Mrs Birling — Edexcel GCSE English Literature 1ET0
Edexcel GCSE English Literature · 1ET0
Mrs Birling
Characters
What you need to know
How Priestley presents Mrs Birling, and how the character develops across the text: class prejudice and refusal to change.
The key quotations for this character and how to analyse them, with the context that shapes them.
How to use the lesson's key quotations in an essay, with a short worked paragraph.
Key quotations: 'a rather cold woman and her husband's social superior', 'Arthur, you're not supposed to say such things', 'Girls of that class', 'As if a girl of that sort would ever refuse money!', 'Go and look for the father of the child. It's his responsibility.', 'I don't believe it. I won't believe it', 'In the morning they'll be as amused as we are'.
Her charity work and its prejudice, and dramatic irony as she condemns Eric.
For Edexcel's essay on this text, link each point to its context and the writer's purpose, which earn as many marks as knowledge of the text (16 of 40); language analysis earns no marks there.
