The redefinition of a woman's role in society and the image of the maternal figure through comparison of female characters in Henrik Ibsen’s A Doll House and Bertold Brecht’s Mother Courage and her Children.

Henrik Ibsen’s Nora Helmer and Bertolt Brecht’s Mother Courage present two strongly defined female heroines whose actions not only adversely affect the other characters’ lives but also suggest a fundamental problem with their societies. Both playwrights establish the macroscopic view of society’s turmoil in the microscopic, individual characters of Nora and Mother Courage. Both characters have an indomitable magnetism that, on the one hand, allows them to control others but, on the other, cause them to make desperate choices that reflect a repressive society. In analyzing the figures of Nora in A Doll House and Anna Fierling in Mother Courage and Her Children, it is important to examine the ways in which they interact with their respective societies, specifically how well they play the roles defined for them. For each play, there exist social structures, as well as exigencies of a given period within those structures, which range from being burdensome to downright inimical to the process of being a good mother.

In the case of Nora, the perspective is bleak: due to the oppressively, male-dominated society , not only is she in no position to be a provider or protector for her children, but due to the condescending, patronizing attitudes of her father and husband she has remained in a state of arrested development her whole life. At the end of the play she leaves her husband and children, the former because she realizes she no longer loves him, that theirs is not a true marriage, and the latter in order to gain the life experience necessary not only to be a more well rounded person, but a better mother as well. In contrast, Anna Fierling is an independent merchant, who engage her children in a war business. She certainly has the ability to provide for her children, although it is a direct threat to their safety. Therefore, much as she tries, she is not a good protector as throughout the play she becomes a distorted as a woman and as a mother. She objects to her sons joining the war effort, yet her whole livelihood revolves around it. She sings anti-war songs with one son, but can't stop negotiating long enough to save another from a firing squad. Mother Courage and Nora are alike in some aspects: both self-centred and selfish, both incorporate, as leading characters, strong-minded females who fight against men- created social or martial oppression. Relatively, both of them stray from the stereotypical female role and by gaining independence they lose their children. Each play depicts a woman that in her own way redefining the abilities and true strength of women. Ibsen’s Nora is a deep-feeling woman who realizes she must leave her family in order to find her own identity. In this way, Nora evolves personally and changes into a stronger and more reflective character as A Doll’s House progresses. Contrary to Nora, Anna aka Mother Courage as devoid of female feeling and in a constant pursuit of profit, she cannot even grieve the wartime losses of her own children. Respectively, they failed as mothers because of their skewed value system. Though Nora is economically advantaged in comparison to Mother Courage, in reality, she is portrayed as a woman who is exploited by her family. Brecht’s Mother Courage, in contrast, shows no evidence of sacrificing of her. Moreover, while Nora is more of a real figure, Mother Courage is more of an allegorical type representing all self-serving war zealotry, devaluating her role as a mother.

Both plays regard the social conflicts of their time, in which both female are involved individually. In Ibsen’s A Doll’s House the central conflict revolves around Helmer’s controlling and demeaning treatment of his wife. However, the real tragedy of the story is not in the supposed superiority of a husband over his wife. Rather, the real tragedy is the dehumanization of the children, who are never given a voice or allowed the possibility of bettering their position. They begin their story under the institution that has marginalized them, and they remain consigned to subhuman status through the last page.
Comparatively, as a very title of the play defines, Mother Courage and Her Children’s plot do not refer only to ‘Mother Courage’. The narrative of her struggle for survival also becomes the narrative of the loss of her mother’s love instinctive and uncomplicated goodness. Mother Courage is driven to increasingly desperate measures, and this desperation spares little time for her children. Leaving the body of her daughter behind in the last scene indicates the progress of her dehumanization as a mother. Although the both characters have three children respectively, they do not share the same attitude or emotions towards them. Nora, in the beginning, is a self-sacrificing, self-effacing character, who subsumes her essential self in order to be a wife and a mother. Anna Fierling, as a more complex character, is depicted more as a tragic hero. She adopts her nickname ‘courage’ during a battle, where under a ferocious bomb attack she drives her cart selling loaves of bread. She claims to be helping her children to survive but in fact she is risking their life. Though, she feels responsible for her family her overwhelming concern for money leads to death of her son. Eventually, she loses all her three children by the end of the play.

While Ibsen’s Nora is more a literal character, Brecht’s Mother Courage is more symbolic and allegorical figure. Nevertheless, both plays, though so different, represent the extremes of female characterization. Both characters as tragic heroines are strong enough to claim their needs, accommodate contemporary circumstances to their necessities, and claim their independence from men. As a matter of fact, they fight against men’s world system equally ruthlessly but in a different mode.
Comparatively, Nora’s picture of the sacrificial housewife, who changes into strong assertive woman, presents how A Doll’s House moves away from the romantic drama genre to a presentation of an objective reality. Portraying social problems of that time and Nora’s position as a woman-liberator is overwhelming. Similarly to Anna Fierling, she fights for her rights yet, by the expense of her children. Although they both live with accordance to their consciousness, for their contemporaries emotionally they are dead. Paraphrasing Joan Templeton:”abnormal women, a hysteric, a vain egoists who abandon her own children” (113).
Apparently, both women are deeply contradictory on the grounds of epoch and circumstances. Nonetheless, they share a few common features like courage, artifice and persistence. Yet, unable to resign from their own interest they present fragile side of their motherhood and are unable to protect their children. Mother Courage's treatment towards Kattrin and Swiss Cheese stresses the difficulty of combining her role as a caring mother.
Whereas, Nora expresses her love to children sincerely through actions and tender expressions: “Oh, you sweet blessing! Look at them, Christine! Aren’t they darlings?” (19). Such compassionate or tender attitude is unfamiliar to Ann Fierling. She is ruthless in every aspect of her life, whether it is with business or with her family. This is evident through her manners as this one in the first scene, where she briefly describes them in a patronizing manner:”I have a stupid one as well but he’s honest. The daughter is nothing. At least she doesn’t talk” (13). Unlike Anna, the heroin of The Doll’s House is a light-hearted pretty mistress; she knows very little of the serious side of life in comparison to her opposite protagonist from Brecht’s play. Mother Courage’s life is based on the tribulations of the Thirty Year’s War, where she is faced with suffering, death and hardship. In contrast to childish Nora and her unsophisticated relations with her offspring, an emotional connection between Ann and her children is far from tenderness or even motherliness. Business is of more concern than the welfare of her children.
Nora lives in a society that articulates the relationship between individuals in term of binary power structure: oppressor and oppressed and she exists in the midst of imbalanced power relationship with her husband and father; her interaction with children seeks only to reverse the terms of this relationship. Rather than seek equality and liberation for her children she approaches them as something less than human, namely as her own ‘dolls’, finally abandoning them. According to Enrol Durbach Ibsen had disgusted his audience by “violating the unconventional”. It is beyond comprehension that woman would voluntarily choose to sacrifice her children in order to seek her own identity.
Considering Anna in the terms of feminine issues, Berthold Brecht inverts the stereotypical female ideal and endows her with male characteristics. Mother Courage distracted by business affairs neglects the agony and death of her children. She becomes even more powerful than a typical man. By retaining some of mother’s quality she applies an aggressive, masculine manner to face the war-time turmoil. By acting in an aggressive and harsh manner she ends up losing her offspring. Anna as a mother and a woman contradicts the lowest standards and as being morally and emotionally corrupted. At this point, raising the question about female genders in a possession of male traits may sound threatening.
On the other hand, she tries to help her children to survive the war by looking after them in a typical female quality and responsibility. For an unmarried woman the canteen wagon offers a decent livelihood .With few alternatives, it is more appealing than prostitution or abandoning their children. But by running a small business and welcoming a war rather than protecting them from it, is much more masculine. Over and above, she takes advantage of her heroic situation looking to the war as a potential profit and her children as a means to that.
She received the name Courage, after driving her cart of bread straight through the middle of a military bombardment .This is hardly the action of a woman, whose role is to be protective and affectionate. At one point, she was so pre-occupied with trying to save money that one of her sons, Swiss cheese, ends up being executed because she tried to bargain with his captors. Even then, his death does not bring out any feminine emotion in her. At the end of the play the last of her child is dead. Nevertheless, Courage does not relinquish her war-business. Labelling her as a practical and callous woman of the war time originates a question: are women capable of achieving exactly what the men are? Mother’s Courage actions manifest the evidence of such capability. A typical woman would be drowned in despair. Instead, her reaction is that of a stereotypical male fighter. A struggle for economical survival killed her mother’s instinct reducing it to the basic animal need to survive. Equally, with the lost of her children Mother’s Courage humanity disappeared.
Likewise, in A Doll's House Henrik Ibsen bravely depicts a female protagonist, Nora Helmer, who dares to defy her husband and forsake her "duty" as a wife and a mother to seek out her individuality. The feminist issues in A Doll's House seem almost contemporary, although it was written more than a century ago. When Ibsen wrote this play in 1879, Nora's behaviour was subject to controversy. Even nowadays most people still believed that a woman's place is in a home. A Doll's House challenges this patriarchal view of the family and shows the audience a fresh perspective on a woman's life. Through this play, Ibsen stresses the importance of women's individuality accomplished through bravery and harshness - features that are particularly applied particularly to men. There is an evident correlation between both female characters, regarding their attitude to outer world. From this perspective each of them can be named ‘Courage’.
Nora's initial characteristic of a child-like wife, who is strictly dependent on her husband, is transformed into passion for individuality and independence. A determination, a sense of rigidity that both women characters reveal create simultaneously a strong link between them. Through sharing an attitude of combative, muscular females they emerge to the surface as anti-hero genre. The social pattern and moral expectations, that define a term of a woman and a mother in a general assumption is not executed by neither of them. The contrasting sides of Nora's personality reveal her confusion about her path in life. She discovers an opposite side of her that leads to progression from a submissive housewife to an opinionated, independent woman. Thus, she represents the future progression of women in society. Regardless of a few similarities, a quantity of disparities between two plays and their heroines are also important to signify.
The audience after the last scene in A Doll’s House remained astonished and indignant about such drastic and egoistic manner of Nora. According to Enrol Durbach in one review of the period stated that Ibsen had left his audience by “violating the unconventional” (101). Undoubtedly, it is beyond comprehension that a woman would voluntarily choose to sacrifice her children in order to seek her own identity. By contrast, Martin Esslin wrote that audiences at Mother Courage were “moved to tears by the suffering of a poor woman who, having lost her three children, heroically continued her brave struggle and refused to give in, an embodiment of the eternal virtues of the common people and left the audience inspired by the woman’s courage and sent home admiring her fortitude, encouraged emulating her ineffably good qualities” (101-10). Similarly, Eric Bentley finds in Mother Courage “an affirmation and admiration for certain kind of courage” (95). It sounds like an excuse for a woman who sacrifices herself in wartime and exposes heroism by her deeds.
In a view of the mother figure demonstrated in both plays the redefinition of the role of a woman is an underlying theme. Though each of them is set in different historical background, location and mental environment both women are portrayed as strong-willed characters with the ability to survive independently. By the virtue of historical context the idea that women could display so much fortitude and strength is hardly recognized. Paradoxically, mother Courage is unable to feel any empathy as far as her children are concerned. What is visible though, are the causes and roots of the evil she represents. With duality of her character she is both hero and antihero. She equated the relentless pursuit of profit with success and survival, inhumanly, at the cost of her children lives. Her pragmatism and strong will left her emotionally, or rather motherly bankrupt. In a similar manner, Nora’s through her egocentric attitude deprives her children of the natural family environment choosing instead freedom to achieve her personal development.
This adaptation allowed society to view women in a different perspective and therefore to extend the boundaries of women's ability. The depiction of strong-minded independent women in literature allowed society to progress towards equality between genders and instilled a newfound confidence in women. By way of analogy, for both female protagonists the support and guidance of a man is unnecessary. By means of utilizing manners typical to men they undertake arduous decisions and thus becoming the icons of female power.
A pattern of a good mother as a compassionate woman who can deliberately give up all her comforts to take care of her offspring is followed neither by Anna nor by Nora. Maternity as a term of sacrifice for the benefit and success of the children do not apply to them. In the two play Mother Courage and Her Children and A Doll’s House both female protagonists stand in close proximity to one another in the role of a mothers deprived of natural inclination of motherhood and womanhood. In the juxtaposition created in both plays the role of the mother stand to tragic contradiction to overall moral and instinctive assumption. Neither of them possesses enough virtue to be considered even remotely heroic. In fact their very existence develops confusion for the audience due to their downfall as a mother-woman figure. However it does not prevent the evocation of pity since they are still perceived as the consequential victims of the social, economical and war-time context; though the magnitude of the empathy is significantly reduced as the experienced sufferings demanded the sacrifice of innocent children.