Sybil Birling: the coldest person in the room

Sybil Birling chairs a committee that exists to help women in trouble. A pregnant girl with nowhere else to go asks it for help - and Sybil turns her away. Then she demands that the baby's father be made to confess in public, and the father is her own son. Priestley makes her good name the coldest thing in the room, and this video shows how.

The evening in order is what An Inspector Calls: An overview gives you. This one stays with the mother of the family.

Right, start with the word that runs her life. Respectability means being seen as proper by the people of your own class: the right manners, the right name, the right friends. Sybil guards it from the first scene. She corrects her husband for praising the cook in front of a guest, because that is not how a family like hers behaves. When Sheila starts to face what the family has done, Sybil does not argue with her - she reclassifies her. You're behaving like an hysterical child tonight. And when she talks about girls like Eva, she starts a sentence that Sheila cuts off. Girls of that class - and three words are already enough. Sheila stops her there, but the three words have already done their work. What does girls of that class assume, before she knows one fact about Eva? That the girl's class tells you her character. Sybil judges the group, so she never has to look at the person.

Now, the refusal itself. Two weeks ago the girl came to Sybil's committee, pregnant and penniless, calling herself Mrs Birling. Sybil used her influence to make sure the committee turned her down. What made Sybil refuse: the pregnancy, or the name the girl gave? The name. A girl like that calling herself Mrs Birling was an insult to Sybil. She was giving herself ridiculous airs. The girl told the committee she had refused money from the baby's father once she knew it was stolen. And Sybil's verdict is instant. As if a girl of that sort would ever refuse money! Then comes the sentence that gives Sybil away. She was claiming elaborate fine feelings and scruples that were simply absurd in a girl in her position. In Sybil's world, fine feelings belong to her own class. So the one honest thing Eva did, refusing stolen money, is the one thing Sybil cannot believe.

That is why her respectability is the damage. It is the false name, not the pregnancy, that she cannot forgive, and that makes the refusal a judgement about class rather than about a person.

One examiner's report records the argument students made about this: many candidates argued convincingly that from the moment she used the false name, Mrs Birling simply dismissed everything else due to her prejudice against the case and that nothing could sway her. So the habit to copy is theirs. Tie her refusal to the false name, and call it a class judgement instead of a bad mood.

Priestley then sets a trap around Sybil, and she builds most of it herself. First, she places herself above the rest of the family. Unlike the other three, I did nothing I'm ashamed of. She even offers sympathy and refusal in a single breath. I'm sorry she should have come to such a horrible end. But I accept no blame for it at all. Then she names who should pay: the young man who got the girl pregnant. She wants the Inspector to make sure that he's compelled to confess in public his responsibility. The Inspector lets her finish. He knows who that young man is, and by now, so does the audience. Why does Priestley let her demand the punishment before she learns it is Eric? Because her own standards convict her own son. The respectable judgement she hands down lands on the family she was protecting.

When Eric walks back into the room, the trap closes, and the chain Eva was passed along reaches its end. One chain, five links: every link hands her on to the next. Sybil is the last link, the one that closes on her own family.

Her own words first, and then one case she never faced in the play. Sybil turns the girl down because she was giving herself what? Ridiculous airs. She was giving herself ridiculous airs, all because of a borrowed name. Next: as if a girl of that sort would ever do what? Refuse money. She cannot believe that a poor girl would turn down stolen money on principle. Try a new case: a well-dressed widow asks her committee for help. How does Sybil react? She helps her. Sybil judges the class a woman seems to belong to, not what she needs, so the widow passes the test that Eva failed. A committee built to help women in trouble, and a good name that turned away the girl it was built for.

A thumbs-up means you could teach this one to a friend, and no thumbs-up means it waits on your list. Three practice questions on her, and it starts to feel normal.

Next in the chapter: Sheila Birling, the one who actually listens.

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