Celebrating Sheila's engagement to Gerald

Arthur's confident speech to Eric and Gerald about business and the future

• Merge 2 companies

• Could improve business = 2 companies Crofts and Birlings should merge. and start 'working together' in the future.

• Marriage is a business deal - will 'lower costs and higher prices'

• Gerald says his mother disapproves of the engagement as he will be marrying beneath him.

• Priestley subtly illustrates, he sees his daughter’s engagement to Gerald Croft as a financial move and potentially the first step towards a merger between the Birling and Croft businesses. Birling represents the political point of view opposite to Priestley’s own.Future predictions

  • Conflicts workers and bosses - says will come to nothing but we know there were strikes between 1912 and 1945. General strike 1926 - Country ground to a halt in 9 days

  • Technological progress - recently completed Titanic 'unsinkable, absolutely unsinkable'

  • War in Germany - Eric asks whether there will be war in Germany. Arthur say no way. 'Silly little war scares' 2 years later, along comes World War One.

• Dramatic Irony

  • Makes audience think might be wrong about other things as well

  • Belief in the motto 'Every man for himself'

  • Birlings optimism seems foolish and short-sighted.

Analysis

• Over the top dinner at home in a room that is highly decorated, highlighting an upper middle class family.

• Everybody is content and saying the right things

• Priestly's idea of a 'perfect middle class family'

• Approach by Mr Birling is overconfident and every man for himself. 'a man has to make his own way- has to look after himself - and his family too'

• Successful businessman who is well respected in Brumley

• Owns a factory

• Head Birling family

• Thinks he's successful as he is 'hard-headed, practical man of business'

• Birling’s politics of self-reliance and personal responsibility are staunchly and unashamedly capitalist, perhaps even right-wing.

• boasting about his status as a former Lord Mayor and a magistrate.

• He believes in “low wages, high prices,” is absolutely dismissive of Eva’s strike, and, even at the close of the Inspector’s inquiry, can only limply claim that he would “give thousands” to make things better. Money, indeed, dominates the way he thinks, even to the extent that,

  
  

  Sybil

• Arthur's wife

• Obsessed with etiquette

• Works hard to keep up their reputation

• Status in society

Sheila

• Daughter

• Early twenties

• Engaged to Gerald, the son of their competitor

Eric

• Son

• Works in the family business

• Secret alcoholic

• Inherit father's business

Gerald Croft

• Upper class businessman

• Son of their competitor

• 30

• Engaged to Sheila

• Crofts more established and socially superior

Edna

• Birlings parlour maid

• Welcomes inspector to the house

• Only working class woman on stage

• Working for what is likely a minimum wage, clearing the table and putting out port and cigars.

• It is no accident, surely, that “Eva” the girl and “Edna” the maid have such similar names.

• The presence of Edna onstage throughout the play symbolizes the presence of Eva and reinforces Priestley’s ultimate point about the abuse of power and the failure to take sufficient responsibility for one’s actions toward others.

  
  

  Inspector

• Claims to be a police inspector

• Investigating death of Eva Smith

• From what we know about the Inspector’s later (seemingly supernatural) abilities, his statement “I’ve only recently transferred” carries tantalizingly ambiguous double meanings. How and from where (what town? what planet? what time?) has he “transferred?”

  
  

• Eva Smith/Daisy Renton

• Victim

• Never see her

• Might not be dead

• May be lots of different girls

• Crofts more established and socially superior

• Makes Mr Birling anxious

2) Gerald ignored Sheila last summer

• Says he was busy with work last summer

• Sheila isn't satisfied - 'yes that's what you say'

• Plants the idea that there must be a better reason for the absence.

  
  

  3) Expectations men and women

• Men supposed to be busy with work and public affairs

• Women are supposed to be interested in

  • Family

  • Clothes

  • Social étiquette (proper behaviour)

• Blunt account of Eva Smith's death

• Harsh language 'Burnt her inside and out' contrasts violently with police and playful atmosphere at the start

• Catches them off guard which helps the investigation

  
  

Theme - Family Life

• Birlings family life held together with secrets and polite behaviour

• Inspector disrupts everything

• Lets out the secrets.

Birling sacked Eva Smith to protect his business

• Inspector lets Birling tell the story of why he sacked Eva

• Birling given a false sense of being in charge

  • Strike

    • Workers at the factory went on strike after Birling refused a pay rise

    • He wanted to protect profits and prevent another strike

    • Sacked the 'ring leaders' including Eva

    • Eric points out the hypocrisy of sacking Eva Smith for asking for higher wages because the Birling company 'try for the highest possible prices'

  • Eva's appearance

    • Remembers her as a 'lively good-looking girl'

    • Attractive hero

    • Makes Birling look worse

Theme - Social responsibility

• Political element to the play

• Priestley positions rights of workers against the interests of the businessman

• Birling sees employees as 'cheap labour' - if he can get them to work for less he will do.

• Opposite of social responsibility -but maximum profit for the individual.

Morality

• Priestley’s key theme: the lower-class individuals are the responsibility of the middle and upper classes.

• This idea draws on traditional class morality - that society at large should care for people who are poor and need support.

• Evidence

  • As Birling did not worry about firing the girls who led the strike for more wages,

  • as Sheila did not think twice about causing the shop assistant to get in trouble,

  • so too do the Birlings routinely ignore Edna during the play.

Gerald is startled he remembers the name.

• His affair with Daisy was 'over and done with last summer'.

• Suggests they should keep it a secret so that it doesn't become a scandal

Inspector's knowledge

• Sheila sure Inspector knows everything already

• She is worried 'how much he knows that we don't know yet'

• Gerald and Sheila become anxious and suspicious which heightens the tension.

Inspector returns

Says only one word - 'Well'

Analysis

• Men and Women

  • Ok for men to have affairs and mistresses

  • Not acceptable for Sheila to have a lover Sheila's Anger

  • Sheila's anger - pleased that Gerald will be judged by the inspector regardless of the consequences of their up and coming wedding and his reputation.

  • Sheila has chosen to side with the Inspector.

Hypocrisy

• Inspector points out Gerald's hypocrisy 'and you think young women ought to be protected against unpleasant and disturbing things'

• It was men like him that took advantage of Daisy Renton 'one young woman who wasn't' protected.

• He is trying to get Sheila to leave so he doesn't have to tell her more details about his affair

Gerald's attack towards Sheila - animosity between them.

• Sheila on hearing that there is to be more questioning—decides to stay.

• Gerald, in encouraging her to leave, makes the suggestion, “You’ve been through it—and now you want to see somebody else put through it.”

• Sheila is angry that Gerald seems not to believe in her motive for staying; this is, she says “just the wrong time not to believe me.” A gap has opened between them.

Inspector speaks for Sheila

• The Inspector, not Gerald, is the one to put Sheila’s feeling into words;

• she needs to hear the whole story in order to come to terms with her part of the responsibility.

• “If there’s nothing else,” the Inspector concludes, “we’ll have to share our guilt.”

• Where - Met her in the music hall in Brumley.

• Why - He had dropped in after a long day, since the bar at the music hall was “a favorite haunt of women of the town.”

• What she looked like - He describes Eva as being “very pretty—soft brown hair and big dark eyes.”

• How they met - She was trapped in a corner by Alderman Joe Meggarty, “half-drunk and goggle-eyed,” and Gerald rescued her from that conversation.

• At the mention of Meggarty’s name, the truth starts spilling out. Mrs. Birling is shocked to hear that Meggarty is “a notorious womanizer as well as ... one of the worst sots and rogues in Brumley.”

• Change in name - Gerald says he took Eva out of the bar, and she told him her story—though under the name Daisy Renton.

• She never mentioned the name “Eva Smith.”

• Dinner - He bought her some dinner, since she was hungry and had no money to buy herself food.

• Keys to rooms - He also gave her the keys to some rooms he was keeping an eye on for a friend, and he gave her some money. “I want you to understand I didn’t install her there so that I could make love to her,” Gerald explains, though “Daisy Renton” indeed did become his mistress.

• 'I made her go to Morgan Terrace because I was sorry for her and didn't like the idea of her going back to the Palace bar. I didn't ask for anything in return'

• Mr. and Mrs. Birling interject, trying again to stop the Inspector’s questioning.

  Theme - Men and Women

  If the Palace stalls are well known for being place to pick up prostitutes, likely Gerald went there to find a prostitute himself.

  
  

  
  

• He replies that “it’s hard to say, I didn't feel about her as she felt about me ”

• Sheila replies that Daisy loved Gerald as her 'wonderful Fairy Prince'

• In response to Mrs B's comment about the disgusting affair, he says 'You know, it wasn't disgusting'

• He agrees he 'adored' being loved by her

• It was Gerald himself who broke the affair off, early in September as he had a business trip.

• The girl took it very well, he thought, and she did not blame him at all.

• He gave her enough money to see her through until the end of the year, as a parting gift.

• Effectively he had made her homeless.

As as Inspector and not Mr Birling, shows the Inspector is in control now

• Ring - The Inspector allows this, but, as he leaves, Sheila gives him back the engagement ring she had been given in Act One.

• Relationship - Sheila tells Gerald she does not dislike him, and she is relieved in a strange way to know the truth about what happened last summer. However, she tells him, “this has made a difference ... We’d have to start all over again.”

• Blames herself - 'Now at least you have been honest...It was my fault really that she was so desperate when you first met her'

• Defence - Birling defends Gerald saying 'I'm not defending him. But you must understand that lot of young men...'

  
  

  
  

• Called herself Birling

• 'Piece of gross impertinence' (rude) to dare to associate her own scandal with Birling family name

• Changed her story

  • First her husband had left her

  • Now she was pregnant

  • Later admitted she wasn't married.

2) Moral standards

• Eva/Daisy wouldn't marry the father of her child

• Wouldn't take any more money from him because

  • He was a 'youngster - silly and wild and drinking too much'

  • Money he'd been gibing to her was stolen

  • He didn't love her.

• Tries to resist inspectors questions

• Avoids admitting her own guilt

• Tells everyone

  • 'Young man' should be punished

  • Tells the inspector should be punished 'very severely'

  • Should 'confess in public his responsibility'

• Blames the father for getting involved with a girl from a different class

• Sybil thinks she wouldn't know a man who drinks and steals

Effect

• Inspector doesn't intervene and lets her walk straight into a trap - demanding punishing her own son

• Totally unaware of what Eric is going to say

• Open to the idea her family are guilty

• She is intelligent and guesses Eric may be the 'young man'

• Audience thinks she has matured since the incident at Milwards

• She is now very different from well behaved blushing bride in Act 1

Stubbornness

• Can be determined and stubborn like her parents

• Parents use stubbornness to resist Inspector

• Sheila uses it to seek out the truth

Truth

• Demands Gerald and Sybil answer Inspector's questions

• Tells Birling not to interfere defending a young man sleeping around.

• No, he's giving us rope - so that we'll hang ourselves' - realises Birlings are all going to walk straight into the trap.

• Dismisses her as over-excited but soon regrets not listening to what she is saying.

Says they weren't 'the same people who sat down to dinner'

• As if summoned to the dock and his mother has already declared him guilty

• Absent for much of the play - left the dining room in Act 1

• Eric is always running away from his family and their expectations of him

• Cliffhanger - audience left wondering whether Eric was the 'drunken young idler' that got Eva/Daisy pregnant

• 'You know don't you

• Forced Eva/Daisy to have sex with him and got her pregnant

• Drunk and threatened to cause a 'row' if he didn't let her into his flat

• Regrets his actions but shows immaturity

  • she was a 'good sport'

  • 'pretty'

  • Insensitive given how badly he treated her

• She treated him as a 'kid'

Analysis

Eric doesn't understand how middle class people are supposed to behave. He has acted worse than Gerald who knew how to have an affair without creating a scandal.

Audience blames his parents for his upbringing

Eric learns of his mother's involvement

• realises she was involved in Eva/Daisy and his child's death

• Furious - links her failure to 'understand' to his own childhood

• You don't understand anything, you never did. You never even tried

Father is appalled not by the suicide but the theft and shame

• Asks why he didn't come to him rather than stealing

• Accuses him of being spoilt

• 
  

Analysis

Every member of the family has let down their defences.

Cost of close and understanding relationship with her children

2. Sheila - turned her out of her second job

3. Gerald - kept her as his mistress and made her happy for a while

4. Eric 'used her' because he was drunk

5. Sybil - refused her a 'pitiable little bit of organised charity'

1) Sybil tells Eric she is 'absolutely ashamed' of his drinking

2) Eric says he's ashamed of his parents' actions

3) Sheila says she is ashamed of her own actions. She shoulders the blame and asks everyone else to do the same

Parents haven't learnt anything. The are more focused on keeping all the revelations in the family and avoiding scandal which is the only thing they are ashamed of.

• Gerald returns - says there no Inspector Goole on the for force. Confirmed by Birling who calls the police station.

• Consider it a hoax

• He is the victim

Sybil rewrite's her role in the evening

• She is proud she 'didn't give in to him'

Photographs

• Gerald points out photograph may have been different photos of different girls

Confirmation no suicide

• Gerald calls the hospital - confirms no suicide

• Birling is relieved and guilt free

Eric and Sheila's remorse

• Recall the words of Inspector

• Cannot forget - 'Everything we said had happened really had happened'

• Following the suggestion from Sybil that they would have a good laugh about it in the morning Sheila says 'So nothing really happened. So there's nothing to be sorry for, nothing to learn. We can all go on behaving just as we did'

• 'You began to learn something. And now you've stopped. You're ready to go on in the same old way'

• At the beginning just after Birling said 'a man has to mind his own business' the Inspector arrives giving a message about social responsibility

• At the end the phone rings just after Birling has laughed at 'the famous younger generation who know it all'

• Irony - Birling still thinks he knows it all and he has not learnt his lesson.

• Arrives unexpectedly

• Outsider with nothing in common with the Birlings. Mrs B says 'The rude way he spoke to Mr Birling and me - it was quite extraordinary'

• Massively interrupts cutting into dialogue with authority

• He is authoritative

  • - 'All in good time'

  • Eric - Act 2 in response to 'Now look Inspector' from Birling he replied 'He must wait his turn'

  • Gerald in response to Gerald saying 'I am glad I amuse you' he responds 'Come on Mr Croft what happened' which leads to Gerald explaining the story

  • Act 2 - Inspector asks if Gerald was in love with her, Birling interjects and states 'I must protest' Inspector replied 'Why should you do any protesting? It was you who turned the girl out in the first place'

  • When he challenges Mrs B that she is not telling the truth, Mr B demands an apology from the Inspector he replies 'Apologise for what - doing my duty?

  • Mrs Birling is asked to explain about the plea by the girl to the committee, Mrs B tries to avoid it disclosing the truth by saying 'I don't think we need discuss it' He is authoratative and says 'You have no hope of not discussing it'

  • After Mrs B suggests the Inspector should find the young man, and tries to shift the blame by saying 'Certainly. I consider it your duty. And now no doubt you'd like to say good night? He responds 'Not yet. I'm waiting'

  • Mrs B, Sheila and Eric in Act 3 are discussing the girl and his drinking and Mr B suggests that his son should have had a sense of loyalty the Inspector responds with ' There'll be plenty of time when I've gone, for you all to adjust your family relationships'

  • Later in Act 3 when they are all squabbling - 'And be quiet for minute and listen to me...' then summarises the position

• Word 'Calls' seems so casual as though he is dropping in

• Deceptive - appears casual and spontaneous but in fact single minded and calculating.

• He 'calls' the shots

• Title of the play is echoed in the words of Edna, who represents the working class under privileged members of society like Eva/Daisy - when she announces the arrival of Inspector Goole.

• Another inspector 'calls' the house on the telephone at the end of the play

• Priestley has the Inspector ring the bell just after B says 'A man has to mind his own business'

• Summons the Inspector to prove the exact opposite

Exits are a clever tactic

• Leaving Sheila and Gerald alone let Sheila interrogate Gerald - suspicion breaks them apart.

Dramatic language

• Builds on the tension and emotion

• If don't learn their less they will be taught in 'fire and blood and anguish'

• Silence after exit as no one else is speaking. Characters are left staring, subdued and wondering.

• Unsettling presence could be due to his confidence and is able to create an air of uncertainty and reel everyone in.

• Ensures he is in charge (above)

• Goole is never confused unlike the other characters

• Everything he says is taken more seriously

• Writer's technique - Inspector's voice getting louder

More than a police inspector

• Represents police and the courts tracking down the truth

• When know he isn't and police offence, Mr and Mrs B do not accept his authority

• Eric and Sheila realise moral judgment is not just about legal power

Supernatural

• Attitude of Philosopher

• Social commentator

• Knowledge of a ghost delivering a prophecy

Nothing in common with Mr B

• Doesn't play golf

• Not impressed by Birling's public profile - former Alderman and Lord Mayor

• Talks about taboo subjects - sex and politics

• Interrupts, repeats and pauses in a way that was not the norm in middle class pre war England

• Doesn't follow etiquette

Classless

• Treats everyone the same

• 'We are members of one body'

• Classes shouldn't ignore each other's needs.

• Confident

• Head of family

• Boss of his own business

Control

• Likes to be in control

• Not used to be challenged. Inspect rarely says 20 words before Birling shows a touch of impatience.

• Angrily tells Inspector 'If you don't mind I'll find out first'

  
  

  Ambitious and obsessed with status

  • 'There's a good chance of knighthood'

  • Merger with Croft by daughter's marriage is a business deal to 'lower costs and higher prices'

  • He is a wealthy self made businessman but it was more prestigious to come from an 'old country family' life the Crofts that had land, inherited wealth and titles.

  • Tried to win Crofts approval by talking about Knighthood and getting Gerald's father favourite port

  • Tries to make himself seem important by saying he plays golf with the Chief Inspector

    
    

    Business minded - 'a hard-headed practical man of business' Has the same attitude to all life

    
    

  Selfish and lack of empathy

  • ' a man has to make his own way

  • Difficult to think about other people. Doesn't believe in 'community and all that nonsense'

  • He sees other people as 'cheap labour'

  • Doesn't just refuse higher wages, but makes it worse for them by firing people who challenge his authority

    
    

• Anxious

  • 'there'll be a public scandal unless we're lucky'

  • Inspector threatens Birlings middle class values

  • When his good name is threatened he is terrified and would give 'thousands' a bribe to avoid scandal

Dramatic irony

• Optimistic about the future dismisses 'silly little war scares'

• Optimism seems foolish and short-sighted

• Inspector undermines his authority

Lack of responsibility

• Rather pass of the Inspector as a 'hoax' than face up to what he has done.

• His family is falling apart and he blames the Inspector for making a 'nasty mess' of the night's celebrations.

Stage directions and language to create character

• Provincial speech - meaning regional accent

• Accent and social class are closely linked - Middle class businessman rather than upper class

• Birling continuous speech in the play - doesn't like to be interrupted - Eric tries to correct him 'Just let me finish Eric'

• Ignores other people's opinions ' repeatedly shouts 'rubbish'. Finishes his own sentences with 'of course' to make his claims seem more obvious

• Shouldn't compliment cook - Tells her husband off for saying the food was good in front of a guest - isn't polite to mention the cook or lower servants. Upper class families would not say 'Tell the cook from me'

• Better manners - always reminds her family. Tells Sheila off for using slang

• Power - Won't let anyone boss her around. Tells Inspector - 'You have no power to make me change my mind'

Proud of her social status

• Traditional values - When you're married you'll realize'

• Follows rules of etiquette - set of rules about social behaviour - what is acceptable and what isn't

• Rules are more important that moral rules

• Standards make her walk into the Inspector's trap

Prejudice

• Strong set of beliefs about social status

• Prepared to be cruel - rejecting Daisy's appeal. 'As if a girl of that sort would ever refuse money''

Charity

• Mrs B supports charity - Brumley Women's Charity Organisation

• Only supports 'deserving cases'

• Gives Mrs B authority to decide who is deserving or not.

• She uses her 'influence' to convince other members to reject the appeal as the girl used the Birling name.

• Deserving to distinguish poor who physically can 't help themselves and those who shouldn't be helped.

Self Centred and doesn't change

• Son - Hasn't noticed her son's alcoholism

• Daughter - Dismisses her daughter's worries that Gerald lost interest in her last summer

• Responsibility - Won't accept her actions 'I accept no blame for it all'

• Regrets - only in relation to not having 'asked him a few questions' as she wants control

Stage directions

• Answers 'haughtily, very sharply, bitterly

• Act 3 - she says she knew it was a hoax all along. Script says she 'triumphantly' tells everyone - important that she comes out on top than her actions could have caused a girl's suicide.

• Final moment - Mrs B smiling and telling everyone she is amused - already put it behind her.

• Quick witted (He's giving us the rope so that we'll hang ourselves'

  • He wit lets her undermine the authority of the other characters

• and strong minded

  • I don't believe I will. So you be careful

  • Hands the ring back when he is unfaithful

  • Wise enough to realise Eric is the father of Daisy's child

• Selfish the year before

  • Abused her status as a wealthy customer at Millard's - dismiss E

Childish at first

• 'Very pleased with life and rather excited'

• Slang - 'squiffy' - reminds audience belongs to younger generation

• Ring - looks to her mother for approval 'Look - Mummy - Isn't it a beauty'

Maturity

• Wise instincts - Sees what the inspector is doing and knew Gerald's absence is suspicious

• Knows men use prostitutes

• Knows dirty old men like 'Alderman Meggarty

• Inspector refers to her as she 'isn't living on the moon'

• She says to her father 'Im not a chid'

Moral standards

• Sensitive and moral

  • But these girls aren't cheap labour - they're people'

• Acknowledges she used her power to punish Eva Smith

• Eager to learn from the consequences - to Gerald 'You and I aren't the same people who sat down to dinner here'

• Uses her as a moral judge at the end 'probably between us we killed her'

• Others don't admit that

• Tells Gerald she respects him more for being honest

• Family must stop these 'silly pretences'

• Hope for change in new generation.

• Parents after the Inspector has left want to carry on as before. Sheila and Eric are the only ones who want change - Sheila changes the most

Like Inspector herself

• Helps with the investigations

• Asks Gerald many questions

• Reveals Eric's drinking problem

• contradicts and undermines her parents

• When she gives the the ring back she tells her father 'don't interefere'

• Sees Inspector asks questions to break down the 'wall and Sheila wants to do the same.

• Isolated and unloved - 'you don't understand anything, You Neve did'

• Alcoholic -

  • 'I was in that state when a chap easily turns nasty'

  • Pours himself a whisky

• Thief

  • Stole money from his family to support her.

• Lost - Says no one understands him - doesn't feel he can talk to anyone

• Irresponsible

  • Forced himself onto ED while he was drunk and doesn't remember 'I didn't even remember - that the hellish thing'

• Regrets actions

  • 'My God - I'm not likely to forget'

Not the only one

• Met ED in stalls bar - exactly where Gerald met her

• Birlings respectable friends go to the stalls bar to find women _ Meggarty

• Mirky world for 'respectable men'

• Normal for middle class behaviour

Only one to have serious consequences

• Lots of men doing what he did in secret

• Eric's lack of self control means his secret gets out

• Parents don't want a scandal

• Don't care about him as much as they care about what other people will think

• Disrupts the polite middle class illusion of respectability.

• Gerald keeps ED as his mistress and breaks it off without his reputation being damaged.

Eric villain and victim

• Isolated and unsupported - finds comfort elsewhere

• At the start - 'the fact remains that I did what I did'

• Shouts at his mother - angriest moment in the play

• Accepts responsibility for what he has done

• Criticises his parents for pretending nothings happened 'you lot may be letting yourselves out nicely'

• Respectable - 'the easy well-bred young man about town'

• Good catch - Upper class - 'landed people and so forth'

• Socially superior

• Gets on well Mr B

• Impresses Mrs B

• Handsome

• Business minded and committed to his work as Mr B is.

Lying

• Fling with E/D

• 'I wasn't telling you a complete lie

Truth

• Determined to take action along with Mr B - Inspector was not a police officer

• No suicide

Reputation

• Sides Mr B - focusing on protecting reputation

• Like a younger version of Mr B. If it wasn't for Gerald, we could say Mr and Mrs B are selfish and unchanging due to their age. But Gerald shows younger people can be selfish and old fashioned

• Used to being in control

• Agrees Mr B politics and women

Lack of remorse

• Gerald sounds less passionate than Sheila and can distance himself from the tradegy

• Uses the word 'hoax'

• End of the play 'everything's all right now'

• Says E/D 'didn't blame me at all'

• Although he showed her affection meaning the Inspector wasn't as hard on him, he left her, went on a business trip and made her homeless.

Hypocrisy

• Inspector asks Gerald whether he thinks 'young women ought to be protected against unpleasant and disturbing things?' - says yes thinking of Sheila

• But Gerald is doing the unpleasant and disturbing things to women like E/D, uses them and discards them

• Able to separate public respectable image from secret, private acts - Eric is able to do

• Upset when E/D dead but already has moved on 'Everything's alright now Sheila'

• Employees sacked for protesting lower wages

• Dismissal leads to a chain of events leading to her death

• Becomes a prostitute and changes her name - meets Gerald and Eric - 'There was some monad who wanted her to go there'

• Real identity never revealed. Could be the same person or different people. See working class girl the same as another

Characteristics

• Attractive - 'young and fresh and charming'

• Honourable - 'she didn't want to take any more money from him'

• Working class - 'Girls of that class, a girl of that sort

  
  

  Social class

• Loss all support as people used their power to remove her.

• Each felt superior due to the social class

  
  

  Eva/Daisy symbolic

• Silent off stage character - represents silent, invisible and powerless members of society - ghost

• Maybe didn't feel she had the power to make difficult for the people who mistreated her. Trapped

• Name Eva - like 'Eve - first woman in the bible - symbolic of all women

• Smith - Very common last name for all tradesman

• Represents ordinary, working class women

  
  

  Eva and Daisy the same?

• Phone call at the end of the play. Has Eva/Daisy just committed suicide?

• Inspector a ghost?

• Was it a different girl? - Inspector warned everyone's lives 'intertwined'

  
  

• Central to message

• 'Millions of Eva Smiths and John Smiths still left' and their chances of happiness 'intertwined with our lives'

• Telling audience to behave responsibility to each other

• Although focus is on a group of five people at a dining table - unidentified and unseen woman. If they all met different girls it doesn't matter. Eva/Daisy is mix of people they've ever treated badly.