An Inspector Calls- Sybil Birling

Mrs Birling is presented as the epitome of a 20th-century patriarchal conforming woman whose apathy and fundamentally elitist psyche consolidate her resistance to anything threatening her affluent status. Priestley describes Mrs Birling as a “cold woman” in the stage directions, oxymoronic in the sense that contemporary women were meant to conform to the expectations of their gender that being tender, maternal, and sensitive.