Arthur Birling In J. B. Priestley's An Inspector Calls

At the beginning of the play Arthur Birling is described as a “heavy looking rather portentous man in his middle fifties with fairly easy manners but rather provincial in his speech” . This shows that he is confident, and tries to seem of high class and that he is the man of the house. We can see that he tries to seem “portentous” when he says “You ought to like this port Gerald, ...Finchley told me it's exactly the same port your father gets from him”. When he say its the same port that Geralds father get the audience feels and knows that he is trying to impress Gerald and the fact that Mr Birling is trying to almost be like Geralds father Mr Croft, shows that he knows who his superiors are and all he wants is the marriage of Sheila Birling and Gerald Croft so he could move forward financially and profit from the marriage. …show more content…
The quote “...perhaps we may look forward to the time when Crofts and Birlings are no longer competing but are working together- for low cost and higher prices” shows that he only cares about the money and how he looks to other people and he hopes with great optimism that he is seen as a superior, which as the audience we can see that because he says “I might find my self into the next Honours List . Just a knighthood, of course” in a way that to the audience it feels as if he is gloating and it's nothing, but to himself he sees it as a great achievement and he wishes to impress Lady Croft because he thinks that his daughter isn't a good “social rank” for someone with such a high role like