J.B. Priestly

The Birlings are a rich family. Their purpose, apart from entertaining, is to represent their social classes. Arthur Birling is "rather portentous" and shows himself to have wrong impressions and ideas about the world and so, is somewhat politically uneducated. Sybil Birling, the former's sanctimonious wife is cold and of a higher class than Birling. She is very concerned about what the society thinks of her and shows her class to be cold, unkind and conceited. Mr. And Mrs. Birling represents the higher class in society. Sheila the Birlings" daughter, is an animated and vivacious character who has an idea about the outside world and so, is not completely innocent. Eric, her brother, is characterized as "half-shy" and "half-assertive". Shiela and Eric together represent the younger generation in society. Their progression is from "immature" and "ignorance" to that of "knowledge". Gerald Croft is described as the "easy-well bred young man about town" who basically portrays the hypocrisy and deceit of the higher class. .
             In the opening scenes, the audience is given a further impression of some of the characters by giving references to the impossibility of War (which follows in 1914) and to progress man is making, represented by the Titanic (which sinks on its maiden voyage). This is most effective to show the pomposity of Birling's social class. Eva Smith represents the working class. She is time and again, downtrodden. i.e. Mr. Birling throws her out of her job when she needed it. Gerald and Eric both use her and in some way keep secret or smother the fact that they did. Sheila uses her power to throw her out of her last job for virtually no reason - as she admits later on she was just jealous ("Inspector: It almost seems you were jealous of her; Sheila: Yes, I guess I was"). Mrs. Birling sees to it that Eva gets no help when the latter needed it most, simply because Mrs. Birling did not like the girls manner and "show" of feelings.