is constantly surrounded by her riches without even considering the lives of other people.
The stage directions are reinforces by the language Sheila uses. She calls her mother ‘mummy’, which seems like a very puerile way to refer to your parents. But in response, her parents also refer to Sheila as ‘girl’. Sheila doesn’t really mind this, but it suggests that she is not yet grown up, nor is she that close to her parents either.
During the engagement party, Gerald gives Sheila their engagement ring. This is to represent their relationship and love. Her words on receiving the gift are ‘Oh – Gerald – you’ve got it’. The pauses in her sentence indicate the excitement in her voice. She then becomes very involved with the present – like a child receiving a birthday gift. Mr. Birling is about to make his speech about the War and Titanic, but pauses when he realises that Sheila may not be listening, as she is only concentrating on her ring. This is what a child may do when they have received a toy.
When Mr. Goole, the inspector arrives, he immediately creates a scene of uncertainty. All of the characters fall victim to his questioning, but Sheila is the main one who changes drastically after the inspection.
He informs Sheila that a young girl had died earlier that night, after drinking some very strong disinfectant, ‘suicide, of course’. Sheila reacts very badly to this news. She has probably always been sheltered all her life, and has no experience of dealing with death, especially one of a terrible nature. She becomes ‘rather distressed’ by just the thought of a young girl, wanting to ‘destroy herself so horribly’ and all Sheila’s thought of the engagement fades from now on.
She then hears that her father was the one who started the chain of events which led to her death. Sheila, after hearing about the poor girl’s death, and learning that her father started it all, sided with the inspector, and felt her father’s actions were too harsh.
Mr. Birling attempts to keep Sheila away from this entire unpleasant event, but Sheila refuses to go. She understands that the inspector is now moving on to one of them, Sheila, Gerald or Eric, and she won’t go until she knows the whole truth.
The inspector now turns on Sheila.
He tells her that she was accepted to work at Milwards, a place Sheila goes into often, but was then sacked because of a customer’s complaint. We can immediately tell that the customer was in fact Sheila, by the way she becomes ‘agitated’ at the mention of her dismissal. When she sees the picture of Eva Smith, she clearly recognises her, and gives a ‘half-stifled sob’ before she runs out. During this time that she is off stage, she is changing very drastically. She is now no longer a ‘young girl’, but a woman who can take responsibility for her actions.
Mr. Birling, who still continues to treat her like a little girl, becomes angry at the way the inspector ‘upset the child’.
When Sheila comes back, she has calmed a considerable amount. She speaks directly to the inspector now, willing to take the chance of acknowledging her own wrong doings. ‘You knew it was me all the time, didn’t you?’ She is the only one who understands that the inspector knows ‘everything’ about the family and their actions towards Eva Smith.
She then begins to tell her account of their meeting. She rushes through her confession, in a state of guilt and anxiousness. We find out that she was quite ‘selfish and vindictive’, but recognises that she is. Nearing the end of the confession, she ‘almost breaks down’, when the guilt and misery amounts to a peak. She’s too weak (like a child) to carry this burden of blame herself, but the inspector evens out the blame between all of the members of the family, and she is then at least able to hold herself up.
After her confession, she understands the incorrect ways of her actions, and is willing to take responsibility. She has changed from the naïve, innocent girl she was only a few minutes before and is now able to take liability. ‘I’ll never, never do it again to anybody’ and this shows us that she has realized the errors of her ways.
She is now clearly on the side of the inspector, and helps in unravelling her own family’s secrets.
When she realises that Gerald has had an affair with Eva Smith, when he was going out with her, she warns Gerald to confess everything to the inspector and to not hide anything, recognising that if they were to try and hide the truth, it would only come out worse.
Her curiosity keeps her on stage for the rest of the questioning, as she is determined to know why exactly Eva killed herself, because if she were to leave now, as Gerald suggested, she would be alone with the responsibility, thinking that ‘she’s entirely to blame’. The Inspector understands Sheila, and allows her to stay, which, in turn, helps him to unlock the clandestine truth.
Once Gerald confesses his involvement with Eva Smith, Sheila hands back the engagement ring. She feels as though they never truly knew each other, and so she hands back the false symbol. They weren’t totally honest with each other; so she gave back the ring that represented the honest relationship she wanted.
I think that Sheila has genuinely learnt her lesson. She instantly takes up her responsibility, unlike the rest of the family members and accepts her part in causing Eva Smith’s death.
As soon as the inspector departs, the Birlings act as though nothing had changed, as they find out that the inspector was ‘a fake’. Sheila and Eric are dismayed at this reaction, as they have both learnt the hard way that it doesn’t matter whether or not the inspector was a fake, because they still did what they did and the girl still suffered and died as a consequence. Sheila can also recall the way the inspector made her feel, ‘fire and blood and anguish’, is how she describes her encounter.
Priestly uses her as a hope for the future. Sheila is young, and is quite ‘impressionable’, which allowed her to be able to apprehend the faults of the society, and therefore able to create a better future.
She accuses her parents of being ‘childish’ after the inspector left, as they are refusing to take the blame. It’s like a child’s situation, where the child does not want to take the blame, so they refuse to acknowledge the circumstances. It’s exactly what Mr and Mrs. Birling are doing.
I think that Priestley felt quite positively about Miss Sheila Birling. He uses her to show us the change from one way to another. Sheila used to be selfish, and only think about herself, but since the inspector’s questionings, she has found a new way of life, and her opinions have changed. I think Priestley created this character to make us relate to her. If we entered the play with views such as Mrs. Birling and Sheila before the transformation, we may too, change, like Sheila.
Mrs. Birling is a stern woman who believes the traditional system of the women being the home maker and the men being the bread maker. She accepts the role of being the submissive, accepting wife. She believes in the concept that the woman should be left at home and not question their husbands. She tries to impress this on Sheila by saying, “When you’re married you’ll realise that men with important work to do sometimes have to spend nearly all their time and energy on their business”. This gives us a negative impression of her values, which are traditional; she is set in her ways.
Mrs. Birling is more upper-class than her husband, and always tries to teach him the way he should behave, ‘Arthur, you’re not supposed to say such things’.
Mrs. Birling seems to always put up an act around people who are not members of the family. She pretends that she knows everything about her children, and that her family is just perfect, but in real truth, she is quite oblivious to her surroundings.
Her constant nagging and putting other down at the start of the play creates a disliking for this character already. She is snobbish and polite in such a way, that it’s rude.
When Mrs. Birling encounters the Inspector, she starts off ‘all wrong’. She’s smiling and very over confident. Mrs. Birling is a very hypocritical woman, and we will find the extreme extent to her hypocrite.
She begins by building a ‘wall’ between herself and ‘girls of that class’, as she refers to Eva. She feels that it was all Eva’s fault that she was in the situations the Birlings’ put her through. Mrs. Birling lacks empathy and cannot understand Eva because of her class.
Whilst being questioned by the inspector, she puts on airs, and pretends to not know Eva. We can already tell that she is involved and that unlike Sheila, Mrs. Birling will not be swayed so easily.
We find out that she gave Eva the ‘final push’ which led her to her suicide. Eva Smith had been to see Mrs. Birling’s charity which helps women in need only two weeks earlier. Eva was pregnant, almost penniless and Mrs. Birling, being prejudiced even before Eva began her story, turned her down for help and money.
Mrs. Birling thinks that she was justified in doing so, and instead of accepting the blame, she places it on the father of the child. ‘In the circumstances I think I was justified’.
She continues to blame the father, saying that he should at least marry her, or at least support her. And then, she goes to even harsher punishments: ‘he should be made an example of’, ‘he ought to be dealt with very severely’, he should ‘confess in public’. Once she finds out that the ‘young idler’ is in fact her own son, she regrets those words. She assumed that the baby’s father was a man who belonged to Eva’s class, but once she understands that it is her own child, she becomes very hypocritical and denies the facts. She ‘won’t believe’ that her own child is a drunk and a thief. This shows that she doesn’t really know her own children and has double standards.
In act two, Mrs. Birling’s stage directions include: ‘smiling, social’, ‘great surprise’, ‘annoyed’, ‘haughtily’, ‘rebuking’, ‘very sharply’, ‘staggered’, ‘bitterly’, ‘alarmed’ and so on. These are all negatively said, (except for the first ones, when she entered too over confident) and give the impression that she is indeed a ‘stern woman’. She has had the same attitude all along, being surprised, arrogant, snobbish and bitter. But during the questioning of Mrs. Birling, there are no stage directions for the woman. This could be to make her seem as though she is trying to hide her emotions, or that she is really cold hearted and feels no sympathy.
Once the inquiring is over, and the family finds out that the inspector is a fake, she, like her husband, is relieved to find out that no one will ever know the family’s secrets. They can all just pretend nothing had happened, and resume their normal, self-centred ways.
She has not learnt anything from the inspector’s message, save the desire to lock everything away. Unlike Sheila, Mrs. Birling does not take any responsibility, and it is probably her belief that responsibility is for only those who are lesser than herself. She leaves all the blame and responsibility to the children.
I think Priestley did not like this character. Mrs. Birling represents everything that Priestley disliked in a society – selfishness, ignorance and class. She doesn’t believe that we should repent for our wrong doings whereas Priestley is trying to show us that we should. We should learn from our mistakes and acknowledge the need for change, rather than hide and try to cover up.
I think the audience will respond negatively towards this character. People can relate to someone like Sheila as she has changed, after acknowledging her mistakes, but as Mrs. Birling does not, we feel that she is too cold.
We never see Eva in the play, nor do we hear her. The only thing that keeps this significant character alive is the memories of her from the Birlings’, and the words of the inspector. Despite the absence of this character, we relate, feel sympathy for and understand Eva Smith, perhaps even more than the other characters.
The first words that we hear about her are of her terrible fate. The inspector tells Mr. Birling, Gerald and Eric about the young woman who died in the infirmary after swallowing a lot of strong disinfectant. ‘Burnt her inside out’. The use of this strong language immediately makes us wonder why she wanted to end her life so horribly.
We then find out that Mr. Birling began the chains of event which led to a dead end. Eva Smith worked for Mr. Birling’s company in 1910, where she was sacked for asking for higher wages – from ‘twenty–two and six’ to twenty-five shillings a week. That is about from £1.12 per week, to a raise of £1.25 per week. It’s not much and Mr. Birling could have afforded the new price, but he refused and Eva was sacked.
Mr. Birling describes Eva in a very positive way, which makes us feel that he was in the wrong, whereas she was in the right. He identifies Eva as a ‘lively good-looking girl’ and we can already picture a smile on her face and innocent eyes. When we contrast this image into the one the Inspector impressed on our minds, we fully understand what has happened to the girl, and we can take it in. We feel even more sympathy for Eva now, as we have a beautiful picture of her in our minds, for it only to be destroyed by the knowledge of death.
When the Inspector rounds on Gerald, even more sympathy is created for the girl. He supports Mr. Birling’s description of Eva with more features. ‘she was very pretty – soft brown hair and big dark eyes’. We can now imagine her even more. He contrasts her beauty with the other ‘dough-faced women of the town’. This tells us that she was unique – a one in a million, sort of girl.
He meets her at a bar where prostitutes congregate. She had no choice but to turn to this repulsive place, so as to support herself. Gerald saved her from the lecherous Aldermand Meggarty (a supposedly respectable man, according to Mrs. Birling’s reaction) and had taken her up as his mistress. Eva was no doubt in love with Gerald, but she must have always known that it was an unrequited love. When Gerald broke up with Eva, she understood and did not want to force him to make it last longer. She accepted the end of the romance gracefully. This shows us that she understands the way the classes work, and although it was unfair, she had no power to stop it.
Eva could not support herself any longer. She came across Eric, who tried to aid her but refused the money, as she suspected it to be stolen. She has great morals, even more than those of Mrs. Birling’s class. She had to go and beg for money from Mrs. Birling’s organization. It must have been such a hard thing to do, as it was so much easier to just accept the stolen money, but it was against her principles, which are set higher than Mrs. Birling’s.
We then find out that she was pregnant. This is the bombshell the Inspector was waiting to drop, and this one significant state creates shock and horror for the family as well as the audience.
Eva Smith had come to the committee for help at a time when ‘no woman could have needed it more’ and Mrs. Birling, being prejudiced from the start, refused her.
The Inspector then piles on Eva’s status in a list. ‘alone, friendless almost penniless, desperate’. We are being bombarded by such awful situations for this one girl, and all she needed to avoid such a horrible fate was ‘advice, sympathy, friendliness’.
Mrs. Birling places all the blame on Eric, the baby’s father and Eva, knowing that Mrs. Birling is actually Eric’s mother defends him, and does not expose his true form. Eva says that Eric never truly loved her, and that it would spoil his life to marry him, so she dismisses the easy way out. If Eva’s morals were those of Mrs. Birling, I have no doubt that she would have married Eric, despite the lack of love in the relationship. But Eva’s morals were set a great deal higher than that of Mrs. Birling, and even though it would have made her life so much easier, she did not want to prospect of a loveless marriage. This shows us that class doesn’t determine morals, as Mrs. Birling’s morals are lower than Eva’s, but she is of a higher class.
I think Priestley liked Eva Smith the most. She represents everything good in a society. She is the link between all that is wrong and selfish in a society and she is also the result. J.B. Priestley uses her to show what can happen in the old society, in which the Birlings’ have lived in all their lives. I think he must have a lot of respect for Eva, and created her to be the good contrasting with the bad in Mrs. Birling.
I think the audience will respond very positively to Eva Smith. We can understand her needs and her actions better than anyone else’s in the play even though she never appears.
I dislike Mrs. Birling for the way she acts and thinks throughout the play. She shows no remorse for her actions until she hears that it was her grandchild that she had refused and killed. ‘I didn’t understand’ she says, in an attempt to relieve herself of the blame, but that is soon forgotten when she finds out that the inspector wasn’t real. Like Priestley, I believe in a society where everyone should look out for each other, and as Mrs. Birling believes strongly in the other society, where you look out for only yourself then your family, my feelings towards Mrs. Birling are negative.
Eva Smith is my second favourite. Although she was written beautifully into the play, I don’t think that I personally can relate to her much. I understand all of her actions and beliefs, but I think that I can never be that good. She is an innocent moral who stood up for what she believed in. I feel a lot of sympathy to her and her unborn child.
I feel that Sheila is my most favourite character as I can relate to her the most. She is the change in the society, and her response to the queries are perhaps the same as mine would have been. I know that I would have changed my ways after hearing and acknowledging Eva Smith and for this, I appreciate the fact that Sheila Birling was in the play to show us that change.
J.B. Priestley’s message (told to us via the Inspector) tells us that we should have collective responsibility, and share our duties equally between us all. Do we really want to live in a world where those of higher class choose our fate, or do we want to choose our own fate? His message is still relevant today, as I think we still live in a society where those of higher class are those with more power (although it is far less today than it was back then). But even if we did live in a society such as the one Priestly desires, we still need to learn his message, as we need to remember our responsibility for others and ourselves.