Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in The Good Woman of Setzuan, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
The Pursuit of Goodness
Greed, Capitalism, and Corruption
Women and Dual Identities
Humanity vs. The Divine
Summary
Analysis
Shen Te emerges in front of the curtain dressed in wedding clothes. She addresses the audience and she tells them that something terrible has happened. As she left the shop with Yang Sung, she saw the old carpet dealer’s wife on the street—the old woman told her that the old man had taken ill after all the “worry and excitement” over the money they’d lent her. The old woman, with tears in her eyes, politely asked for it back. Shen Te promised the old woman she’d give it back to her.
Shen Te wants it all: she wants to be able to help her lover to whom she is devoted while also being good to her neighbors. But as Shen Te is learning, it is nearly impossible to be good and to be true to one’s own desires all at once. This is a different kind of dual identity that Shen Te must learn to embody: that of neighbor and lover wrapped up in one, rather than the split consciousness of Shen Te and Shui Ta.
Themes
Shen Te laments having let Yang Sun sweep her away “like a small hurricane” and having forgotten her promise to the carpet dealers. Shen Te declares that Yang Sun plans to work in a cement factory rather than “owe his flying to a crime.” She is on her way to her wedding, she says, and she cannot stop wavering “between fear and joy.”
Shen Te is cautiously optimistic about her future but she knows what a dangerous situation she’s gotten herself into both financially and morally.
Themes
