Inspector Calls Character

Page 1

Arthur Birling

Arthur’s primary concerns are the Birling family’s good name and his ability to climb in early-twentieth-century English society. Arthur is aware that, although his firm is successful, it is not as successful as the Crofts’. Arthur also does not yet possess a formal title as the Crofts do, so he gleefully tells Gerald in Act One that he is expecting a knighthood. Although Arthur does seem somewhat upset at the idea that he contributed to Eva Smith’s death, he is more upset that his family’s implication in the scandal would become public. This would mean that the knighthood might be withheld, and that Birling would no longer continue his social ascent.

Arthur’s opinion, that men ought only to look after themselves as individuals, is a strictly capitalist mentality, in which owners of capital value only profits, and do not care for workers’ rights. As Sheila says in Act Three, the Inspector calls just as Arthur tells Eric and Gerald that they must put their own interests before anyone else’s, and that socialist ideas of human brotherhood are strange and not to be trusted. Sheila wonders if the Inspector’s visit was meant to prove to Arthur that people’s lives are actually very complexly intertwined.

Sybil Birling

The matriarch of the Birling family. Sybil is described in the play’s performance notes as “cold.” Though she is pleased her daughter Sheila is engaged to be married, she tends to ignore any potential discord in the family. Sybil serves on a charitable committee in the town, and busies herself with social events befitting a woman whose husband is a business success. She protects what she perceives to be the family’s good image and standing in the community.

Sheila Birling

Daughter of Arthur and Sybil. Sheila, “in her early twenties,” is engaged to Gerald and believes, at the start of the play, that her future lies bright before her. But knowledge of her role, and the family’s role, in Eva/Daisy’s death devastates Sheila, who wonders how her family can go on afterward, pretending simply that nothing has happened.

Eric Birling

Son of Arthur and Sybil, and older brother of Sheila. Eric works part-time at the family business and has a drinking problem that he hides, with some success, from his parents and sister. When it is revealed that Eric had a romantic relationship with a woman, resulting in a child born out of wedlock, the family must confront facts about Eric’s life, and about their own, which they had sought previously to ignore.

Gerald Croft

Fiance to Sheila, and son of another prominent manufacturing family. Gerald is from a more socially-elevated family, and Arthur worries that Gerald’s parents believe he is making a “poor match” in marrying Sheila. Although the Inspector criticizes Gerald’s affair with Daisy, the Inspector notes that Gerald is perhaps the least culpable, and most morally upright, of all the characters.

Inspector Goole

The Inspector is physically imposing, and he has no trouble articulating his frustration with the Birlings and with Gerald. Over the course of his questioning, the Inspector reveals that each of characters has, in some sense, contributed to Eva Smith/Daisy Renton’s demise. The Inspector implies that the other characters care primarily for themselves, that they are angry and impulsive, and that they cannot control their sexual appetites or their intake of alcohol. He also says that they cannot change what has happened to Eva/Daisy, because she is no longer alive and capable of accepting their apologies. But the Inspector, too, is a curt, direct man, and his motivations for grilling the other characters are not readily comprehensible. His apparent socialist sympathies at the end of the play might account in political terms for some of his anger, but the Inspector’s desire to see justice through, in this case, is left unexplained.

Eva Smith/ Daisy Renton

A character who does not appear onstage in the play, but who is the absent figure around which the action spins. She is referred to as Eva Smith, Daisy Renton, and “Mrs. Birling.” She may be a combination of these young women, or a different person, or a fiction. Whether she is real or not, Eva/Daisy is a stand-in for the girls that Arthur, Sybil, Sheila, Eric, and Gerald have wronged, either separately or together. Eva/Daisy worked for a low wage, and Arthur fired her for attempting a strike. Sheila had her fired for impertinence. Eric and Gerald both had affairs with her, and though Gerald cared for her, Eric’s relationship to her was more vexed, and required him to steal money for her. If Eva/Daisy is a real person, as the last phone call suggests, then the family’s guilt might really knot them together. But if she is not one person, and rather a set of people, this makes her no less substantial as an organizational principle for the work. Priestley demonstrates how selfish, or economically motivated, or jealous behaviour can ruin people’s lives. Eva/Daisy is the lesson each character must learn individually.

Eden

The Birlings’ maid. Edna mostly sets the scenes in which the family eats and talks. She is not, like the Birlings, of the upper-middle class, but instead makes money by virtue of her labour. Edna leaves the room at the end of the play without mention of her absence or whereabouts.