Character Analysis Of Mrs. Birling In 'An Inspector Calls'

Explore how Priestly creates like or dislike of Mrs Birling
‘An Inspector Calls’ is a well-known play which was written by J.B. Priestly in 1945. However it was set in a Midland Industrial town in 1912. Priestley deliberately set his play in 1912 because the date represented an era when all was very different from the time he was writing. In 1912, rigid class and gender boundaries seemed to ensure that nothing would change. Yet by 1945, most of those class and gender divisions had been breached. Through his play Priestly wanted to show how different the two eras were yet were only a few years apart, this shows that things can change. As priestly was a socialist who believed everyone should be treated fairly he did not approve of the way in
In describing her in this way it is possible to suggest that she has no warmth to her character and she doesn’t come across very approachable unless you know her very well. Mrs Birling may want to come across this way as she doesn’t want the lower classes to think she is friendly enough to talk or even consider helping them in their daily struggles. By choosing the word ‘cold’ to describe Mrs Birling, Priestly is suggesting that Mrs Birling has no feelings and we can see this throughout the play as she doesn’t feel guilty about the time she prejudiced against the girl who applied to her committee for help and saw it as her duty to refuse to help her, she refused to take any blame for this. Priestly is using the word ‘cold’ to present Mrs Birling at the beginning of the play because he wants to show people that Upper/Middle Class women only cared about their class and didn’t have to be responsible for the lower class welfare, this was almost every woman who was in a higher class that was presented as cold hearted as they don’t care for lower people in society which priestly disagreed with highly as he was an socialist. Personally I dislike Mrs Birling as it is easy to dislike her as she is described as ‘cold’ which makes me think she isn’t loving and genuine and makes me think of her as cruel and
While the story of Eva Smith is being informed to the family, Mrs Birling hears a fact about Eva which she cannot understand and comments on by stating “Girls of that class”. The way in Mrs Birling comment on this fact about Eva refusing to take money from the father of her child suggests to me that Mrs Birling thinks of the lower class as worthless. By choosing the word ‘that’ makes me think that Mrs Birling would have used emphasis to show how much she despise the lower class and how much their ways of life disgust her. Priestly present Mrs Birling in this way as this is how every other person in the higher class would have thought about the young female that didn’t take the money. This show that all the people in the higher class looked down on the lower class and the lower class were inconsequential to the higher class society. This makes me extremely dislike Mrs Birling as I believe every should be treated with the same respect as we are all the same just born into different background and that shouldn’t affect how we are