Motherhood in Mother Courage (needs grammatical editing or any other critique)

Hello.
I stumbled upon this fantastic site by chance and am definitely glad about it.
I went through some previous threads and saw a lot of excellent advice given to people.
So without further ado, I shall present my request for aid.
I am writing an English essay on how motherhood is depicted in the play Mother Courage through the characters Kattrin and Mother Courage. It would be a plus if you had some knowledge of the play but otherwise I am searching for someone to point out the grammatical errors present in my essay, such as the use of colons and semi-colons, etc.

Any help is appreciated greatly!
Cheers!
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Mothers play a significant role in our lives. A mother's love is one of a kind for each individual, as mothers bring their own children to the world and nurture them till adulthood. The unconditional love mothers feel towards their children is a perpetually unique notion, which tends to be idealized in literature. However, this positive attitude could be perverted as the subversion of this nature can occur during distressed times, as external values begin to displace the maternal instinct. Mother Courage and Her Children by Bertolt Brecht is one of the most notable plays concerning the arduous nature of motherhood during war in juxtapose with general survival. Through the characters Mother Courage and Kattrin, Brecht depicts misplaced motherhood during war due to conflicting priorities and its resulting disastrous effects.

A fundamental concept of motherhood is giving birth to ones child. From the colorful backgrounds of her children, Mother Courage was obviously a sexually active and frivolous individual with multiple partners. In stark contrast is Kattrin's suppressed sexuality and desire for a stable family, which is thwarted by her handicap, disfigurement and the lack of sympathy from her mother. It is this difference that mainly emphasizes the contrasting attitudes towards maternity present between the two characters. Kattrin abides to the fact that she will never be granted with the joy of having her own child; instead she devotes her love to every child she encounters. There is a possibility that this lack of experience of a genuine and lasting motherhood could have casted a delusional view of motherhood for Kattrin. In addition, the impression of her mother's lack of devotion to the maternal responsibilities is likely to have encouraged this imagination. Notably the impression of motherhood, which Kattrin composes, is generally linked to peaceful conditions. Even in the play Mother Courage associates Kattrin and her dream of a family to peacetime; "I promised her she'd get a husband soon as peace came." (pg.54 ) Due to the critical nature of the play Kattrin's maternal instincts become misplaced as her sentiment towards children becomes overtly excessive and the prioritizing of this idealistic maternal love finally leads to her own demise. Mother Courage instead, is the mother of three children from the result of various rendezvous' and as a single parent has accumulated years of experience of maternal responsibilities. This is a clear distinction from her daughter and serves an important purpose for her behavior in the play as due to her experience, it enables her to view motherhood in a far more complex and realistic view than Kattrin. Mother Courage recognizes that financial adequacy is of utmost importance in sustaining a family, especially during war time. However, similar to Kattrin, the maternal instincts of Mother Courage also become misplaced as she has the difficulty of integrating her roles as a mother and as an entrepreneur. Instead of benefitting and ensuring survival, her doubtful priorities destroy the very family she was trying to protect and ensure survival for. As the audience is able to tell, for both of the characters, motherhood signifies as the protection and survival of the child, but to what extent do they go to protecting the children?

Providing protection and nurturing a child also come as a natural maternal responsibility for women. What can be regarded as one of the most profound lines highlighting her sense of maternal responsibility in the play is when Mother Courage states that "All I'm after is get myself and children through all this [war]." (pg. 57) Nevertheless, throughout the play we witness how Mother Courage fails to achieve this goal of protecting her children, and subsequently loses her children to the war because of the subversion of her maternal instincts. One way Brecht has established this is the ironic origin for Mother Courage's name. The audience is likely to hold preconceptions that the name is derived from her maternal abilities; this assumption is diminished as Mother Courage provides the factual background for her name: "Courage is the name they gave me because I was scared of going broke...I drove me cart right through the bombardment of Riga with fifty loaves of bread." (pg.5 ) On the contrary, the reason behind her name is her sense of commitment to her commercial instincts leaves the audience to question her priorities and facilitates in the digression from her maternal responsibilities. During the first scene we witness Mother Courage vehemently opposing to Eilif being enlisted for the army. The sincerity in her response and her attempt to prevent Eilif's enlistment seemingly arise from her motherly instincts of protecting ones child. She even proceeds to "[pull out] a knife" (pg. 8) to stress her determination. This display of protectiveness shows that Mother Courage does not lack the sentimental principles of motherhood. This sentiment is jeopardized as she promptly forgets her failure in dissuading the recruiter from enlisting Eilif, when a chance for business arises. The subversion is most imminent not only through the classification of her children as commodities for trade, but mainly for her sudden willingness to let her commercial instincts to override her maternal ones and only regretting afterward. Similarly with the death of Swiss Cheese, Mother Courage tries to bargain a lower price for his ransom, causing an unnecessary delay and ultimately his death. Kattrin shares an equivalent mentality as Mother Courage towards protecting children. However, a significant difference between the two figures is that Kattrin is persistent towards the responsibility. This is partly driven by her kind nature and her idealistic sense of motherhood. Her determination leads her to sacrifice herself to protect the children of Halles. For her, the clear outlook ensures that the children should be survivors, while Mother Courage's conflicting outlooks victimizes her children, resulting to her being the sole survivor.

Through the subject of motherhood, Brecth manages to bring about a much more arcane thought of the general prioritization of various aspects of life. With the differing perspectives towards motherhood and their resulting consequences, the audience is left to critically evaluate their own priorities in life and learn to avoid the consequences waiting to occur.

I have made a few corrections, in the first and second paragraph
the tense needs to remain constant- i went with the beginning present tense,
i would say that the essay just needs to be put in the active voice and take out the qualifications, could, maybe possibly, you should state your opinion without undermining it with these unnecessary words

the active tense will create a more concise, nonwordy paper. When we write, we tend to speak differently than how we speak. If you think more about how you would express it in a conversation you will more likely use the active tense, and omit unnecessary words

I did not change all the sentences but i think its the same issue throughout


to
As mother's rear and nurture their children, a mother's love is one of a kind.


to
The unconditional love of a mother tends to be idealized in literature.
(it is unclear what is unique about this?) and why is it perpetual?) the sentence seems stronger with out this, though maybe i am missing your point.


(using "could" weakens your argument, this qualification undermines your argument_
However the idealization of a mother's love is an unreasonable expectation and provides a disservice. The subversion of this nature can occur during distressed times, as external values begin to displace the maternal instinct.

Your first sentence is ambiguous. The second sentence is not much more specific. Another thing, always limit the scope of your writing, because your first few sentences could be flatly disproved with the aid of a few grim exceptions. Do not use informal words such as "till." Also, do not flail helplessly and insert hackneyed phrases such as "unconditional love", and do not botch phrases by really reaching hard, for anything, as evident with the phrase "perpetually unique notion." Scanning the next few lines, I don't see hope for this paper.

Thanks for your reply!
It's much better when someone else reads your essay and helps to point out the (obvious) errors in your writing and structure. I still have a long way to go until I am able to properly edit my own essays...

This might seem out of the blue, but I am wondering what in your opinion, in general terms, would have been a more appropriate introduction for this essay?

Anyways, thank you again!
Hope you have a good day. :D

This is full of excellent material, but I want to criticize the way you introduce paragraphs...


I think it is never good to start with a statement of the obvious. You MUST make it intriguing in some way...

Start with this:
The unconditional love mothers feel towards their children is a perpetually unique notion, which tends to be idealized in literature.--- this is interesting!! It makes me think, "Yeah, it does get idealized..."

A fundamental concept of motherhood is giving birth to one' s child. --- here is another statement of the obvious. Don't do that! :-D Replace this with a topic sentence that tells the main idea of the paragraph.

Providing protection and nurturing a child also come as a natural maternal responsibility for women. --- not relevant to the essay. The essay is about the literature, not about obvious truths of motherhood.

If you do topic sentences right, the reader could understand your whole essay by reading just the topic sentences. Many people take this approach that you take and say something general and obvious. This is a good topic sentence:

Through the subject of motherhood, Brecth manages to bring about a much more arcane thought of the general prioritization of various aspects of life.--- it should be followed by sentences that give examples to support the assertion.

From the colorful backgrounds of her children, Mother Courage was obviously a sexually active and frivolous individual with multiple partners.