The Character Sketch of Mother Courage

The character sketch of Mother Courage

A Complex Personality; and Our Mixed Reaction to Her

               Mother courage is one of the best-know characters in modern European drama. Whatever Brecht’s own intentions in portraying this character might have been, the play itself creates in our minds the image of a formidable woman possessing several admirable qualities though also suffering from certain faults and weaknesses. She is not the kind of heroing whom we adore or whom tend to glorify while talking about her. She produces a mingled impression upon us; and there is certain contradictoriness in her which, however does not present any enigma or riddle to us. The contradictions render her all the more convincing. Our own reaction to Brecht’s portrayal of this woman is not only one of sympathy with her but also one of a certain dislike of her. In other words, while on certain occasions we almost identify ourselves with her, on certain other occasions we feel repelled by her. Thus the effect upon us is one of alienation as well as one of empathy. In order fully to understand the character of this woman, it is necessary for us to form a comprehensive view of her various characteristics. This woman has a complex character. In other words, she is a many-sided personality. she is not a simple kind of woman whose character can be summed up in one word or one phrase. Her children can certainly be summed up in single phrases on the basis of what she herself tells us about them. But her own character is a compound of several traits.

Her Bold, Almost Defiant, Manner of Speaking

                  Mother Courage is a bold woman who can speak in a defiant manner whenever necessary. In the very opening scene she speaks to the recruiting officer and the sergeant in a defiant, almost challenging, manner to prevent them from recruiting her sons in the army. She goes to the extent of pulling out her knife and threatening to attack them if they go ahead with their plan to recruit her sons. Subsequently she often speaks in a curt and even haughty manner to Catholic as wall as Protestant army officers, regardless of the side to which they belong. For instance, she snubs and scolds the Protestant officer who wishes to sell stolen bullets to her even though she does buy those bullets. Then she authoritatively forbids a Protestant soldier to enter her tent, saying that she allows only officers to enter, and that an ordinary soldier must stand at the counter to drink. When a Catholic sergeant is making inquiries about Swiss Cheese, she speaks to him also in a bold manner. And yet she capable of surrendering to others when she thinks it more prudent to do so, For instance, she needs to surrender to those who are mighty and powerful. Thus she has an elastic nature and can adept herself to the changes in her circumstances.

A Shrewd But Not an Expert Businesswoman

                 Mother Courage is a shrewd businesswoman and also a hard bargainer. She shows this trait of her character in the manner in which she haggles over the price of the capon which she wishes to sell to the Swedish commander’s cook; and later she shows the same trait when she snatches away a fur-coat from a soldier who has no cash to pay to her for the brandy which he has drunk at her counter. In managing her canteen-business, she is all the time worrying about the rise and fall in prices. And yet we cannot say that she is an expert businesswoman because she is always seeking advice from others whether to dispose of her merchandise or add to it. Which she should adopt in this matter.

A Practice Woman with a Strong Common Sense

                 Mother Courage has a strong and sturdy common sense. She is a practical woman who harbors no illusions or false hopes. She knows that people get killed in the course of a war; and that is why in the opening scene she tries her utmost to prevent her sons being enlisted in the army. She needs her sons for running her own business because this business is her only source of her livelihood. Later in the play, she rejects the chaplain’s proposal to marry her because the chaplain does not attract her as would be husband. Still later, she agrees to accompany the cook to his native town of Utrecht because now it suits her to settle down to a comfortable kind of existence and to bid good-bye to her traveling canteen-business. She is now willing to ignore the cook’s past misdeeds because she thinks that she can handle him. Even on a previous occasion her towards her decently and that she could handle them both if they misbehaved.

The Basic Contradiction in Her Character

                 According to Brecht himself, the key to the character of Mother Courage lies in her self-contradictoriness. This view is certainly borne out by the play itself. The chief contradiction in the character of Mother Courage is her advocacy of war and, at the same time, her opposition to war, very often she expresses a strong desire for the continuance of this war, but sometimes she also expresses a hatred of this war. When, for instance, the war has stopped because of the sudden death of king, she deplores the fact and tells the cook that the return of pence has “broken her neck”. She laments the end of the war because she may even lose her means of livelihood because it is only during the war that her canteen-business, which caters only to the soldiers, can be carried on. It is because she disapproves of the return of peace and expresses a strong preference for the war that the chaplain calls her “a hyena of the battlefield”. And yet it is at this very point that, replying to the chaplain, she says: “There isn’t much love lost between me and the war,” meaning that she hates the war: and she then goes on to tell him that she can no longer keep company with him because he has called her a hyena of the battlefield. The chaplain, who is at this moment in a quarrelsome mood, say that she is grumbling about the return of peace only because her wagon carries a lot of junk which she wants to sell. To this, she replies that her goods are not and that she has been maintaining him too with the money which she has been earning from this business. All this clearly shows that she supports the war and its continuance only because she can make a living by the sale of her goods to the soldiers, and because the end of the war would mean the end of her canteen-business. Her desire for the continuance of the war only shows a desire for her own and her dumb daughter’s survival. Apart from being the means of livelihood for her and her dumb daughter, the war is something which she detests and hates. There is one speech which clearly and unambiguously shows her hatred of the war; and she makes that speech just after her daughter Kattrin has been attacked and wounded by a drunken soldier. In that speech she says that the moment of her daughter having been wounded upon her eye is a historic moment to her because her daughter would now never get a husband. Even Kattrin’s dumbness, she says, was the result of the war because a soldier had thrust something into her mouth when she was a little child. And then she adds the following words which almost break our hearts: “I’ll not see Swiss Cheese again, and where my Eilif is the Good Lord knows. Curse the war!”  Thus we must understand that Mother Courage is by no means a militarists or a war-monger, and that she does not enjoy the spectacle of bloodshed or of soldier falling down to their deaths in the course of a battle. She never takes part in the plunder of a town or village. She does not rob the wounded or the helpless persons in the course of the war. She is certainly not a hyena of the battlefield. She wants the war to continue only because she earns her living from it. There is nothing criminal in her nature. It is the politicians and the high army officers who are the hyena of the battlefield. Poor Mother Courage only wants the means of survival for herself and her children. Even when she sings songs praising the continuance of the war, she shows through those songs a keen awareness of the dark side of the war also. In this connection, we might refer to the songs in which she says that the war is a “business proposition” and in which she also says that the soldier who digs a hole to creep into it finds that he has dug only a grave for himself.

A Self-Sacrificing Kind of Mother

                 Even if there were nothing more to be said about Mother Courage, she would not be an odious figure in our eyes. Even in the light of what has already been said, Mother Courage would not cut a sorry figure. But the finest trait of her character is yet to be mentioned. More than anything else, Mother Courage is a mother. Her love for her children is boundless. It will be utterly wrong to say that she loves money above her children, or that she is a merchant first and a mother afterwards. When Swiss Cheese is about to lose his life, she decides to sell her canteen-wagon to raise enough money to bribe the Catholic sergeant in order to obtain the release of Swiss Cheese. She decides to sacrifice the very means of her own survival in this decision that Swiss Cheese is executed before her decision can be carried into effect; but that is just her bad luck and not any unwillingness to make the sacrifice. After all, she was thinking of Kattrin too while coming to a decision. And, indeed, we cannot ignore her received a bad would over the eye! But the supreme moment of Mother Courage’s spirit of self-sacrifice comes when she decides not to go with the cook to Utrecht but to stay with her daughter Kattrin. She “sacks” the cook who has become the owner of a lousy inn, and she clings to her daughter even though it means continuing hard toil for both of them. Can such a woman be regarded as a mean or despicable person or a hyena?

Her Callousness on One Occasion, Certainly a Fault

                 Of course we cannot ignore Mother Courage’s callousness and hard-heartedness on certain occasions. In the scene in which she refuses to give some linen away to be used for bandages when a number of Protestants have been wounded in a Catholic attack, she certainly appears something of a hyena. Here she certainly alienates us. But we should not expect angelic goodness from any human being in this world. We are not reading a fairy tale. Nor does Mother Courage a traditional heroine possess all the noble qualities and virtues. The callousness in her is definitely a flaw in her character; and we are not prepared to make light of it. But this flaw shows that she is a human being after all. At the same time we should guard against calling her a monster on the basis of this fault in her.

Her Sense of Humour; Her Wit and Capacity for Sarcasm

                 There yet remains one more quality of Mother Courage to be taken into consideration. She has a strong sense of humour, and she has also the capacity to make witty and sarcastic remarks. She can hold her own in a conversation, no matter to which she is talking. She shows this quality in the opening scene when she has to deal with a recruiting officer and a sergeant who are, of course, close allies against her. Later, she shows this quality when dealing with the chaplain and with the cook, separately or jointly. When, for instance, the cook tells her he is a sound man if nothing else, she replies that her previous experience of a sound man has been very bitter. That sound man, she says, used to sell the blankets off the children’s beds in the spring, and used to find fault with her mouth-organ, describing it as unchristian. She goes to say that, by calling himself a sound man, he has in no way recommended himself to her. When the cook feeling irritated, says that she is opposing him tooth and nail, she replies: “Don’t tell me you’ve been dreaming of my teeth and nails.” When the cook says that his regiment had been disbanded and that he has, therefore, come to her on a friendly visit, she makes the following retort: “In other words, you’re broke.” Perhaps the best example of her wit is to found in the manner in which she describes the misbehaviour of the soldiers when, after days and days of starvation, they get the opportunity to plunder a town. Here is a part of that speech: “For weeks on end, no grub. Then, when they get some by way of plunder, they jump on top of the women-folk.” What Mother Courage here means to say is that soldiers, who have been starving; not only plunder a town for food but also rape the women-folk of the town.

A Tragic Figure Because of Her Spirit of Endurance

                 Mother Courage deserves our admiration for the manner in which she endures all her misfortunes. She does not collapse, and she does not give way to despair. In the final scene of the play, after she has lost her dumb daughter, she yet has enough spirit left in her to be able to start her business afresh. She harnesses herself to the wagon and gets ready for the coming ordeals of her life. Mother Courage is indeed a woman of courage; and this courage and the spirit of endurance, which goes with it, raise her far above average womanhood. It would be a complete distortion of the battlefield or as a woman of no worth. At the end, she strikes us a tragic figure because of her heroic endurance of her misfortunes; and now her support of the war or her advocacy of the war can also be seen by us in the proper perspective. It is sheer necessity which has always compelled her to desire the continuance of the war; and at the end we find her once more hoping to earn her livelihood from the continuance of the war. Yet, she has learnt nothing from her experiences. But how many of us do learn anything from their own experiences or even from the experiences of others? Has history taught any lessons to mankind collectively or to the various nations of the world individually? Brecht has been regarded as a sort of prophet for having written a play which anticipated the outbreak of World War 2. Well and good. But he was also a confirmed socialist or communist. What is the fate of communism or socialism today? Where today is the super-power known as the U.S.S.R? why did Brecht’s spirit of prophecy fail him in that matter?