When the inspector arrives he uses different interrogation approaches to get answers from his suspects. Sheila responds to the inspector in a very honest way. After coming back into the room, she is very sincere with everybody. Sheila answers his questions and queries as honestly as she can, she is genuinely sorry for what she did to Eva Smith and for contributing to her death, ‘Yes but it didn’t seem to be anything very terrible at the time. Don’t you understand? And if I could help her now I would.’ After her confession has come out Sheila is eager for everybody else to confess to what they supposedly did to Eva. Now that her dirty laundry is out in the open she’s prefer everyone else’s to be aired so they don’t think she’s so bad because they also ‘helped to kill this girl’ as Gerald said. When questioned, Sheila breaks down in tears. Sybil stays calm and again doesn’t show her emotions. She doesn’t let this stranger intimidate her because she feels she did the right thing by her charity of which she is a chairperson and is a great influence on the overall decision of who they should help. Every other character except Sybil feels remorse for what they did.
When questioned, Sheila and Eric have broken down and confessed their indecency after being asked just a few questions. Sheila was shown a picture of the girl she got fired from Milwards. She recognizes the picture and runs out the room sobbing. She comes back in and says ‘You knew it was me all the time didn’t you?”
Sybil on the other hand answers the inspector’s questions with very short, few word answers. The inspector shows her a photo and says ‘do you recognize her?’ Sybil then says ‘No. Why should I?’ which is a blatant lie because when the inspector says ‘But Mrs. Birling spoke to and saw her only 2 weeks ago.’ Then Sybil admits it by saying ‘Yes its quite true.’ I think at first she tries to deny this because she may think that the inspector doesn’t know anything but really he does or he’s very clever and bluffing. The younger characters feel remorse for what they have done, Sybil doesn’t even pity the poor girl. ‘I’m very sorry, but I think she only had herself to blame.’ But then Mrs. Birlings opinion is that Eva shouldn’t of used the respectable Birling name , lied about where she came from and why she wanted help from the charity. The differences between classes at this time were very clear. The Birlings are obviously a rich family and there name highly respectable. For Eva to use the Birling name was a big insult for Sybil as people might think they are part of the same family and might lower her social standing.
Sybil having had much more life experience knows how people of different classes should speak to her. Lower class people should speak to her with respect because without people like her husband and their factories a lot would be out of work. When the inspector comes along and talks to her like her would any other person, she is a bit shocked. I think you can tell this by her short answers that go straight to the point. ‘ I meant what I said’ most of what she says is never more than a line long. I think the inspector relises this and plays on it a bit, but this backfires because Sybil doesn’t like being spoken to like this so she is very short and avoids the main point that the inspector is trying to get out of her. This is very clever, meaning the inspector actually has to know everything that Eva did relating to Sybil in order for him to get the story out of her. With the other characters he just mentions a name and asks a few questions and he has the whole story.
To conclude I have to say that I have found that age does affect the way these people act. If Sheila was older and more grown up then she would of known that someone not of her class, cant intimidate her if she knows how to act. Sybil obviously knows how to act but she does come off as a bit arrogant. Also if Sheila was older she would of known that she doesn’t have to ashamed of her actions if she can justify them. If your actions can’t be justified then they must be wrong. Sheila’s actions weren’t justified enough, because to get someone fired just because they look better in a hat than you do is a bit shameful. Sheila could f shown that she was sorry but she ran out the room crying. Sybil could have been more understanding with Eva, but then she doesn’t understand how a girl in that position would feel. Sybil was proberly bought up like Sheila and then married before she had her first child. She proberly had never had to worry about money or anything like that in her life.
I have to say that honestly I didn’t like this play very much. It wasn’t very dramatic. It would have been better to have a big twist at the end, like Edna could have been Eva’s mother or something like that.
