Sheila: a model answer

Hi all,

I found a nearly finished Sheila essay on my iPad, which I obviously wrote while you were writing yours. I've finished it off and tidied it up - and here it is:

How far does Priestley present Sheila as an admirable character?

In the early stages of An Inspector Calls, Sheila Birling is far from admirable; Priestley presents her as immature, spoilt and giddy. The stage directions describe her as a ‘girl’ in her early twenties who is ‘rather pleased with life’ and speaks with ‘mock aggressiveness’. These stage directions suggest that she has not had to grow up yet; she has had an easy sheltered life and has not had to take life too seriously thus far. She calls her parents ‘mummy’ and ‘daddy’, suggesting her immaturity, her lack of independence and her deference to the older generation. Her excitable response to receiving her engagement ring makes her seem materialistic, and at one point she addresses her fiancé, Gerald, ‘possessively’. Priestley is implying that Sheila is used to getting everything she wants.

However, Priestley suggests early on that there may be more to Sheila than meets the eye. Her first contribution to the dialogue could be seen as an attempt to undermine his her father: ‘you don’t know all about port - do you’? Perhaps this comment is innocent and honest, but a more combative nature is also suggested in the way she talks to her brother, Eric: ‘You’re squiffy... don’t be an ass, Eric.’ Mrs Birling quickly moves to shut down this conversation, but we can infer that these petty squabbles are common in the family and that they are trying to hide them from their high-status guest. Even Gerald, Sheila’s fiancé, has to be wary of Sheila’s ‘nasty temper’ when she brings up his distance from her ‘all last summer’, but at this point in the play, Sheila is only ‘half serious’.

When the Inspector arrives and tells Sheila about Eva Smith’s suicide, her response shows empathy and compassion. Unlike her father, who dismisses it as ‘horrid business’, Sheila’s response shows that she relates to Eva as a human being: ‘what was she like? Was she pretty?’ Her inquisitiveness here shows that she is immediately receptive to the Inspector’s emotive and moralistic line of questioning. She readily admits to finding her ‘impertinent’ and getting her sacked because she felt ‘jealous of her’. The word ‘impertinent’ is used pointedly by Priestley, as it reveals the Birlings' sense of superiority. Sheila’s use of the word is obviously inherited from her mother, who later uses it to describe Eva. Arthur later accuses her of ‘damned impudence.’ However, as the play develops, Sheila’s attitudes noticeably change. She says that ‘impertinent is such a silly word’. She seems to understand that it is a word that implies inequality and hierarchy. 

Her language changes in other ways too. She becomes more direct, opinionated and sarcastic in her tone. When Gerald mentions the Palace bar, she sharply replies: ‘well, we didn’t think you meant Buckingham Palace’. She also sarcastically describes Gerald as the ‘wonderful fairy prince’. These two royal images are suggestive of a privileged background and idealistic fairytale expectations which have now been punctured by the Inspector’s harsh delivery of the truth. She has become disillusioned - by her family, her fiancé and in terms of her optimistic, carefree view of the world. Her sarcasm reveals this new, bitter disillusionment. Sheila also becomes more metaphorical in her speech. She tells her parents not to build up a ‘wall’ between themselves and Eva Smith. This metaphor represents the rigid social structure that separates the Birlings from the working class. It suggests that she sees her parents as hiding away from the realities of life for working class people and protecting themselves from the consequences of their actions on others. She also seems to know what the Inspector is doing, saying that he will ‘give us the rope, so that we hang ourselves.’ She now seems perceptive. Perhaps Priestley uses Sheila to help communicate the idea of the Inspector’s unusual behaviour to the audience. She becomes an Everyman figure who recognises her flaws and is able to grow and overcome them.

Even though Sheila is immediately receptive and empathetic, posing the question ‘am I really responsible?’, as the play goes on, Priestley uses Sheila to enhance the socialistic viewpoint in the play. Her voice becomes like the Inspector’s: moralistic, direct and blunt. She refuses to entertain the idea that they are not responsible and treats her parents with derision for trying desperately to evade responsibility, sarcastically saying ‘I suppose we’re all nice people now.’ She is a changed character, and becomes an important figure for Priestley, who wants to show that it won’t be an unrealistic ghoul who changes the future, but a new generation who are capable of learning from the mistakes of the past. Sheila takes up the mantle of providing the blunt truth once the Inspector has gone, continuing her stark metaphorical language by saying that ‘we’re all in it - up to the neck.’ Her willingness to accept her mistakes and face the consequences when her parents are trying desperately to wriggle out it makes her an admirable figure.

At the end of Stephen Daldry’s theatrical production of the play, the final curtain comes down between the two generations on the stage: the older Birlings disappear behind the curtain while the younger characters remain front and centre. This is an effective way of communicating Priestley’s historical perspective: once the Edwardians are out of the way, the audience are left looking at their own generation, the people who live through the turmoil of the early twentieth century and emerge in 1945, when the play was first performed, ready to lead the country in a new, socialist direction. Sheila and Eric can be seen as representatives of the generation that rejected more of the same in the 1945 general election, and instead voted for a radical, socialist alternative that led to the establishment of the welfare state and the NHS. Sheila ends the play as a dynamic, brave and moralistic character, and Priestley certainly wants us to admire her for standing up to her parents and recognising and correcting her flaws.

Mr M