Comparison of the Women in an Inspector Calls

The stimulus of this essay will be the play "An Inspector Calls" by J.B. Priestly. The main objective of the essay is to discuss, compare and contrast the roles of the three woman in the play. These are Sybil Birling, Sheila Birling, and Eva Smith; Edna may be another woman but she is really too minor a character to focus on. In this essay I will be looking at character, action and the dramatic effects of both. I will be talking about dramatic devices and structures as well as studying the social, historical and cultural context of the play.

If you are looking for major similarities between all three characters, you really won't find much apart from the fact that they are all women. Mrs Birling and Eva Smith are chalk and cheese (metaphorically of course). From completely different sides of many spectra, such as social economical and personality, apart from gender and species, I really can not think of any other traits that they share in common. Shelia is more of a go between the two. She is not as snobby or as un-compassionate as her callous mum, but her social position is a million miles away from that of Eva Smith's.

Sheila Birling and Mrs Birling are related (obviously) but they are much more distanced than you might think. In this era it was the norm for parents to be distanced from their children, so as you can imagine with Sybil's case, she hardly even would have known her own daughter.

At the start of the play we see a very closed minded view of Sheila. She is shown as something of a shallow airhead, a Paris Hilton of the Victorian era, if you will. She is very impressed by material goods, especially the engagement ring that Gerald presents her with, calling it "wonderful" and saying "look mummy - isn't it a beauty?" She is also in her twenties and still calls her mother 'mummy', another indication of her girlish immaturity. These two pieces of evidence also work for her case as well as against it. They are quite symbolic later on in the play where impressions of Sheila change and her estimation goes up considerably. First of all, she gives Gerald back his ring, claiming that she wants to start their relationship afresh (something that I'll come back to later). Secondly, she refers to Mrs Birling as 'mother' and seems to see her in a different light, unimpressed and ashamed of flippant and unsympathetic attitude.

She is originally very enthusiastic about the engagement and obviously loves Gerald very much. However, she is not stupid and knows that he was doing something suspicious last summer, even though she doesn't know exactly what. She mentions it quite lightly and in an amiable manner "except for all last summer, when you never came near me, and I wondered what had happened to you." Though it does let us know right from the start that Gerald is up to something, and we can guess that he had something to do with Eva Smith even before the other characters do, good use of dramatic irony by the playwright.

She is deeply upset but to be honest, not too surprised when she hears the news of Gerald's affair. As I have said earlier, she hands Gerald back his ring, asking to start their relationship afresh. This shows signs of her developing maturity towards the end of the play in two ways. She is calm and dignified in her manner, not delivering the infantile histrionics that would have been expected of her at the beginning of the play, and she knows that she really loves him and does not want him completely out of her life. She does not however forgive him completely and utterly, showing that she is independent.

Mrs Birling is, on the whole, a very nasty piece of work. She is even more conservative and cold-hearted than her husband, which is no easy feat. She takes no responsibility whatsoever for the suicide of Eva Smith, and tries to blame her, calling her "impertinent". She seems to think that because she is rich, she is never to blame for anything. What is even worse than her nauseating self-righteousness is the fact that she's deluded, she genuinely believes everything she says.

Mrs Birling is very comfortable with her position in society, or at least we think she is. Her icy demeanor and po-faced manner give very little about her aspirations. She is not as high a status as the Crofts but unlike her husband, has no visible burning desire to be so, she is already "her husband's social superior" and seems to be content with that. She is very aware as well, reprimanding her husband for the mere triviality of thanking the cook "Arthur, you're not supposed to say such things".

Not only does Mrs Birling put herself on a pedestal, but she has contempt for everyone else. She even patronises her own children, treating them as if they were about fifteen years younger than they actually are. She finds the inspector absolutely despicable, as if she was above the law "I beg your pardon!" according to her, if she doesn't like the inspector's attitude, that means he has to leave. If she got held hostage by terrorists she would probably say "how dare you take me hostage? Get out of my house this instant!" and genuinely believe that it would work.

Our image of Mrs Birling is a negative one from the very start and only gets work, she is symbolic of the capitalism that the playwright has set out to expose and undermine.

While Mrs Birling is seen as the nemesis of socialism, Eva Smith is portrayed as its champion. She is more of a symbol than a character, seeing as though she doesn't actually appear but is still very important. Also The name Eva is probably derived from Adam and Eve, plus Smith is Britain's most common surname, so really Eva could have been a metaphor for everyone.

Both Priestley and Inspector Goole (who are very similar) really support Eva Smith and while everyone (apart from Mrs Birling perhaps) feel sorry for her death, the inspector and the playwright are the only ones who haven't done her wrong.

In conclusion, I think that the three women in the play are poles apart, but only enhances our enjoyment of the play.