Sheila Birling undergoes arguably the most significant dramatic transformation in the entire play, shifting from a naive, compliant daughter to a passionate advocate for social conscience. Capturing this trajectory with precision is essential for writing high-scoring essays on her character, whether for GCSE exams or coursework.
In this lesson, we perform a deep dive into the best language, structural features, and dramatic techniques Priestley uses to build Sheila’s arc. We’ll analyse her shift in mode of address, her use of blunt language, and her key moments of anagnorisis. We'll also unpack the rich symbolism connected to her character, explore how she acts as a foil to both her parents and Gerald, and examine how stage directions chart her emotional and moral growth.
Timestamp
0:00 Anagnorisis
2:18 Metaphor
5:09 Symbolism Part One
6:59 Conversation Terminology
10:23 Stage Directions
14:39 Mode of Address
16:37 Blunt language
19:48 Contrast
22:08 Foil
24:55 Symbolism Part Two
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There are also resources to help you in the Study Materials section:
An Inspector Calls Vocabulary Bank
The words in this vocabulary bank will help you to develop a more sophisticated and high level understanding of the key ideas and concepts in 'An Inspector Calls'.
As well as providing a range of words, their definitions and an example sentence, this book also suggests a number of activities that you can use to revise and put the vocabulary into practice.
Bonus - it's completely free!
An Inspector Calls AQA GCSE Model Answers (Coming soon!)
This resource will have model answers for multiple years of AQA past papers, giving you the ability to see what high grade essays look like for a range of essay questions.
An Inspector Calls Edexcel IGCSE Model Answers (Coming soon!)
This resource will have model answers for multiple years of Edexcel past papers, giving you the ability to see what high grade essays look like for a range of essay questions.
An Inspector Calls Flipped Learning (Coming soon!)
This resource is designed for teachers and students: it is a workbook designed to be completed alongside all of my An Inspector Calls videos. It is essentially a structured way for you to take notes and ensure that you are squeezing every ounce of advice my videos have to offer.
I fully intend to add more videos and study materials on this play. If there's something in particular you're looking for, then register and get in touch to let me know what would help you.
Lesson Transcript:
Hello everybody, it's Mrs. Wear of Stream English here, and today we are looking at my favorite character in An Inspector Calls: Sheila. She is an absolutely brilliant character to analyze, and I'm going to show you how you can analyze her to a Grade 9 standard. So let's do this!
The key to understanding Sheila is understanding that she changes. She is not the same person at the start of the play compared to the end of the play. And there is a term for that in plays, and it is anagnorisis. Anagnorisis is when a character begins to recognize their faults, and that is absolutely what Sheila does and what Priestley wants her to do.
So the first thing we need to understand is that anagnorisis. And I forgot to say, by the way, that in the top corner—in the top corner you can see what kind of technique it is that I'm looking at. So, I'm going to be looking at a range of language, structure, and form. You are not kidding today! Form just means techniques that are only found in plays. So anagnorisis, because it's a technique for plays, is form.
We can see the anagnorisis that Sheila has in this quote from right towards the end of the play. This is long after the Inspector has left:
Eric: "It's still the same rotten story whether it’s been told to a police inspector or to somebody else... The money's not the important thing. It's what happened to the girl and what we all did to her that matters."
Sheila: "Eric's absolutely right. And it's the best thing any one of us has said tonight and it makes me feel a bit less ashamed of us. You're just beginning to pretend all over again."
And she's talking to her parents there. Now, of course—I'm trying to make a video, I can't keep stroking you all the time!
Now, this shows Sheila's anagnorisis because, of course, Mr. and Mrs. Birling don't change. They do not recognize that they should take responsibility for what they did to Eva, whereas Sheila and Eric do. So Sheila and Eric experience anagnorisis, while Mr. and Mrs. Birling do not.
So what I'm going to be focusing a lot of my analysis on is us looking at that change in Sheila's character, and how she develops, and why she changes, and why she develops in those ways as the play goes on.
And the first technique we're going to look at for that is metaphor. Now, this quote is taken from much earlier on in the play than the last one we looked at. This is now during the Inspector's investigation. However, Sheila has begun to change at this point because she has had her part of the investigation and she is now observing her mother being investigated:
Mrs. Birling: "I don't suppose for a moment that we can understand why the girl committed suicide. Girls of that class—"
Sheila: "(urgently, cutting in) Mother, don't—please don't. For your own sake, as well as ours, you mustn't—"
Mrs. Birling: "(angrily) Mustn't what? Really, Sheila!"
Sheila: "(slowly, carefully now) You mustn't try to build up a kind of wall between us and that girl. If you do, then the Inspector will just break it down. And it'll be all the worse when he does."
So Sheila uses this metaphor with her mother to make a brilliant point about, yes, the Inspector's power, but also the theme of class. The image of building a wall between us and the girl: it's that element of class whereby those of the higher classes treat themselves as if they are superior, and they try to separate themselves from those of the lower classes. And Sheila is, of course, saying you can't do that.
Now, if we think about the connotations of "wall"—something that is quite strong and robust—it really highlights that strong separation that the likes of Mrs. Birling try to create between herself and the other classes. But she also points out the Inspector will "just break it down." And I love that use of the word "just," suggesting that it's going to be quite easy for him to do so; suggesting that the Inspector, who is of course a symbol for socialist values, will be able to point out the problems with trying to create this social hierarchy and inequality in society, and it is very easy to break down and point out the problems with that inequality.
However, what's important about Sheila at this point compared to the anagnorisis that we just looked at: in the anagnorisis we just looked at, she was very clearly attacking her parents. You know, she was ashamed of her parents for not changing and not learning. At this point, there is still an element of her trying to protect her parents: "Mother, don't. Please don't." That imperative there is she's trying to give her mother advice about how to manage the Inspector, how to manage this investigation: "for your own sake as well as ours." It's about protecting the family, that plural pronoun of "ours." "And it'll be all the worse when he does." Sheila is pointing out that the people that are damaged by this investigation are the Birlings. And so her focus is still at this point less on Eva, per se, and what was done to Eva and the harm to Eva, and it's much more on us as a Birling family and protecting us as a Birling family.
That is going to change, though. She is going to shift to be much more about that fighting spirit, and being against her parents, and arguing back against her parents. And that is because of the fact that she symbolizes the younger generation and societal progress.
Now, when I say she symbolizes the younger generation: a really common theme that writers will explore is how the younger generation are much more capable of change and progress than older people, right? We've seen that countless times throughout loads of different examples of literature, even in songs: Whitney Houston said, "The children are our future..." All that good stuff! There's a general connotation behind the younger generation of change, of progress, of being open-minded, and Sheila represents all of that.
She also represents the societal progress that's going to come in Britain in part because of our younger generation. So, of course, with 1912, we are talking about—I had that image up, so you can already probably guess where I'm going with this: the suffragette movement has really sort of started and is going to grow. And one of the things that's really interesting about the suffragette movement is that it's kind of been sanitized in the modern day. We talk about how they fought for the right to vote with protest, and determination, and grit—it was way more violent than that! The fight for suffrage by these women: it involved attacking police, it involved bombs, it involved going to prison, it involved hunger strikes. It was brutal; it was full of fight and struggle against a very traditional, old way of thinking. And what Sheila essentially embodies is that first-wave feminism spirit: that pushback, that determination, and we can see that in her character as it keeps going.
Now, the conversation terminology I have already defined in two of my other An Inspector Calls videos. And I'll be honest, I'm getting super sick of defining it, and I'm feeling really lazy! So, I'm going to say that if you don't know these terms, you need to go have a look at my Inspector or Mr. Birling videos, because I explain the definitions of all these terms in both of those videos, and you'll be able to just flick through the timestamps, find conversation terminology, and go see that. And then, of course, at a later date, come back and watch it all, because it's all incredibly helpful.
But for right now, I just want to show you the conversation terminology on this slide; I'm not going to talk it through, and instead I'm going to go straight into explaining what it tells us about Sheila.
When we have the very start of the play before Sheila starts to change, the topic management, the turn-taking is all her father: he is very much the one in control, he has the power and the authority. Then, of course, the Inspector shows up: he topic manages, he does the turn-taking. But when the Inspector leaves, this is where Sheila takes on that fighting spirit: she doesn't need the Inspector anymore, she doesn't need a man anymore speaking for her! Sheila really heavily turn-takes; she holds almost, I would say, equal weighting with her parents in the back-and-forth. She doesn't allow them to just try and keep changing the topic; she keeps bringing it back alongside her brother Eric. She is a big part of that topic management.
And that change in the control that she has in the conversation is representative of how she has gained power as the play has gone on. She has gained power because of her anagnorisis: because she has recognized her faults, and she now realizes she may not have a power that comes from age or experience compared to her parents, but she has moral power, she has moral integrity, and her parents don't have either of those two things. And so she is filled with a righteous anger: at her parents for refusing to change, at society for treating Eva that way, and at herself for being so ignorant and oblivious to the issues in society. And when she's fueled by that power that the Inspector has helped give her—and we're going to look at more of that as the video goes on—that is how we then see this change in the way the conversations go down: she is much more demanding, much more controlling, much more determined.
The same goes for the back-channeling. Before the Inspector arrives, she overwhelmingly back-channels her father and shows that she's listening to him and she supports him. Once the Inspector arrives, she starts to back-channel the Inspector. And I haven't provided exact quotes for any of this because there are just so many you can refer to. And to be honest, when you're in an exam situation where you've had to memorize quotes, you don't need to memorize quotes for this; you just need to talk about the pattern across the text, and for an exam purpose this will do you fine. But the key point is: she starts back-channeling Mr. Birling, she then back-channels the Inspector, and that is all a signal of her shifting in her views, her changing in her views. Because, of course, Mr. Birling is a symbol of individualist and capitalist ideology, while the Inspector is a symbol of collectivism and socialism, and she's shifting from one to the other: from Mr. Birling and capitalism to the Inspector and socialism.
This shift leads to a big change in how she behaves, and we can see that first of all with stage directions. So let's start by looking at an example from right in the beginning of the play, Act 1, before the Inspector has arrived. I've got two lines here, both of which were said to Gerald when it's talking about, you know, where was he last summer:
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"(half serious, half playful) Yes—except for all last summer, when you never came near me..."
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"(trying to be light and easy) You'd better look out or I'll begin weeping."
Now, here's what's significant, I think, about these stage directions: first of all, the "half playful," the "light and easy"—the connotations of those words fit with the expectations of women in this time period. Women needed to be fun, light-hearted, carefree, innocent, delicate, beautiful. And so the way that she's talking to Gerald fits with that expectation of a woman of her time, a woman of her age.
However, there are also hints that she is actually much more emotionally complex than society would believe: "half serious," "trying to be light and easy." The juxtaposition between "half serious, half playful" indicates that she is having to tone down her true feelings, her true emotions about Gerald ghosting her for a summer, and she's having to act like she's completely fine with it and it's no big deal, when actually she does care. Similarly, that verb of "trying to be light and easy" indicates that, number one, it's not easy for her, and number two, that she is deliberately creating a persona that isn't authentic to who she is.
But when you look again at that language, "You'd better look out or I'll begin weeping," that is a classic cliché expectation of women: crying about everything, being all over-emotional, all that kind of stuff. So before the Inspector arrives, there are hints that she's just playing the game: she's acting a certain way to fit into society's expectations of women, but there are also those hints that she is a lot more complex than that.
During the Inspector's investigation, once she's changed and once the Inspector has left, the stage directions also really change. And oh my goodness, has she gone sassy! She does not care anymore about some fake persona. Just look at these stage directions:
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"(bitterly)"
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"(with irony)"
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"(sharp sarcasm)"
And by the way, keep in mind that these stage directions come up more than once: like "bitterly" is said more than once, "with irony" more than once, "sharp sarcasm" more than once—maybe not in that exact same wording, but certainly those exact same emotions. She is sarcastic, bitter, mad, and she is not hiding it anymore! She is so forthright in how she feels, and she is laying it all out there.
So that change in her—again remembering because she's gained that moral power now: she recognizes her wrongs, she recognizes the problems in society about how we treat one another—she now feels confident to break away from the traditional ways that women are behaving, and she's prioritizing pushing her views on what is right over maintaining some facade of how women should be. And these kinds of stage directions do not fit in with the expectation of women as well: the idea of a woman explicitly being angry or sarcastic, especially, again, really often these are said to a man—said to Gerald or Mr. Birling—that is a big deal. It is a real change in the power dynamics, the male-female power dynamics.
And again, if we think about her symbolizing those younger generations and that societal progress, she is that first-wave feminist spirit of fighting against the man, fighting against the patriarchy, once they have recognized the ills and problems in society. And of course, for our 1945 audience, they are aware of what the suffrage movement achieved for women and how much it progressed society. And so Sheila's behavior would be celebrated by our audience, would be recognized and appreciated by our audience, because part of what Priestley is trying to get our audience to do is recognize how far Britain has come between 1912 and 1945, and how much further we need to go. And Sheila is a big part of that: she is the progress of Britain.
Another way we see it is with the modes of address. So again, going back to Act 1, Sheila before her change: just look at how she refers to her parents—this is a girl in her early, early twenties:
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"Yes, go on, Mummy."
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"Look—Mummy—isn't it a beauty?" (That's talking about her engagement ring.)
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"I'm sorry, Daddy. Mummy sent me to look for you."
It's all about requesting permission from her parents, okay? "Yes, go on, Mummy" sounds like she's commanding her mom, but she's not: her dad had just told her mom to have some drink, and she is back-channeling dad by agreeing with him and being like, "Yeah, mom, have a drink, join us."
The way that all of that language is phrased—with the mode of address being really childish and immature, and then the rest of the language in that quote indicating how her parents are directing her and pushing her—that is someone who is absolutely innocent, naive, and under the yoke of the patriarchy. That is another way of saying a woman who is perhaps unaware of, and under the control of, sexist, patriarchal views of women and how they should live their lives.
If we contrast that to later in the play, we've got two quotes for you:
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"Of course, Mother. It was obvious from the start."
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"Go on, Gerald. Don't mind Mother."
Look at that sass! Imperatives towards her mother, imperatives towards Gerald—a man and her social superior! Sarcasm, brutally blunt: "It was obvious from the start." Speaking to her mom, calling her "Mother," no longer "Mummy." Gerald: "Why, you fool—he knows!" Calling Gerald a fool! Sheila is not here to play!
So, you're going to be able to analyze that change in her language, that change in mode of address, that change in how she relates to her parents and the relationship that she has to her parents. Because again, that is all a big fat symbol of her shifting her political ideology, her shifting her views and her beliefs much more towards a belief in social responsibility and collectivism.
Linked to that "It was obvious from the start," she becomes so blunt: there is so much blunt language once she has changed. Here's just some examples:
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"He means that I'm getting hysterical now."
So Mr. Birling had just said something quite euphemistic—that means, like, he's trying to be quite subtle and not outright saying what he means. Sheila contrasts it, comes straight in, and explicitly says what he was trying to say about her.
That use of the word "hysterical" is also important as well in terms of the theme of gender and looking at the treatment of women. "Hysterical" was a word often used in a derogatory way—that means in a negative way—to talk about women, because there was this now completely debunked condition called hysteria that would only affect women. And it was basically—we would understand it today as more like a kind of depression as a result of having your whole life being oppressed and restricted. But back then, they saw it as: women cannot handle their own emotions. Because the word "hysterical" has—basically, it has roots in the word for uterus; if you think of like the medical term for removing your uterus, it's hysterectomy. I'm not going to go into the full etymology now, but it's linked to that word, linked to women's reproductive parts. And so hysteria and hysterical was all about women not being able to handle their emotions, and women not being able to control themselves.
And so there's a huge irony in this, because, number one, she is being so blunt in pointing out the misogyny that is coming from her father; but thing two, she is the opposite of that! For us as an audience, when we read Sheila in this play, she is not out of control: she's using imperatives, she's topic managing, she's in control of the conversation. She seems the most powerful and most in control that she has ever been! And so when Mr. Birling calls her hysterical, we do not remotely as an audience come down on his side of that viewpoint; we come down on the opposite. We are thinking, "No, Mr. Birling, your traditional, misogynistic ways of talking about women are completely wrong here." This is, again, that fighting spirit of somebody pushing for change and pushing to make the world a better place.
You can see in this other blunt language:
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"I suppose we're all nice people now." (More sarcasm!)
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"You ought to be saying sorry to me." (That modal verb "ought," almost like a command to Gerald.)
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"Imperatives again: but you're forgetting I'm supposed to be engaged to the hero of it." (Sarcasm again!)
She is just so blunt. And this blunt language hasn't come out of nowhere. Do you know who else in An Inspector Calls is really blunt and uses lots of blunt language? If you've watched my video, then you already know where I'm going with this: it's the Inspector! The Inspector, from the moment he shows up, uses blunt language. And so Sheila using blunt language can be analyzed from a perspective, again, of signaling her change in a character, because her language is starting to mirror that of the Inspector: she's starting to talk like he does.
And the more that she starts to talk like the Inspector, the more she contrasts against her own parents. So a big part of that change in Sheila is, like, seeing her go from being on the same side as her parents to just the huge gap between them as they just go off in completely different directions with completely different views. Just have a look at these two quotes:
Sheila: "But these girls aren't cheap labour—they're people."
To understand the full ramifications of this quote, we have to remember a quote said by Mr. Birling (and I do analyze this quote in my Mr. Birling video): he says, "It was my duty to keep labour costs down." So he refers to the people he works for as "labour"; he uses that business jargon. Later on, fast-forward a little bit, the Inspector also uses that jargon as a point of, like, attacking that way of thinking, attacking that dehumanization of the working class and treating them like they're just dispensable tools for your business. And Sheila back-channels the Inspector in that, and says, "But these girls aren't cheap labour—they're people." She rehumanizes them. So that line from Sheila is a direct contrast to something her father has already said.
Now, there's been a gap between what her father said and what she said, so she's not yet outright arguing with him—that is going to come later. However, she is absolutely beginning to show different views and different values to her father.
You've also got this quote, and this time the investigation has reached the point of Mrs. Birling, and we've heard everything about what Mrs. Birling has done, and Sheila describes what Mrs. Birling has done as "cruel and vile." And she says that direct to her mother's face. The power behind the pejorative connotations of "cruel" and "vile": they are quite extreme condemnations of somebody's behavior, and she is using those words to talk about her mother, and she is saying those words to her mother's face! So again, a huge contrast in the values of Mrs. Birling versus Sheila, because we can see Sheila's explicit condemnation of her mother and her mother's behavior.
All of this: younger generation versus the older generation, it's about that contrast between our two different generations. And in some ways, I would argue this ends up making Sheila a foil to her parents.
Now, a foil is designed to illustrate or reveal information, traits, values, or motivations of one character through the comparison and contrast of another character. So Sheila isn't the foil of her parents the whole way through the play—only once she has changed. But once she has changed, she really does—like the change in her and the change in Eric really does illustrate and reveal how stubborn and unchanging her parents are. So she does become their foil, particularly after the Inspector has left and she and Eric are left fighting to maintain the views that he has tried to instill in the Birling family.
She also, though, is arguably a foil for another character, and that is Eva. They're both young women, but they are completely different classes. Arguably part of Sheila's role in the play is to serve as a comparison for how class affects the treatment of women. Because, of course, both of them experience sexism: both Sheila and Eva experience sexism, but the scale of it, the level of impact it has on their lives, is not the same. And so what Priestley is trying to point out is that, if we almost think of it as like a discrimination war of which is worse, sexism or classism, his point is essentially: classism is the root, is the problem, because it heightens the negative impact of everything else.
So Sheila at the beginning of the play is the foil for Eva. By the end of the play, she actually has more in common with Eva in the sense that she also has that fighting spirit: Eva is also a first-wave feminist fighter, and so is Sheila. Both of them are women fighting for their rights, fighting for equality, fighting for improvement and progression in society.
Now, Sheila, of course, isn't fighting explicitly for herself, for her rights, for the vote, or for anything like that; but just that fighting spirit that she has—the pushback against capitalist values and the push for more social responsibility—that's enough to create echoes for our audience of the suffrage movement and the women that were part of that movement.
Of course, it's important for me to point out that not every single woman that was part of the real suffrage movement was a socialist—way more complicated than that! But she is still, ultimately, a symbol of that progress in society that comes from pushing for change. And that's what we're really supposed to be thinking about: not necessarily the real specific of the vote, but the more general push for progress, push for change.
So overall: beginning of the play, foil to Eva; end of the play, foil to her parents.
As I've already mentioned, as well as being a symbol for the younger generation's societal progress, Sheila is also a symbol for the treatment of women in this part of society. And we've looked at loads of different techniques and quotes that exemplify that, but I want to look at another one here, again taken from during the Inspector's investigation.
So this is when we find out that Alderman Meggarty is a bit creepy and has cornered Eva in a part of the bar. And Mrs. Birling, upon hearing that, is really shocked, because she says:
Mrs. Birling: "Well, really! Alderman Meggarty! I must say, we are learning something tonight."
Sheila: "(coolly) Of course we are. But everybody knows about that horrible old Meggarty. A girl I know had to see him at the Town Hall one afternoon and she only escaped with a torn blouse—"
Birling: "(sharply, shocked) Sheila!"
Now, this moment is a classic example of the treatment of women, namely the harassment that is pervasive in society, but at the same time is sort of a well-known secret. Harvey Weinstein comes to mind as a modern example of this. Sheila knew long before the Inspector's investigation: Sheila knew about sexual harassment, sexual assault by men in power. Her parents knew nothing; her parents were the oblivious ones. Sheila knew! The only difference now is Sheila isn't keeping it a secret anymore: she's being blunt, she's being open, she is exposing the misogyny. And she's doing it, again, in that slightly sarcastic, super-blunt way that we have seen her become since she started to change.
And when you look at Mr. Birling's response—his "sharply, shocked: Sheila!"—what he's shocked about: is it what Meggarty did, or is it the willingness and brutalness of Sheila to expose it?
So what we've got here is a great example of the mistreatment of women in society: how well-known it is, the open secret of it all in society as well, especially by those in power, because that is what Alderman Meggarty represents. An alderman is basically someone in local politics, so he represents that powerful man. And it also represents the arguably willful ignorance of those in society from dealing with it, from exposing it, from talking about it.
Sheila's willingness to talk about all this is, again, an important sign of her changing: she is not holding back from exposing the ills in society anymore. And while we don't have anything—the way that the play ends, I've got a video analyzing that if you need to have a look at it—the way the play ends, we don't see direct progress. We don't get to see how Sheila's pushback leads to an improvement to the treatment of women.
But that's on purpose, because, of course, this play is set in 1912. Our audience are supposed to be watching it constantly with their real-life knowledge of history in mind and how far society has come. So although we don't get to see Sheila become a suffragette or push for women's rights or anything like that, we do know that women like Sheila made a huge impact in society in taking steps towards improving the treatment of women.
Because not only has there been the suffrage movement, we have also started to have the treatment of women improve post-World War II, with more women being able to work, being able to go to university, being able to join professions like becoming a lawyer and a doctor. Things are by no means anywhere near modern standards, but they are progressing, and the treatment of women is improving.
And so, on the one hand, Sheila is a symbol for the terrible treatment of women alongside Eva, but she is also a reminder of how things are going to get better.
I hope that Sheila is now one of your favorite characters! And if you need more help with the other characters from An Inspector Calls, make sure you go check out my other videos.