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Mr Birling
How does Priestly present the character of Mr Birling?
Mr Birling is symbolic of the selfish, capitalist higher class who only really care about
their own social image. Anytime Mr Birling’s social image is threatened his insecurities
are portrayed to the audience and lack of remorse and acceptance of responsibility
are also constantly portrayed by Priestly throughout. Mr Birling is a static character in
the play and illustrated as the vehicle for capitalism, which contrasted Priestley’s own
views of socialism and therefore Priestly makes Mr Birling the most disliked character in
the play due to his arrogance and his firmly entrenched attitude within the 1912 ante-
bellum social elite. In this way Mr Birling is displayed as an antithesis to the Inspector, as
well as reluctant to change and caught up in his insecurities.
One of the most significant traits of Mr Birling is that he is capitalism personified. He
serves to the audience as the living embodiment of capitalist ideology as reflected by
Priestly in his physical appearance. We learn Mr Birling is from a lower-class
background and so is ‘provincial in his speech’ conveying his regional Brumley
accent. The adjective ‘provincial’ used by Priestly in the stage directions reinforces
the lower-class origins of Mr Birling and so Priestly highlights to the audience that he
tries to compensate for this lower-class accent with material possessions. To further this
depiction of him he is ‘portentous’ conveying a sense that he must dress to impress
indicating insecurities and the fact he has to try really hard to maintain his social
image and status which he has built up. The adjective portentous also gives an
immediate sense of Mr Birling’s indulged self-temperament to the audience. Priestly
dresses Mr Birling in this way to show the ignorance and insecurities of the capitalist
upper class and this allows him to reach out to his audience and connect with them
as they can relate. In addition, the plosivity from the repeated use of the ‘p’
consonant adumbrates a harsh feel and shows us from the offset that Mr Birling is not
a character that we will like.
Mr Birling’s self-absorbed perspective on life is evidenced through his immediate
reclamation of the spotlight during his daughter’s engagement with Gerald. He
makes numerous speeches intended to educate the younger generation to which
Priestly cuts short by having the Inspector act as a sense of relief to the audience by
creating a break in the speech and ringing on the doorbell. Before the inspector’s
arrival Mr Birling proclaims, ‘it is one of the happiest nights in my life.’ Priestly further
conveys the selfish nature of Mr Birling by using the personal pronoun ‘my.’ The
emphasis on it impacting his own life, rather than his daughters shows that his
happiness stems from the social status and reputation he stands to gain, and Mr Birling
doesn’t care if they are happily married once again portraying the narcissistic
capitalist attitudes in 1912 Britain. Priestly is therefore presenting the idea that business
is of greater importance than family for the upper class and this prospect of increased
profit is reinforced since he objectifies his own daughter as a bargaining chip to
Gerald saying, ‘she’ll make you very happy.’ The audience watching the play in 1945
would have been disgusted by this view as the world was a changed place. There
was a Labour government on the brink of revolutionising Britain and by this time the
welfare state (a state where the government effectively looked after people) was
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