Capitalist Motives in Bertolt Brecht’s Play Mother Courage and her Children

Abstract

The paper attempts to provide a reading of Bertolt Brecht's play Mother Courage and Her Children by opening the realms of capitalist motives, through Marxist Literary Criticism. Instead of moving on to a consideration of play as a representation of fantasy, this paper unmasks the capitalist motives of a working woman during the Thirty Years' war at the cost of the death of her children, Swiss Cheese, Eilif, Kattrin. This desire of an old woman, her crime, her participation, her desire to share in the profit of the war business finds an explanation in Marxist Literary Criticism.