Brecht’s Mother Courage and Gorky’s The Mother
/Two stories about mothers.
Middle-aged women in different times and places but faced with the similar problem of how to live under difficult conditions.
Mother Courage, a pragmatist, doesn’t change, but pits all her will and wit in order to survive. The Mother changes qualitatively and goes from having no power to being enlightened.
These two authors both wrote powerful female protagonists.
Brecht’s Mother Courage
Mother Courage was written in Sweden in 1939 during Brecht’s time away from Germany.
He left Germany the day after the infamous Reichstag Fire in 1933. That fire was set by the Nazis just one month after they were elected and was used as a pretext to attack the communists.
Escaping Nazism Brecht travelled throughout Europe and eventually lived in the United States
“Mother Courage is among Brecht's most famous plays and has been considered by some to be the greatest play of the 20th century. His work attempts to show the horrors of war and the idea that virtues are not rewarded in corrupt times. He used an epic structure so that the audience focuses on the issues being displayed rather than getting involved with the characters and emotions.” Damon Wakelin, Bench Theatre, England.
The story tells of a woman with her wagon of goods following armies during war so she can sell to the soldiers and provide a living for her family. With her are Eilif, her eldest son, Swiss Cheese her younger son and Kattrin, her only daughter – a mute.
Eilif joins the army and is eventually executed for stealing cattle during a brief peace. Swiss Cheese becomes an army paymaster and is executed when he refuses to reveal where he hid the regiment's cashbox.
During the 1949 German premiere of Mother Courage and Her Children, Helene Weigel, playing Mother Courage, developed what is now the famous silent scream. Occurring in Scene 3 – Swiss Cheese’s death - Mother Courage must suppress her vocal grief and deny knowing her dead son to protect herself and her remaining children from the soldiers.
Instead of a traditional wail, Weigel performed a soundless, physical contortion: she threw her head back, opened her mouth wide in an agonized expression, emitting no sound and making the internal pain visible in a way that dialogue or a realistic scream could not.
Brecht and Weigel intended for the silence to force the audience to "complete" the scream in their own minds.
“Streep doesn’t do the silent scream that Helene Weigel made famous in the role 50 years ago (and that Streep used at the climax of Sophie’s Choice). She mutely shakes her head, jerking it from side to side while wearing an expression of terrible, wide-eyed sorrow.” Jeremy McCarter, New York Magazine, reviewing The Public Theater’s 2006 production.
Including Helene Weigel, who first created the role, Courage has been played by Fiona Shaw, Diana Rigg, Meryl Streep, Judy Dench and Glenda Jackson.
At the Stratford Festival it was played by Susan Wright and Seana McKenna
Mother Courage says at one point, “Sometimes I see myself driving through hell with this wagon and selling brimstone. And sometimes I’m driving through heaven handing our provisions to wandering souls! If only we could find a place where there’s no shooting, me and my children—what’s left of ‘em—we might rest a while.”
Brecht’s plays are filled with humour, irony and metaphor. Here are some great lines from Mother Courage: “Selflessness is a rare virtue, because it doesn’t pay for itself.” “I don’t trust him, you see we’re friends.” “What happens to the hole once the cheese has been eaten?”
“Kattrin… she risks her life—and loses it—by climbing on a roof and beating a drum to call the sentry's attention to the invading troops. Refusing to stop, she is shot dead. Yet despite her sacrifice, the war goes on, and her mother continues her business. However, a village of children is saved—for the present.” Course Hero.
Damon Wakelin writes, “Brecht himself felt that the theatre had, for too long, been a place of entertainment only. He believed that the theatre should be a place of education too. In the new "scientific age", Brecht sought what he called a "scientific audience"; that is to say a rational dispassionate and analytical audience; to entertain this audience would be to challenge them.”
Brecht left the United States in 1947 the day after he appeared before the House Un-American Activities Committee.
The Mother, Maxim Gorky
“The Mother portrays the typical life of a Russian factory woman in 1906: hard labor, poverty, hunger, and sickness. Nilovna’s husband drinks heavily, physically abuses his wife, and dies early, leaving her to raise her only son, Pavel, who would repeat his father’s life. The change comes when Pavel is drawn into a revolutionary circle: He stops drinking and starts bringing home books.” Literary Theory and Criticism, Nasrulla Mambrol
Gorky wrote the novel while in the United States after fleeing capture during the 1905 Russian revolution.
“I’ve thought all my life, ‘Lord Christ in heaven! what did I live for?’ Beatings, work! I saw nothing except my husband. I knew nothing but fear!” The website Lesser Known Gems quotes Nilovna from Gorky’s novel.
She continues, “This fear is what is the ruin of us all. And some dominate us; they take advantage of our fear and frighten us still more. Mark this: as long as people are afraid, they will rot like the birches in the marsh. We must grow bold; it is time!”
Gorky has the character Rybin tell one of the novel’s most famous and sharply contrasting stories.
“They destroy lives with work. What for? They rob men of their lives. What for, I ask? My master—I lost my life in the textile mill of Nefidov—my master presented one prima donna with a golden wash basin. Every one of her toilet articles was gold. That basin holds my life-blood, my very life. That’s for what my life went! A man killed me with work in order to comfort his mistress with my blood. He bought her a gold wash basin with my blood.”
The Shah of Iran had gold-plated bathroom taps, gold fittings, and gold-accented telephones and today King Charles has a gold carriage.
Mambrol writes, “The novel culminates when the mother is arrested at a train station by the police, who want to confiscate the proclamations. As the police start closing in on her, she feels scared, but above any fear is her desire to give the proclamations with her son’s speech away to people. She starts throwing the flyers out to the people around her while the police try to drag her away, severely beating her.”
The novel had a 1932 theatre production of Gorky’s The Mother at New York Theater Union, Civic Repertory Theatre directed by Gleb Panfilov.
A number of film versions of Gorky’s novel including a 1926 version Directed by Vsevolod Pudovkin, 1955 directed by Mark Donsky, 1956 Chinese version directed by Ling Zifeng and a Soviet-Italian co-production and Cannes selection version directed by Gleb Panfilov.
Maxim Gorky wrote 9 novels plus a famous 3-part autobiographical/fictionalized trilogy (My Childhood, In the World, My Universities). The Lower Depths and Summerfolk are Gorky’s two most famous plays along with the other 17 that he wrote.
“Mother and son are united not only by their blood bondage, but, most important, by their joint revolutionary ideals and activities.”
Article compiled from:
Course Hero
New York Magazine, Jeremy McCarter
Bench Theatre, Damon Wakelin
DeepSeek
Mother Courage, Bertolt Brecht
The Mother, Maxim Gorky
Literary Theory and Criticism, Nasrulla Mambrol
The Balloch News, Lucky Sattar
Goethe Institute
