All-Female Faust: Gendering Goethe

By Meagan

For about a year now, I’ve been working on Faust: Scene II - a kinetic novel adaptation of an excerpt from Goethe’s classic tragedy.  The dialogue in this personal project of mine is nearly unaltered from a contemporary English translation.    The art is heavily inspired by historical artists such as Heironymous Bosch and Harry Clarke.  The element that I feel is entirely mine, however, is the gender presentation of the two main characters.

Making Faust and Mephistopheles women wasn’t an arbitrary decision.  In fact, I wavered back and forth for a long time about how “true” I should stay to the source material in this regard.  Ultimately, though, I chose to make Faust: Scene II a story about women.

In the Western literary canon, women and other marginalized groups are rarely represented in important roles - yet we’re told that these works are somehow universal and speak to the essence of what it is to be human.  Faust the character, especially, is often read as a metaphor for humanity as a whole, and his existential struggles represent humanity’s collective grappling with morality and scientific progress.  Changing the characters’ gender is my way of questioning the supposed universality of the (straight, white) male experience.  I want to challenge players to read these same broad philosophical themes in a female character, rather than in the men we’re erroneously told depict the “default human.”

What’s more is that Faust: Scene II is an opportunity for me to portray an older female character.  Women over 35 are a rarity not just in games, but in all forms of mass media, and scarcely (if ever) do they get to play the role of protagonist.  Their roles tend to be limited to passive, grandmotherly figure or evil witch stereotypes.  Faust, in sharp contrast, is not only an active and driven protagonist in my kinetic novel; she’s also a university professor and renowned scientist.  Simply put, by changing Faust’s gender, I hope to expand what we think of as “appropriate” roles for older women.  As a woman myself, I want to know that I’ll still have options in life 10, 20, or 30 years from now.

All this being said, I don’t have any illusions that my 5-minute Ren’Py game is going to totally change the world.  However, if it gets a few players to think about the gender representation issues I’ve talked about here, I’ll consider it a success.  Faust: Scene II is nearly complete with only a couple art assets to finish up.  Expect plenty more updates from me related to this project!