How does Priestley use the character of Sybil to explore ideas about morality?
Morality - the belief that some behaviour is right and acceptable and that some behaviour is wrong
How does Priestley use the character of Sybil to explore ideas about morality?
Before the arrival of the inspector, Priestley presents Sybil Birling as superior and unsympathetic. Like the other Birlings, Sybil is ‘pleased’ with herself at the start of the play. This suggests that she thinks too highly of herself but doesn’t think enough about others. She tries to bully the Inspector by mentioning that her husband used to be mayor. This reveals that she tries to use status and power for her own advantage. Sybil scornfully looks down on working class women like Eva Smith. She calls them ‘girls of that class’ and says that she can’t understand them. She also sneers about Eva as ‘a girl of that sort’. Priestley uses Sybil’s scornful character to show that the rich look down on the poor. This links to the divisions in 1912 and 1945 in England between rich and poor and the Labour movement’s fight for workers’ rights, conditions and fair pay. Priestley believed in a morality based on social responsibility not on class status. His character of Sybil is an attack on the judgmental arrogance of the rich who do not care about helping the poor.
During the inspector’s questioning, Priestley makes clear Sybil refuses to take any responsibility for Eva’s death. She admits that she was prejudiced against Eva from the beginning and influenced others not to help her. She repeats many times that she felt ‘perfectly justified’. This dialogue between Sybil and the inspector adds to the idea that she is selfish and stubborn. She accepts no blame for refusing help to a girl who soon after committed suicide. She says she did nothing wrong and nothing she’s ashamed of. This implies that she is heartless and uncaring. Her repetition of the word ‘justified’ suggests that she feels she is morally right. Priestley is criticising those who deny their social responsibility to look after others, especially the vulnerable in society. Writing in 1945, Priestley was in favour of the new Labour government’s National Health Service to provide security for the ‘millions’ like Eva Smith in difficult positions.
Later in the play, Sybil’s blaming the father of Eva’s child badly backfires on her and her son Eric. At the climax of Act 2, she tries to deflect blame away from herself by saying: ‘Go and look for the father of the child. It’s his responsibility.’ She says she blames the young man and that the Inspector should make an example out of him. She suggests he should be forced to confess in public. Priestley uses dramatic irony because Sheila and the audience have realised that the young man is actually Sybil’s son Eric, but Sybil hasn’t realised this. This moment shows Sybil is hypocritical. She blames the father and makes things worse for Eric. The irony is that she has unknowingly blamed her own son. Eric later accuses her of killing his child and her own grandchild. Priestley attacks Sybil’s uncaring morality and shows how it destroys her own family relationships. Priestley’s Inspector exposes Sybil’s heartlessness to show the failure of charity welfare and to suggest that socialist morality is better for looking after the poor.
In conclusion, Sybil is unsympathetic, irresponsible and hypocritical, and her individualistic morality backfires on her in the play. Priestley wants the audience to realise that socialism is better for society, which explains why his play was first performed in socialist Russia in 1946. He wants spectators to change their morality to one based on social responsibility.
Grade 7+
‘An Inspector Calls’ is about how people should behave morally. Priestley explores the theme of morality throughout the play by criticising the immoral actions of the wealthy in society. Priestley challenges the immoral treatment of the working class by the wealthy in order to encourage his audience to be moral and to inspire change in society. Through the character of Sybil Birling, a stubborn and selfish member of the older generation, Priestley explores how damaging the immoral behaviour of the wealthy can be in order to emphasise the need for change.
Before the inspector arrives, Priestley’s portrayal of Sybil Birling, an unsympathetic and superior woman, demonstrates the selfish nature that many upper class women possessed. In the opening stage directions, Priestley describes Sybil, a woman only concerned with the reputation of herself and her family, as ‘pleased’ with herself. Celebrating her daughter’s engagement in her ‘heavily comfortable house’, Priestley implies that Sybil thinks too highly of herself and her family but does not think enough about others. Priestley also demonstrates that Sybil behaves immorally because she would rather bully the inspector by mentioning that her husband is a mayor rather than accepting that her family could have behaved irresponsibly. Priestley reveals that Sybil believes she is superior to other people in society because she is willing to use her status and power for her own advantage. Furthermore, the fact that Priestley chooses to have Sybil refer to Eva Smith as a girl of ‘that class’ conveys that Sybil snobbishly looks down on working class women and believes that she is superior to them just because she has more money. Priestley’s use of the word ‘that’ is derogatory, indicating that Sybil Birling is unsympathetic of the difficulties they faced and views all of the working class as immoral. Priestley uses irony here because it is actually Sybil, a woman who is unwilling to use her wealth and power to help women, who is immoral not Eva who refuses to take stolen money despite desperately needing it. By juxtaposing the characters of Eva and Sybil, perhaps Priestley was challenging the stereotype that working class people were immoral and hopeless by asking his audience to consider the difference in moral standards between the wealthy and the poor.
During the inspector’s questioning, Sybil’s actions demonstrate a need for the upper class to take more responsibility for the working class. As an owner of a women’s charity, Sybil is responsible for looking after the working class women who come to the charity for help, however, Sybil admits that she is prejudiced against Eva from the beginning. Priestley has Sybil repeat that she felt ‘perfectly justified’ in the way she treated Eva Smith. It is clear through the adverb ‘perfectly’ that Sybil is stubborn in her viewpoint and is unwilling to accept that the way she treated Eva was immoral. Additionally, Priestley also conveys that Sybil has no sympathy towards Eva Smith and her situation. By repeating that she is ‘justified’, Sybil appears to the audience as unashamed of her actions and unwilling to change, implying that Sybil believes she was morally right. Priestley’s portrayal of Sybil as an unsympathetic and unashamed woman implies Sybil did not use the charity to help others but to improve her own social status. Perhaps Priestley wanted his audience to consider whether the wealthy upper class run charities to provide support for those in need or to benefit themselves. Priestley could have also portrayed Sybil as irresponsible in order to challenge the fact that the working class only had private charities run by the immoral upper class to turn to for help and to call for the need for government help in the form of the NHS.
Later in the play, Sybil, a woman only concerned about the social status of herself and family, tries to deflect the blame of Eva’s death away from her own family. At the climax of Act Two, Priestley has Sybil tell the inspector that he should ‘look for the father’ because she believes it is his responsibility. At this moment, Priestley suggests that Sybil, who is prejudiced against the working class, assumes the father is an immoral working class man who needs to step up and take responsibility for his actions. Priestley uses irony here as Sybil hypocritically is able to notice when the working class have acted immorally but cannot recognise her own immoral actions. The use of dramatic irony here also allows the audience to find Sybil foolish because they have already figured out that Eric is the father. Priestley might have chosen to have the audience discover before Sybil that Eric is the father to imply Sybil is blinded by prejudice; she is only willing to see the working class as immoral and is unable to comprehend that her own son could behave in this way. The attack on Sybil’s uncaring morality could have been used by Priestley to challenge the way the upper class portrayed themselves as moral and the working class as immoral and hopeless. Perhaps he wanted his audience to consider whether the upper class were more immoral because they were unable to recognise the immorality in their own actions.
Overall, perhaps Priestley uses Sybil’s immorality in order to help his audience recognise that morality is not linked to your status in society or the amount of money you own but linked to the way you do not let your situation influence your character. By exploring the immoral actions of the wealthy, Priestley highlights the need for a more socialist approach to society.