The Good Woman of Setzuan: Scene 1 Summary & Analysis

Shen Te stands in an empty tobacco shop. She tells the audience that three days ago, the gods paid her over a thousand silver dollars for their stay. She has used the money to rent a tobacco shop and the attached rooms. She says she hopes to “do a lot of good” in her new store—starting with being kind to Mrs. Shin, the previous owner, who stopped in the night before to ask for rice for her sick children. Mrs. Shin enters. She and Shen Te greet each other kindly, but Mrs. Shin quickly begins griping about how Shen Te took over her and her “innocent children[’s]” home. Shen Te sheepishly goes to get more rice for Mrs. Shin.

An older husband and wife, along with their nephew, enter the shop and they congratulate Shen Te on coming into money. As their nephew looks around, the couple ask if they can spend the night as they have no home of their own. Mrs. Shin asks who these people are. Shen Te tells her that the couple sheltered her when she arrived from the countryside. In an aside to the audience, Shen Te adds that the couple threw her out on the street when she couldn’t pay them. Nevertheless, Shen Te turns to the couple and she happily offers them to share the little room behind the shop.

A shabby, old, unemployed man enters. He asks Shen Te if there are any damaged cigarettes he can take for free. The wife scoffs at the unemployed man for seeking out cigarettes rather than bread. Shen Te, however, gladly gives the man a pack of cigarettes. She thanks him for being her first customer and she says she hopes he will bring her good luck as a business owner. The man lights up a cigarette and leaves without thanking Shen Te. Mrs. Shin and the couple gossip about the man as soon as he is out the door. The husband and wife tell Shen Te that she is “too good”—if she wants to stay in business, they advise her, she’ll have to “learn to say no.”

A carpenter enters and he chastises Shen Te for filling up the shelves without paying for them. Shen Te insists that when she took the shop, she was told furnishings were included. The carpenter, however, demands a hundred silver dollars. Shen Te begs the carpenter to be patient with her—after all, starting a new business is hard. In response, the carpenter starts ripping shelves off the wall. The wife tells Shen Te to let her relative—pointing out her own husband—settle the affair. The carpenter is suspicious of the man really being Shen Te’s relative but he agrees to put his claim in writing, nonetheless. He puts the shelf down, sits, and begins writing up a bill. Shen Te worries what the gods will have to say about her failure to pay the carpenter.

A man and a woman enter the shop. They are cross with the husband and wife for “hiding out” away from them. The elderly woman states that the man is her brother and the woman is her pregnant (and moody) sister-in-law. Shen Te welcomes the couple warmly.

Mrs. Mi Tzu, the landlady, enters the shop. She introduces herself to Shen Te and she says she hopes that their relationship will be a “happy one.” She hands Shen Te a lease to look over and she asks if Shen Te has any references. Shen Te is about to say she doesn’t have any, but the husband speaks up and he claims that he is “Ma Fu, tobacco dealer.” He claims he has just sold his successful shop. Mrs. Mi Tzu, however, says that Shen Te will need more than one reference. Shen Te says slowly, with downcast eyes, that she has a cousin who can vouch for her. She claims he lives far away and that his name is Shui Ta. The various members of the large family promise the landlady that “Shui Ta” is an upstanding man. Mrs. Mi Tzu says she looks forward to making Shui Ta’s acquaintance and bids Shen Te goodbye.

A very old man—the grandfather of the large family—enters the shop along with a young boy and the niece of the elderly couple. The wife asks Shen Te for the key to the shop—they must protect themselves from anymore “unwanted guests.” The nephew jokes that he hopes “the strict Mr. Shui Ta” doesn’t come by tonight. Everyone laughs, knowing there is no Shui Ta. The members of the family begin opening bottles of wine and taking cigarettes down from the shelves to smoke. Shen Te, holding the carpenter’s bill and the landlady’s lease, looks on, too exhausted and overwhelmed to say anything.

The sister-in-law suggests a song to lift Shen Te’s spirits. The grandfather begins singing “Song of the Smoke,” a song in which he laments that smarts are not enough to make a poor man rich—just as “smoke float[s] free into every colder coldness,” he, too, has been forsaken. The husband joins in and he laments that although he’s tried to live both good and “crooked” lives, both have turned him into “smoke” as well. The niece chimes in and she says that the younger generation, too, is as evanescent as smoke—their "future[s are] a blank.”

As the family grows drunk and happy, they begin arguing and fighting. Soon, they are toppling Shen Te’s sparse displays. Shin Te begs them not to “destroy a gift from the gods.” The sister-in-law laments that when the rest of the family arrives, they will find the shop too small. A knock at the door announces the arrival of an uncle, an auntie, and more children. The wife asks Shen Te if she can let the rest of the family in, and Shen Te, as if in a trance, states that even when a lifeboat is sent down, men “greedily / Hold on to it as they drown.”