Bertold Brecht offers incontrovertible proof in The Good Woman of Setzuan that to expect goodness of any person who lives in a capitalist society is unreasonable. The demands of the religion portrayed in the story are very similar to most religions: honor your father and mother, speak only the truth and do not covet your neighbor's house, yet Shen Te, alone in the city and having grown up in the country finds herself faced with the same challenges as any immigrant from rural to urban life - impoverished, alone, without any prospects for marriage and without the references required to enter into an honest business, Shen Te sells the only product she has, her body.
When Shen Te tells the gods that her willingness to host them should not lead them to believe that she is good - because of her prostitution - the gods offer a highly qualified and seemingly forgiving answer when First God says, "these thoughts are but, um, the misgivings of an unusually good woman! (14)." Equivocation is woven throughout The Good Woman of Setzuan and serves to demonstrate how the rules of religion, ethics and economics in a capitalist system depend from the exigencies of the moment and the position of the person who must make the problematic choice. Gods, it seems, may sidestep their own rules when it suits them; the gods tell Shen Te that her economic inability to be and remain good are not in their sphere, "we never meddle with economics (14)," yet they proceed to to give her more than one thousand silver dollars and admonish her, "don't tell anyone! The incident is open to misinterpretation (15)."
Endowed now by the silver from the gods, Shen Te makes an honest attempt at being a good woman in a town full of irreligious and dishonest characters. The competition faced in the capitalist system by everyone Shen Te meets becomes obvious immediately, each person stepping forward to take more than they deserve while claiming that they are being robbed. After agreeing on a price for the tobacco shop, the seller, Mrs. Shin, returns to beg rice and silver from Shen Te asserting that Shen Te was, "robbing me and my innocent children of their home (16)," in an attempt to squeeze more out of the deal; Shen Te has been identified by Mrs. Shin (and subsequently by most other characters in the play) as having a kind heart and no head for business - the feeding frenzy begins immediately and Shen Te has gone into debt - despite the windfall from the gods - before the end of the first scene. This type of kill-or-be-killed, winner-takes-all economic darwinism is the heart and soul of capitalism, yet the gods demand honesty and kindness as the standard for being and staying good.
The paradox set up by goodness as dictated by the gods against the capitalistic drive to win at any and all cost - especially at the expense of those who are weak - is too much for Shen Te and she finds that the exigencies of the situations she faces requires her to create an alter ego. Only by leading a double life and allowing the needs of each moment to dictate which character she must be - hard Shui Ta, or kind Shen Te - is this person able to survive. This requisite schizophrenia is proof of the argument that the only way to be and stay good in a capitalist system is to be two persons, to speak two languages, to have two faces and lead two lives which, as is shown, can not last forever.
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I also see Shen Te's creation of an alter ego as a failure to survive in a Capitalist system. Even if one argues that both Shen Te AND Shui Ta were good characters, the fact that Shen Te could not maintain her business "on her own" and relied on a scapegoat of sorts (Shui Ta) to get the job done is bad news! If your actions within any economic system force you to take on multiple personalities, how is that success?! Wouldn’t living two lives over an extended period of time be bad for your mental health? In addition, maybe Shui Ta can pull off “fat” instead of “pregnant,” but what about the sudden loss of weight around 9 months? Liposuction? I think not.
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