sheila birling

“these girls aren't cheap labour, they're people”

• Pronoun shift from “girls” to “people” mirrors her advancement from infantilism

• Both maturity and realisation set her and by extension the youth up as progressive

“what was she like? Quite young” … “pretty?”

Ignorance:
- interrogative: she misunderstands the dynamic in power
- shallow questions: fails to understand evas struggles

hyperfocus on beauty → critique of the upperclass and their detachment from reality.

Detachment from lower classes struggles due to Social Darwinism: the idea that success was natural meaning, any problems the lower class faced were deserved so didnt require attention

“He’s giving us the rope - so that we’ll hang ourselves”

• Shiela is much more receptive to the inspectors intentions than the others, showing maturity

• The hyphen is a barrier between the inspector and the family; they alone must bear responsibility for their actions.

• "hes giving us the rope” seems generous but then turns morbid. Parallels how their actions seemed appealing to them but actually lead to death

• great depression: suicides due to jobs lost
  only ended due to ww1; many deaths

gerald: ‘what about this ring’

sheila “no, not yet. It’s too soon. I must think”

‘must’ shows a need to reflect
‘yet’ and ‘soon’ relate to time; aware of long lasting impact

However, yet shows she inevitably will accept it, conforming to gender roles

→ patriarchal norms are too deeply ingrained into her