OTTO958

Summary

Later, in a street, Faust walks past a lovely young woman, Margarete. He takes her by the arm and offers to escort her home, but she frees herself, saying she doesn’t need an escort, and leaves. Faust exclaims that she is a real beauty, all modesty and virtue.

Analysis

Margarete is an embodiment of ideal innocence for Goethe. This is suggested in her very first appearance in the play, where she rebukes Faust’s romantic advances.

Summary

Mephistopheles enters, and Faust demands that the devil get him that girl. The devil says that she is returning home from confession. She is an innocent with nothing to confess, so the devil has no power over her. Just because you try doesn’t mean you can pluck the flower, Mephistopheles says. Faust calls him “Professor Dogmatist,” and tells him that if the girl isn’t lying in his arms by midnight, he’ll part with the devil forever.

Analysis

The devil can only act on those who have already admitted sin into their souls, as the innocent Margarete has not. Faust, then, who is not bound by such laws, must seduce the woman himself. But the feeling of love is very strong, and is associated throughout the drama with transcendence, so Faust insists the devil aid him.

Summary

Mephistopheles tells Faust to be practical: it’ll take at least two weeks to coordinate the affair. Faust responds that if the devil could just get him alone with the girl for seven hours he would not need the devil’s help in seducing her. Mephistopheles suggests in turn that Faust shouldn’t rush pleasure, but Faust says he doesn’t need to whet his appetite. The devil has had enough, and declares that the girl can’t be taken by storm, only by strategy.

Analysis

Goethe emphasizes the weakness of the devil and magic in general, which cannot instantly satisfy the will, but which can only work slowly by rational cunning, craft, and deception. Compare the slowness of Margarete’s seduction with the speed of Faust’s salvation at the end of the play.

Summary

Faust narrows his ambitions, and asks for a mere souvenir of the girl, a handkerchief from her breast or garter to excite his passion. Mephistopheles proposes that he take Faust to the girl’s room instead, when she is at a neighbor’s house, so that he can anticipate the taste of future joy. Very well: Faust orders that the devil get a present for him to take to her. The devil knows some excellent locations with lots of ancient buried treasure and goes off to do a little looking.

Analysis

The rational scholar in Faust has been transformed by youth and love into a raging inferno of passion, a truly Romantic lover in his explosive haste. The devil is associated throughout the play with gold, which glitters but has no intrinsic value, just like the devil’s own illusions.

Summary

In her small, neatly kept room, Margarete is braiding and tying up her hair. She wishes to know the identity of the debonair, noble gentleman she met earlier in the day, who was none other than Faust. When she exits her room, Mephistopheles and Faust enter, the former snooping about. Faust, enraptured, welcomes the twilight glow that permeates the room, and asks the sweet pain of love to possess his heart. He sits in a leather armchair and announces that Margaret’s hand is godlike enough to make this cottage into paradise. He lifts one of the bed-curtains and becomes ecstatic. He came here for immediate enjoyment, but instead he’s fallen in love.

Analysis

Faust does not merely lust after Gretchen, but truly is in love with her. Love gives him a sense of eternity and creative power, the ability to transform the ordinary world into a paradise. In the witch’s kitchen, Mephistopheles sits down in an armchair like a king, but Faust rules here, indicated by his sitting down in an armchair. Gretchen, by metaphorical extension, is his queen and equal in power.

Summary

Mephistopheles warns that Margarete is returning, so he and Faust must leave. He presents his love-struck master with a little casket of treasures and tells him to put it in Margaret’s drawers, the better to win her love. Faust wonders whether he should do this after all, so the devil does it for him. Mephistopheles observes that Faust looks glum and gray. The two exit in a hurry.

Analysis

The image of a casket of treasures darkly suggests the idea of a burial casket, and indeed Gretchen’s death is set into motion by the treasures Mephistopheles leaves for the girl. Love transforms Faust, so that he no longer wants to prey on Gretchen like an animal, but wants to encounter her soul honestly.

Summary

Margarete enters, carrying a lamp. She is warm, so she opens a window and finds it cooler outside. A feeling she can’t describe comes over her. She starts trembling, feeling silly and timid, and she wishes her mother would come home. Margarete sings a song about a faithful king in Thule whose dying mistress gave him a cup of gold, which he cherished until his death.

Analysis

Margarete’s indescribable feeling is an erotic one—she is developing sexual desire, but she is so innocent that she does not yet understand this. Perhaps seeing Faust in the street has brought this feeling about. Margarete’s song is about an ideal lifelong love—something she won’t have the fortune to enjoy.

Summary

Margarete then opens her chest to put away her clothes, and at once she sees the casket Mephistopheles planted there. She opens it and finds beautiful jewels inside, which she tries on. She laments the fact that women are valued only for the wealth they have. And if we’re poor, that’s just too bad, she says.

Analysis

Margarete is absolutely innocent, and so she cannot even imagine the jewels in her drawer as being sinister or ominous. She does understand the social fact, however, that financial interests often get in the way of love.

Summary

Faust walks back and forth, preoccupied, while Mephistopheles swears vehemently. Faust asks what’s ailing the devil, who explains that Margarete’s pious mother gave the girl’s new jewels to a local priest as a donation to the Church, fearful that they were treasures of wickedness. The priest, of course, accepted.

Analysis

Margarete’s mother is very controlling of her daughter, which no doubt contributes to the girl’s naïveté. Though the Church preaches against earthly wealth, it can hypocritically be a greedy institution, as the priest’s seizure of the jewels suggests.

Summary

Faust inquires about Margarete, here referred to as Gretchen. Mephistopheles says she is grieving about the loss of her jewels and thinking about who may have brought them to her. Faust orders that another set of jewels be brought to the girl at once, and also orders the devil to groom Margarete’s neighbor, presumably so that she can be of use to him. The devil obliges. Lovesick fools would do anything to entertain their ladies, he says.

Analysis

Faust referring to Margarete as “Gretchen” is like using a pet name, and it indicates his affection for the girl. Faust intends to use Margarete’s neighbor’s house as a private place where he and his beloved can meet. While love is a positive feeling, it can also lead us into temptation, which the devil delights in.

Summary

Margarete’s neighbor, Dame Martha Schwerdtlein, is alone in her house, thinking about her husband. He has left her though she did him no wrong, she says. She always loved him and fears he may be dead. She wishes she had a death certificate to know for sure.

Analysis

In contrast to Gretchen, who loves ideally, Martha had what seems to be an unloving and combative marriage, founded not on love but on pragmatism.

Summary

Margarete enters and tells Martha that she has found yet another casket of treasures more splendid than the first. Martha advises Margarete not to tell her mother about this and suggests that, since the girl can’t wear the jewels in public, she come over to her, Martha’s, house to dress up in them privately. Margarete again wonders who on earth could have brought these two caskets. Something, she says, is not quite right.

Analysis

Martha, a morally imperfect woman, promotes secrecy and deception in inviting Margate to dress up in her jewels privately. In this way, she is the perfect tool for the devil to use in helping Faust seduce Gretchen. But Gretchen is now realizing that something bad lies behind her treasures.

Summary

There is a knock at the door and a gentleman enters. It is Mephistopheles, claiming to have a message for Dame Martha Schwerdtlein. He excuses himself for interrupting, and addresses Margarete as though she were a lady of high social standing (even though she is just a poor girl), induced to do so not only by the girl’s jewels, he says, but also by her noble demeanor and piercing eyes. He then gives his news: Martha’s husband is dead. Martha despairs. Mephistopheles says that the man’s corpse has been buried in Padua, and he instructs her to have three hundred masses sung for him.

Analysis

The devil flatters Margarete’s self-esteem by addressing her as a lady of high social standing. He is trying to stir her ambitions to transcend the littleness of provincial life and to make her feel above common morality. This will make her more susceptible to Faust’s charms. He also lies to Martha in order to gain admission into her home and win her trust so that Faust can later seduce Gretchen under the privacy of Martha’s roof.

Summary

Martha is troubled: her husband left her no money? No jewelry? Mephistopheles offers his sympathies, and Margarete promises to pray requiems (masses sung for the dead) for the departed. The devil turns to Margarete and says she deserves a husband right away, or at least a lover. She responds that taking a lover is not the custom in these parts. It’s still a practice, however, the devil replies.

Analysis

Martha is less interested in her husband’s death than in the fact that she isn’t profiting from it. This is indicative of her moral corruption, particularly when compared to Margarete’s innocence. The devil continues to prime Margarete to take Faust as her lover.

Summary

Martha requests that Mephistopheles tell her more of her husband’s death. The devil says he was beside him on his straw deathbed. Her husband, he says, died a Christian, requesting his wife’s forgiveness for going into debt and forsaking her. Martha says that she has long since forgiven her husband. But the devil continues: he claims that the husband blamed his wife more than himself, and he insinuates that the husband acquired a huge treasure only to spend it on his mistress. Martha curses her dead husband as a thief and villain. When the devil advises her to mourn, however, she praises her husband as most lovable, even though he had vicious habits.

Analysis

Sadistically, Mephistopheles tortures Martha by lying to her about her husband’s last words. He says that the husband was cruel and neglected his wife in favor of his mistress. This is all just a vicious prank, designed to relieve the devil’s boredom. Martha, for her part, sincerely curses her husband, only to hypocritically conform to the social convention that she should at least appear to be aggrieved by his death.

Summary

Mephistopheles gets in a final dig, by saying that things would have been all right if Martha’s husband had been as tolerant of his wife as she claims to have been of him. He then resolves to leave. Martha requests proof of her husband’s death and burial. Mephistopheles says he’ll bring a friend to her house as a second witness to establish the truth of what he’s said. He then asks Margarete if she’ll be here too, and praises his friend (the one coming to verify the death) as worldly and polite. Margarete says that she will only be able to blush in front of him, but the devil replies that there’s no need to blush before a king. Martha says she’ll expect Mephistopheles and his friend to return this evening.

Analysis

Martha satisfies the devil’s plan perfectly by asking for a death certificate, which gives Faust an occasion to come to her house and meet Margarete again. The devil’s digs about Martha’s husband, however, have nothing to do with this plan and are just wanton acts of nastiness. Having flattered Margarete and stirred her social ambitions by calling her a lady, the devil then sets Faust up as a king, that is, one able to satisfy any social ambitions she might have. So he lays his snares for the poor innocent girl.

Summary

It is the same evening, and Faust and Mephistopheles are in Martha’s garden. Martha and Mephistopheles walk together, and Margarete is on Faust’s arm. She is self-deprecating in conversation with him, but Faust praises her and kisses her hand, which makes the girl both anxious and pleased. She says Faust must know so many sensible people, but Faust responds that what passes for good sense is often vain stupidity.

Analysis

The garden represents a kind of earthly paradise, so it is an appropriate setting in which to fall in love. Although Gretchen and Faust come from two very different backgrounds, their love transcends all boundaries. Love becomes a deep wisdom here, to Faust’s mind.

Summary

As they enjoy one another’s company, Margarete tells Faust about her and her fussy mother’s modest household. Because they don’t have a maid, Margarete has to cook and sweep and knit and sew herself. Her brother is a soldier, and her beloved little sister—whom Margarete cared for after their father died and their mother became paralyzed with misery—is dead. Faust says that Margarete has enjoyed the purest form of happiness through this, but she remembers hard hours too, of waking in the night to feed and comfort the child, and of waking early to clean the child and shop and cook.

Analysis

Margarete has had a difficult life, in contrast to Faust’s life of relative privilege (recall that he has never had to manually labor). Nonetheless, Faust sees in Margarete’s love for her little sister the purest form of happiness. This is something of a naïve idealization, of course, and Margarete reminds Faust that with that happiness also came hardship. Margarete understands, as Faust does not, that pure happiness is just a dream, not a reality.

Summary

Meanwhile, Martha and Mephistopheles walk together. Martha says that it’s difficult to reform long-time bachelors into husbands. Mephistopheles says that all it would take is a woman like Martha to teach him better. Martha asks her companion to speak plainly: is he not at all romantically involved? Mephistopheles evades the question by quoting a proverb, that a home and a virtuous woman are as precious as gold and pearls. This frustrates Martha. The two walk on.

Analysis

We later learn that Margarete is disgusted by Mephistopheles. The less upstanding Martha, however, attempts to seduce the devil here, and he evades her with riddles and proverbs. He is toying with her rather insensitively, out of boredom and a sadistic sense of fun.

Summary

Faust and Margarete are deep in conversation. Faust asks if she really recognized him when he entered the garden. She says she did. The two discuss their first meeting, which Margarete says dismayed but also pleased her. She picks a daisy and plucks its petals—he loves me, she murmurs, he loves me not… She plucks the last petal, elated that doing so coincides with “He loves me!” Faust says he does indeed love her. He clasps her hand and vows complete devotion. He feels a sense of bliss that he is sure must endure eternally, for its end would be his despair. Margarete runs off. Faust stands pensively a moment, and then follows her.

Analysis

Faust asks Margarete if she recognized him to see whether he left an impression on her before being introduced by Mephistopheles as a man of power and wealth. That she did subtly indicates to Faust that Margarete loves him for who he is, not for his social status. Love brings Faust to a state of bliss. This bliss leads him not into stagnation, but only deeper into Margarete’s soul. Faust following Margarete here anticipates when his soul follows hers into heaven.

Summary

Mephistopheles and Martha reenter. Martha says that she’d ask her companion to remain longer if the evil-minded town wouldn’t gossip about it. Then she asks where the young couple is. Down the garden path like wanton butterflies, Mephistopheles answers. Martha says that Faust is infatuated with the girl. So the world runs its course, the devil says. They both exit.

Analysis

Goethe introduces the judgmental town here to remind us that even love cannot exist in a vacuum, but is a part of a social whole, as Gretchen tragically learns later. Mephistopheles’ image of the butterflies suggests that love has transformed Faust and Gretchen.