An inspector calls

Hi all.

i have an english lit exam tomorrow about the change in relationship between Sheila & Gerald.

Any help will be greatly appreciated!

Thanks

That's amazing! I'll have a look now! Thanks so much.

no worries, good luck

I'm assuming you've done the test by now? How did it go?

Sheila Birling is presented as an influential character from which Priestley can voice and impose his viewpoints of social hierarchy as well as gender inequality in a way which the people can relate to as if Sheila is capable of change, so are the people.
At the start of the play, Sheila is presented as a conventional Edwardian woman who conforms to society's expectations. Priestley introduces Sheila as "a pretty girl in her early twenties, very pleased with life and rather excited" to convey the typical attitudes of a middle class Edwardian woman who is sheltered from the realities of the harsh world and also the struggles from which the lower classes- like Eva- face. The fact that she is "pretty" connotes the frivolous convention of Edwardian women but also indicates her naivety which is further developed when Priestly refers to Sheila as a "girl" rather than a woman. Her immaturity is reinforced as she is "very pleased with life and rather excited" suggesting she is content with the suffering that occurs in the society around her that she is so far oblivious to as she holds the same myopic and self centred views of her parents who don't value "community and all the nonsense". Consequently, Priestley may be highlighting how Sheila is unenlightened to socialism, something which was very common among young higher class individuals due to the influence of their parents.

I'm assuming you've done the test by now? How did it go?

Hiya! This sounds great! I put dashes in one of the sentences as it was a subordinate clause. I've made this bold, underlined and italic in the quote to show you where it was. I'm assuming you'll be showing her development throughout the play in your other paragraphs?

Hi - sorry for the late reply. I feel like i did really well! It went really well with some very positive feedback, thanks

Thank you so much for taking your time to give me feedback! Honestly, I appreciate it so much and I've been posting a lot of essays for very long but no-one seems to be willing to check them and give feedback. Thank you so much again for the editing as well. Also, yes our teacher told us to follow a specific structure which includes 3 paragraphs - how the character is presented at the start of the play, then as the character develops, then at the end of the play.

P.S. Could you blindly grade this paragraph? Say if I complete 2 other paragraphs on how Sheila develops and how she is at the end of the play in the same style, could you predict a rough estimate for a grade? If not its totally fine. Thank you so much again

Haha no problem. Yeah, you'll get less people willing to mark whole essays and paragraphs because it can be a lot of reading and students don't have mark schemes or know how to roughly grade or mark other people's work. That's definitely the way to go about it!

I'm not really sure, but I'd say you'd get a pretty high mark. Maybe 7 or above. I think you should change the opening sentence as you say that she is influential and holds Priestley's viewpoints, but the paragraph is about how she is naive and follows her family's opinions. This is what you said: "Sheila Birling is presented as an influential character from which Priestley can voice and impose his viewpoints of social hierarchy as well as gender inequality in a way which the people can relate to as if Sheila is capable of change, so are the people. At the start of the play, Sheila is presented as a conventional Edwardian woman who conforms to society's expectations." Maybe you could lose the first sentence and keep the second one as your point. You could then use this sentence to open your last paragraph.

Ohhh, I see thank you so much for the way you even highlighted the sentences in colour which is really helpful! Also, I used that opening sentence as the main idea for Sheila in AIC basically like an introductory paragraph or should I just drop that and use it in the last paragraph "At the end of the play" and then "Sheila Birling is presented as an influential character from which Priestley can voice and impose his viewpoints of social hierarchy as well as gender inequality in a way which the people can relate to as if Sheila is capable of change, so are the people"

Of course! I'd drop it and use it in the last paragraph, just like how you've done it in the highlighted bit I've quoted. You don't need an introduction so it could use up time that you may need.

Ah I see. Thank you so much!

No worries! glad I could help. When's your exam?

Oh hey! My exam's on the coming Thursday. Also, I wanted to ask have you studied Romeo and Juliet? I basically have 2 exams (well assessments) in this coming week - Romeo and Juliet exam (on Tuesday) and AIC (Thursday) which will be used as evidence to send to exam boards and decide my final grade for English Literature GCSE. I'm in Year 10 and In our school, we do English Lit in year 10 - no idea why. Rather do it in Year 11 since by the end you've developed a higher range of vocabulary.

Good luck! Yeah, I did. Need some help? That's weird