Moment 3

• (coming farther in) What business? What’s happening?

  Sheila
• I was quite justified


  Birling
• It’s what happened to her since she left Mr. Birling‘s works that is important.

  Gerald – irony, foreshadowing
• what do you mean by saying that? You talk as if we were responsible-

  Sheila
• (cutting in)

  Sheila to Birling
• Can’t blame her.


  Eric
• (to Birling) I think it was a mean thing to do.

  Sheila
• with no relatives to help her, a few friends, lonely, half-starved, she was feeling desperate.

  Inspector
• It’s a rotten shame.


  Sheila
• But these girls aren’t cheap labour – they‘re people.


  Sheila
• these young women counting their pennies in their dingy little back bedrooms.


  Inspector
• (moves nearer a light) Inspector
• (She looks at it closely, recognises it with a little cry, gives a half-stifled sob, and then runs out)
• (angrily) Why the devil do you want to go upsetting the child like that?


  Birling
• We were having a nice little family celebration tonight. And a nasty mess you’ve made of it now 


  Birling
• we’re respectable citizens and not criminals.


  Gerald
• Sometimes there isn’t as much difference as you think.


  Inspector
• (miserably) So I’m really responsible?


  Sheila
• you’re partly to blame. Just as your father is.


  Inspector
• she was very pretty and looked as if she could take care of herself. I couldn’t be sorry for her. 


  Sheila
• you used the power you had, as a daughter of a good customer and also of a man well known in the town


  Inspector
• And if I could help her now, I would-

  Sheila
• (approaching her) Now listen, darling-


  Gerald
• I don’t come into this suicide business.

  Gerald
• (laughs rather hysterically)… you fool… You’ll see. You’ll see.


  Sheila
• She’s had a long, exciting and tiring day


  Gerald
• she’s obviously had about as much as she can stand. 


  Gerald
• And you think young women ought to be protected against unpleasant and disturbing things?


  Inspector
• (bitterly) both Gerald and Sheila
• she died in misery and agony – hating life –


  Inspector
• Shelia: He means that I’m getting hysterical now

  Inspector: And are you?

  Sheila: Probably


  Discuss as if gerald’s not there
• What happens in moment 3?

  Sheila’s confession and uncovering of Gerald’s affair