Brecht: ‘The Unseemly Old Woman’

 One of the biases of this collection of notes is that some writing of recent years is as illuminating as the ancient scriptures.

Bertolt Brecht’s story is as good as a parable — perhaps better, because I’m at an age where the topic of aging is, well, relevant.

Spoiler alert: If you haven’t read it and think you might, stop here.

The narrator says Grandfather died when Grandmother was 72. She lived in a big house. One of her sons — the narrator’s uncle — had a big family living in crowded quarters and wanted to move in. Grandmother didn’t invite him.

Instead, Grandmother began to hang out with a cobbler and other disreputable people. Uncle’s letters focused exclusively on Grandmother’s behavior and became increasingly hysterical.

When the narrator’s father visited Grandmother, she showed no interest in accompanying him to see Grandfather’s grave.

When you come to think of it, she lived two lives in succession. The first as daughter, wife and mother; the second simply as Mrs. B, an unattached person without responsibilities and with modest but sufficient means. The first life lasted some sixty years; the second no more than two.

 

When Grandmother died, the narrator was struck by how small she was, but there was no smallness.

 

She had savoured to the full the long years of servitude and the short years of freedom and consumed the bread of life to the last crumb.

 

I like the story for a couple of reasons.

For people who write: We’ve been told “Show, don’t tell.” Brecht does just fine telling.

For people who are old: In younger days, we chose the circumstances of our lives, the roles of “daughter, wife and mother” in this case. When those circumstances change, we must choose again. Otherwise, choices are made for us.

• Source: Bertolt Brecht, “The Unseemly Old Woman” was republished in Real Life: Ten Stories on Aging, edited by Patrick McKee and Jon Thiem; Niwot, Colo.: University Press of Colorado, 1994, pp. 32-7. The quotations are on pp. 36-7.