How far does Priestly present Sheila Birling as a naive character?

The character of Sheila Birling changes and grow throughout the play. She begins as a very sheltered young woman in a well off family. This is exemplified in the initial stage directions where Preistly describes her as 'a pretty girl in her early twenties, very pleased with life and rather excited'. The combination of Sheila being referred to as a girl rather than a woman and her being excited reflect a young naivety in her character. This is further supported by her line 'Oh – it's wonderful! Look – mummy – isn't it a beauty? Oh – darling ' when Gerald gives her a ring. This shows us how Sheila values the beauty of objects rather above all else. It suggests that she does not think about financial implications or the value of the object as itself but rather how it looks, which supports her naivety.
However, Priestly later shows that Sheila grows as a person throughout the events of the play and she has a much more assertive personality in the finals scenes. For example, she feels confident enough to tell her family that they are reverting to an attitude that she believes is wrong as she says 'You began to learn something. And now you've stopped. You're ready to go on in the same old way'. Here Priestly is demonstrating that Sheila has strong morals and beliefs and shows the original naivety to be almost fully gone from her. Priestly, therefore, only shows Sheila to be naive in the initial moments of the play but does not show that she is without her own thoughts and convictions about the world overall.

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