In The Good Woman of Setzuan, Bertolt Brecht uses the parable of Shen Te, a put-upon woman singled out by the gods as the only good person on Earth, to contemplate whether one can ever truly be plainly, wholly “good.” Throughout the play, as Shen Te struggles to be good to others and to herself—and she fails repeatedly—Brecht ultimately shows how the constraints of contemporary society make it impossible for a person to ever be entirely good. Ultimately, Brecht suggests that in a world where true, unimpeachable goodness is impossible, the pursuit of goodness is more important than actually achieving goodness itself.
Early on in The Good Woman of Setzuan, a trio of gods descends to Earth in search of one good person who can convince them to let the world remain as it is. The gods seem desperate to find this one person—so desperate, in fact, that they choose a kind but imperfect woman, Shen Te, as their paragon of goodness after she lets them shelter in her room for the night. Throughout the rest of the play, Shen Te, burdened by the gods’ favor, tries her best to be “good” in the face of increasing pressure and mounting problems. At several important points in the action, Brecht demonstrates moments in which Shen Te falls short of pure, total goodness—but her actions prove that aspiring to be good is just as worthy as achieving the elusive title of “good person.”
The first instance in which Shen Te proves that the pursuit of goodness is more important than one’s ability to achieve an impossible standard of purity comes early on in the play, after Shen Te hosts the gods in her room for the night. The gods have been turned away at doors throughout Setzuan and the surrounding provinces for many days and nights—when Shen Te lets them in, they believe that they have finally found a “good human being.” Shen Te insists she isn’t good: she hesitated to put them up at first, after all. She also sells her body as a prostitute for a living, she is covetous of her neighbors’ things, and she often lies. The gods—perhaps suggesting that in simply questioning her ability to achieve goodness, Shen Te is putting forth more of an effort than most people do—insist that she is an “unusually good woman” with simple “misgivings” about herself. Though Shen Te doesn’t believe she is “good,” as she takes stock of the things about herself that she dislikes, she demonstrates her own self-awareness. No one else the gods have met has admitted to their own shortcomings or expressed any desire to change who they are or how they move through the world. Shen Te is the first person the gods have encountered who has any measure of mindfulness and so they choose to reward this quality in her. This demonstrates that the gods—and likely Brecht himself—all believe that one’s desire to chase down the mere potential for goodness is just as important as goodness itself.
The second major instance in which Shen Te proves that aspiration toward goodness is just as important as the pipe dream of achieving goodness itself comes toward the end of the play. After unmasking herself to the gods in the middle of the trial of Shui Ta—an alter ego Shen Te has invented in order to do the “bad” things she needs to do in order to get by in the world as she pursues her promise of goodness—Shen Te attempts to explain to the deities the struggle she has endured as she’s tried to follow the gods’ “injunction / To be good and yet to live.” She claims that trying so hard to be good has, over the last several months, “torn [her] in two,” quite literally. Badness is necessary in some circumstances, Shen Te posits in a lengthy speech. She laments that though she “truly wished to be the Angel of the Slums” and take care of all of her needy friends and neighbors, pity became a “thorn in [her] side;” soon, she “became a wolf” when the impossibility of achieving goodness made itself known to her. As Shen Te wrestles with her failure to be good to her neighbors while also maintaining allegiance to herself, she reveals the argument at the heart of the play. Brecht doesn’t necessarily believe that there is even one truly good person on Earth—there are only those who strive to be good and those who do not. Shen Te is in the former camp. Despite her failures—and despite her reliance on the alter ego of Shui Ta to get things done—the gods recognize Shen Te as a good woman who has done many good deeds. Shen Te reminds them that she’s also been a bad man who’s done many bad things—but the gods declare that the self-critical Shen Te is simply “confused.” The gods give Shen Te their permission to be mostly good and they even suggest she continue using Shui Tai “once a month” or so when being the “good woman of Setzuan” becomes too much for her to bear. Thus, Brecht demonstrates his belief that while complete and total goodness is an impossibility, those who struggle to do good and be good should still be rewarded.
Though Brecht is pessimistic about humanity’s collective potential to achieve goodness, he suggests that striving for this ideal is what’s important. In the play’s final moments, as an actor (who isn’t assigned to a specific character) entreats the audience to find a “happy ending” to the work, Brecht suggests that it is the burden and the purpose of humanity to work together toward collective solutions. Even if total purity is unattainable, the quest for goodness is nonetheless of vital importance to humanity’s continued existence.
Related Themes from Other Texts
The Pursuit of Goodness ThemeTracker
The Pursuit of Goodness Quotes in The Good Woman of Setzuan
SHEN TE: I’d like to be good, it’s true, but there's the rent to pay. And that’s not all: I sell myself for a living. Even so I can’t make ends meet, there’s too much competition. I’d like to honor my father and mother and speak nothing but the truth and not covet my neighbor’s house. I should love to stay with one man. But how? How is it done?
THIRD GOD: Good-bye, Shen Te! Give our regards to the water seller!
SECOND GOD: And above all: be good! Farewell!
FIRST GOD: Farewell!
THIRD GOD: Farewell!
SHEN TE: But everything is so expensive, I don’t feel sure I can do it!
SECOND GOD: That's not in our sphere. We never meddle with economics.
THIRD: One moment. Isn’t it true she might do better if she had more money?
SHEN TE: The little lifeboat is swiftly sent down.
Too many men too greedily
Hold on to it as they drown.
FIRST GOD: Do us a favor, water seller. Go back to Setzuan. Find Shen Te, and give us a report on her. We hear that she’s come into a little money. Show interest in her goodness—for no one can be good for long if goodness is not in demand. Meanwhile we shall continue the search, and find other good people. After which, the idle chatter about the impossibility of goodness will stop!
SHUI TA: Miss Shen Te has been delayed. She wishes me to tell you there will be nothing she can do—now I am here.
WIFE (bowled over): l thought she was good!
NEPHEW: Do you have to believe him?
HUSBAND: I don’t.
NEPHEW: Then do something.
HUSBAND: Certainly! I’ll send out a search party at once.
[…]
SHUI TA: You won't find Miss Shen Te. She has suspended her hospitable activity for an unlimited period. There are too many of you. She asked me to say: this is a tobacco shop, not a gold mine.
SHEN TE: I want your water, Wong
The water that has tired you so
The water that you carried all this way
The water that is hard to sell because it's been raining.
I need it for the young man over there—he's a flyer!
A flyer is a bold man:
Braving the storms
In company with the clouds
He crosses the heavens
And brings to friends in faraway lands
The friendly mail!
THIRD GOD: Forgive us for taking this tone with you, Wong, we haven't been getting enough sleep. The rich recommend us to the poor, and the poor tell us they haven’t enough room.
SHEN TE: Your brother is assaulted, and you shut your eyes?
He is hit, cries out in pain, and you are silent?
The beast prowls, chooses and seizes his victim, and you say:
"Because we showed no displeasure, he has spared us."
If no one present will be witness, I will. I'll say I saw it.
SHEN TE: In our country
A useful man needs luck
Only if he finds strong backers
Can he prove himself useful.
The good can’t defend themselves and
Even the gods are defenseless.
Oh, why don’t the gods have their own ammunition
And launch against badness their own expedition
Enthroning the good and preventing sedition
And bringing the world to a peaceful condition?
[…]
She puts on SHUI TA’S mask and sings in his voice.
You can only help one of your luckless brothers
By trampling down a dozen others.
Why is it the gods do not feel indignation
And come down in fury to end exploitation
Defeat all defeat and forbid desperation
Refusing to tolerate such toleration?
SHUI TA (a slight outburst): She is a human being, sir! And not devoid of common sense!
YANG SUN: Shen Te is a woman: she is devoid of common sense. I only have to lay my hand on her shoulder, and church bells ring.
YANG SUN: On a certain day, as is generally known,
One and all will be shouting: Hooray, hooray!
For the beggar maid's son has a solid-gold throne
And the day is St. Nevercome’s Day
On St. Nevercome’s, Nevercome’s, Nevercome’s Day
He'll sit on his solid-gold throne
Oh, hooray, hooray! That day goodness will pay!
That day badness will cost you your head!
And merit and money will smile and be funny
While exchanging salt and bread
On St. Nevercome's, Nevercome's, Nevercome's Day
While exchanging salt and bread
FIRST GOD: Our faith in Shen Te is unshaken!
THIRD GOD: We certainly haven’t found any other good people. You can see where we spend our nights from the straw on our clothes.
WONG: You might help her find her way by—
FIRST GOD: The good man finds his own way here below!
SECOND GOD: The good woman too.
FIRST GOD: The heavier the burden, the greater her strength!
THIRD GOD: We're only onlookers, you know.
WONG: It’s about the carpenter, Shen Te. He's lost his shop, and he's been drinking. His children are on the streets. This is one. Can you help?
WONG: Illustrious ones, at last you're here. Shen Te’s been gone for months and today her cousin's been arrested. They think he murdered her to get the shop. But I had a dream and in this dream Shen Te said her cousin was keeping her prisoner. You must find her for us, illustrious ones!
THIRD GOD: The place is absolutely unlivable! Good intentions bring people to the brink of the abyss, and good deeds push them over the edge. I'm afraid our book of rules is destined for the scrap heap—
SECOND GOD: It's people! They're a worthless lot!
THIRD GOD: The world is too cold!
SECOND GOD: It's people! They're too weak!
FIRST GOD: Dignity, dear colleagues, dignity! Never despair! As for this world, didn't we agree that we only have to find one human being who can stand the place? Well, we found her. True, we lost her again. We must find her again, that's all! And at once!
POLICEMAN: The evidence, in short, my lord, proves that Mr. Shui Ta was incapable of the crime of which he stands accused!
FIRST GOD: I see. And are there others who could testify along, shall we say, the same lines?
SHU FU rises
POLICEMAN (whispering to GODS): Mr. Shu Fu—a very important person.
FIRST GOD (inviting him to speak): Mr. Shu Fu!
SU FU: Mr. Shui Ta is a businessman, my lord. Need I say more?
SHUI TA: I only came on the scene when Shen Te was in danger of losing what I had understood was a gift from the gods. Because I did the filthy jobs which someone had to do, they hate me. My activities were restricted to the minimum, my lord.
SHUI TA: Shen Te… had to go.
WONG: Where? Where to?
SHUI TA: I cannot tell you! I cannot tell you!
ALL: Why? Why did she have to go away? […]
SHUI TA (shouting): Because you’d all have torn her to shreds, that’s why!
SHEN TE: Your injunction
To be good and yet to live
Was a thunderbolt:
It has torn me in two
I can't tell how it was
But to be good to others
And myself at the same time
I could not do it
Your world is not an easy one, illustrious ones!
When we extend our hand to a beggar, he tears it off for us
When we help the lost, we are lost ourselves
And so
Since not to eat is to die
Who can long refuse to be bad?
SHEN TE: It was when I was unjust that I ate good meat
And hobnobbed with the mighty
Why?
Why are bad deeds rewarded?
Good ones punished?
I enjoyed giving
I truly wished to be the Angel of the Slums
But washed by a foster-mother in the water of the gutter
I developed a sharp eye
The time came when pity was a thorn in my side
And, later, when kind words turned to ashes in my mouth
And anger took over
I became a wolf
SHEN TE: What about the old couple? They’ve lost their shop! What about the water seller and his hand? And I’ve got to defend myself against the barber, because I don’t love him! And against Sun, because I do love him! How? How?
[…]
FIRST GOD (from on high): We have faith in you, Shen Te!
SHEN TE: There’ll be a child. And he’ll have to be fed. I can’t stay here. Where shall I go?
FIRST GOD: Continue to be good, good woman of Setzuan!
SHEN TE: But I need my bad cousin!
“How could a better ending be arranged?
Could one change people? Can the world be changed?
Would new gods do the trick? Will atheism?
Moral rearmament? Materialism?
It is for you to find a way, my friends,
To help good men arrive at happy ends.
You write the happy ending to the play!
There must, there must, there's got to be a way!”
