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How Does Priestley Present Mr Birling

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In the play An Inspector Calls, Priestley fundamentally presents a class ridden society through the characters attitudes and behaviour's within the play. The Birling family is seen to be attentive towards their class in society, especially Mr and Mrs Birling. Priestley uses the Birling family and The Inspector to imply how an arrogant and conceited mindset can destroy the lives of the less privileged through actions and words.

Mr Birling is shown to be an extremely selfish, arrogant and stubborn character in the play. He claims himself to be a “hard-headed, practical man of business.” This shows how Mr Birling’s mindset is mainly focused on political issues. Priestley uses alliteration here to emphasise his views towards his class. The phrase …show more content…

Mr Birling states how it’s his "duty to keep the labor costs down," regardless of anyone else's emotions or needs. This implies Mr Birling’s selfish attitude and the way he tries to impress Gerald with his control. Additionally, this presents his lack of morals and his egotistic attitude to those of a lower class. Furthermore, the noun “duty” immediately presents the pride and arrogance he has for his business as he feels no one else could take on this job as he is the only ‘practical man’ out there. The language used here shows the audience how Mr Birling’s only route to wealth and success with his capitalistic views, is by condemning the poor workers lives. This gives the audience an insight to the behaviour and attitude to expect from Mr Birling later on in the …show more content…

Mrs Birling finds it hard to believe that "a girl of that sort" refused money. The phrase “a girl of that sort” displays her preconceptions about female employees and suggests they lack morals. This phrase also shows the audience how Mrs Birling perceives Eva to be morally inferior due to her lower class. Moreover, this gives the audience an insight to Mrs Birlings attitude towards those of a lower class, implying her lack of sympathy and respect for Eva. Mrs Birling shows her arrogant, hollow self when being questioned about her response to Eva seeking help from her organization. This shows the reader how impossible it was for Mrs Birling to look at the lower class as anything but

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Priestley implies that higher social class makes people greedy, through creating Mr Birling as a symbol of pomposity of capitalists in Edwardian society. He is constantly insecure in his own position and comes from the nouveau riche, making him socially inferior to the Crofts. Priestly illustrates how even Mr Birling experiences class prejudice despite being middle-upper class which provokes him to work harder and explains why he cares so much about being a ‘practical man of business’ and expanding his business to earn more money to decrease his insecurity. This is displayed when he says ‘There’ll be a public scandal... and who here will suffer for that more than I will’ indicating how significant money and his business is to him that he cares for his reputation before anything else. The desire of being associated amongst a higher class is the crucial reason for Mr Birling’s perspective on life, he is constantly striving to make more and more money to be able to live happily.

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Arthur was the first member of the family who was shown to be greedy through the inspector’s questioning, as he revealed to care very little about his worker’s wellbeing and just cares about the money they are making for him, as shown by Arthur’s solution to improve his company's profitability being ‘Lower costs and higher prices’, which perfectly illustrates his complete disregard for the wellbeing of his workers, and when his workers went on a strike to get their rates increased from twenty two sixpence to twenty five sixpence, he immediately refused and fired the people who were the leaders of the protest, not caring for what would happen to them after. The Inspector reveals to both the reader and the Birling family that Eva Smith was one of the people who were fired for this reason and set the stage for her misfortune that eventually led to her death. After Eva Smith was fired, she found another job working at Millwards, where she fell victim to Sheila Birling’s selfishness. Sheila abused her links to the shop and her mother to blackmail the manager of Millwards to fire Eva Smith out of pure jealousy due to the fact that Sheila looked bad in a dress whereas Eva looked stunning with it. This alone drove Sheila to do all she could to get her fired due to just the fact that Eva looked better than her.

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