Interiority, Power, and Female Subjectivity in Goethe’s Faust I

Lynn D. Zimmermann

Of the numerous scholarly essays which explore the role of women in Goethe’s Faust, many appear to do so in an attempt to understand the definition and importance of the “ewig-weibliche” or the “eternal femi­nine” as it functions in the drama. To that end, the character of Gretchen is often singled out as the prototypical female. Many critics, such as Christoph E. Schweitzer, point to one theme which continues to resurface in regard to Margaret’s feminine character; namely, Gretchen shows herself as a remarkably strong woman, yet “from a male point of view, can be considered the embodiment of the female, with all privileges and advantages on the side of the male” (133). In light of Schweitzer’s assertion, I wish to examine the notions of “privilege” and “advantage” as they relate specifically to power and gender for female char­acters in Part One of Faust.

It is my contention that the characters of the witch and Gretchen in particular demonstrate great power when they move within private and usu­ally domestic interiors; these women take charge of enclosed spaces and the persons (whether male or female, human or supernatural) within those spaces in a profound way which serves to underscore their autonomy and self-control. One might wonder why Goethe shows women be­having strongly primarily within confined spaces. Perhaps by depicting women in constrained domestic areas, Goethe offsets the “danger” of the female Other acting and thinking independently. Accordingly, female physical containment as presented on the stage visually reinforces the idea that a woman is manageable, that men can control their inherent fear of the female Other simply by keeping her close. Yet, this simple containment strategy proves rather complicated in Goethe’s drama; even though women like the witch and Gretchen seem to be constrained (and thus ostensibly subject to male will and desire) they most often work and act on their own terms, thereby subverting masculine authority.

One of the first instances we see of this subversion of masculine authority appears in the famous Hexenkuche or Witch’s Kitchen scene. A witch exists as a symbol of unchecked female Otherness, a woman whose strength surpasses ordinary human strength (regardless of gender) by virtue of her relationship with the devil. Consequently, the witch figure poses a threat to male authority because she has assumed some unknown degree of supernatural authority. However, Faust and Mephisto enter the witch’s domicile in her absence, and in so doing, seem to take charge of this female space immediately. Faust finds an en­chanted mirror which holds the image of a beautiful woman: “What am I seeing in this magic mirror? / A form whose beauty is divine . . . Does earth contain its counterpart?” (2429-30, 2440). Enchanted by the image he sees confined within the glass, Faust longs to possess the women, to have her love, and wonders if the earth “contains” her being. He longs to control and own her body, to appropriate the power of her beauty for his own de­sire.

As Faust pines for the woman framed in the looking glass, Mephisto keeps busy by ordering the witch’s demons about; he always takes delight in con­trolling things about him (Starr 134). Jane K. Brown asserts that Mephisto appears to direct action in the kitchen when he and the Meerkatzen enact a play within a play (52). Even though Mephisto appears to be in charge of the situation, Faust is nevertheless uneasy about their being in a witch’s home and availing themselves of her services. Faust questions the necessity of turning to such a woman for help, and asks Mephisto why he cannot concoct a potion himself. Mephisto answers:

Knowledge and skill are not enough;

a job like this requires patience

A calm, still spirit must toil for many years,

only time gives the subtle ferment potency.

And the ingredients are very special!

Of course the devil taught her how to do it,

but he can’t do the work himself. (2371-77)

Mephisto’s commentary stresses foremost the fact that he could make the elixir himself; however, the witch possesses the patience and calmness that perfects the power of the drink. Hence, Mephisto acknowledges and affirms this woman’s unique attributes, her special advantages of power, while he only pays lip service to his own. In this manner, Mephisto intro­duces the witch as a being who possesses powers beyond those of ordinary men, and even beyond those of the devil himself.

The focus in this scene shifts from Mephisto and the love-struck Faust to the witch upon her clamorous arrival. Nearly wounded in the chimney, she upbraids her servants, the Meerkatzen whom she controls, for “scorch­ing [their] mistress” (2467). Her four exclamatory questions illustrate her shock at finding trespassers in her home; she shouts,

What’s going on here?

Why are you two here?

What do you want there?

How did you get here? (2469-73)

The repetition of the word “here” works to emphasize the witch’s ownership and control of her space; this is her interior and her home. Moreover, she acts to defend her hearth by attacking the two interlopers, splashing flames at them with a ladle from the cauldron. Once she realizes her mistake in not recognizing Mephisto, she apologizes and asks how she might help them.

Mephisto requests of the witch to give Faust her potent brew, and the witch replies, “Of course you know that if he drinks it / without due preparation, he won’t live an hour” (2527-8). The witch’s admonition here is important because it demonstrates just how powerful a woman she is. She has the ability to aid or kill Faust depending on the time she gives him to prepare to receive the elixir. Mephisto asserts that Faust is a good friend and therefore deserves “all benefits your kitchen offers” (2529).

The witch responds to Mephisto by manipulating her kitchen’s interior in order to enchant and control Faust’s person. The stage directions read, “The Witch, making fantastic gestures, draws a circle and places curious objects in it; simultaneously, glasses begin to ring and caldrons vibrate . . . Next, she fetches a great book and stations the apes in a circle . . . and then beckons to Faust to join her” (65). The witch’s activity is important here because she alone controls the happenings in this environment. Through language, the speaking of spells, the witch affects change on all things within her domicile. Thus, she has the power to conjure music and make objects shake and vibrate with her words and gestures. Moreover, she has the ability to control Faust; just as Faust objectifies the beautiful woman in the mirror, wanting to control and possess her, the witch now objectifies Faust. Faust is contained within her circle (as the lovely woman was con­tained within the mirror frame) and is subject to the witch’s will. Indeed, his very life depends upon her desire to aid him and the efficacy of her magic.

The witch’s magic spell becomes actualized in the words she chants around Faust as he stands within her circle. Referring to an ancient book, she declaims,

See how it’s done!

Make ten of one,

and let two be,

make even three,

then you’ll be rich.

Cast out the four!

Now heed the witch:

from five and six

make seven and eight,

and now you’re done;

Then nine is one,

And ten is none.-

That is the witches’ one-times-one. (2540-52)

The strange illogic of the witch’s spell deserves close scrutiny. Kathryn S. Levedahl notes in her essay “The Witch’s One-Times-One: Sense or Nonsense” that “at the time he stepped into the magic circle [Faust] was fifty-­five, and at the time he stepped out was twenty-six years old. This would be a loss of twenty-nine years-one more than thirty” (382). The witch turns back time for Faust through her creative math. Mathematical computations supposedly reflect infallible logic and structure which, in turn, reflect rational male order. Yet, the witch plays with the structure and logic of math, subverting the “rules” every student learned in grade school, in order to make Faust young; she defies logic and nature in her chant. In undermining math to reverse the natural effects of time, the witch subverts masculine (or phallogocentric) numeric codes and chronology which signify rationality. Faust, of course, dislikes the witch’s incantation and asks, “What is this nonsense she’s reciting?” (2573). Faust cannot tolerate the irrational nature of the witch’s language. Yet, the witch’s subversion of time, numbers, and age is nevertheless successful. After the witch breaks the circle (2587), and releases Faust from her control, Faust gains youth; the spell has worked. In keeping with the control she has established in her kitchen, the witch’s last words in this scene are no less than an order: “take this song, and sing it now and then; / you’ll find it adds a lot to the effect” (2591-92). Although the witch does not have the last words in the scene, she does end her part by telling the men what words they must employ. Thus, to some extent, she controls the language Faust and Mephisto speak after leaving her interior space.

As Faust and Mephisto trespass in the witch’s kitchen, so too do they trespass into Gretchen’s bedroom after Faust becomes infatuated with the girl. As Jaroslav Pelikan observes, Gretchen’s “old-fashioned piety has given her the modest manner and attitude that Faust finds so irresistible” (111). They enter her room in order to plant a cask of jewels for Gretchen, and their presence in the room marks an undeniable violation; Eric Blackwell re­fers to Faust’s move inside her room (bordering on a sexual violation) as a most “base trick” (197). Nonetheless Faust longs to be alone in her room. He calls it a sanctuary wherein

all here breathes a sense of calm,

of order, of contentedness!

What abundance in this poverty,

what blessedness within this prison (2691-4)

Faust’s description of Gretchen’s room underscores the fact that, like the witch, Gretchen is very much in control of her own domestic interior space. Unlike the threatening witch, however, Faust sees Gretchen as an in­nocuous prisoner. He calls the room a (blessed) prison, and consciously thinks of Gretchen as a woman incarcerated, contained, and therefore con­trolled.

Faust’s reference to prison also serves to remind us of the final room (the prison cell) Gretchen will inhabit. Here though, in her bedroom, de­spite her poverty, she keeps her possessions neat and orderly, and such feminine order seems to unsettle masculine desire; Mephisto notes, “Not all young women are this neat” (2685). Mephisto needs to assert that most young women are not orderly, not in control of their environs, and there­fore not threatening. Although this feminine order seems to annoy Me­phisto, it entices Faust, perhaps because this particular order is alien to him. Liselotte Dieckmann suggests that Faust is drawn to Gretchen’s “tradition-bound and limited” world, because it is foreign to his experience as a scholar (53). Herein, Gretchen is ostensibly bound and limited in movement and thought, potentially subject to whomever chooses to dominate her. Faust wants her very badly, and thus scrutinizes her room for its neatness and simplicity, seeking her essence in her room’s furniture and spatial arrangement.

We see this alignment of Gretchen’s person, her essence, with furniture when Faust approaches her curtained bed. Goethe’s stage directions read “He lifts one of the bed curtains” and, in doing so, Faust remarks, “What awesome ecstasy enthralls me!” (2709). Gretchen’s room and furni­ture are sexually charged for Faust; here her bed and body become syn­onymous. Accordingly, Faust wants to spend hours within the room’s walls, penetrating the secret interior of the bed curtains as he would her body. As Jane K. Brown writes, “the paradox [is] that Faust will destroy Margarete’s purity by taking possession of it” (57), but Faust’s desire overwhelms him. In his rhapsody of passion, Faust contemplates her entering the room any minute and declares, “The gentleman, become a beggar, / would lie and languish at her feet” (2726-27). Although Faust is in control of this interior space for a few brief moments, he clearly acknowledges Gretchen’s over­riding power within this room. She can please or deny him sexually, and his lust for her reduces him to a beggar at her feet. As he was within the witch’s kitchen and circle, within Gretchen’s bedroom and bed, Faust recognizes his potential to be the object of a woman’s will and desire.

Before leaving her room, Faust lets Mephisto deposit and lock up the cask of jewels within Gretchen’s chest of drawers, a further violation of her interior space. Indeed Gretchen instinctively responds to the violation of her room by remarking, “It is so sultry here, so close” (2753) when she reenters it. The interlopers’ presence seems to hang in the air, stifling the room; hence, she opens a window in order to release the tainted air. She re­claims control of this space by opening the window, and removing the cask of jewels out of her room and into the domestic interior of Martha’s home. Martha tells her,

Come over whenever you can

and dress up in them privately

Then you can walk a while before the looking glass,

that will afford us both great pleasure. (2885-88)

Martha’s invitation reiterates the control women characters have over their own private interiors; she wants Gretchen to take pleasure in the jewels, and knowing that Gretchen’s mother controls her own home (and would not allow the jewels) Martha comes up with this compromise for her young friend. Yet, Martha’s reference to the looking glass reminds the audience of the female image contained in the mirror in the witch’s kitchen. Thus, Martha’s suggestion serves as a warning that the purpose of the jewels is to make Gretchen subject to Faust’s will, and a reminder of “the fact that Faust’s relationship to Gretchen does not develop into one of caring, of faithfulness, of true love [but] brings about her terrible fate” (Hamlin 135).

Gretchen, of course, does fall prey to Faust’s charms and his seduction leaves her isolated and lonely, longing for his return. The final scene within Gretchen’s room shows her carrying out domestic chores half­heartedly. She sits at her spinning wheel, a symbol of feminine virtue and craft, and sings a song of lamentation:

Where he is not,

Is like the grave,

and all my world

is turned to gall . . .

I look from my window

only for him

and only to seek him

do I leave the house. (3378-82; 3390-94)

Her lyrics reveal the severity of her emotions. Gretchen’s room, the interior space she controls, has assumed a new value for her. Now she identifies her bedroom as the place “Where he is not.” This interior becomes remarkable for what it now lacks for Gretchen. Although her room now feels prison-like to her, it is not quite a true prison. She looks out her window searching for her lover in the activity of the world, and tells us “And only to seek him / do I leave the house.” Hence, although depressed, Gretchen still decides whether and when she will enter and exit her room; she is physically free to act as she pleases. Moreover, through language, she takes charge of her emotions and orders them in song lyrics; singing offers respite to her weary spirit. Previously, when Faust first entered her bedroom, he aligned Gretchen’s body, her physical being, with the room’s furniture. In this scene Gretchen’s room becomes closely aligned with her emotional being. Her activity within this space, her spinning and singing, reflect her sorrow but also simultaneously assert her productive control over that sorrow.

Gretchen’s autonomy and self-control come to their fruition in the final enclosed space she inhabits. Within the privacy of her prison cell, she re­counts her sins. As John Geary points out, “Gretchen is guilty not only in the eyes of society but profoundly so in her own” (75). Initially, when Faust first comes to her, Gretchen tells him how society has accused and tor­mented her. She says,

and now they’re saying that I killed it,

And I can’t ever be happy again.

People are making me their song! It’s mean of them!

There’s an old story that ends like that,

Who gave them the right to say it’s mine? (4446-50)

Gretchen’s complaint is important because it stems from disliking a par­ticular kind of punishment others thrust upon her. Alan P. Cottrell explains, “within the context of Margarete’s world, the illegitimate child meant shame, disgrace, and, as it turns out, her own destruction,” (255) since she kills her child and will pay for her crime with her life. Although she knows she has committed a murder, she cannot stand the community’s appropria­tion of the story of her crime. She does not dispute her crime, but she ob­jects to people making songs, “Lieder,” about her. To put her story into song is to deny her control over her own actions; she becomes subject to the will of the tale-teller, who distorts her story, she claims, to fit the formula of an old tale. For Gretchen, this usurping of another’s story is especially cruel, because it robs her of her voice, of her deeply personal version of the event; this public misconstruing of her personal pain is a punishment that does not fit the crime.

Faust enters Gretchen’s cell to save her specifically from capital pun­ishment, and upon his entrance, her fetters fall to the floor. She exclaims, “You have undone my chains, / are taking me again into your arms” (4503-04). No longer chained, Gretchen is now physically able to leave the prison, but Faust attempts to control her leaving; his arms become new fetters which seek to constrain and control her. He tells her to hurry and leave with him, that the past is over, “Laß das Vergangne vergangen sein” (4518). As Harald Weinreich notes, there is something especially insidious in Faust’s overeager willingness to throw off the past, for in doing so, he refuses to accept responsibility for his actions (287).

Gretchen, however, does take responsibility for her actions, and her negotiation of the prison cell’s space underscores this. Faust tells her she may leave the cell in order to enter freedom. To which she replies, “I cannot leave . . . / Why run away when they are watching for me? / ... and then with a bad conscience too! (4543-57). As John Geary explains, Gretchen “will not-psychologically cannot-take the step to escape that Faust offers her” (75). Gretchen’s strength and innocence shine through when she ac­cepts the consequences of her guilt, when she refuses to cross the cell door’s threshold. Faust, though, will not relent; he tries to take control of the situation by forcing Gretchen over the threshold and out into the night. He says, “One step, just one! And you’ll be free! / . . . I’ll carry you away against your will “ (4564, 4576). It is at this point that Gretchen rejects Faust’s will altogether. She asserts, “Let go of me! I won’t be forced. / Take you wicked hands off me! / You know that up to now I’ve done what you wanted” (4576-78). Christoph E. Schweitzer emphasizes that we see Gretchen at her strongest when “she refuses to leave prison with Faust and thus assumes responsibility for her actions and, in doing so, saves herself” (137).

Gretchen’s strength becomes even more manifest when she seizes control of her cell, and orders Faust out of its interior. She tells him to go and “Let no one know you’ve been in Gretchen’s room” (4582); her order underscores her anger at his intrusive, demanding desire inside her private space and private heart. Her language then abruptly shifts into a description of her imminent execution:

The crowd is gathering in silence;

the square and streets

won’t hold them all.

Hear the knell calling, see the white rod break!

How roughly they tie and handle me,

How quickly they carry me to the block!

The edge that rushes down at me

Is darting now toward every neck.

All is silence-the silence of the grave. (4587-94)

Gretchen’s control of language mirrors her control of self in this descrip­tion of her march toward death. John Gearey writes, “we see that verse is made not only of meter and rhyme but also of content, as though the order in its form promotes ordered thought, and ordered thought is the matter of the dungeon scene” (211). Gretchen’s description of the execution yet to come is also important because it shows the clarity of her thinking, and her willingness to embrace her fate; she can see past her present torment to the necessity of actively accepting her end.

In light of Gretchen’s acceptance of her fate, her anger becomes quickly aroused when Mephisto appears at the entrance to her cell. She cries, “Send him away! / Why is he here, in this holy place?” (4602-03). By Gretchen’s calling her cell a “holy” place, she gives the room new meaning and new value; she, in fact, consecrates the space. Accordingly, when she calls upon God to save her, she asks to be encompassed by his love: “An­gels and heavenly hosts, / compass me about and keep me safe!” (4608-09). At that moment, enclosed within the private, holy space of God’s love and forgiveness (a spiritual space which Faust and Mephisto cannot penetrate), Gretchen is saved.

Hence, the manipulation and negotiation of private space becomes in Faust an outlet for feminine power and control. In the confines of small rooms, we see women like the witch and Gretchen acting strongly, making profound decisions and choices which affect not only their lives but also the lives of those who surround them. By controlling interiors and the language spoken within those interiors, female characters actively work to subvert male authority. They are not always successful at thwarting masculine desire, but in Gretchen’s case at least, she does have (indeed demands) the final word and action when it comes to the fate of her own body and soul. Con­sequently, I think critics such as John Gearey are unforgivably wrong when, in regard to Gretchen, they assert that “her main characteristic is that in her wholeness and completeness she seems to have no characteristics. She has no edges, as it were . . . she cannot be said to have a ‘function.’ Surely, she does not mean” (73). Surely, I would argue, Gretchen and the witch as well, do mean; perhaps it’s the way that they mean, a way which often subverts male power and desire, that disturbs those who would deny them their edges.