Character list: an inspector calls

Arthur Birling

Mr. Arthur Birling, in "An Inspector Calls" by J.B. Priestley, is a wealthy industrialist and businessman. He
is the owner of Birling and Company, a successful manufacturing business. The patriarch of the Birling
family. Arthur is a “rather portentous or pompous, selfish” man “in his fifties” who owns a profitable
manufacturing company. His business success allows the Birlings to live in upper-middle-class comfort.
Throughout the play, Birling is depicted as a self-made man who is proud of his achievements and status
in society. He is also portrayed as someone who prioritizes his business interests and social standing
above moral considerations. Arthur is aware that, although his firm is successful, it is not as successful as
the Crofts’. Arthur also does not yet possess a formal title as the Crofts do, so he gleefully tells Gerald in
Act One that he is expecting a knighthood. Although Arthur does seem somewhat upset at the idea that
he contributed to Eva Smith’s death, he is more upset that his family’s implication in the scandal would
become public. This would mean that the knighthood might be withheld, and that Birling would no
longer continue his social ascent. Arthur’s opinion is a strictly capitalist mentality, in which owners of
capital value only profits, and do not care for workers’ rights. Arthur tells Eric and Gerald that they must
put their own interests before anyone else’s, and that socialist ideas of human brotherhood are strange
and not to be trusted.

Sybil Birling

The matriarch of the Birling family. Sybil is described in the play’s performance notes as “cold.” Though
she is pleased her daughter Sheila is engaged to be married, she tends to ignore any potential discord or
tension in the family. Sybil serves on a charitable committee in the town, and busies herself with social
events befitting a woman whose husband is a business success. She protects what she perceives to be
the family’s good image and standing in the community. From the start, Sybil maintains a chilly and aloof
attitude toward the proceedings, as evidenced most notably by her refusal to help the pregnant Eva.
That someone as uncharitable as Sybil might be in charge of a charitable investigation is presented as
cruelly ironic, as is the fact that Sybil unwittingly denied aid to her own grandchild. When confronted
about her lack of generosity, Sybil denies responsibility and insists her behavior was correct; Eva, in her
eyes, was unworthy of help. She’s uninterested in, or in denial of, the investigation as a whole. She offers
a defensive and occasionally combative attitude towards Goole. Her issues with the Inspector have less
to do with the information he conveys, and more to do with her belief that it’s inappropriate for a
stranger to make such baseless claims. Her chief concern is with reputation; she writes off references to
Eric’s drinking habits, for instance, and though she’s upset to learn of Gerald’s affair, she’s more worried
about the prospect of the affair becoming public and causing a scandal. She calls the Inspector
“impertinent” for having the gall ( criticize someone to be rude)to ask questions. Goole demonstrates
that Sybil herself has violated violated the Birling family’s own personal maxim—that they should only
help themselves and their families—once it's revealed Eva’s child was also Eric’s. Despite the trap the
Inspector has laid, she ultimately refuses to take accountability.

Sheila Birling

Daughter of Arthur and Sybil. Sheila, “in her early twenties,” is engaged to Gerald and believes, at the
start of the play, that her future lies bright before her. But knowledge of her role, and the family’s role, in
Eva/Daisy’s death devastates Sheila, who wonders how her family can go on afterward, pretending
simply that nothing has happened. She wants the family never to forget what they have done,

Sheila is the conscience of the Birling family. She realizes very soon after the Inspector’s arrival that her
anger at Milward’s resulted in Eva/Daisy’s dismissal, and that, because Eva/Daisy went on to commit
suicide, Sheila played a role in her demise. She seems genuinely upset and lost, and reminds the rest of
her family that they, too, have acted wrongly.

Although she does not seem to care much for the Inspector’s implicit critique of capitalism, she does
believe that humans are responsible for one another’s good will. She is despondent that she cannot
undo what she has done, but is committed to the idea that the family can change going forward. She is
also willing, at the play’s end, to forgive Gerald his infidelity, because he appeared to have genuinely
cared for Eva/Daisy, even if at Sheila’s expense. She represents socially-aware younger generation and
the feminist movement.

Eric Birling

Son of Arthur and Sybil, and older brother of Sheila. Eric works part-time at the family business and has a
drinking problem that he hides from his parents and sister He represents socially-aware younger
generation and the consequences of toxic masculine culture. When it is revealed that Eric had a romantic
relationship with a woman, resulting in a child born out of wedlock, the family must confront facts about
Eric’s life, and about their own, which they had sought previously to ignore.

Eric’s position is similar to his sister’s, in that he, too, is wracked or tormented by guilt after learning of
the Eva/Daisy’s suicide. But Eric’s addiction to alcohol and his moodier, wilder temperament keep him
from reasoning as Sheila does at the play’s end. Eric believes that he behaved justifiably in stealing from
the family business to help Eva/Daisy. And, when he learns that his mother refused Eva/Daisy from her
charity despite being pregnant, he is shocked and aghast at his family’s lack of sympathy.

Different characters interpret Eric’s alcoholism in different ways. Arthur sees it as a sign of weakness, an
indication that Eric is lazy and was spoiled as a child. Sybil refuses to acknowledge that Eric has a drinking
problem, despite Sheila’s protestations. And Gerald, though he wants to believe that Eric’s drinking is
“normal” for a young man, admits that very few young men drink the way Eric does.

Gerald Croft

Fiancé to Sheila, and son of another prominent manufacturing family. Gerald is from a more socially-
elevated family, and Arthur worries that Gerald’s parents believe he is making a “poor match” in
marrying Sheila. Although the Inspector criticizes Gerald’s affair with Daisy, the Inspector notes that
Gerald is perhaps the least blamable or culpable, and most morally upright, of all the characters.

He isn’t quite as quick to defend himself, nor to denounce others; he and Sheila serve as voices of reason
throughout the investigation, He is less affected by Inspector Goole’s accusations because he enjoys the
invulnerability of the upper classes. The Birlings, on the other hand, prize their social standing precisely
because it is not set in stone; they are lower on the step or rung than Gerald, and will stop at nothing to
maintain what they have.
Where Arthur and Sybil lash out at Goole and claim they’re the victims of an unjust attack, characterizing
the accusations as invalid and thus of little consequence, Gerald takes a moment to collect his thoughts.
This contemplative move is what allows Gerald to discover the nature of Goole’s deception, and bring to
light the idea that the investigation is a “hoax.”(joke) Once Gerald realizes the girl in question may not
have been the same girl they all did wrong, and that no girl committed suicide, he is firm in his belief
that nothing really happened, aligning himself with Arthur and Sybil. he had the least to lose.

Inspector Goole

He represents the ideals of Socialism and social responsibility, and the ideal justice system. A
representative, supposedly, of the local police force, sent to investigate Eva Smith/Daisy Renton’s suicide.
The Inspector asks all the Birlings, and Gerald, questions about Eva/Daisy. It seems that the Inspector
knows the answer to everything he asks, but wants the family to admit to various instances of
wrongdoing. At the close of the play, the characters wonder aloud whether the Inspector is actually a
policeman, and the constabulary confirms that no such man serves on the force. But this does not
explain why the Inspector, who seems to have socialist sympathies, would have come to the house, or
how he could have known so much about Eva/Daisy and the Birlings.

The Inspector is physically imposing, and he has no trouble articulating his frustration with the Birlings
and with Gerald. Over the course of his questioning, the Inspector reveals that each of characters has, in
some sense, contributed to Eva Smith/Daisy Renton’s demise. The Inspector implies that the other
characters care primarily for themselves, that they are angry and impulsive, and that they cannot control
their sexual appetites or their intake of alcohol. He also says that they cannot change what has
happened to Eva/Daisy, because she is no longer alive and capable of accepting their apologies. But the
Inspector, too, is a curt, direct man, and his motivations for grilling the other characters are not readily
comprehensible. His apparent socialist sympathies at the end of the play might account in political terms
for some of his anger, but the Inspector’s desire to see justice through, in this case, is left unexplained.

Eva Smith/Daisy Renton

The victim in the play, and its most mysterious character. Inspector Goole begins by telling Arthur that a
girl named Eva Smith has killed herself, and Arthur recalls a girl of that name in his employ whom he
dismissed because she asked for a raise. Other characters claim to know different girls of different
names, including “Daisy Renton,” who, the Inspector asserts, are all the same person. But the Inspector
only shows Eva/Daisy’s photograph to one person at a time, causing Gerald to wonder, just before the
play’s end, whether the Inspector has tricked the family into combining incidents involving separate girls
into one. This revelation is again undercut when, at the very close of the play, Arthur receives word that
an unnamed girl has died in the local hospital from ingesting disinfectant.

A character who does not appear onstage in the play, but who is the absent figure around which the
action spins. She is referred to as Eva Smith, Daisy Renton, and “Mrs. Birling.” She may be a combination
of these young women, or a different person, or a fiction. Whether she is real or not, Eva/Daisy is a
stand-in for the girls that Arthur, Sybil, Sheila, Eric, and Gerald have wronged. Eva/Daisy worked for a low
wage, and Arthur fired her for attempting a strike. Sheila had her fired for impertinence. Eric and Gerald
both had affairs with her, and though Gerald cared for her, Eric’s relationship to her was more vexed, and
required him to steal money for her. If Eva/Daisy is a real person, as the last phone call suggests, then the
family’s guilt might really knot them together. But if she is not one person, and rather a set of people,
this makes her no less substantial as an organizational principle for the work. Priestley demonstrates
how selfish, or economically motivated, or jealous behavior can ruin people’s lives. Eva/Daisy is the
lesson each character must learn individually.

Edna

The Birlings’ maid. Edna mostly sets the scenes in which the family eats and talks. She is not, like the
Birlings, of the upper-middle class, but instead makes money by virtue of her labor. Edna leaves the room
at the end of the play without mention of her absence or whereabouts.