Intentional Melodrama Forms in Brechts The Jewish Wife Essay

The triviality of melodrama is so often the theatrical scapegoat that boils the blood of the modern-day critic: the sentimental monologues, the martyred young lovers, the triumphant hero, and the self-indulgent imagery. Melodrama would seem the ultimate taboo; another failed Shakespearean staging or even worse, an opera minus the pretty music. Ironically, Bertolt Brecht, dramatic revolutionary and cynic of all things contrived found promise in the melodramatic presentation. Brecht examined and manipulated the various superficial and spectacular aspects of theatre, establishing a synthesis of entertainment and social criticism as his fundamental goal. Bertolt Brecht employs various facets of melodramatic technique in The Jewish Wife,†¦show more content†¦This is Judith. Look, Im leaving right away (13). Like the grand opera of the nineteenth century, we are presented with a formulaic plot that is easily understood, clearly reflecting a change in time or consciousness (B rooks, 141). Providing the audience with over-the-top imagery, elements of the stage direction indicated by Brecht embellish an already melodramatic piece in The Jewish Wife. Perhaps one of the most deliberate actions taken by Judith comes as she completes the series of departing telephone calls. A blatant symbolic device, Judith is not only to said to have been smoking, but that, she now burns the little book in which she looked up the telephone numbers (13). This reflects the end of her characters existence up until this point as wife and passive homemaker. Examining the intense political and social climate in which Brechts text is set, it becomes clear that for the aforementioned reasons and more, The Jewish Wife is intentionally written as a melodrama. Positioned at the onset of the Third Reichs rise to power in 1930s Germany, Brecht instantly establishes a chaotic environment in which the characters interact. The observing audience, as Brecht is aware, understands the tragic circumstances into which Judith and her husband have been thrown. It is perhaps the most