Bernarda Alba: A Deep Dive into Characters and Themes
The House of Bernarda Alba: A Summary
Federico García Lorca wrote The House of Bernarda Alba in the last months of his life. It impressively portrays the situation of a group of women condemned to frustration by Catholic morality, sexism, and patriarchal norms. Bernarda assumes this morality as her own and imposes it on others. While some resign themselves to it, Adela rebels against it, ultimately leading to a tragic end.
The Imposition of Mourning
After the death of her second husband, Bernarda imposes an eight-year period of seclusion on her six unmarried daughters as a symbol of mourning. Angustias, the eldest daughter, is the daughter of Bernarda’s first husband and heir to a considerable fortune. She becomes engaged to a handsome young waiter, Pepe el Romano. However, he only seeks Angustias’ dowry and secretly maintains relations with the youngest sister, Adela. Moreover, Bernarda does not let any man come near any of her daughters, believing that they are all of a lower social level.
Bernarda is able to maintain the semblance of order at home but cannot govern the passions of her daughters, which eventually explode.
Symbolism and Setting
The play takes place inside Bernarda’s house, reflecting her obsession with purity, virtue, honor, and her daughters’ virginity. Symbolic elements also appear, such as death, the sea (representing freedom), Bernarda’s cane (representing authority), and the stallion (representing sexual passion).
Echoes from the Village
Sometimes, there’s an echo of events in the village. Bernarda tells Poncia the episode of Paca la Roseta, a married woman who is kidnapped and taken with her consent to the grove by a few waiters. In the second act, the audience witnesses the arrival of the reapers, with their songs and their burden of sexuality. At the end of the same act, the lynching of an unmarried girl who had a son and killed him to hide her shame is depicted.
All this serves to reinforce Bernarda’s belief that she and her children belong to a higher social level, free of those passions. Meanwhile, Bernarda’s daughters complain about the double standards by which the behavior of men and women is measured: men are allowed freedom, while they are not.
Pepe el Romano also reaches out from the outside. He wants to marry the eldest daughter for her money but is involved with the youngest daughter for her beauty. He will be the trigger for the tragedy.
Characters in The House of Bernarda Alba
Bernarda: The Embodiment of Tradition
Bernarda represents an exaggerated form of Catholic tradition, sexism, patriarchy, and classism. She is a representative of the Calderonian concept of honor, an external form of virtue associated primarily with women’s purity and virginity.
She has a profoundly classist mentality and an absolutely traditional view of women’s social role. She represents irrational power and does not question her commands. She has boundless confidence in her ability to bend her daughters’ will and ensure that everything is as she dictates. In fact, throughout the book, she consistently uses the imperative mood. This spirit leads her to deny the obvious.
She considers herself an unquestionable moral authority. She enjoys listening to the lurid episodes that Poncia tells her, mercilessly judging the behavior of others and feeling herself on a higher plane of morality. Bernarda is a clear example of the old and equivocal morality that Lorca sought to highlight through his theater.
Bernarda’s Daughters: A Spectrum of Reactions
In Bernarda’s daughters, we can see a range of attitudes toward their mother’s authority, ranging from tame submission to Adela’s rebellion.
- Angustias is the heiress of Bernarda’s previous marriage. She is a mature woman, withered and graceless, and assumes her position with surprising ease. She is aware that her dowry is what matters to Pepe el Romano.
- Amelia, the least defined of the sisters, is shown to be submissive to her mother and resigned to her condition, but she complains about the pressure of what people will think.
- Magdalena expresses her rejection of their situation. She submits to her mother’s will and social pressure but expresses her dissatisfaction and frustration with candor. She also speaks directly and realistically about Pepe el Romano’s motives in his relationship with Angustias and criticizes Martirio’s hypocrisy.
- Martirio is a complex character. Sickly and homely, she had a suitor whom her mother drove away. She feels a passionate love for Pepe el Romano and is jealous of Adela, who seems to be the only rival who has been able to enjoy the love of the man she loves. Throughout the play, she involves herself in bending, throwing innuendo intended to highlight her sister. At the end, she announces Pepe’s death to her sisters, desiring to cause suffering to her younger sister, thus becoming the cause of Adela’s suicide.
- Adela represents the force of desire. She is a beautiful young girl who does not bow to her mother’s will and is driven by her desire to love above her mother’s authority and social conventions. She is the only one who openly challenges Bernarda’s authority, breaking her cane.
- Maria Josefa is the only character who clearly expresses her wishes throughout the play. Maria Josefa claims freedom, love, happiness, and fertility, both in her screams and in her amazed song.
La Poncia: A Complex Servant
La Poncia is a complex character. In her life, she has managed to stay above the authority of men, but her position and her origins as a maid force her to adopt a submissive attitude at home. She acts as an advisor to Bernarda and reproaches her stubbornness and blindness, making clear her class resentment against her domineering mistress.
The Maid: A Mirror of Abuse
At the beginning of the play, the Maid shows herself to be despotic toward the beggar. She reports the abuse she was subjected to by Bernarda’s husband but radically changes the tone of her words when she sees the housewife appear.