Mrs Birling Flashcards
(8 cards)
How is Mrs Birling presented in order of the play?
- obsessed with etiquette
- believes that a woman’s place is not to question her husband
- treats Eric and Sheila as children not adults
- socially arrogant
- refuses to accept any responsibility for her actions
What was Priestley’s intentions through Mrs Birling?
Priestley has created Mrs Birling as a way of showing us the brutality beneath the veneer of apparently respectable 1912 society. Following the two world wars in which women increasingly found roles in the work-place, the audience is likely to feel antipathy for a woman who could not embrace change in gender relationships.
What do Priestley’s stage directions say about Mrs Birling?
Described in the initial stage directions as a “rather cold woman” and her husband’s “social superior”, Mrs Birling is presented as a woman whose lack of empathy prevents her from seeing the truth before her very eyes. Priestley shows us a woman so obsessed by class vanity, she is unable to change her blinkered outlook.
Quotes to show Mrs Birling’s obsession with etiquette
Social vanity and status
“(reproachfully) Arthur, you’re not supposed to say such things-“
“I don’t think you ought to talk business on an occasion like this”
Quotes to show Mrs Birling thinks a woman’s place is not to question her husband
Bound by traditional gender roles
Mrs Birling reprimands her daughter, saying that when she gets married she will have to realise that “men with important business have to spend nearly all their time on business”. - how women like Mrs Birling were keeping themselves in almost deliberate ignorance of their husband’s infidelities
“I think Sheila and I had better go into the drawing-room and leave you men-“
Quotes to show Mrs Birling’s ignorance
“No of course not”, “It isn’t true”
“Alderman Meggarty! I must say we are (italicised) learning something tonight”
Quotes to show Mrs Birling’s social arrogance
“Girls of that class”
“That I consider is a trifle impertinent Inspector”
“simply a piece of gross impertinence”
“That was one of things that prejudiced me against her case”
Quotes to show Mrs Birling’s refusal to accept any responsibility for her actions
“Go and look for the father of the child. It’s his responsibility”
“I accept no blame for it at all”, “the girl herself”, “I blame the young man”
“I thought I had done no more than my duty”
