Mrs Birling

Profile

Full name: Mrs Sybil Birling

Age: ‘about fifty’

Role: Birling’s wife

Ideology: capitalist

Social class: upper class - ‘husband’s social superior’

Other Key Facts:

  • Not as arrogant as Mr Birling but still proud of her social class
  • Has good etiquette
  • Strong set of beliefs about people’s social status
  • Cruel
  • Ironically a part of the Brumley Women’s Charity Organisation
  • She doesn’t change and doesn’t accept responsibility

Etiquette

  • She has a good reputation as she is polite
  • It is important to her as it improves her family’s social status

Characteristics

  • Traditional

‘when you’re married’

  • She expects marriage

  • Proud/pompous

‘I was the only one of you who didn’t give in to him’

  • Prepared to throw the rest of her family “under the bus” to protect herself, even in private situations like this

  • Discriminatory/judgemental

‘Girls of that class-’

‘As if a girl of that sort would ever refuse money’

  • Cruel

‘I used my influence to have it refused’

  • In reference to turning Eva away from the charity organisation
  • Took advantage of her power

‘her husband’s social superior’

  • She won’t let anyone boss her around
  • Always reminding her family to have better manners e.g telling Sheila off for using slang (‘squiffy’)
  • Tells her husband off for mentioning the lower class servants in front of a guest - ‘Tell the cook from me’

Standards

  • Make her fall in Goole’s trap when he asks her who she blames for Eva’s suicide (she says that the father of her child is even though the father of her child is Eric)
  • Can’t imagine Eric being involved with women ‘of that sort’
  • Condemns the lower class and their relaxed standards - doesn’t realise what it is like to live that way

Stage Directions

  • Her tone of voice often shows that her opinion cannot be changed:

‘haughtily’ (arrogantly)

‘very sharply’

‘bitterly’

  • ‘triumphantly’ says that she knew it was a hoax all along even though she didn’t know

‘smiling’

  • Shows her amusement
  • She has already put the night’s events behind her

Video

Symbolises:

  • Uncaring nature of capitalism - ‘I accept no blame for it at all’
  • Pride
  • Class prejudice - ‘Girls of that class-’

Sybil:

  • Named after the Greek myth of the Sibyls - famous for their gift for seeing into the future
  • Ironic as Sybil is blind and refuses to see things
    • Eric’s addiction
    • Alderman Meggarty sexual assaults on women
    • Eric’s relationship with Eva and her pregnancy
    • Is the last to figure out in the end about Eric - ‘I don’t believe it. I won’t believe it’
    • Expects Sheila forget about Gerald’s actions, and get used to it ‘just as I had’

Is she most to blame?

  • She is the last person who has the opportunity to help Eva
  • She is the most blamed but it is the opposite of what Priestley intended

Welfare State:

  • Helps house the poor
  • Mrs Birling helps represent what the welfare state could be
  • Leaving things to a charity doesn’t guarantee the welfare of everyone

Why should she believe Eva?

  • Begins by using the name Birling - fraud to gain money
  • Lies about the father of her child
  • Truth is so absurd that it also sounds like a lie