Sheila Birling: Quotes + Notes 🕵️💬📝: An Inspector Calls (2024)

Sheila Birling, Quotes + Notes

One of the youngest in the Birling household.

Yet, Sheila Birling is key to this play. Butbefore we can understand her key quotes, we must analyse her character.

1/4: Sheila Birling's Character Notes

Sheila Birling matures across the play.

At first, JB Priestley describes her asgiddy, naïve and childish, "a pretty girl in her early twenties, very pleased with life and rather excited". This is precisely how she comes across in the first act of the play. In the second and third acts, following the realisation that she has played a part in Eva Smith's death, she matures and comes to realise the importance of The Inspector's message.

Sheila is in her early twenties and she is engaged to be married toGerald Croft. She is the daughter ofArthur BirlingandSybil Birling, and sister ofEric Birling.

Now that we have understood her character, we will be able to better understand the context of her key quotes.

Before we can fully understand these quotes, we must briefly analyse her character development and find out why JB Priestley develops her character. But to achieve Grade 9, there is theCGP Inspector Calls text guideby CGP with 100x more detailed notes.

2/4: Sheila's Character Development/changes

She learns her lesson. She takes responsibility and changes; she also tries to encourage the members of her family to do the same.
Sheila Birling, along with her generation, is the most open to changing attitudes on society and wealth.

3/4: Priestley's Message (intended effect on the audience)

She represents (with Eric) the younger generation – Priestley saw them as ‘more impressionable’ – after all, they were the future.
She gives the audience hope that their society can improve if people make changes and take responsibility.

4/4: Sheila Birling's Key Quotes Bank

These are the most important quotes for Mrs Birling.

Act 1

Pg 3:'Yes – except for all last summer, when you never came near me, and I wondered what had happened to you.'
Pg 4:'Neither do I all wrong'
Pg 5: 1910s Sexism / view of women'(Excited) Oh – Gerald – you’ve got it – is it the one [ring]youwanted me to have?'
Sheila had no say as to which ring she wanted, Gerald chooses on her behalf.
Pg 5:‘Oh-its wonderful! Look- Mummy- isn’t it a beauty? Oh - darling - [She kissesGeraldhastily]’
Pg 6:‘I’m sorry, Daddy [Mr Birling]. Actually I was listening’
Pg 16:‘Oh- sorry. I didn’t know. Mummy [Mrs Birling] sent me in to ask you why you didn’t come along’
Pg 17: Displays Sheila's curiosity'What’s this all about?'
Pg 17: Only one to react and care about Eva's death (Eric also cares later)'Oh, how horrible! Was it an accident?'

Act 2

Pg 27: Context'Then I’m staying.'
Pg 28: Context(To Gerald)'So that’s what you think I’m really like.'
Pg 29: The first to accept responsibility and take some blame'I know I’m to blame – and I’m desperately sorry'
Pg 29: (to Inspector) 'There's something I don't understand about you'
Pg 30:'(slowly, carefully now) You mustn’t try to build up a kind of wall between us and that girl. If you do, then the Inspector will just break it down. And it’ll be all the worse when he does.'
Pg 33: 'He’s giving us the rope- so that we’ll hang ourselves.'
Pg 36:'Of course, Mother. It was obvious from the start'
Pg 37: (cutting in, as he hesitates) I know. Somehow he makes you.
Pg 42:‘You might as well admit to it’
Pg 45:‘Mother, I think that was cruel and vile’
Pg 48: '(with sudden alarm) Mother – stop – stop!'
(to Gerald) 'I rather respect you more than I’ve ever done before.'
Pg 53: 'This isn’t my fault’

Act 3

Pg 56: '(who is crying quietly) That's the worst of it'
Pg 58: But that’s not what I’m talking about. I don’t care about that. The point is, you don’t seem to have learnt anything.
Pg 58: ‘(with sudden alarm) Mother-stop-Stop!’
'Between us we drove that girl to commit suicide.'
Pg 59:'Don’t you see, if all that’s come out tonight is true, then it doesn’t matter who it was who made us confess. And it was true, wasn’t it? You turned the girl out of one job, and I had her turned out of another. Gerald kept her – at a time when he was supposed to be too busy to see me. Eric – well, we know what Eric did. And mother hardened her heart and gave her the final push that finished her. That’s what’s important – and not whether the man is a police inspector or not.
Pg 65:'But that won’t bring Eva Smith back to life, will it?'
Pg 70: 'You’re forgetting one thing I still can’t forget. Everything we said had happened really had happened. If it didn’t end tragically, then that’s lucky for us. But it might have done.'
Pg 71: 'No, because I remember what he said, How he looked, and what he made me feel. Fire and blood and anguish. And it frightens me the way you talk'
Pg 71: Affected by Inspector's message'I tell you – whoever that Inspector was, it was anything but a joke.'
Pg 72:Huge change in character, compared to previous quotes (see: Pg5 quote) and for the common role of women at the time.'I must think.'
The final line:[As they stare guiltily and dumbfounded, the curtain falls.]

Complete!If you needto see every single important quote, use theCGP Inspector Calls text guide.

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Sheila Birling: Quotes + Notes 🕵️💬📝: An Inspector Calls (2024)