Mr Birling is, as he put it, a "hard headed, practical business man," but it seems he is not much more than this. He is not much of a father to Eric or Sheila, changing the subject from Sheila's marriage, to business.
Another important thing to Mr. Birling is his reputation. He is desperate ...
for the Eva Smith story never to get out to the public, offering bribes to the inspector on more than one occasion. Mr Birling seems more worried about his reputation than the fact that he helped lead a young girl to suicide. And when he finds out, at the end of the play, that there was no Inspector Goole, he is relieved and the fact that everything the inspector said could have happened, he dismisses the possibility at once. Priestley has deliberately created the character, Mr Birling, to behave like this. He thinks it will help make the middle class people realise how ugly arrogance is and make them think about their actions. He has very successfully achieved this using Mr. Birling, who was never going to accept his part in the blame for the death of Eva Smith.
However, Sheila Birling is much more considerate and distressed when she hears of Eva Smith's death. She believes she is partley responsible fwith the rest of her family and Fiance. Sheila seems to learn her lesson. She regrets her actions and promises "I will never do it again." Sheila, unlike her father, seems to have a conscience. I think Priestley uses Sheila to show people that we can learn from our mistakes. He makes the audience prefer Sheila to Mr Birling, showing how consideration and thought for others can be much more attractive in a person.
The inspector has the most authority, even more so than Mr Birling, commanding and stern with the Birlings and Gerald. He is very clever about the way he goes about his business, fooling the Birlings into believing this suicide actually happened, and making a deep impact on a few of them.
Even the women of the Birling family are thought of as being lower than...
men. Mr Birling expects the women to agree with him all the time and Sheila is often found apologising to her father and backing down to him; "I'm sorry, Daddy." This seems as though she thinks she has no right defend herself. This could have been caused by the way her mother and father have brought her up, in a system where she never talks back to the men of her class. Or it could be that Sheila has not arrogance and knows that, with her stubborn father, it is easier to back down.
A huge factor in this play is money. At the very beginning of the play, the Birlings seem to put money over anything else, when they quickly change the topic of conversation from marriage and Sheila's happiness, to business. It is the Birling's class that makes them look down on those who were not as fortunate. Priestley sets the play in the Birling's "substantial and heavily comfortable, but not cosy and homelike" house. This is what helps us picture in our minds what the Birlings are like. Mr. Birling also has a very proud and ignorant attitude, which makes us understand that he is capable of behaving in such a manner, towards a girl who isn't as rich. Mr Birling boasts all the way through the play, and tries to make the inspector feel intimidated, using statements such as "I was an alderman for years - and Lord Major two years ago - an I'm still on the Bench." Mr Birling seems to be heavily hinting to the inspector that he has authority over him. Mr Birling consequently is taken aback when Inspector Goole didn't treat him with the respect he thought he deserved.
The overall message in An Inspector Calls is that we shouldn't become so involved in our own lives that we forget about other people.
