Priestley portrays the character of Sheila in a male-dominated society. The challenges she faces and how she conducts herself through life illustrates her maturity journey. Priestley uses Sheila to allow the Birling family to understand their faults; in the play, he positively presents her naivety. Priestley presents Sheila as adolescent and fatuous. Despite the stage directions telling us that she is “in her early twenties”, Sheila refers to her parents as “mummy” and “daddy”, an infantile, immature mode of address which is reciprocated by Mr and Mrs Birling, who refer to Sheila as both a “child” and “childish”.“Mummy” is a term of endearment and her language remains infantile and childlike. At this point, she treats her parents like any …show more content…
“mock” underlines her superiority over him at that time.” Sheila has no such mentality and would rather be impressed by port being an expensive wine. The Birlings already have enough on their table, but she disagrees. Priestley uses Sheila as the Birling's moral conscience, this is highlighted when she says “But these girls aren’t cheap labour - they’re people” This spotlights Sheila is starting to display more socialist views. The character Sheila is used to present Priestley’s intentions of socialist views being better than capitalist views. juxtaposes her father's point of view about young women living lives where they have no money. Priestley emphasises the noun “people” by italicising it, so the actor knows to emphasise the word “people”. It also compares how Mr Birling thinks they are just for cheap labour, whereas Sheila thinks of them as people. Priestley uses a dash in this line, perhaps to indicate to the actor to pause and then continue with her line, emphasising the word “people” even more. Sheila directly indicts her father’s exploitative capitalist ways by opposing that “But these girls aren’t cheap labour - they’re people”. These plosive words perhaps signify how Sheila has realised the exploitation that’s permitted by capitalists, for example, Mr Birling. The term “girls” connotes innocence and vulnerability, Sheila has recognised that upper-class members of society, typically possessing capitalist views, exploit the innocence and vulnerability of the lower classes. “Cheap” connotes something that doesn’t have that much value, Sheila realises how immoral capitalism is but can’t break away from