Essay On How Does Priestley Present Gerald In An Inspector Calls

Gerald Croft is the fiancé of Sheila Birling and the son of prosperous businessman Sir George Croft, and Lady Croft. He has a privileged upbringing and comes from a wealthy family who, like the Birling's, have a business, although it is 'both older and bigger.'He 'is an attractive chap about thirty' and his father has a knighthood. The audience may initially consider him to be a dandy but in the stage directions Priestley specifically states that is not the case, he ‘is rather too manly to be a dandy but very much the easy well-bred young man-about-town.' He is the character who will deceive the readers' expectation in the play.

At the beginning of the play, Gerald appears to be very polite and well mannered"Absolutely first-class."He is enthusiastic …show more content…
He seems to adhere to traditional views concerning men and women, he tries to protect Sheila from hearing about his affair, not only because he wants to hide it from her but he fears she will be too weak-willed and find it very upsetting "Why should you? its bound to be unpleasant and disturbing."Gerald does come across as honorable as at first, he appears to want to help Daisy and not use her "she was desperately hard up and at that moment was actually hungry. I made the people at the County find some food for her."He also says "I want you to understand that I didn't install her there so that I could make love to her"showing that he is kind and willing to help. He is also gracious as he further 'insists on gifting her enough money' before leaving. Status and class do not seem to matter to him as much, maybe because he is of higher status than the Birlings, so more secure in his position. Gerald then leaves to contemplate the evening alone, with the intention of os coming back …show more content…
Although, he did care for Eva but treated her carelessly due to her social status (kept her as his mistress for his own pleasure then discarded her, basically made her homeless). At the end of the play, Gerald is the only one who remains calm and collected and returns having figured out that the inspector was not a real inspector. Mrs. Birling admires him for him having 'argued this very cleverly.'He is crucial to the plot because of his evidence of the inspector being fake makes the whole night a 'joke' and there will, therefore, be no consequences for the group. Similar to the two older Birlings, Gerald does not learn anything from the whole situation, he replies to Sheila, saying that they all helped to kill her, "Did we? Who says so?"His ignorance is due to his status in society and this is one of his weaknesses, that he cannot see what the inspector was teaching them like Mr. and Mrs. Birling. Towards the end, Gerald clearly believes that nothing has changed,"Everything's all right now, Sheila. What about this ring?"He expects that Sheila have gotten over it so soon and he believes now that the situation is over, everything can go back to normal, revealing quite a naive side of Gerald and has no understanding of the lesson the inspector