Faust: A Prison

Brief Summary

On Walpurgis Night, Where witches and devils gather to celebrate the witches Sabbath, Faust sees a phantom that reminds him of Gretchen with a thin red line around her neck. Soon after, Faust learns that Gretchen has been put in prison for murdering her newborn child. He then denounces Mephisto and prays to God. He commands Mephisto to take him to Gretchen so he can free her. When they arrive at her jail cell they find Gretchen insane, but she is overjoyed when she sees Faust. However, screams in horror when she sets her eyes on Mephisto. Faust pleas with her to leave with him but she won't. Mephisto says that she is a lost cause and that Faust should leaver her to die. As they are leaving Gretchen is hanged and an angel's voice calls out that her soul has been saved.

Commentary

Red line around Gretchen's neck: "Symbolizes her impending execution for drowning her child" (Campbell 258).

Freedom: " Faust comes to realize that freedom in life belongs only to those who struggle and work for it daily. He discovers that freedom lies in surrendering the self so that one can more fully share in all life has to offer" (Campbell 257).

Notes

In "A Prison," Goethe relies on Shakespeare's tragedy Hamlet in the representation of Gretchen's madness. Gretchen’s condition is based on that of the character Ophelia. The episode in which Gretchen imagines that she can still see her brother's blood on Faust's hand is an allusion to the scene in Shakespeare's Macbeth, in which Lady Macbeth imagines that she can see Duncan's blood on her hands.

Lines 4251-4441: Faust's Surprise Visit

Gretchen is singing a folk ballad, projecting herself into her dead child and denouncing its parents, she the whore, and Faust the rogue. Rather it is her version of a folksong of the day, and as with her other songs earlier in Part I it establishes her link with the women of German tradition, the heroines of earlier tragedies. We gather from this hint that her child has indeed died. She takes Faust, now entering, for the executioner and begs for his pity. Faust is afflicted by her misery, but yet again relates it in his self-centred way to his feelings and not hers (4441). Once more it is the way in which the scene stirs his own emotions that preoccupies him, as though he cannot merely feel but has to be always observing his reactions introspectively. And his Hamlet-like introspection has indeed been a feature of his speeches in Part I.

Lines 4442-4451: Mephisto's Final Stir

It now transpires that Gretchen has somehow killed her own child. She has become a character in the old story, the age-old story, of the fallen and doomed woman. Faust falls on his knees as the lover, while she ironically mistakes his gesture for the beginning of prayer. He has made the cult of sensual love his religion, and this is where it has led him. She has betrayed her own Christian morality and this is where it has led her. However there is an emotional barrier between the two of them, the result of their joint crimes, perhaps the Witches’ activity at the Ravenstone, and Mephistopheles’ presence. All is conspiring to thwart the rescue. Gretchen cannot convince herself that he still loves her, is still warm towards her. As a murderess of her own mother and now her child, she cannot accept guilt-ridden freedom, and is held back by conscience. What after all would await her outside? It is too late. Faust now makes, at last, his declaration. He will stay with her. That precipitates a mental crisis for her (4551). By not standing by her before he has increased the dimensions of the tragedy. Now, too late, he makes his promise. She meanwhile is preoccupied by the two accusatory deaths, of her child and her mother. Faust is not, as we can see, similarly preoccupied with the death of Valentine and the tragedy he has initiated.

Lines 4452-4559: The End

Gretchen is resigned, anticipating, and envisioning her death. She sees Faust momentarily as a hostile physical force. Now Mephistopheles urges flight, as ever. Run from the unacceptable and the tragic, is his message. His appearance is the last straw, since Gretchen believes him the Devil incarnate, and she throws herself on Divine Mercy, while fearing for Faust’s soul. Mephistopheles cries out that she is judged, but a voice from above, offering the grace and mercy she seeks, cries out that she is saved (4557). Obeying the Church’s message of faith and penitence, she is a candidate for redemption, as a sinner but an unwitting one, a criminal but without murderous intent. Regardless of his own beliefs which were hardly conventional, Goethe brings Part I to a traditional enough close. A sinner is rescued, but Faust and Mephistopheles flee.

Study Questions

The character of Margarete was inspired in the first place by a real-life story Goethe had heard of a young woman who was seduced and abandoned, who killed her illegitimate child, was condemned to death, and whose repentant lover joined her in prison to share her fate. In what important way does this scene differ from the original incident?
Having been either directly or indirectly responsible for the death of her mother, brother, and baby, Margarete has gone insane with guilt. She madly performs this action in her prison cell, in this she blends the classical myth of Tereus and Procne (which involves cannibalism and rape) with a similar Germanic tale in which the victim is turned into a bird. What is Margarete doing and why?
Who does Margarete think is coming when she hears Faust and Mephistopheles enter the prison?
How does Margarete speak differently than she might have if her madness did not prevent her from recognizing Faust, and how does that create a powerful effect on him?
What has Margarete learned that she did not understand earlier that explains why Faust seduced her?
Margarete imagines that someone else has stolen and killed her baby, and complains of the sensational street ballads that are being composed about her crime. What evidence is there that Margarete, though mad, has recovered much of her sensitivity to evil?
In what way does line 4490 say more than Margarete intends?
At what point does Margarete seem to emerge from her madness into relative sanity?
As Margarete imagines her own execution, she is finally saved--why?
What is Margarete's final reaction toward Faust?

Works Cited

Campbell, John. The Book of Great Books. New York: Metrobooks, 1997.