The Loss of Children:
Mothers in Ghosts, Riders to the Sea, and Mother Courage
Leda Hoffmann
Drama Lit II
Professor Ellen Mease
May 2009
The pieta image of Mary with a dead Christ across her lap is a central symbol of Western art. This image of the failed, grieving mother is used throughout visual art, literature, and theatre. Playwrights explore the maternal archetype in a myriad of ways – frequently a mother, her objective centered on the well being of her children, experiences the loss of her children and the collapse of the very thing she set out to achieve. This paper focuses on three classics of modern drama in which a mother fails at her children’s survival and, specifically, must mourn over the body of her child in a pieta image - Helene Alving’s terrible options of euthanizing her son or caring for him in an infantile state in Ibsen’s Ghosts, Maurya’s understanding that all her sons have now been taken by the sea in Synge’s Riders to the Sea, and Mother Courage’s relentless determination to keep going with the futile belief that she has one last child to live for in Brecht’s Mother Courage.
These mothers have strong maternal instincts and yet make mistakes that contribute to their children’s deaths. Often, this maternal archetype follows a pattern, from recognition of her mistakes through grief, to the release from the responsibility of protecting her children. In Ghosts, Mrs. Alving discovers that it is her adherence to a strict social code that killed the life joy of her husband, and infected her whole family, including her son, who she tried to protect. In the end Oswald lays across her lap, returned to her, but reduced to an infantile state, pleading for death. In Riders to the Sea, Maurya is unable to bless her son as he leaves and sees a vision that speaks of his death. As she tries to rectify her mistake, something sticks in her throat. She is left to preside over the body of her dead son Bartley and the identifying remnants of her dead son Michael, only to realize that now all her sons have been lost, she can rest. Mother Courage, on the other hand, does not recognize that she drives a hard bargain at the expense of her children. She mourns her dead daughter Kattrin but is left to struggle on, believing that she still has one son alive.
In Ghosts, Mrs. Alving’s realization of her error precludes the loss of her son. She recognizes that her adherence to social norms has suffocated her family but the past cannot be undone. Oswald explains his inherited illness and Mrs. Alving is left with a horrific choice.
Mrs. Alving’s mistake is her “Christian smug moral sense of having overcome a spiritually or ethically inferior way of life (the pagan, erotic joy-of-life).”[1] Having served her duty, she destroyed her husband’s youthful exuberance. Watching Oswald’s and Regina’s love, Mrs. Alving recognizes that her adherence to duty destroyed her husband: “Everything seemed to come down to duty in the end – my duty and his duty and…I’m afraid I must have made the house unbearable for your poor father.”[2] She realizes that, in fact, “this law and order [is] the cause of all the trouble in the world.”[3]
However, this discovery of error and admission to Oswald has great potential for renewal and correction of errors. Mrs. Alving is now willing to go beyond conventional morality to reveal to Oswald and Regina that they are stepsiblings so that they can make a free choice. However, decisions made in the past cannot be reversed. Regina, the source of joy-of-life, leaves and Mrs. Alving is “condemned . . . to a choice between two equally horrible alternatives: to kill her child or to spare him and care for him as she did his father. In either case there is no possible personal happiness.”[4]
Mrs. Alving’s remorse that she “didn’t exactly bring very much gaiety into [Mr. Alving’s] home” builds the tragedy of her ending. Society is to blame far more that Mrs. Alving. By adherence to a social code, she did what she thought was best for her family. As Brian Johnson argues, Mrs. Alving’s recognition of her guilt is not realization of her guilty motives, but rather a flaw in her allegiance to a social force: “It is not Mrs. Alving who stands condemned by the action of the play . . . it is an inadequacy destructive of a whole cultural tradition in the West that is condemned.”[5]
The final scene’s depiction of a mother as she loses her son reveals her powerful maternal drive and the denial, grief, and potential release that comes with losing a child. Mrs. Alving’s tragic error is punished when the remnant of her husband’s dead joy-of-life, syphilis, comes back to claim her son. The past cannot be reversed. John Northam describes this as the “gradual process by which a noble woman, who imagines herself to be enlightened enough to exorcise the ghosts of past actions, comes at length to know the complete irrevocability of deeds done long ago.”[6]
For all of Oswald’s life, Mrs. Alving has tried to be a good mother and believed that she is protecting Oswald by sending him away from his father’s corrupt house. She says, “I felt the child would somehow be poisoned simply by breathing the foul air of this polluted house.”[7] She continues to attempt to protect him, believing that she will be able to restore her son’s joy-of-life: “And now, my darling, I am going to take a great burden off your poor, tormented mind . . . all the remorse and the self-reproach, as you called it, all those things that have been worrying you.”[8]
However, as John Northam puts it, “her reward is be valued, not as a mother, but as an agent of death.”[9] Northam calls this the “most painful reversal to her confident expectations.”[10] The time apart has left Mrs. Alving with a son who does not love her but who needs her to accept the burden of his death. She continues to recognize her error, as she realizes, “Oswald . . . then you don’t love me.”[11] Oswald replies, “at least I do know you”[12] and Mrs. Alving remains committed to winning his love, “I can see that I haven’t made you completely mine yet – I must still win you.”[13] Her maternal instinct will fight with everything she has to get his love.
However, this maternal love and determination to “take a great burden off [his] poor, tormented mind”[14] is what makes Mrs. Alving’s situation at the end of the play so terrible. As Oswald sits his mother down to talk to her about his disease he says, “Mother, earlier on this evening didn’t you say there was nothing in the world you wouldn’t do for me, if I asked.”[15] As a woman with a powerful maternal instinct, she replies, “You can depend on me, my dear, darling boy. I have nothing to live for but you.”[16] As Daniel Haakonsen points out, Oswald is young in this mother-son relationship, going to his mother for consolation. He asks to “sit beside [her] on the sofa [as he] can’t bear it any longer.”[17]
Oswald then asks his mother take his suffering upon herself. Ibsen highlights the fact that Mrs. Alving’s grief is that of a mother with her lines, is, “Me! Your mother!” and “Me! Who gave you life!”[18] But Oswald frames her decision in the context of her love for him stating, “If you love me, Mother . . . how can you let me suffer all this unspeakable terror!”[19] Mrs. Alving’s desire to love and be loved by Oswald leads her to make her promise: “Here is my hand on it.”[20]
Mrs. Alving must now destroy the men in the family: Oswald now asks his mother to “do consciously was she unconsciously has done to his father – destroy him.”[21] Brian Johnson highlights the pattern of the past repeating itself saying, “She had helped destroy her husband and the memory of him, through hatred; now, when she has come to love her husband in her son, she must, out of this same love, repeat the action she has come to loath.”[22]
Mrs. Alving deals with this grief by denying Oswald’s illness and remaining steadfast in her determination for him to be happy. Like Lear over Cordelia’s body, she refuses to believe it is true. Her initial reaction to Oswald’s news is to shout, “It’s not true, Oswald! It’s impossible! It can’t be!”[23] As Oswald describes his illness and asks for her help, she remains optimistic that “it won’t be necessary.”[24] John Northam explains this in terms of maternal instinct:
“all the years of frustrated maternal longing show in her pathetic gratitude at having her beloved boy back home with her again . . . She will win back his love; she will be good and patient, yes, happy too, as Oswald pathetically asks her to be. That, surely, must take away his resentment and self-reproach.”[25]
She believes that Oswald will see the sun again, telling him, “It’s early morning. Dawn is breaking over the mountains. And it’s going to be fine, Oswald! In a little while you’ll be able to see the sun.”[26] She anticipates a “lovely day” with “brilliant sunshine” where he will be able to “see the place properly.”[27]
John Chamberlain compares this loving mother to Ibsen’s Peer Gynt:
Mrs. Alving, the loving mother comforting her son and distracting his mind from morbidity with talk of a delightful new beginning, is as tender as Peer, the loving son, inventing soothing fantasies . . . to ease the dying mind of his frightened old mother. Her tone is that of infinite reassurance. She wants to grant his every wish and to be the guardian of his happiness, just as Solveig, at her most motherly, accepts the charge of Peer’s soul.”[28]
Chamberlain’s analogy shows Mrs. Alving as a loving, positive, mother. Like the tenderness of Solveig when she accepts maternal responsibility for Peer, Mrs. Alving, the boy also in her lap in an image of pieta, promises, as Solveig does, to “watch over” him as he “sleep[s] in [her] arms.”[29]
This positive pieta image from Peer Gynt recalls the fact that, at the end of Ghosts, Mrs. Alving has, in a twisted way, achieved what she desired – her son in her arms. After Oswald tells her he will be “turned into a helpless child again,” Mrs. Alving responds, “my child will have his mother to look after him.”[30] Some critics suggest that Mrs. Alving got exactly what she desired, a dependant child. John Northam says she “relies upon a mother/child relationship that is horribly at variance with the foul reality – she can actually find comfort in being a mother to a son reduced to childlike imbecility.”[31] David Thomas calls Mrs. Alving’s desire for Oswald’s love “feverish possessiveness” and says she is “a child-devouring mother who has reduced her schizophrenic son to apparent acquiescence in his loss of all power of independent action.”[32] However, Mrs. Alving’s desire for Oswald to love her is a natural expression of maternal desire and, while she would have her son, caring for a man who has been turned into an infant is not what Mrs. Alving hopes for. Hans Georg Meyer articulates this bleak reversal in more understanding terms: “Helene, whose whole life has been devoted to maneuvering Oswald back into the nursery, is grimly taken at her word. Her son is restored to her – infantile for the rest of his life. She herself is finally fixed in her maternal role.”[33] John Northam calls these facts, “compressed ironies that attend the progressive revelations.”[34] Since Mrs. Alving postponed the real mother-child relationship for ideals taught to her by society, now a grown man will be a child through disease.[35]
Mrs. Alving is left with a terrible choice – to sacrifice her son to relieve herself of caring for him or to sacrifice herself to his care. Daniel Haakonsen, who writes on sacrifice in Ibsen’s plays, comments that it is right that we don’t see Mrs. Alving administer the morphine or find out if she does.[36] We know “the blind idealist has recovered her sight, and is now endeavoring to act independently. And the mere endeavor to do so is a sign of heroism, because one of the alternatives she has to face is terrible almost beyond human understanding.”[37] Haakonsen claims Mrs. Alving is a hero because of her devotion to her son.[38] Mrs. Alving’s anguish over Oswald’s broken body “exposes at one and the same time her guilt and innocence, her greatness and her limitation.”[39] The audience hears Mrs. Alving torn between these two terrible decisions: “I can’t bear it – Never! . . . Where’s he put them? . . . No, no, no!. . .Yes!. . .No, no!”[40] Like another Ibsen mother, Aase, when she believes her son is lost forever, Mrs. Alving “clutch[es] her hair,” staring at [Oswald] with speechless horror.”[41]
Mrs. Alving, while at fault for the destruction of Mr. Alving’s joy-of-life is a courageous mother. She has continuously fought to make life better for her son. Only when she recognizes her error and takes steps to free her son, does she learn that he will be destroyed by a remnant of the past. As she leans over the motionless body of Oswald, she remains a courageous mother: “It takes great courage, but she possesses it, not to simply collapse.”[42] While some critics argue that she is selfish in her desire for Oswald, Northam articulates her great sacrifice best when he says, “The element of maternal selfishness is minor compared with the selflessness that has made her sacrifice her own happiness to her son’s well-being.”[43]
Maurya in Riders to the Sea also undergoes recognition of her mistake of not accepting the sea and blessing her son. This recognition leads Maurya to a point of release when she is able to stop worrying about her sons and the sea and find “great rest.”[44] The image of pieta as Maurya leans over the body of Bartley and the remaining clothes from Michael, reflects the grief of mothers over the inevitable deaths of their sons.
While Synge characterizes Bartley’s death as an inevitably, he also places emphasis on Maurya’s action (or inaction) in her inability to bless him on his way. It is Maurya’s concern for her son, and fear that Bartley will be “drownd’d with the rest”, that causes her to not reply to Bartley’s “The blessing of God on you.”[45] In keeping with the tradition of the Aran Islands, one should respond to this greeting with “God and Mary bless you.”[46] People believed that danger could result from failure to reply to the opening phrase.[47] Maurya’s inability to bless her son is a serious offence and Cathleen makes her mother take Bartley the bread and say “God speed you” so that “the dark word will be broken.”[48]
It is the business of men to go to sea and Maurya’s determination to keep Bartley at home defies that natural order. Cathleen reminds her mother, “It’s the life of a young man to be going on the sea.”[49] Withholding her blessing in the house and then failing to give him the sustaining bread at the well, emphasizes her failure to fulfill the maternal role. Eugene Benson argues that Riders to the Sea is not a tragedy in the Greek or Shakespearean sense as there is “no causality which dictates a fitting punishment.”[50] While Maurya’s missing blessing is not as large an initiative incident as many causes in Greek and Shakespearean tragedies, Maurya’s inability to bless her son can be seen as a cause of her son’s death. Edward Kopper agrees that, the “evil influence of Michael [as a ghost on the grey horse] could have been mollified had Maurya been able to bless Bartley either before he left the house or when she saw him at the spring well.”[51] However, like Mrs. Alving, Maurya is not ill intentioned. The reason she does not bless Bartley is that she does not want him going to the dangerous sea, just as Mrs. Alving tries to get Oswald away from the dangerous household.
Daniel Davy’s also argues that Maury is not a passive figure, centering his argument on the vision of Michael on the grey pony. He claims, “Maurya consciously and actively participates in the essential ‘event’ of the play (if not ‘action’), and in doing so moves beyond her status of passive ‘object’.”[52] It is after Maurya “trie[s] to say, ‘God speed you,’ but something choked the words in [her] throat”[53] that she looks up to see Michael on the grey pony.
The reversal of Michael’s image on the grey pony (a contradiction of the literal truth) is central to the recognition of the fact that Bartley will die. Synge approaches the supernatural without explanation or question, such that “we not only believe[s] that Maurya saw Michael on the grey pony, we believe Michael was there.”[54] Simon Williams acknowledges that, just as we accept Maurya’s vision, “we accept the fact of Bartley’s death as a result of this pursuit.”[55] As soon as Cathleen and Nora establish Michael’s death, Maurya enters, claiming to have “seen the fearfullest thing.”[56] The women recognize the vision as a certain sign that Bartley will die: “It’s destroyed we are from this day. It’s destroyed, surely.”[57] In this short tragedy, reversal and recognition take place at the same time.