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Goethe's Faust, Part One (1808) Fourth Lecture I • Faust's Wooing Of

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Goethe's Faust, Part One (1808) Fourth Lecture I • Faust's Wooing Of Goethe’s Faust, Part One (1808) Fourth Lecture Please note: while you must focus on the highlighted material to prepare for your exam, you do not need to worry about the line numbers! I • Faust’s Wooing of Margaret/Gretchen ¶ In the name of the Virgin Mary, Margaret’s mother gives to a Roman Catholic priest the jewels that Faust placed in the young woman’s bedroom, causing Mephistopheles to observe, “The Church … \ Always digest[s] ill-gotten goods” (line 2839-2840) — i.e. the Church is materialistic, despite Jesus’s statement that one cannot serve God and Mammon. ¶ Arguably, the text implies that the mother should be attentive to her daughter (as opposed to the priest). She fails to offer candid, caring advice concerning the sexual threat that some men, such as Faust, pose (an aspect of what, in recent years, has been deemed “toxic masculinity”). ¶ In general, Margaret’s mother comes across as aligned with — even fearful of — the (essentially patriarchal) Roman Catholic church. In addition, she is either plain lazy or (perhaps as a consequence of losing her husband and young daughter) depressed and inactive, requiring Margaret to perform most of the housework. A domestic disciplinarian, she seems incapable of addressing Margaret’s emotional wellbeing. ••• ¶ Due to a lack of maternal guidance, Margaret seeks mentorship from a middle-aged neighbor woman, Martha Schwerdtlein. who encourages her to engage romantically with Faust, especially due to his having delivered “another box of jewelry” (line 2875). ¶ While masculine figures — Mephistopheles, Faust, and (later) Gretchen’s solider brother Valentine — do not treat young women in a considerate manner, neither do Martha and Margaret’s mother, two middle-aged women. ¶ Mephistopheles makes a cold-call on Martha (while Margaret is visiting her home). Telling a lie, he claims that Martha’s husband — a lover of “foreign women, and foreign wine” (line 2996), as well as gambling — has died unexpectedly while in Naples, Italy. ¶ Martha seems less interested in her husband’s supposed demise than in what money and other assets he may have bequeathed to her in his will. Mephistopheles states that no fortune exists because the husband had fallen into debt. ¶ The likely truth is that Martha’s husband is has abandoned her and their children in favor of a young Neapolitan mistress — a “lovely girl” (line 2981). Implicitly, this scenario constitutes an indictment of the moral shortcomings of German male culture (which Goethe wanted to reform, especially given the possibility of Germany’s becoming a nation-state, competitive with the UK, France, and the US). ¶ Mephistopheles offers to return that night with Faust so that Martha can have the “two [male] witnesses” (line 3013) required to verify her husband’s death. Effectively, he sets up a double date (Mephistopheles- Martha and Faust-Margaret) in Martha’s garden, a locale that suggests the medieval idea of the enclosed Garden of Love, a kind of erotic version of locus amoenus (“ideal place”). ••• ¶ When Faust expresses reservations about lying, Mephistopheles calls him a “Sophist” (line 3050). The reference is likely to the Ancient Greek philosopher Plato’s work (known as a dialogue) titled Sophist, which, in essence, argues that, although intellectually acute, the kind of thinker-teacher known as a sophist deals in deception, not truth. 1 ••• ¶ During the double-date, Margaret (also known by the familiar name Gretchen) apologies to Faust for the “nasty, rough” (line 3082) condition of her hands, due to hard work. With those hands, she pulls petals from a Marguerite flower, a kind of daisy, playing the traditional fortune-telling Volk game, He Loves Me, He Loves Me Not, originally known by the French title of effeuiller la marguerite. The outcome is “He loves me!” (line 3184), convincing Margaret that her infatuation with Faust, an older man, is love and causing her to clasp Faust and return a kiss he gives her. ••• ¶ In a subsequent scene, Faust, alone in a forest cave, meditates on his evolving ease with the Passions. He praises the absent Mephistopheles for “reveal[ing]” (line 3233) to him the “deep, secret wonders in my heart” (line 3234). Faust also acknowledges the Sublime quality of the setting. He has sheltered in the cave, located amid “high cliffs” (line 3238), due to a storm that “roar[ed] in the forest” (line 3228) so violently that “giant firs” collapsed noisily. ¶ Suddenly, Mephistopheles appears in the cave to encourage Faust to have sex with Margaret. He explains, “Your body’s still stuck … with the Doctor [i.e. Faust’s old self]” (line 3277). ¶ Mephistopheles also reports that Margaret/Gretchen — who he deems a “poor little ape of flesh and blood” (line 3313) — is pining for Faust, exhibiting signs of lovesickness, even “[s]ometimes crying out, in tears” (line 3321). Becoming emotionally overwrought (even suicidal) as a result of romantic passion is a theme in Shakespeare’s play Romeo and Juliet (1590s) and Geothe’s novel The Sorrows of Young Werther (1779). ¶ Faust suggests that physical and spiritual desire may not be all that different or separate from one another, for he reflects, “I even envy the body of our Lord [i.e. the consecrated bread of the Roman Catholic Mass, understood to be Jesus’s body], \ When her [Margaret’s] lips touch it at the altar” (lines 3334-3335). II • Gretchen’s Fate ¶ Highlighting the lovesick Gretchen, the scene that follows quickly became one the most famous in Goethe’s Faust, Part One. Known as Gretchen am spinnrade (“Gretchen at the Spinning Wheel”), it depicts Margaret/Gretchen spinning yarn while pining for Faust by means of a poem-song. Frequently, the act of spinning is interpreted as a metaphor for living one’s life. ¶ In October 1814, aged 17, a German composer named Franz Schubert set Gretchen’s emotion-rich words, articulated while spinning, to music, intending a soprano voice to perform them. The result became a smash- hit instance of the genre known as the Lied (a German word sometimes defined as “art song”). ¶ At times, Gretchen’s passion suggests the common phrase “madly in love”; for example, the third of the poem’s ten (four-line) stanzas begins, “My poor head \ Seems crazed to me” (lines 3382-3383) — or, in the original German: Mein armer Kopf \ Ist mir verrückt. ¶ Among Goethe’s goals here (as elsewhere in Faust, Part One) is to demonstrate to both domestic and international audiences the potential of German to function as a literary language. Goethe wanted to help create a body of German literature that could enhance German national identity and pride. He had in mind the way that such authors as Chaucer, Shakespeare, Spenser, and Milton served as icons of English capability and achievement. ••• 2 ¶ In order to achieve his very precise (and perverse) ambition of having sex — what he calls “heart to heart” (line 3504) — with Gretchen in her girlhood bed, Faust arranges another rendezvous in Martha’s garden. ¶ This time, Gretchen calls him by his first name, “Heinrich” (line 3413), and inquires about his apparent non-engagement with Christianity, as well as his friendship with Mephistopheles, who, she confesses, “chills my blood” (line 3476). ¶ Concerning religion, Faust claims that he cultivates a spiritual life, which he calls “Feeling” (line 3456), with a capital “F.” His spirituality is, it seems, based on a consciousness of the sublimity of the universe — the “heavens [that] arch above us” (line 3442). ¶ Gretchen tells Faust that she would “gladly draw the bolt [for him] tonight” (line 3506) — that is, permit him into her bed — were she not fearful of her mother. In response, he presents her with “a little phial” (line 3511) of sleeping potion, three drops of which she should administer to her mother. ••• ¶ The ensuing action, sexual intercourse between Gretchen and Faust, occurs offstage, meaning that the reader next encounters Gretchen after she has become pregnant by Faust. The venue is the town fountain, where locals regularly come to draw drinking water. ¶ Aware of — but ashamed to admit — her condition, Gretchen encounters at the fountain her friend, Lisbeth, who shares news that their mutual acquaintance, Barbara, has become pregnant outside marriage: “She’s feeding two when she eats” (line 3549); “the flower [Barbara’s virginity] is gone” (line 3561). ¶ In response to Gretchen’s statement that Barbara’s lover will do right by her and “take her for his wife” (line 3570), Lisbeth reveals that he has already “gone” (line 3573) — that is, failed to man-up and take responsibility for getting Barbara pregnant. Here, Goethe presents another indictment of the sorry state of German males. ¶ In today’s United States, over 40% of births are to unmarried women. Furthermore, around 40% of US children are raised in homes without fathers. Manning-up to parental responsibility does not appear to be a priority for two-fifths of American males. ¶ Henceforth, abetted by the Roman Catholic church (which traditionally deemed unwed pregnancy a sin and the resulting children illegitimate), society will condemn Barbara as a “sinner” (line 3569), a status to be reinforced by local “lads” (line 3575) symbolically “scatter[ing] chaff” (line 3576) —waste material from processing wheat for flour — outside her house. ••• ¶ Uncomfortable as regards seeking counsel from either her mother or Martha, the pregnant Gretchen turns to prayer. Characterizing her heart as “break[ing] in me” (line 3607), she presents herself before a statue of the Virgin Mary in her role of Mater Dolorosa (“Our Lady of Sorrows”) and pleads to be saved “from shame and destruction” (line 3616). This manifestation of Mary emphasizes the seven major sorrows she endured as Jesus’s mother, the most profound of which was the crucifixion.
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