Women in the play: what happens to Eva, Sheila and Sybil

Gerald Croft and Eva Smith are the two people in the same affair. When it ends, Gerald still has his family's money, his good name and a place at the Birlings' table. Eva, though, has to leave the flat, with a little money he gave her to live on. Same affair, two very different prices, and this video asks who sets the price.

The events come first in An Inspector Calls: An overview, if you need them. Here, three women stand side by side.

Priestley sorts the women of this play by class before he sorts them by sex. Gender means what a society expects of men and of women, and what it lets each of them get away with. When Birling explains the sacking as a matter of costs, Sheila pushes back. But these girls aren't cheap labour - they're people. To Birling, the factory girls are a cost, like coal for the furnace. Sheila's reply puts them back among people, and it is the first crack in the family's view of them. Then comes Sheila's own link. She had Eva sacked from the shop, and she admits why. If she'd been some miserable plain little creature, I don't suppose I'd have done it. A woman with money destroys a woman without it, over prettiness. Being a woman does not make Sheila Eva's ally. Money puts them on opposite sides of the counter. And the men weigh Eva on the same scale. Eric's verdict on her is short. I wasn't in love with her or anything - but I liked her - she was pretty and a good sport. Sheila and Eric both judge Eva on one thing. What is it? Her looks. Sheila punishes her for being pretty, Eric enjoys her for it, and neither of them pays for the judgement.

Sheila herself is not free, even with money. Halfway through Gerald's story, her father objects to her hearing it, and she has to claim her own adulthood out loud. I'm not a child, don't forget. I've a right to know. Yet nobody asks Gerald to prove he is grown up. A double standard means one rule for men and another for women, and here it is in one line. Seconds later, Sheila names the double standard with sarcasm. You were the wonderful fairy prince. In a fairy tale, the prince is the hero. The girl he rescues is the story, and she does not get to tell it. Mrs Birling polices another woman on behalf of her class. Her verdict on Eva is contempt. As if a girl of that sort would ever refuse money! And she turns the same weapon on her daughter. You're behaving like an hysterical child tonight. Hysterical was the word used to silence women who would not stop talking. Here, a woman uses it, to keep her own daughter in line. Run one event past all three women: each of them speaks up against somebody. Eva speaks up for higher wages, and loses her job. Sheila speaks up against her parents. She is scolded like a child, and she keeps her home, her allowance and her future. Sybil speaks up against Eva at the committee. What happens to her? She gets her way. Eva is refused help, and Sybil's life goes on exactly as before.

Gender and class are not two arguments here. They are one: what protects Sheila is money, and Eva has none.

Treating the three women as one group loses that argument - because it hides the money that separates them. One examiner's report says: Responses to Question one focused heavily on the representation of Sheila and Sybil, although some successfully included examination of the use of Eva Smith, Daisy Renton, as a representation of the proletariat. Proletariat means the working class. In plain words, most answers stayed with the two women in the dining room, and the stronger ones brought in the woman who never gets there. So the fix is to put Eva in the same paragraph as Sheila and Sybil, as the woman without money, so the comparison does the arguing.

Now, the last question in this video is yours to plan. How does Priestley present the ways women are treated in An Inspector Calls? Pause and sketch three paragraphs, each with a woman and a price. A tempting wrong turn is treating all three as interchangeable victims. Sybil is no victim - and the play needs you to see it. Another is arguing that Sheila is powerless. She is controlled, but her money still protects her from everything that happens to Eva. A plan that argues runs like this, a step at a time, so you can match yours against it. It opens on the factory girls: to Birling they are cheap labour, so class sorts the women before sex does. It sets Sheila against Eva in the shop: both women, on opposite sides of the counter, and money decides who pays. And it ends on Mrs Birling, a woman who uses her class to judge another woman, and her own daughter too. One chain, five links: every link hands her on to the next. Every link is a decision made about a woman by somebody with money, and two of those somebodies are women.

Two checks to close: one of Sheila's lines, and one swap the video never made. Sheila on the factory girls: these girls aren't cheap labour, they're what? People. And the word labour tells you how her father had filed them. Try a swap now. Picture Sheila behind the counter with nobody behind her, and a rich customer complaining about her. What happens to Sheila in Eva's place, and what does that prove? She is sacked, as Eva was. What kept Sheila safe was her family's money, not her character. The same affair, two very different prices, and by the end of the evening the play has shown you who paid.

Once you've fully understood it, and can say what protects Sheila but not Eva, give this a thumbs-up. If the three women still run together, take them one at a time over three evenings, and they come apart.

Next in the chapter: Young and old, who can change, and who never will.

For more, visit scholafly.com, or watch the next video.