Inspector Calls

The Inspector had a huge effect on the whole Birling family, however I think the two characters that he had the biggest impact on were Sheila and Eric.
Sheila starts out in the play as a very spoilt girl, and also seems rather shallow. Several things give us this impression in the first scene, for example her reaction to her engagement ring: “Oh Mummy – isn’t it a beauty?!” She also appears quite naive, despite her curiosity as to where her fiancé Gerald spent his summer last year. However, as soon as the Inspector starts to interview the family, we see an altogether different side of her. She shows compassion immediately when hearing about her father’s poor treatment of Eva Smith in his factory: “But these girls aren’t just cheap labour – they’re people”. She is also horrified by her own part in Eva's story. She feels full of guilt for her jealous actions and blames herself as "really responsible."

We also realise later on in the play that Sheila is very perceptive, and a lot clever than she may have seemed on the surface, much more so than her parents. We see this when Mrs Birling is blaming the father of Eva Smith’s child (who we soon find out to be Eric Birling himself) for her suicide. Sheila tries to stop her mother from speaking out because she realises before anyone else the horrible situation that her mother is putting the family in. This shows the audience a huge contrast between Sheila and her mother that the Inspector has drawn out, and how she is altogether more perceptive and open than her parents. She understands the consequences of not cooperating with the Inspector and whilst the realisation about Eric exposes her mother as a hypocrite, it shows us that Sheila has intelligence and awareness that we have never seen before, and we, as the readers, warm to her.
At the end of the play, we see the full effect of the Inspector’s visit on Sheila, that she is now much wiser. She can judge her parents and Gerald from a new perspective, but the