Sheila Birling: the one who actually listens

At the start of the evening, Sheila Birling's sharpest words are for her brother. You're squiffy. By the end, she is saying this to her own parents. It frightens me the way you talk. Nobody in the play announces that she has changed - so this video tracks where Priestley puts the change.

Anyone who has not met the Birlings yet can meet them through An Inspector Calls: An overview. Here it is Sheila, line by line.

Squiffy is slang for slightly drunk. It is light, jokey family talk, the voice of a sheltered girl at a party. But the girl everyone treats as silly is the first to spot that Eric has been drinking. Priestley gives her sharp eyes before he gives her a serious voice. When she hears how Eva was sacked from the factory, she disagrees with her father before anyone has accused her of anything. But these girls aren't cheap labour - they're people. When her own part comes out, she answers the question she is asked, straight away. Because I was in a furious temper. Then she names her own motive out loud, which is jealousy of a prettier, poorer girl. If she'd been some miserable plain little creature, I don't suppose I'd have done it. Now, set that beside how Birling answered the same Inspector about the factory. What does Sheila do with her guilt that her father never does? She owns it. Birling explains and defends, while Sheila says plainly what she did and why, with no excuse at all.

In Act Two, Priestley changes how she speaks, and a stage direction, the writer's instruction to the actor, marks it. She is to talk slowly, carefully now, as she warns her mother. You mustn't try to build up a kind of wall between us and that girl. And that is a new shape of sentence for her. It is an instruction to a parent, built round an image, and the girl who said squiffy is now telling her mother what not to do. She turns the same voice on Gerald after he tells his story of rescuing Daisy Renton. You were the wonderful fairy prince. That line is sarcasm. Sheila can now hear the flattering story Gerald is telling about himself, and she says so to the man she was about to marry.

In Act Three the hoax is exposed, and her parents relax at once. Sheila will not. But you're forgetting one thing I still can't forget. Everything we said had happened really had happened. Those are full, balanced sentences, and they correct the adults in the room. The hoax changes nothing about what the family did - and she is the one who says it. Three of her lines, from three different points in the evening, now jumbled up. Order these three, first to last: the wall, squiffy, everything really had happened. Squiffy, then the wall, then everything really had happened. That is Act One, Act Two, Act Three. Now the reason: what changes in her language from the first line to the last? Slang aimed at her brother becomes full sentences aimed at her parents. Her words grow, and her authority in the room grows with them.

So the change is in how she speaks, not only in what she believes. Priestley moves her vocabulary and her sentence shapes, and her status rises with them.

That makes her a foil. A foil is a character set beside another so that the difference shows, and Priestley sets Sheila beside her parents. One examiner's report describes students reading her that way, with Sheila and Eric seen as their, to some extent, foils who carried the burden of the author's ideas for societal improvement. In plain words, Sheila is not a minor character for being young. She carries the play's hope for change. The habit that follows: whenever you write about Sheila, set her beside a parent, and name what the difference shows.

Her link in the chain was the shop, and by the end, she is the only one of the five who will not let it go. One chain, five links: every link hands her on to the next. Sheila is the link that turns round and looks back down it.

Three checks on Sheila's voice, and the last one is new. In Act One, Sheila tells her brother he is what? Squiffy. She tells her brother he is squiffy, slang for a little drunk, and she is the one who notices. Next, Act Three: everything we said had happened, what? Really had happened. The hoax changes nothing for her. Now a new line: she was very pretty too, with big dark eyes. Early Sheila, or late? Early, in Act One. It dwells on how Eva looked, which is the jealousy talking, not yet the voice that judges her parents. From squiffy to it frightens me: the same girl, the same evening, and a new voice.

Tap the thumbs-up if you nailed it, and leave it bare if the change in her voice still feels vague. Nobody hears every shift in Sheila first time through.

Next in the chapter: Eric Birling, the one nobody was watching.

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