Is Mrs Birling unfeeling in “An Inspector Calls”?
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Inspector Calls: Historical Context and Writer's Viewpoints.
FULL REVISION KIT - AN INSPECTOR CALLS - MATERIAL NEEDED FOR GRADE 9 - AQA SPEC
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Is Mrs Birling unfeeling in “An Inspector Calls”?
Throughout the play “An Inspector Calls”, Priestley presents Mrs Birling
as unfeeling. She exclaims “It’s his responsibility”. Priestley uses the short,
sharp sentence to create an assertive tone for the audience The third person
pronoun “his” deflects any responsibility away from Mrs Birling. This is ironic
as the audience later learns that this man is Eric, causing situational irony to
form since Priestley displays to the audience how Mrs Birling expects others
to be held to different moral obligations than her and her family. Priestley uses
this double standard to show the audience how Sybil is cold and unfeeling
towards others. This is so that he can teach the audience how the aristocracy
that Mrs Birling represents is uncaring towards lower classes, so that the
audience can hold them morally accountable.
Mrs Birling is even shown to be uncaring towards her own family, saying
it wasn’t I who had her turned out”. In this statement, Priestley uses an
accusatory tone, supported by the stage direction “(agitated now)”, displaying
to the audience how Mrs Birling has no sense of familial loyalty, causing the
audience to dislike her.
However, it is not her family that Mrs Birling is most crue to, but Eva
Smith. Mrs Birling refers to Smith’s story as “a lot of silly nonsense!”. The
informal language and exclamatory remark combine to reveal Mrs Birling’s
disdain for Eva. Later she says “As if a girl of that sort would ever refuse
money!”, where Priestley uses the exclamatory remark to highlight Mrs
Birling’s prejudice against the lower social classes. Priestley displays this to
the audience as part of his socialist message by shaming the cruelty with
which the aristocracy react the lower classes Priestley achieves this by
demonstrating the unfeeling manner with which Mrs Birling treats Eva Smith.
Additionally, Mrs Birling says “I’m sorry… But I accept no blame for it at
all”. The negative conjunction “but” negates the previous sentence, underlining
Mrs Birling’s lack of remorse to the audience. In this way, Priestley further
displays the horrible way that Mrs Birling treats Eva Smith and her unfeeling
treatment of others.
Elsewhere in the play, Mrs Birling describes Eva as acting
“impertinently”. The adverb carries weight and is used by Priestley to highlight
Mrs Birling’s sense of entitlement due to her social class, to the audience. This
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