Overview
- Female: 1
- Male: 1
Context
Melchior has been philosophizing about religion and self-sacrifice when he meets Wendla. In a previous scene, Wendla learned that he friend Martha was abused by her parents, and has been trying to understand what that experience is like. Melchior challenges Wendla’s altruism in helping the poor, but Wendla believes that Melchior could find happiness in helping others. She then asks Melchior to beat her with a switch, so that she might know what her friend Martha feels. Melchior refuses at
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On a sunny afternoon—Melchior and Wendla meet each other in the wood.
MELCHIOR: Is it really you, Wendla?——What are you doing up here all alone?——For three hours I've been going from one side of the wood to the other without meeting a soul, and now you come upon me out of the thickest part of it!
WENDLA: Yes, it's I.
MELCHIOR: If I didn't know you were Wendla Bergmann, I would take you for a dryad, fallen out of your tree.
WENDLA: No, no, I am Wendla Bergmann.——How did you come here?
MELCHIOR: I followed my thoughts.
WENDLA: I'm collecting Elderflowers. Mamma wants to make Maybowl. At first she intended coming along herself, but at the last moment Aunt Bauer dropped in, and she doesn't like to climb.——So I came by myself.
MELCHIOR: Have you found your Elderflowers?
WENDLA: A whole basketful. Down there under the beach it grows as thick as meadow clover. Just now I am looking for a way out. I seem to have lost the path. Can you tell me what time it is?
MELCHIOR: Just a little after half-past four. When do they expect you?
WENDLA: I thought it was later. I lay dreaming for a long time on the moss by the brook. The time went by so fast, I feared it was already evening.
MELCHIOR: If nobody is waiting for you, let us linger here a little longer. Under the oak tree there is my favorite place. If one leans one's head back against the trunk and looks up through the branches at the sky, one becomes hypnotized. The ground is warm yet from the morning sun.——For weeks I've been wanting to ask you something, Wendla.
WENDLA: But I must be home at five o'clock.
MELCHIOR: We'll go together, then. I'll take the basket and we'll beat our way through the bushes, so that in ten minutes we'll be on the bridge!——When one lies so, with one's head in one's hand, one has the strangest thoughts.——
They lie down together under the oak.
WENDLA: What do you want to ask me, Melchior?
MELCHIOR: I've heard, Wendla, that you visit poor people's houses. You take them food and clothes and money also. Do you do that of your own free will, or does your mother send you?
WENDLA: Mother sends me mostly. They are families of day laborers that have too many children. Often the husband can't find work and then they freeze and go hungry. We have a lot of things which were laid away long ago in our closets and wardrobes and which are no longer needed.——But how did you know it?
MELCHIOR: Do you go willingly or unwillingly, when your mother sends you?
WENDLA: Oh, I love to go!——How can you ask?
MELCHIOR: But the children are dirty, the women are sick, the houses are full of filth, the men hate you because you don't work——
WENDLA: That's not true, Melchior. And if it were true, I'd go just the same!
MELCHIOR: Why just the same, Wendla?
WENDLA: I'd go just the same! It would make me all the happier to be able to help them.
MELCHIOR: Then you go to see the poor because it makes you happy?
WENDLA: I go to them because they are poor.
MELCHIOR: But if it weren't a pleasure to you, you wouldn't go?
WENDLA: Can I help it that it makes me happy?
MELCHIOR: And because of it you expect to go to heaven! So it's true, then, that which has given me no peace for a month past!—Can the covetous man help it that it is no pleasure to him to go to see dirty sick children?
WENDLA: Oh, surely it would give you the greatest pleasure!
MELCHIOR: And, therefore, he must suffer everlasting death. I'll write a paper on it and send it to Pastor Kahlbauch. He is the cause of it. Why did he fool us with the joy of good works.—If he can't answer me I won't go to Sunday-school any longer and won't let them confirm me.
WENDLA: Why don't you tell your trouble to your dear parents? Let yourself be confirmed, it won't cost you your head. If it weren't for our horrid white dresses and your long trousers one might be more spiritual.
MELCHIOR: There is no sacrifice! There is no self-denial! I see the good rejoice in their hearts, I see the evil tremble and groan—I see you, Wendla Bergmann, shake your locks and laugh while I am as melancholy as an outlaw.—What did you dream, Wendla, when you lay in the grass by the brook?
WENDLA: ——Foolishness——nonsense.——
MELCHIOR: With your eyes open?
WENDLA: I dreamed I was a poor, poor beggar girl, who was turned out in the street at five o'clock in the morning. I had to beg the whole long day in storm and bad weather from rough, hard-hearted people. When I came home at night, shivering from hunger and cold, and without as much money as my father coveted, then I was beaten——beaten——
MELCHIOR: I know that, Wendla. You have the silly children's stories to thank for that. Believe me, such brutal men exist no longer.
WENDLA: Oh yes, Melchior, you're mistaken. Martha Bessel is beaten night after night, so that one sees the marks of it the next day. Oh, but it must hurt! It makes one boiling hot when she tells it. I'm so frightfully sorry for her that I often cry over it in my pillows at night. For months I've been thinking how one can help her.——I'd take her place for eight days with pleasure.
MELCHIOR: One should complain of her father at once. Then the child would be taken away from him.
WENDLA: I, Melchior, have never been beaten in my life——not a single time. I can hardly imagine what it means to be beaten. I have beaten myself in order to see how one felt then in one's heart——It must be a gruesome feeling.
MELCHIOR: I don't believe a child is better for it.
WENDLA: Better for what?
MELCHIOR: For being beaten.
Wendla sits up, and picks up a stick lying near her.
WENDLA: With this switch, for instance! Ha! but it's tough and thin.
MELCHIOR: That would draw blood!
WENDLA: Would you like to beat me with it once?
MELCHIOR: Who?
WENDLA: Me.
Melchior sits up in surprise.
MELCHIOR: What's the matter with you, Wendla?
WENDLA: What might happen?
MELCHIOR: Oh, be quiet! I won't beat you.
WENDLA: Not if I allow you?
MELCHIOR: No, girl!
WENDLA: Not even if I ask you, Melchior?
MELCHIOR: Are you out of your senses?
WENDLA: I've never been beaten in my life!
MELCHIOR: If you can ask for such a thing——
WENDLA: Please——please——
MELCHIOR: I'll teach you to say please!
Melchior stands and pulls Wendla to her feet. He takes the switch, and hits her hip.
WENDLA: Oh, Lord, I don't notice it in the least!
MELCHIOR: I believe you——through all your skirts——
WENDLA: Then strike me on my legs!
MELCHIOR: Wendla!
Melchior strikes her harder.
WENDLA: You're stroking me! You're stroking me!
MELCHIOR: Wait, witch, I'll flog Satan out of you!
Melchior throws the switch aside and beats her with his fists so that she breaks out with a frightful cry. He pays no attention to this, but falls upon her as if he were crazy, while the tears stream heavily down his cheeks. Presently he springs away, holds both hands to his temples and rushes into the depths of the wood crying out in anguish of soul. Wendla remains, shocked and intrigued by his passion.
Wedekind, Frank. Spring Awakening: A Children’s Tragedy. Trans. Francis J. Ziegler, 1910. https://www.gutenberg.org/files/35242/35242-h/35242-h.htm
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