The Dynamism of Humanity and Womanhood in "Mother Courage and Her Children"

Bertolt Brecht’s “Mother Courage and Her Children” defies expectations by emphasizing pragmatism over symbolism and morality, choosing instead to reward traits such as survival over loyalty in the case of Mother Courage and divergent femininity/sexuality over traditional purity in Yvette. By depicting these characters as real people who are not at the mercy of fate or the gods, but rather random chance, Brecht’s art imitates life much more closely, allowing the audience not only the cathartic experience of relating to characters with flaws and desires much closer to our own, but also translating a much more realistic view of woman as person and not as symbol.

In traditional play narratives, narrative arcs center around the morality of characters and the consequences that occur as a result of decisions made along a “good” and “bad” binary, the “good” decision rewarded with life and often love, the “bad” decision punished with destruction and bitter resentment. Mother Courage, in contrast, continuously breaks this expectation in that despite her sense of loyalty centered on herself rather than her children, she receives no disproportionately devastating consequences to force her into an example. Consider, for instance, in scene iii how Mother Courage’s haggling over the price of the cart seems to result in Swiss Cheese’s death which, as Yvette so harshly words it, ought to mean Mother Courage “got what [she] asked for” (557).  Yet, Mother Courage keeps her cart, her daughter, and is even warned by Yvette in order to avoid the soldiers, a situation where we might expect the traditional play to strip Mother Courage of her livelihood in order to emphasize the value of family. Similarly, Mother Courage breaks with tradition in this scene by praising corruption as a source of survival and further connecting this corruptible nature with humanity, claiming that “[the soldiers] ain’t wolves, just humans out for money. Corruption in humans is same as compassion in God” (603-605). Here Brecht seems to argue outright against portraying humans as morally good or bad, but rather creatures with an innate sense of both in the same way that God may be said to display compassion with varying frequency (as the play so demonstrates).  

In the same way Yvette, a character whose sex worker profession would typically place her either as a woman in need of rescue or a deviant punished for not adhering to a morality centered on monogamy and sexual purity, especially as a woman, is rewarded with the opportunity to advise Kattrin in a sisterly fashion (“watch out for the thin ones” (scene iii 67)) and ultimately, despite her mild complaints, is able to get “her hooks on some colonel” (scene iii 514) who is wealthy and devoted to her. By not outright punishing Yvette Brecht displays oppositional interpretations of femininity and womanhood as people who, like their male counterparts, may act without extreme consequences by way of example.

As a reader, I was pleasantly surprised to find two women who independently support themselves and are treated no more delicately and no more harshly than the male characters within the work. I think Brecht succeeds in his attempts at realism by acknowledging humanity not as symbolically binary but as dynamic, flawed, and yet despite this capable of moments of camaraderie and warmth in the midst of adversity. More than most of the plays we’ve read this semester, I felt “Mother Courage and Her Children” remained true to the human spirit.