Sheila

capitalism(cheap labour)

"But these girls aren't cheap labour - they're people." (Act 1)

• internalized sexism (girls = naive)

• syntactic antithesis = acting as post-war audience’s proxy to learn and reveal

• cathartic moral realignment to audience

capitalism(rope)

"No, he’s giving us the rope – so that we’ll hang ourselves." (Act 2)

• anagnorisis(epiphany), inspector is catalyst but moral progression is personal

• freud’s theory of dreams = inspector is personification of subconscious guilt

social responsibility(never again)

“I’ll never, never do it again to anybody…I feel now I can never go there again” (Act 1)

• repetition = desperation + aligning with feminist emancipation

social responsibility(fault, desperate )

"And it was my fault really that she was so desperate when you first met her." (Act 2)

• three unities(time, place, action) in 1 place = urgency of repentance

old v. young (pretend nothing)

“But now you’re beginning all over again to pretend that nothing much has happened”

• “pretend” = reverse parental hierarchy

• cyclical structure = frustration

old v. young (childish)

“…it’s you two who are being childish—trying not to face the facts”

old v. young (learnt anything)

“The point is, you don’t seem to have learnt anything.”

social class(pretty)

“But she was very pretty and looked as if she could take care of herself” (Act 2)

• superficial appraisal = only beauty matters to her

• defensive syntax to disperse guilt

social class(stage direction)

"A pretty girl in her early twenties, very pleased with life and rather excited." (Act 1)

social class(wall)

“You mustn’t try to build up a kind of wall between us and that girl”

social class(confident)

“so confident, so pleased with ourselves until he began asking us questions.”

guilt (can’t stop)

“Don’t please — I know, I know and I can’t stop thinking about it”

guilt(not yet)

“no, not yet, I must think”

• monosyllabic pauses = breaks up celebration

• “yet” = still may re-enter the marriage

power(he knows)

“Why- you fool- he knows. Of course he knows… You’ll see. You’ll see.”

• repeated vignette(you’ll see) = evolving detachment

• foreshadowing inspector omnipotence

guilt(same people)

“You and I aren’t the same people who sat down to dinner here.”

• erases Eva and makes situation about her own relationship

• structural inertia = emotion over politics