Mrs. Birling is the wife of Arthur Birling. Nearly as cruel and intolerant as her husband, she is very stubborn. Preistley uses her to show that it is not just men who are the barrier to the unification of society. Her view on the world, although she is mean and cruel, is through rose-tinted spectacles. She cannot imagine that Eric has been drinking at all, let alone heavily as this quote demonstrates –
“Mrs. B. Eric? Oh I’m afraid he may have had rather too much to drink tonight. We were having a little celebration here-
Inspector Isn’t he used to drinking?
Mrs. B. No, of course not. He’s only a boy.”
This quote also shows Mrs. Birling’s reluctance to treat her offspring as equals. Right the way the play she treats them as if they are both very small children. This fact also shows her similarity to her husband. When it emerges that she had spoken to the dead girl two weeks ago and she had, in effect, killed her, she still shows no remorse and believes she did the right thing because the girl’s plight “sounded ridiculous to me”. Her crime in relation to Eva Smith is possibly the worst. Mrs Birling is the one that had the chance to save her from her awfully premature demise and she chose to let it go because she was so pompous. She believes that a girl of a subordinate class could not have high enough morals to stop accepting stolen money. “As if a girl of that sort would ever refuse money!” This woman is also absurdly short sighted. She is incapable of imagining that her son could have had a relationship with this girl. With this character Preistley fulfils his aim very well indeed. The character is beautifully written and you really do get a sense of how mean and pompous she is. Her treatment of her children, the Inspector, Gerald and her husband all exemplify the things that Preistley hated about his society.
Over the entire play Mrs Birling’s character develops very little. She is not on stage for a large segment of the play, and when she does her character seemingly does not change. However there is a some small changes in the way she treats the Inspector. After the revelations about Eric she becomes quieter and less abusive to him.
I think that Mrs Birling is even more of a social climber than Mr Birling and to continue the earlier metaphor of the ladder she would be the one hanging on to Mr Birling’s ankles with all of her strength. She is only a member of the committee that rejected Eva Smith because she wants to appear a nice, kind public figure. I think that she is possibly the guiltiest figure in Preistley’s eyes because, as I said earlier, she is the one who ad the chance to save the girl and she was the one who pushed her over the edge by her heartless and baseless rejection.
Eric is a very interesting character. He is portrayed as a kind, good-hearted figure, if a bit reckless. He obviously has difficulty asserting himself towards his parents as he shares a difficult relationship with them. They treat him with no respect and act as if he is very young indeed. However, he shares a close relationship with his sister, though he does get irritated with her when she tells them that he drinks. He is a very moral man, who shows a strong reaction to Eva Smith’s death:
Eric (involuntarily) “My God!”
Although his father is a right-winger, Eric is the opposite of him. He believes there was no reason to fire Eva Smith and that they should have kept her on. Overall he is a very individual character. When Eric leaves his mother and father cannot imagine why he has left, while his sister just thinks he has gone to cool off. One marked contrast between the Inspector and Birling is that Birling refuses Eric a drink, again treating him as a child, while Goole demands that he is allowed one. He then describes his relationship with the girl and when he begins he is slightly casual, using words such as “squiffy”. After that, though, he gets slightly more serious. When he gets to the piece where he got back to her room he breaks down for a moment showing a very strong emotional feeling about what he has done to this poor girl:
“Eric Yes. And that’s when it happened. And I didn’t even remember – that’s the hellish thing. Oh – my God! – how stupid it all is!”
He describes about how next time they met he couldn’t remember her name or where she lived. The next passage relates how, at the time, he was prepared to take advantage of the girl’s weak condition. This shows another morale side of Eric; the spoilt boy, well adjusted to getting his own way. One interesting point in this is that he says that he will not go to a prostitute, but that Birling’s friends are quite ready to. This shows that Preistley’s disgust at the double standards abundant in the upper echelons of the society at the time. It describes how the rich businessmen, so full of supposed morals, used prostitutes, something supposedly against their ethical code.
Continuously through the play, Eric is shown to be opposed to his father and his father’s friends. When Eva tells Eric that she is pregnant, Eric reacts badly, but says this was because he had no one to talk to about it. I think Preistley was trying to get across that the rich had become so emotionally unattached that they cannot communicate with their own family. When he comes to the theft of £200 from his father’s office he does not admit it is wrong because the money was taken for a desperate cause – that of a pregnant women. This shows that Eric was prepared to break set society rules for what he thought of as the higher good.
At the end of the play, Eric joins Shelia in the admittance of their guilt and how it does not matter whether there is a scandal as they have still done wrong. In Eric, Preistley shows a moral character, set against his parents, only bent on appearing good in public.
Shelia, the daughter of Mr and Mrs Birling is used as a direct contrast to Eva Smith right the way through the play. Shelia had successful parents and has lived in luxury since she was born. Eva’s parents were probably unable to provide even the most basic of upbringings for her. While Shelia is rich and has a high chance of making something of her life, Eva’s biggest success before she died was that she managed to get a job at a high quality store. I think Preistley’s problem is not with Shelia’s character, but with her position in life. I think this because he has written Shelia as a person who cares innately for someone she has never met and whom probably many girls of her position would have rejected as too low a class to even think about.
When the Inspector starts to interrogate her she is very honest and is very upset when she realises that it was her that got the girl fired from Milward’s. One thing that the firing shows about Shelia is that she did things impulsively, without thinking of the results. I think that if she had reflected on what firing might do to the girl she would not have spoken to the manager. Another thing that is interesting is that she is a bit of a spoilt brat as her only reason for being angry with this girl is that she looked better in a certain dress than Shelia. Her reaction to the realisation of what she has done is a direct contrast to her father. She knows what she has done is wrong and is still upset over it. Her father however just doesn’t care. He will not even admit that he has done wrong at all. She even goes so far as beginning to think that she is horrible for suggesting to Gerald that he is accusing her of being the same.
Again and again, Shelia says how she feels responsible and that the girl’s death is her fault. She is shown as a very honest woman who tells her parents and the Inspector how her brother drinks, but only when she thinks that it is necessary to do so. Although she is very kind, she is not completely forgiving and is still angry with Gerald for having an affair though she does however recognise that Gerald is not all bad and although he walks out she says that she probably respects him more than she ever has for the honesty that he showed.
At the end of the play Shelia has changed a lot. I think that the element of her character that appeared at the shop has almost disappeared and she is now much more wary of her parents and fiancé. Overall she is another one of Preistley’s moral characters and, as with Eric, shows an opposite response to her parents. She, like the rest of the moral characters has imperfection, moments of selfishness that cannot be hidden.
Generally though she comes out of the play liked by the audience and respected. Preistley’s aim with Shelia is to show that no human can be perfect but that some people are better than others.
Gerald is an interesting character from a moral prospective. He appears at some points to be kind and gentle and at others to be almost like Birling in his attitude towards everyone.
In his engagement to Shelia he shows himself to be a very ‘by-the-book’ man, following the customs of his age. The conservative side of him appears early in the book when he agrees with Birling that the girl should have been fired as she asked for a better wage. He is also very pompous when he hears about how Shelia got the girl fired from Millwood’s out of pure spite and jealousy.
The good side of him starts to show through when he appears reluctant to lie to Shelia when talking about his affair. He has realised she needs to know the truth and tells her it. Unfortunately, straight after this Gerald tells Shelia to try and keep this quiet, as he is more worried about public scandal than private ruin.
“Gerald So – for God’s sake – don’t say anything to the Inspector.”
When Shelia starts to get hysterical Gerald shows his prejudice against women by saying that she cannot cope and she should leave, He starts to get petty, accusing her of purposely staying because she just wants to see him put through what she had to go through. Another interesting point here is that although he is quick to try and protect Shelia, he caused untold damage to Eva Smith’s life without thinking.
His similarity to Birling is very obvious in that they are both “hard-headed business men” and Gerald is nearly as cold hearted towards Eva’s death as his future father-in-law.
When he finds out whom the girl is however he reacts to it, showing another character gap between him and Shelia – he only cares about her because he met her. Shelia cares anyway even though she only set eyes on the girl once. When he tells his story he sets himself in the hero role as the generous beneficiary. If you look through this though you see that he does care for her. In fact throughout the play he is the only one of the family who took the time to talk to Eva and find out about her life. You also notice how he did take advantage of Eva and had a great amount of power over her. This is exemplified when he talks about how he would give her an allowance and presents. When he gets on to how he broke off the relationship it is obvious who is in control as he breaks it off without thinking of her in anyway. The thing that redeems him is that he admits that he still has affection for her. As the novel draws to a close and he presents his case that the whole thing was a hoax he starts becoming more and more like Birling in that he doesn’t care about what they have done, only that they will not get caught.
Overall I am not sure what Preistley intended to do with this character as he just seems to be a halfway point between the two view points- left and right. This of course makes him a well-rounded character and one that is very interesting.
Inspector Goole is the most important character in the book. He is the pivot around which everyone else reacts. Almost super-natural in his predictions and guesses he is even slightly scary.
He is the social conscience who tries to get each member of the family to realise what they have done. The only ones he is really successful with are Eric and Shelia. The other three are only worried about keeping up appearances. In the age where this play is set Goole would have been viewed as mad. His views on everything are at an opposite from the majority of people in the early 1900s.
Birling obviously thinks he is a crank and is disgusted with the way Goole speaks to him and his wife. Eric and Shelia are in awe of him and when he leaves they realise all that he has said is true and they should be sorry for what they have done. Gerald’s relationship with the Inspector is slightly unclear and it is a mixture of the other two. He is defiantly slightly pompous towards the man, but he also recognises that this person is very powerful and knowledgeable. Goole gets very angry with all the family at some point in the play, but more so with Birling as he holds the extreme opposites to the Inspector’s views. The Inspector is a very reasonable man who notices when the parents are infantilising Eric and Shelia and tries to stop them. This element of justice is the one thing that makes the Inspector. Right the way through the book he insists on being just. He is definitely a left-winger as this quote shows:
Inspector “We are members of one body. We are responsible for each other.”
The Inspector makes some eerily accurate predictions through the play, this being the most interesting:
Inspector “then they will be taught it in fire and blood and anguish. Good night.”
This is an obvious prediction to World War 1, which Preistley indirectly blames on conservatives like Birling who had already caused untold damage to society. This quote is also from the communion, which shows the Inspector’s religious connection and mystifies the reader even more about who he really is. The Inspector’s identity is further mystified when the cast find that he is not a registered police officer.
Overall Preistley used Goole as his own persona in the play. He shares exactly the same views as Preistley. Right through the play he takes the moral high ground and the audience gets the impression that he is always right and is almost omniscient. The play-writ uses this is the same way he used Birling. Having the character with the views that Preistley disagreed with being always wrong and the character that embodies Preistley’s views always right gives the subtle message to the audience that Preistley is right.
After looking over the play my views of Preistley’s aim have changed. He mainly uses it as a way to get his ideas across in a stronger way than just stating them. Contained in this play are Preistley’s views on communism, war and fascism. Of course Preistley was trying to show what an immoral society we lived in but first and foremost he was trying to tell the world what he thought. Whether he achieved this or not depends on your viewpoint but in my opinion he defiantly succeeded and I finished the play feeling I had learnt something about human nature.
