THE GOOD WOMEN/PERSON OF SZECHWAN

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Eugen Bertolt Friedrich Brecht (10 February 1898 – 14 August 1956) was a German poet, playwright, and theatre director of the 20th century. He made contributions to dramaturgy and theatrical production, the latter through the tours undertaken by the Berliner Ensemble – the post-war theatre company operated by Brecht and his wife, long-time collaborator and actress Helene Weigel. Brecht's mother was a devout Protestant and his father a Catholic (who had been persuaded to have a Protestant wedding). The modest house where he was born is today preserved as a Brecht Museum.[6] His father worked for a paper mill, becoming its managing director in 1914.[7] Thanks to his mother's influence, Brecht knew the Bible, a familiarity that would have a lifelong effect on his writing. From her, too, came the "dangerous image of the self-denying woman" that recurs in his drama.[8] Brecht's home life was comfortably middle class, despite what his occasional attempt to claim peasant origins implied.[9] At school in Augsburg he met Caspar Neher, with whom he formed a lifelong creative partnership, Neher designed many of the sets for Brecht's dramas and helped to forge the distinctive visual iconography of their epic theatre.
Bertolt Brecht wrote The Good Woman of Setzuan while living in the U.S. He started work on it in 1938 but it wasn’t completed until 1943. In German, the title is Der gute Mensch von Setzuan. This translates into “The Good Person of Setzuan”, as the play is sometimes called.

SUMMARY:

The play begins with a water seller named Wong who is out trying to sell his product. While working, he meets three gods. The gods have been searching the earth for a good person who lives by their guidelines. However, they find only vagrants and sinners. Wong tells them about a prostitute who “can’t” say no, and is likely to do any good deed asked. The gods meet this prostitute, Shen Te, and find that she is good. They reward her with money that she uses to buy a tobacco shop. She opens the money and tobacco in her shop to anyone who cares to ask. She also allows homeless families to live in the shop. Her kindness is impressive to the gods and others, but her shop quickly becomes overcrowded, messy, and low on money. Then one day Shen Te’s mysterious cousin, Shui Ta shows up. Shui Ta kicks out the people living in the shop and returns it back into a profit-earning business. However, the audience is aware that Shui Ta is really Shen Te in a mask. Eventually Shen Te returns and continues her charitable activities. As time progresses, word of the “good woman of setzuan” spreads and more people come to the tobacco shop looking for help. As more people demand Shen Te’s charity, Shui Ta shows up more and more often. Shui Ta starts coming around so frequently that he is able to grow the business into a large tobacco shop with many employees. Shui Ta is not the only man trying to help Shen Te. Shen Te meets a pilot named Yang Sun. Shen Te like him but her friends do not. They would rather she date the local baker who is willing to put a lot of money into the tobacco shop. As Shen Te’s story develops, the gods check in with Wong on a few occasions. Wong tells them that Shen Te continues to do good and the gods talk about the moral rules they have set in place on earth. One day an employee of the tobacco shop hears Shen Te crying, but only finds Shui Ta when he checks in on her. Shui Ta is then taken to court for allegedly kidnapping or murdering his cousin. At the trial, the gods disguise themselves as the judges. Shui Ta then tells them he will confess when the room is cleared. Alone with the judges, Shui Ta reveals that he is actually Shen Te. Shen Te discusses with the god how disguising herself as Shui Ta was necessary in order to keep the business alive. The gods sympathize with the situation as they realize their moral rules aren’t perfect. They allow Shen Te to be Shui Ta only part time, a compromise Shen Te is not satisfied with.

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With this story, I believe Brecht tried to show how people must balance good and bad moralities. This theme can first be seen with the introduction of the gods. Most stories don’t feature any god or gods as characters so it’s clear from the beginning that morality would be a central theme here. They first mention that they have been looking for someone good who follows their guidelines. This shows that the gods are creators and leave people to live with their own free will. It also shows that they want people to do good things in life. This religious theme is interesting since Brecht was a communist and communists were known to be relatively secular. Perhaps it was his stay in the U.S. which gave him the idea of using gods as characters. The religious theme is also evident in the fact that Shen Te was originally a prostitute. In the New Testament of the Bible, Jesus befriends a prostitute, Mary of Magdalene, who ends up becoming one of his closest disciples. In Good Woman of Setzuan, Shen Te befriends the gods and is given the responsibility of maintaining a good life when they leave at the end. The bad morality in this story is represented by Shui Ta. He is cold-hearted and makes decisions only if they benefit him and his cause. None of the characters in the play like Shui Ta and it’s no surprise that he is brought to court at the end of the play.
The main theme though is the balance of these two moralities. Shen Te is given the tobacco shop because of her goodwill. She quickly reveals this goodwill by letting in poor families. Since the gods had so much trouble finding a good person, we can assume that most of the people Shen Te helps aren’t good. Their never-ending demand for Shen Te’s charity proves this. Like most business, the tobacco shop can only survive if it turns a profit. If Shen Te is giving most of the supplies and space away to people who don’t pay, it won’t be long before the shop closes and Shen Te is unable to help anyone. To make sure this doesn’t happen, Shen Te creates her alter-ego Shui Ta. Shui Ta manages the store as a competent and efficient businessman. Although he does not care for the needs of the helpless, he does care for the shop and increases its profitability.
This meshing of the characters is important because it shows that our world is not set up in such a way where purely good people can succeed. Without Shui Ta, the shop would go bankrupt and Shen Te would be unable to help anyone. At the same time, if Shui Ta grows the business larger, Shen Te would be able to help even more people. This is evident as the story progresses. As more people come to Shen Te for help, Shui Ta appears more often to create a larger shop. This is because a larger shop means helping more people. During one of the meetings between Wong and the gods, they discuss the rules put into place. The gods almost admit that they’re system isn’t perfect, but they do admit that it is difficult to manage. At the end of the trial, the gods finally sympathize with the bad moralities needed in this world by allowing Shui Ta to exist part time.
In the epilogue, Brecht suggests that the audience try to figure out a morally correct way to live. I remember in one of our classes a student talked about how Brecht tried to spark a moral revolution with this story by encouraging the audience to come up with a perfect ending. This ties into Brecht’s alienation style of production. He is more concerned with getting people to objectively analyze a play rather than having them simply enjoy it. Figuring out a perfect moral system is a daunting task and I have no suggestions for how people should live. Brecht makes this task even more challenging by implying that even the gods don’t know of a perfect system. This brings out the deeper questions in life like “why are we here?” and “who are we?”. At first glance, this story seems a little silly and farfetched, but upon deeper analysis we see the moral dilemmas that Brecht is trying to solve.