Discuss Priestleys depiction of the Birling household and Gerald :: English Literature

Discuss Priestley's depiction of the Birling household and Gerald Croft, prior to the arrival of Inspector Goole In this submission I hope to fully discuss Priestley's depiction of the Birling household and Gerald Croft, prior to the arrival of Inspector Goole. The play is set in the fictional town of Brumley, an industrial town in the North Midlands. It is evening in the town, in the spring of 1912. At the moment the play starts the characters are celebrating the engagement between Gerald Croft and the Birling family's only daughter Sheila. They are all very pleased with themselves and are enjoying the occasion. The house is described as being a fairly large suburban house. The furniture in the rooms is described as being, "good solid furniture of the period. The general effect is substantial and heavily comfortable, but not cosy and homelike." As you will see later Mr. Birling always wants to make the impression that he is better than his guest, or at least is his guest's social equal. The furniture in the house may be another one of Birling's attempt to make the guest feel this way. He doesn't want to make the guest feel comfortable in his home he wants to make them feel small and insignificant in comparison to himself. Mrs. Birling is, herself, a person that is obsessed by social class, she may have selected the furniture herself as a way of showing off their status and again making their guests feel as if they aren't as "good" as the Birling family. Birling as you will see later is the stereotypical capitalist of the time. He will do anything to make himself look and feel as if he is better than his guest. The furniture represents the Birling families longing for status. In the early 1900s social status was virtually everything. This was because socialism dominated the whole of the United Kingdom. The vertical social ladder of status was what controlled who was a "somebody" and who was a "nobody". The description of the house is a good example of how unsocial many families were during this time because all anybody, who was "anybody", wanted was to show how wealthy they were, and to climb the social ladder. I shall now talk about the characters themselves. Mr. Birling is described as being, "a heavy-looking, rather portentous man in his middle fifties with fairly easy manners but rather provincial in his speech." He is a prosperous factory owner and is "a self made man". He follows all the capitalist traits of the time and works heavily under the capitalist business mentality, "build them cheap, sell them expensive".