Birlings - Exploitation

Question 1

How do the Birling’s link to exploitation?

Answer 1

• An allegory for Capitalism’s exploitation of the working class.
• Profit prioritised over personal wellbeing.
• Poor dehumanised and reduced to cheap labour.

Question 2

Mr Birling - ‘We’ve several hundred young women… and they keep changing’ (Act 1)

Answer 2

• Dehumanisation.
• Vague term ‘several hundred’ illustrates women’s loss of individual identity as they are viewed as collective.
• Verb ‘changing’ connotes replacement and substitution - the individual does not matter, only the factory that has large number of workers.
• ‘keep changing’ alludes to vast no. of unemployed.
• Common noun ‘women’ shows the Patriarchal society - women were targeted and seen as inferior.