here I have 29 different quotations for the character Sheila in JB Priestley's play and inspector calls but which 10 do I think are most important for you to analyze let's find out [Music] hey everyone it's me Liam aka mr. Knight aka dystopia drunky and if you're watching this video that's because you're looking for some quotations about the character Sheila Burling in JB Priestley's play and in spectacles well you've come to the right place because in this video I'm going to provide you with a quick summary of her character ten quotations and then a quick discussion about what I think JB Priestley's intentions were when writing this character I will be saying a lot of things that won't necessarily be appearing on-screen during this video so you might find it useful to grab a pen and paper now before I get properly started that way you can make sure that you can get the most out of watching this video and of course if as you're watching this video you think that it's super helpful and that you would like to see more content like this you can of course let me know by dropping the video a like commenting on it and obviously subscribing to my channel too recently I have hit 400 subscriber mark and so I guess the race is on now to hit 500 so here is my quick summary of Sheila so Sheila is obviously a Burling and presumably their only daughter meaning that her role in the family is to do she is told and to eventually marry in to another family she is in her early 20s in 1912 so she would have belonged to the same generation as JB Priestley who was 18 in 1912 she is engaged to Gerald Croft telling us that she has performed the duty that was expected of her as a young woman in 1912 namely finding a husband she appears to be quite childish and giddy at times in the play but even at the place beginning we can see that there may be more to her than this as she teases Gerald paths playfully half seriously over the course of the play Sheila appears to be the most insightful character she understands what the inspector is doing and generally seems to and it generally seems to figure things out and importantly her role in Eva Smith's suicide was that she got her fired from her job at Mill woods which is a shop that Sheila frequently goes to she did this out of pure jealousy because when Eva held up a dress that Sheila looked bad in she looked beautiful and so Sheila go has sacked so with all that out of the way let's have a look at some quotations right so here is the first quotation that I have selected for Sheila as I did for my 10 quotations for mr. Birling a link for which is appearing on screen about now I will start with the place opening stage directions for Sheila the stage directions say Sheila is a pretty girl in her early 20s very pleased with life and rather excited these stage directions highlight Sheila's youthfulness beauty and happiness which one suggests that she is not a particularly serious character and here we have the second quotation for Sheila it comes right at the start of the play at the end of her and Gerald's engagement party when Arthur encourages mrs. Berg to drink Sheila says yes go on mummy you must drink our health this quotation reveals two things to us most obviously we can see that Sheila refers to her mother as mummy which is something we see a few times in the opening stages of the play this makes us seem much younger than her twenty or so years and so you could say that she seems immature infantile or inferior to her parents however slightly conversely to this though Sheila also seems somewhat assertive in this quotation she is telling her mum what to do albeit in a very soft way these two interpretations combined could make Sheila seem like a bit of a spoiled brat okay so here we have two quotations so technically you've got eleven quotations for sheeter in this video rather than ten these two come in quick succession though and are only separated by a tiny line of dialogue from the inspector and they achieve more or less the same thing so I'm sticking them together these two quotations are Sheila's response to finding out that Eva Smith has killed herself by drinking some strong disinfectant of course the stage directions in the first quotation exemplify her heightened emotional state but that's kind of obvious it would be hard to do any meaningful language analysis of rather distress that went beyond defining those two words however her dialogue that follows is also indicative of her feeling rather distressed the sentences in these lines of dialogue are all fairly short which creates a quick pace which could represent her state of distress the punctuation achieves this also the exclamation mark shows her heightened emotional state the dashes show that she is flustered and cannot think coherently and the succession of two questions shows that she is desperate for more information but cannot wait for the answers across these two quotations Sheila asks three questions what was she like quite young pretty depending on how you interpret this you could look at Sheila in quite a positive light here by asking this many questions Sheila shows that she genuinely cares about Eva's death even though she did not know her by asking these questions Sheila is trying to relate to Eva and empathize with her you could argue though if you're a bit of a cynic that Sheila's questions are quite shallow she asks about Eva's age and appearance which might suggest that she is vain and shallow or that she only cares about people who are like her the next quotation is something that Sheila says after the inspector suggests that mr. Birling does not see his employees as people but sources of cheap labor instead Sheila's response is super important she says but these girls aren't cheap labor they're people this quotation shows that Sheila does not necessarily share the same wholly capitalist views that her parents hold whereas I am cautious to say that she is a socialist I think it would be hard after all for somebody like Sheila to be purely socialist given the advantages we can assume that she has had in her life due to her social class but I am definitely happy to say that she has some socialist sympathies in short this quotation means that she sees the women at her father employees as people first rather than sources of cheap labor which is essentially the reverse of what mr. Birling has to say if we're thinking about form for a moment about this text as a play that is acted out rather than a book that is read in our heads then we can see that Priestley specifically wanted the actress playing Sheila to stress the word people this could be important for a number of reasons firstly it humanizes them which mr. Birling apparently does not do secondly it is in the plural form people rather than a singular person suggesting that's the amount of people in this position is vast finally people is generic the working-class do not have much in the way of identity perhaps reflecting the fact that Sheila does not really know or understand them or this could reflect the fact that's the working-class how little power or say in 1912 our next quotation for Sheila is her response to Gerald at the end of Act one when he says that he can keep his affair with Eva / Daisy secret from the inspector Sheila's reply is after laughing Rob hysterically why you fool he knows of course he knows as I hate to think how much he knows that we don't know yet you'll see you'll see so I've picked this quotation for a few different reasons the first is that it does indeed present Sheila as rather hysterical the stage directions obviously do this but so too does Sheila's dialogue her dialogue is made up of mostly short sentences which creates a rapid pace reflecting her slightly unhinged frame of mind as to does the repetition of you'll see she is starting to sound a little mad but why is she mad all of this is coming out after she has found out that her fiance has had an affair and she's found this out on the night of her engagement party no less Sheila's hysteria and fury are brought about because she is immensely upset about the things she has found out about Gerald she really does or did love him secondly I have selected this quotation because it presents Sheila as insightful out of all of the burling's in Gerald she is the one who understands the inspectors methods the most she has seen him for what he is some sort of omniscient detective and she has also seen how he is letting the characters fall into the trap of revealing things about themselves this is perhaps why she is so honest with him she knows that any lie is futile our next quotation comes a little bit later once the inspector has finished questioning Sheila and is beginning to interrogate Gerald gerald doesn't want Sheila to stay around and listen to his involvement with Eva's left AZ and yet Sheila is adamant that she is staying the inspector explains that Sheila must stay and hear Gerald's involvement otherwise she will feel totally responsible for Eva / Daisy's death for the rest of her life Sheena's response list is eagerly yes that's it and I know I'm to blame and I'm desperately sorry but I can't believe I won't believe it's simply my fault that in the end she she committed suicide that would be too horrible this quotation is interesting for a number of reasons at its surface level Sheila accepts responsibility as seen in the phrase I know I'm to blame which is good Sheila is now behaving responsibly and in an unselfish way she regrets her actions too as seen in and undeath saury with the adverb desperately really emphasizing how bad she feels about Eva / Daisy's death however she agrees with the inspector very eagerly and says that she won't believe that it is simply her fault that she committed suicide just how much blame is Sheila accepting maybe she's willing to take some responsibility but not all of it our next quotation comes after Gerald has been thoroughly questioned by the inspector emotional he excuses himself and says that he will go for a walk Sheila hands him the engagement ring and says that he needs to rebuild their relationship mr. Birling steps in trying to defend Gerald as he's only done what young men tend to do apparently Sheila's response is Swift she says don't interfere please father Gerald met with I mean and you apparently don't now what's important about this quotation is that it is clearly an interruption if you have your copy of the text to hand open it to this quotation which is a little over halfway down page 40 mr. burnings line of dialogue ends with a long dash which is used to signify that his words are not finished and that the next character to speak speaks over him Sheila interrupts her father showing a level of maturity and independence that we have not necessarily seen from her before moreover the things that she says are important to firstly she calls mr. Birling father and not dad or daddy which we imagine that she probably does given that she calls her mother mummy that's the start of the play Sheila's language choices have become less infantile suggesting that she is maturing as the play progresses furthermore the first sentence of this line is a command don't interfere please father although she's still being polite she is very much telling her father what to do or not do this inverts the power dynamic seen in families in 1912 the father was the one to bosses children around and yet here mr. burling's child his female child no less gives him an order which he seems to follow our latest quotation for Sheila comes impact three once the inspector has left the Burling household in response to mr. Berlin's claim that there's every excuse what he and mrs. Birling did Sheila interjects and says I behave badly too I know I did I'm ashamed of it but now you're beginning to pretend that nothing much has happened this quotation is significant for two reasons first of all the frequent use of the first-person pronoun shows us that Sheila is aware of her poor behavior as that she has accepted responsibility for the things that she has done on a similar note when she tells her father that he is beginning to pretend that nothing much has happened Sheila is trying to adopt the assertive mature persona that she has developed across the play although mr. Birling does not bend to her will this time it is still an example of Sheila clearly displaying that she has learned from the inspectors teachings our next quotation comes shortly after the previous one the burling's and they're wondering whether the inspector was genuine or not the older generation are now claiming that it makes a big difference if he was a fraud or as Sheila is adamant that it makes no difference whatsoever in response to this mrs. Birling says don't be childish Sheila - which Sheila responds with flaring up I'm not being if you want to know is you two who are being childish try not to face the facts this quotation is interesting as it shows the tension at the very heart of Sheena's character at the end of the play on the one hand she is trying to act maturely and responsibly as she is trying to face the facts of the situation and feels guilty about how she treated Eva / Daisy and is even trying to correct the behavior of her parents on the other hand the stage directions tell us that she flares up when her mother calls her childish showing a lack of control over her emotions which could be seen as a very immature and childish reaction to put it short Sheila is still getting used to behaving in a grown-up way and as such she appears to make mistakes and gets things wrong from time to time and here we have our final quotation for Sheila which comes on the second last page of the play and is one of the last things that she says this is a response to the older generation feeling pleased of themselves as they have just found out that there is no such person called inspector ghoul working for the local forces nor has a young woman committed suicide by drinking a lot of strong disinfectant mr. and mrs. Birling and Gerald all seem to be having a laugh and as she readies herself to leave the room and go to bed she says I tell you whoever the inspector was it was anything but a joke you knew it then you began to learn something and now you've stopped you're ready to go on in the same old way Sheila's voice may as well be Priestley's hear her insight gives the audience a clear summary of what is going on in the play although the older generation had started to learn from the inspectors lessons they have now stopped and are carrying on as if nothing has changed whatsoever this insight reveals to the audience that Sheila really has learned from the inspector as they are left with the impression that she will behave differently towards others in the future her criticism of the older generation they are ready after all to go on in the same old way will ring in the audience's ears long after the play is over Sheila is condemning people for not learning their lesson but how is she really talking to hear her parents and Gerald or the audience who have been given a lesson in how they should or should not treat the less advantage as I said in my video for mr. Birling it is all well and good being able to remember quotations and their analyses but you will not get into the top grades if you do not consider the author's intentions why did Priestley right Sheila the way he did it never was what would be missing from the message of the play if Sheila was not in it so first of all through presenting Sheila in such a positive way by the end of the play Priestley is praising her generation they are certainly better than the generation that came before them now if Sheila was in her early 20s in 1912 she would have been in her mid to late 50s in 1945 the year of the play's premier who else would have been roughly this age in 1945 yeah okay priestly but also many of the plays audience members by praising a character who could be seen to represent them Priestley may be encouraging his audience to learn the same lessons as Sheila and to do what they can to help those who are less fortunate secondly Sheila is the character who IRG finishes the play best and undergoes a transformation from child to responsible young woman through presenting her in this positive light Priestley may have been celebrating women and the rise in status that they experienced as a result of the two world wars through celebrating women he may have been hoping that his flattery would have made the female members of his audience feel more inclined to take on his lessons and help others around them after all given woman's increase in power in the post-war era it was no longer just men who had to be socially responsible and finally by showing Sheila's positive transformation at transformation that sees her edge towards more socialist modes of thoughts despite her presumably capitalist upbringing Priestley may have been intending on showing that even the most wealthy people we should remember here that his audience would have had a certain degree of expendable income if they were going to the theatre are able to be part of the solution rather and the problems caused by capitalism so there we go that is Sheila burning in JB Priestley's and in spectacles analyzed I've summarized her role in the play given you ten or eleven quotations that I think are really vital and even discussed Priestley's possible motivations for writing her the way he did but what can you do next well if you're looking for a way to turn this into a revision task you could release it time and time again why not turn these 10 or 11 quotations into flashcards on one side you could write what does the below quotation shows about Sheila and then below it write one of the quotations and on the other side you could then write some analysis either something you've heard from me in class read somewhere else or thought of yourself remember though what you've made then you use the flashcards and test yourself and your memory get those quotations stuck in your brain or how about answering the exam question that I've just put on screen I've kept it as generic as possible so that it may be applied to a number of different examples write an essay and see if you can do it in exam conditions and that means that you'll note too if you're feeling brave and you could even turn the quotations that you've just made notes on I hope into a rap poem or song yes I know that sounds a bit weird and cheesy but rhyme can really help to get things stuck into your brain whilst being creative with the source text can also help you with information retention too and whether or not you're going to do any of those things you should also remember to like this video if it's helped you out and you'd like to see more content like this drop a comment on the video to the letting me know if it has helped you ask me a question or actually the Burling or even adding in a quotation that you think is worthy of inclusion in this top 10 list and of course please don't forget to subscribe if you aren't already that way you can't miss out on any of the future GCSE English revision content that I put up and also it helped me out too and as ever I hope that you have an awesome rest of the day if you are revising please please please please remember to take frequent short breaks as a burned out student is not a happy or successful student and happy and successful there two things that you deserve to be so there we go those are our 10 or 11 quotations for Sheila she goes from petulant jealous child to a conscientious caring young woman a journey that JB Priestley has shown to give us hope for the next generation [Music] [Music]