Character analysis Essay

Priestley describes him in the opening stage directions as a ‘rather portentous man’, full of his own self-importance. In the play, he is certainly very concerned with his social position – he twice mentions that he was Lord Mayor as a way of impressing Gerald (pp.8, 11), and mentions the knighthood to him, even though it is far from definite. He is solely worried about how his family’s reputation will suffer at the inquest when he hears of Mrs Birling’s part in the girl’s death (p.45), and he is more concerned about how to ‘cover†¦up’ Eric’s thefts (p.54) than about how to put them right. He tries to use first Gerald’s family name (p.13) and then his friendship with the Chief Constable (p.16) as ways of bullying the Inspector; he obviously believes that others are as easily impressed by social connections as he is. (We know he is easily impressed because of his evident pride at Gerald’s family background ; he obviously believes he has made a good match for Sheila.) His key characteristic is his complacency. He is well-off (as the opening stage directions suggest), and he believes he always will be: that ‘we’re in for a time of steadily increasing prosperity’ (p.6). This success, however, has been at the expense of others – he threw the girl out of her job for asking for a modest rise, and intends in the future to work with Crofts Limited ‘for lower costs and higher prices’ (p.4), exploiting his power as a capitalist to profit at the expense of others. Birling does not believe he has a responsibility to society, only to his family: ‘a man has to mind his own business and look after himself and his own’ (p.10). He is not upset, unlike Eric, at hearing the details of the girl’s death (p.12), which shows him to be a little heartless. He is suspiciously defensive when he thinks the Inspector is accusing him of causing it, and – like Mrs Birling – is relieved when he thinks the finger is no longer pointing at him. This is hypocritical because, as the Inspector says, ‘the girl’s [still] dead, though’ (p.18). He also has double standards: for he sees nothing strange in wanting to protect Sheila from the unpleasantness of the girl’s life and death, yet feels no guilt at not having protected the girl herself. Crucially, Priestley undermines this self-important, complacent man, who believes his only responsibility is to his family, right at the start of the play. He is shown as short-sighted and wrong:  Prediction  Reality  Ã¢â‚¬ËœWe’re in for a time of steadily increasing prosperity’  The Wall Street Crash (1929) and the Great Depression within a generation  Ã¢â‚¬ËœThere isn’t a chance of war’  World war within two years, with a second to follow within the same lifetime  Ã¢â‚¬ËœIn 1940†¦you’ll be living in a world that’ll have forgotten all these Capital versus Labour agitations’  The General Strike (1926) and the continued rise of the Trade Union Movement. The Titanic: ‘unsinkable, absolutely unsinkable’  SS Titanic sinks on her maiden voyage  This dramatic irony at his expense encourages us to question how many of his other beliefs are correct; Priestley, as a socialist, is not sympathetic to what this capitalist believes.  He also undermines Birling’s relationship with his family, the only institution that Birling believes matters. In Act Two, both his children – who learn from the Inspector in a way Birling never does – behave badly in front of him (pp.32-33), and his heir Eric is later revealed as both an alcoholic and a thief. After the Inspector has gone, Birling simply wants things to return to the way they were. He cannot understand Sheila’s and Eric’s insistence that there is something to be learnt, and he is relieved and triumphant when he feels that scandal has been avoided and everything is all right. Right up until the end, he claims that ‘there’s every excuse for what both your mother and I did – it turned out unfortunately, that’s all’ (p.57). Birling is not the cold and narrow-minded person that his wife is; he simply believes in what he says. He is a limited man, who is shown to be wrong about many things in the play; it is the Birlings of the world whom Priestley feared – in 1945 – would not be willing or able to learn the lessons of the past, and so it is to the younger generation that Priestley hopefully looked instead†¦Ã‚  Mrs Birling  Priestley describes her in the opening stage directions as ‘a rather cold woman’ (p.1).  She expects Sheila to make the same sacrifices in marriage that she had to (p.3); she has a clear sense of her duty within the family.