In the following critical essay, Woodland discusses the manner in which audiences identify with Mother Courage's continual suffering, examining Brecht's dramatic technique and the ways in which it, quite contrary to the playwright's intentions, serves to make his title character such a sympathetic one.

It is by now a critical commonplace that Brecht's Mother Courage and her Children owes its success, if indeed it has any, not so much to the author's implementation of his many theories of play writing as to his inability, in spite of himself, to put these theories into full practice in his own work. Thus, it is claimed, we respond not to the story of Mother Courage but to the character herself. We are inspired by the woman's courage and sent home from the theater admiring her fortitude, ourselves encouraged to emulate her ineffably good qualities. We respond to the play in...