Arthur Birling
‘
‘hard headed, practical
man of business’
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What do we learn from these:
KEY WORDS
CAPITALIST
AMBITIOUS
CLASS
Conscious
ARROGANT
SEXIST
IGNORANT
SCANDAL
SMUG
RESPONSIBLE
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What do we learn from these:
KEY QUOTES
“I’m talking as a hard-headed practical man of business”
long monologues
‘The Titanic – she sails next week…and unsinkable, absolutely unsinkable.’
‘you’ll hear some people say war is Inevitable … fiddlesticks!’
dramatic irony
His language is also very dismissive when he says
‘Fiddlesticks!’ and ‘silly’ - he belittles other’s ideas.
Exclamatory sentence – he’s passionate and convinced about what he’s saying.
Titanic symbolizes his own family – believes they are untouchable until the Inspector arrives
giving them a rude awakening.
“I gather there’s a very good chance of a knighthood”
He often uses ‘I’ which conveys his selfish attitude, however, as the play continues he switches
to the inclusive pronoun ‘we’ to diminish the scale of the problem (Eva’s death) and shift blame.
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What do we learn from these:
KEY QUOTES
“A man has to make his own way – has to look after himself – and his family too,
of course”
“(rather impatiently) Horrid business. But I don’t understand why you should
come here.”
“you’d think everybody has to look after everybody else, as if we were all mixed
up like bees in a hive – community and all that nonsense.”
“I was an alderman for years – and Lord Mayor two years ago – and I’m still on
the Bench – so I know the Brumley police offers pretty well”
His language changes when the Inspector arrives as he speaks in short, sharp fragments and uses lots of dashes.
“there’s every excuse for what your mother and I did” / “Probably a Socialist or some sort of crank”
“Now look at the pair of them- the famous younger generation who know it all.
And they can’t even take a joke-”
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KEY CONTEXT POINTS
CLASS SYSTEM
Gerald and Mrs Birling are part of the aristocracy, which is to say that they are both from families that have been wealthy for many generations. Mr Birling is slightly different; he is part of the emerging upper-middle class because he has made his money more recently. Think back to his conversation with Gerald about Crofts Limited being both ‘older and bigger than Birling and Company’. Birling has ‘new’ money, whilst his wife and Gerald have ‘old’ money. As a socialist – someone who believed in social equality – Priestley wanted to remind his audience about how bad things were in 1912 as a way of encouraging them to continue pushing for changes that would result in greater freedom and fairness.
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KEY CONTEXT POINTS
STRIKES
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KEY CONTEXT POINTS
WOMEN
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MR B.
Personality Purpose
Relationships
Attitudes Appearance
Themes
Importance
Context
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First impressions
Mr Birling (Arthur)
“heavy-looking, rather portentous… with fairly easy manners but rather provincial in his speech”
Important / dominant (possibly threatening) / arrogant
Speaks in a regional dialect – hints that he has not been born into an upper-class family – ‘new money’
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Mr Birling’s stage directions
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Dramatic irony
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Personality
Capitalist views
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Birling is also rather full of his own success and importance. He feels he and his family are in a position to ‘lecture’ the next generation, as he is some sort of role model:
And he is VERY worried about his reputation and future prospects, above all else:
‘public scandal’
Personality
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Personality
‘I refused, of course’. He cannot empathise with those who work for him, and judges them unfavourably constantly, as does his wife:
‘she got herself into trouble there, I suppose?’
‘How do you get on with our Chief Constable, Colonel Roberts?’ or ‘go and talk this over quietly in a corner’, to which the Inspector responds with statements like ‘I don’t play golf.’ He refuses to play Birling’s games.
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PARTI - PERSONALITY | Quotes | Context |
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Appearance
Birling appears to be a stereotypical ‘fat cat’ of the business world, who is used to drinking port and eating, or playing golf with his fellow rich factory owners:
‘heavy looking’
‘evening dress of the period’
‘middle fifties’
‘fairly easy’
‘rather provincial in his speech’
Birling’s attitude is the selfish outlook of the CAPITALIST. Priestley uses Birling to represent the views of the ruling class, the owners, the bosses. He has no understanding or compassion when it comes to those who work for him. His sole purpose in life is to make money. He is set in his ways so that at the end of the play, no progress has been made.
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PARTI - PERSONALITY | Quotes | Context |
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CONTEXT CHECK POINT
Priestley uses Birling as a symbol of the callous and heartlessness of capitalism. Through his character he is criticizing the complacency of capitalist prosperity.
He is representative of the older generation who were unwilling to change.
However, he is presented as a realistic character by Priestley through his use of colloquial language appropriate for the time.
Furthermore, he is described as ‘panic stricken’ this indicates that his defiance and bravado have finally been shattered and so Priestley lets the audience see someone who is so blindly wrong and never as really in control of events as he would like himself and others to think. Therefore the audience is invited to feel sympathy.
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Relationships
Birling seems to be very traditional in his attitudes to women in that his wife has to separate herself from the business side of things and play the dutiful wife, ‘go into the drawing room and leave you men’ or ‘important work to do…you’ll have to get used to that’, whereas Sheila is to be the protected, privileged young daughter who is his passport to a bigger, better business, ‘Crofts and Birling … working together’. She needs to be removed from the room when the unpleasant family business is being discussed so that the Inspector has to remind him that Sheila isn’t ‘living on the moon’.
Birling is ‘not the kind of father a chap could go to when he’s in trouble’, as it seems Birling excludes his son from any sort of responsibility or involvement in grown up issues. He appears to prefer Gerald, who is he very attentive to, ‘lights his cigar’.
Quote- “just you keep out of this” (when the Inspector is interrogating his about not giving his staff a pay rise)
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With Inspector Goole:
Arthur Birling is the political and social antithesis of Inspector Goole. They may be the same age but that is where the similarity ends.
Mr Birling stands for CAPITALISM – the Inspector stands for SOCIALISM, which means that they cannot connect when it comes to their outlook on life at all. The Inspector is trying to teach Mr Birling a lesson that Mr Birling has no intention of learning:
Mr Birling says TOO MUCH, whereas the Inspector says as little as he can and lets the characters speak. He prompts.
Mr Birling has no empathy, whereas the Inspector tries to make the characters walk in the shoes of the less well off.
Over the course of the play, Birling’s authority is undermined by the Inspector, who reveals Birling as an ambitious, selfish man who’ll ignore the needs of others to keep up profits and a good reputation.
His encounter with the Inspector shows that he doesn’t like being challenged – he shows “a touch of impatience”. The Inspector threatens Mr Birling’s middle-class values, the reputations of his company and his family.
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BIRLING
Inspector
‘I refused of course’
‘Why?’
‘I can’t think they can be of any great consequence’
‘The girl’s dead though’
‘if we were all responsible for everything … it would be very awkward, wouldn’t it?’
‘Very awkward.’
‘a nice little family celebration … nasty mess you’ve made of it now’
‘nice little promising life there … nasty mess somebody’s made of it’
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PARTI - RELATIONSHIPS | Quotes | Context |
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Themes Birling is very important to a number of themes in this play:
Social Class
Birling is very impressed with ‘class’ and has worked his way to the upper middle class through marrying a woman who is his “social superior” and exploiting the working classes by expanding his business/factory. He hopes to gain even more status and wealth through Sheila’s marriage to Gerald:
He appears to think VERY LITTLE of the working class girls, stereotyping them without
compassion or understanding:
‘Have you any idea what happened to her after that? Get into trouble? Go on the streets?’
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Responsibility
Birling feels little, if any, responsibility towards anyone except his own immediate family. His outlook on life is greedy and selfish, exactly what Priestley is trying to discourage in writing this play. He is there to show the post war audience how foolish and misguided the Capitalists are, and we only have to look at the ridiculous speeches (dripping with dramatic irony) Birling gives just before the Inspector arrives to know that the audience are meant to think little of his airs and graces. He is hypocritical - he wants higher profits, but criticises Eva Smith for wanting higher wages.
And the sad thing is, that even after they’ve all admitted their parts in the scandal, he feels exactly the same. The children learn from it, accept social responsibility, whereas he and his wife remain resolute:
‘You’ll have a good laugh over it yet’
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Young VERSUS Old
Birling and his wife are the older generation who are stubborn, selfish and will never change. They are set as a stark contrast to the younger generation, Sheila and Eric, who, although misguided, have learned a lot by the end of the play. Find example where their attitudes completely contrast:
Eric - ‘He could have kept her on instead of throwing her out’
‘What does it matter now whether they give you a knighthood or not?
Sheila - ‘And probably between us we killed her’
‘It frightens me the way you talk’
‘I suppose we’re all nice people now’
Mrs Birling ‘In the morning they’ll be as amused as we are’
‘I wish I’d been here when that man first arrived...I’d have asked HIM a few questions
Mr Birling - ‘all we have to do is keep our heads’
‘Come on, Sheila, don’t look like that. All over now.’
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PARTI - THEMES | Quotes | Context |
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CONTEXT CHECK POINT
His language becomes more colloquial ‘y’know’ which conveys how his authority is breaking down.
He often uses ‘I’ which conveys his selfish attitude, however, as the play continues he switches to the inclusive pronoun ‘we’ to diminish the scale of the problem (Eva’s death) and shift blame.
He uses understatement ‘it would be very awkward wouldn’t it?’
He uses euphemisms when referring to taboo subjects
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MR BRUFF click here
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Importance - conclusion:
Birling represents everything Priestley dislikes about pre-war Britain. He is anti-socialism to the core, with his talk of ‘lower costs and higher prices’. He and his wife think they are a different species from the working classes, ‘girls of that sort’ or ‘cheap labour’, and continue to live gloriously unaware of the suffering of others. Priestley makes Birling as unattractive as he possibly can, giving him no credibility with the Inspector, ‘Don’t yammer and stammer at me, man’. The Inspector makes him look a fool, even when Birling isn’t doing that for himself with protestations of ‘silly little war scares’ and ‘progress everywhere apart from Russia … behindhand, naturally’. He knows everything and so obviously nothing.
He is bettered by his children, however, and that is the thought Priestley leaves with his audience. That we don’t have to be like Birling in the new society post war. We can be more compassionate, fair and humble. Birling serves as an example of what not to be. The audience were required to take his example and bury it. This was Priestley’s motive behind writing this popular play.
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PARTI - IMPORTANCE | Quotes | Context |
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Mr Birling is…
Ambitious – “there’s a very good chance of a knighthood”. He is obsessed with his social status.
Business minded – a self-proclaimed “hard-headed, practical man of business”. He even sees his daughter’s marriage as a business deal – he hopes a merge with Crofts Limited it will bring “lower costs and higher prices”
Selfish – “a man has to make his own way” – Capitalist views
Anxious – “there’ll be a public scandal”.
He’s desperate for the Croft’s approval – talks of his knighthood and gets Lord Croft’s favourite port.
Confident – demands attention from his family before he speaks – “just listen to this”
Likes to be in charge and doesn’t like to be told what to do – “well – if you don’t mind – I’ll find out first”.
He has the most continuous speech in the play and doesn’t like being interrupted – “just let me finish, Eric”.
He repeatedly shouts “Rubbish!” to dismiss what other people have said, but he finishes his own sentences with “Of course”, to make his own claims seem obvious and matter-of-fact.
Optimistic about the future – examples of dramatic irony which also make him appear foolish and unwise
Stubborn and unremorseful – he refuses to accept he has done anything wrong in regards to Eva/Daisy and would rather pass off the inspector’s visit as a “hoax” rather than race up to what he has done. He also blames the Inspector for making a “nasty mess” of the evening.
Dismissive of the concept of social responsibility – he doesn’t believe in “community and all that nonsense”
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