Mrs Birling

Question 1

First impressions
- “about fifty, a rather cold woman”
- “her husband’s social superior”

Answer 1

• has public influence through her marriage and her charity positions
• symbol of hypocrisy in the upper classes and a demonstration of the need for a welfare state
• stage directions foreshadow her unsympathetic nature and her perception of the lower classes as inferior
• cold suggests that her self interest and lack of emotion is unnatural as women were expected to be loving, maternal and sensitive

Question 2

Upholding of the patriarchy
- “leave you men”
- “first the girl herself” and “secondly the young man”
- her denial of responsibility for ES’s death
- indifference to gerald’s affair
resistance to suffrage and change

Answer 2

• volunteers to go into the drawing room herself to leave the men to discuss topic deemed not suitable for woman - without prompting from her husband. Demonstrates her complacency with the patriarchal social system of the early 20th century, later inflicting this ideology onto her daughter.
• she takes the ignorant view that working class women choose prostitution rather than being forced into it
• she rejects the inspectors message, taking the view that Eva made her own decisions and therefore the consequences where her own fault
• fails to recognise her own suppression let alone the suppression that she and her family inflict on others, highlighting how deep rooted hypocrisy and selfishness is in upper class society
• her view of marriage is that it is a transaction and not rooted in love or loyalty, this behaviour id expected of men and not often challenged
• comfortable with the traditional values as she is privileged which perpetuates her self serving nature.

Question 3

relationship with Sheila
- “you’re behaving like a hysterical child”
- their opposing reactions to Eva Smith’s death
- control dynamic (“mummy” and “impertinent”)

Answer 3

• Mrs Birling is opposed to Sheila’s new found socialist views and therefore dismisses them to make her appear delusional rather than attempting argue her point. Priestley paint Mrs Birling in a similar light to her husband, who has also fails to form a coherent argument and resorts to personal attacks and distractions. Through this characterisation, the Birlings emphasise the Inspectors thought out interrogations and present themselves to be ignorant.
• the two characters juxtapose each other, with Sheila being the exemplar response and Mrs Birling the antithesis. These positions also represent the divide between generations and discourages Mrs Birling’s actions.
• in the beginning, Mrs Birling is very influential of Sheila, even passing on her vocabulary wither description of Eva as “impertinent” which is linguistically echoed by her mothers description of Eva. Sheila is dependant on her mother and this is demonstrated by her treatment of ES. After the Inspector arrives, there is a shift in the dynamic shift as Sheila rejects her mother’s manipulation and she later loses all influence over Sheila.