The House of Bernarda Alba: A Critical Analysis
The House of Bernarda Alba
by Federico García Lorca
Written in 1936 and premiered in Buenos Aires, The House of Bernarda Alba tells the story of Bernarda, a widow who, at the age of 60, imposes an eight-year mourning period on her five daughters. The play begins with Bernarda’s despotism and the arrival of the mourning period. Angustias, the eldest daughter from Bernarda’s first marriage, inherits her father’s fortune, which creates tension among her sisters. She is also set to marry Pepe el Romano, but only for his money. Love triangles and conflicts arise between the sisters and Pepe, ultimately leading to the suicide of Adela, the youngest daughter, who is pregnant with Pepe’s child and unable to be with him. Bernarda ends the play by declaring that Adela died a virgin.
Characters
- Bernarda: 60 years old, false, hypocritical, and despotic. She relies on her cane and is often the target of criticism.
- Angustias: 39 years old, unmarried, and childless. The eldest daughter from Bernarda’s first marriage. Pepe does not love her, and she knows it, but she desires to leave the house.
- Magdalena: 30 years old, mourns her late father the most. Resigned to Bernarda’s tyranny, she knows she will not marry and wishes she were a man.
- Amelia: 27 years old, shy and rarely speaks.
- Martirio: 24 years old, her mother prevented her marriage. She is resentful and jealous of Adela.
- Adela: 20 years old, full of life and challenges the morals of the time. She commits suicide.
- Poncia: 60 years old, raised Bernarda and the other daughters. A friend of Bernarda but also her servant.
- Maria Josefa: 80 years old, considered crazy but speaks the truth, which is why Bernarda keeps her locked away. She represents a threat to Bernarda’s image.
- Prudencia: 50 years old, a friend of Bernarda.
- Pepe el Romano: Never appears on stage but is the catalyst for passion and conflict.
Themes
- Social Classes: The play highlights classism, particularly between Bernarda and Poncia.
- Role of Women: The play explores the mentality and dependence of women on men in that society.
- Oppressive Society: The play depicts a society full of gossip, whispers, and criticism.
- Tradition: The play examines traditions such as mourning, dowries, and arranged marriages.
- Authoritarianism: Bernarda’s tyranny is a central theme.
- Desire for Freedom: All the daughters yearn to escape their confined lives.
- Hate, Jealousy, and Money: These are driving forces in the play’s conflicts.
Symbols
- Water: Represents sexual desire.
- White and Black: Symbolize life and death, respectively.
- Green: Represents rebellion and death.
- Heat: Intensifies the dramatic action.
- Cane: Represents Bernarda’s authoritarian power.
- Lamb: Represents Adela’s sacrifice.
- Names: Bernarda (strength), Alba (caste), Angustias (sorrow), Magdalena (desolation), Amelia (territory of a leader), Martirio (torture), Adela (noble character), Poncia (handwashing), Prudencia (sound judgment), Maria Josefa (wisdom).
García Lorca and His Theater
Lorca’s plays often depict characters facing tragic destinies, shaped by societal constraints and condemned to death. These themes are frequently explored through female characters, but their implications extend beyond gender. The House of Bernarda Alba is the tragedy of individuals condemned to a sterile and frustrating existence.
Lorca portrays various frustrations in his characters, sometimes stemming from opposing forces, the inevitability of death, or societal prejudices and conventions.
Conception of Stage
Lorca was immersed in theater culture throughout his life, particularly in his last six years. During this period, he wrote works that brought him international fame. From 1932, he directed La Barraca, a university theater group that toured Spain, performing classic plays.
Lorca believed that “theater is poetry that rises from the book and becomes human, human speech, shouts, cries, and despair. Theater needs characters to appear on stage wearing a suit of poetry and, at the same time, to reveal their bones and flesh.” He sought to combine beauty and aesthetic emotions.
Style and Language
Lorca skillfully employed both verse and prose in his dialogues. His theater is rich in symbols, metaphors, and comparisons.
History of Lorca’s Theater
1. The Beginnings (1920s): Lorca wrote The Butterfly’s Evil Spell and short pieces inspired by puppet theater. His first success came with Mariana Pineda, a play about a heroine executed for embroidering a liberal flag. In 1926, he wrote The Shoemaker’s Prodigious Wife. This phase also includes The Love of Don Perlimplín and Belisa in the Garden and The Puppet Play of Don Cristóbal. Lorca experimented with various forms and styles: symbolist, modernist, popular, and puppet theater, paving the way for a bolder approach.
2. Avant-Garde Experimentation (late 1920s-early 1930s): Lorca experienced a deep crisis that led to an extended stay in New York (1929-1930). This period renewed his theatrical language, influenced by surrealism. Works from this phase include The Public and Thus Five Years Pass.
3. Stage of Completion (1930s): Lorca took a radical turn, uniting aesthetics and popular appeal. He believed that “in our time, the poet has to open his veins for others, so I have given myself to drama, which allows for more direct contact.” These were the years of La Barraca, marked by great success. Women play prominent roles in most of his works, reflecting his sensitivity to their societal situation. Notable plays from this period include:
- Blood Wedding (1933): Based on a true story, a bride runs off with her lover on her wedding day. It explores a passion that transcends social and moral barriers, ending in tragedy.
- Yerma (1934): The drama of a woman condemned to infertility who kills her husband, ending the possibility of motherhood.
- Doña Rosita the Spinster or The Language of Flowers (1935): Lorca examines the situation of women in the urban bourgeoisie, the spinsterhood of provincial ladies, and how they seem to fade like flowers.
- The House of Bernarda Alba (1936)
Significance of Lorca’s Theater
After some unsuccessful and unperformed works, Lorca achieved recognition. Following his death and the Spanish Civil War, his work gained international acclaim. However, it took several years for his plays to be staged in Spain due to censorship and the need for family approval. The House of Bernarda Alba, for example, was not performed until 1964. Lorca is considered one of the greatest playwrights of the 20th century.
Postwar Spain: Society and Culture
The Spanish Civil War (1936-1939) caused a rupture in all aspects of Spanish life and devastated the economy. After World War II (1939-1945), Spain’s international isolation further hindered its recovery.
The dominant ideology of the Falange controlled culture and media, suppressing any alternative viewpoints. The new government implemented harsh repression, resulting in numerous deaths, imprisonments, and exiles after the war.
Exile Literature
The end of the civil war led to the exile of many intellectuals and writers. Established writers from previous generations and those who began publishing in the 1930s left the country and produced most of their work in exile. This includes Max Aub, Ramón J. Sender, Rosa Chacel, Alejandro Casona, and Arturo Barea.
The Existential Novel
Novels of the 1940s reflect the harshness of daily life. Writers of this period depict rootless, marginalized characters whose primary concern is sadness. Due to censorship, they could not address social issues directly. Examples include The Family of Pascual Duarte by Camilo José Cela, Nada by Carmen Laforet, and The Shadow of the Cypress is Long by Miguel Delibes.
Objectivism emerged as a technique to reflect social reality coldly, often featuring a collective protagonist. Dialogue takes center stage, while the narrator and author’s voice recede.
Social Realism
In the 1950s, young writers produced novels of social commitment and witness. This movement employed objectivism. Notable works include Between Curtains by Carmen Martín Gaite and Jarama by Rafael Sánchez Ferlosio.
The Renewal of Narrative Techniques
In the 1960s, established and emerging writers embraced new narrative techniques from European and North American literature.
Features:
- Multiple narrators tell the story from various perspectives.
- Variable-length sequences separated by spaces replace traditional chapters.
- Alternating sequences create a kaleidoscopic effect, combining multiple storylines.
- Time becomes fragmented, with the use of flashbacks.
- Authors utilize the second person, reflexive narration, and interior monologue.
- Elements foreign to the novel, such as news reports and announcements, are incorporated.
- This new style demands an active and creative reader.
New Techniques
The 20th century saw the emergence of new narrative elements in European and American literature. Europe contributed the anxiety-ridden literature and symbolism of Franz Kafka, as well as self-analysis and interior monologue. The American “Lost Generation” introduced the stream-of-consciousness technique.
Examples of novels employing these techniques include The Saga/Fury of J.B. by Juan Benet Goitia, The Truth About the Savolta Case by Eduardo Mendoza, and The Mortal Threshold by Francisco Umbral.
Camilo José Cela
(1916-2002) Cela received the Nobel Prize in Literature for his extensive and diverse body of work, characterized by experimentation and observation. The Family of Pascual Duarte, a social novel, inaugurated the “tremendismo” literary movement. The Hive and Mazurka for Two Dead showcase his continued experimentation and ability to surprise readers.
The Hive
Published in 1951, The Hive introduced the sequence technique. The omniscient narrator employs objectivism. It features a collective protagonist to reflect the contrasts of postwar Madrid, portraying the lives of over 300 characters. The novel has an open ending.
Cela’s style blends irony and lyrical tones, counterbalancing the accumulation of repetitions, parallelisms, and adjectives that create a distinct rhythm. Sequences begin with the name of the character they focus on, unfolding in a disorderly manner and concentrated over three days.
Miguel Delibes
(1920-2010) Delibes was born in Valladolid, Spain, where he lived and worked as a professor of commercial law and a journalist. He won the Nadal Prize for The Shadow of the Cypress is Long. He was a member of the Royal Spanish Academy and received the Cervantes Prize.
Considered one of the great storytellers of the 20th century, his novels often depict rural settings and defend humanity’s connection to nature. Examples include Diary of a Hunter and Rats. He pays meticulous attention to language, using precise vocabulary and masterfully capturing popular speech. His style remains simple, even in more experimental novels like Five Hours with Mario, Parable of a Shipwreck, and The Holy Innocents. In The Heretic, he recreates 16th-century Valladolid and criticizes the Inquisition’s intolerance.
Five Hours with Mario
In Five Hours with Mario, Carmen, the main character, speaks to the corpse of her husband, Mario. Through her lengthy monologues, the differences between them are revealed: Mario, a school teacher, was Catholic, liberal, socially concerned, and critical of society. Carmen, on the other hand, is a conservative middle-class woman.
Delibes skillfully reproduces the fluidity of colloquial language through Carmen’s monologues. The protagonist’s thoughts flow freely, and her memories are presented in a temporally disordered manner, requiring active reading. The reader must mentally reconstruct the story. The novel’s success lies in the surprising fact that readers often identify with Mario, even though they only have Carmen’s critical voice to judge him.
Elegy to Miguel – Ramón Hernández
This elegy expresses Ramón Hernández’s sadness, despair, and resignation over the death of his friend Miguel. Throughout the poem, Hernández experiences a range of emotions.
The first metaphor, using the personal pronoun “I,” sets the tone: “I want to be crying.” The poem is written in chained triplets. From the beginning until “give your heart for food,” the focus is on sadness.
The fourth verse introduces gradation, as the pain intensifies. The lines “Early death” and “made no mistake” form a parallel structure. “Early death raised the flight” is a metaphor, and death is personified as love.
From “From my hands up,” anger emerges. There is alliteration: the repetition of sounds for emphasis. From “Back to me has died” onward, resignation takes hold. The line “Field of almonds still, in spring” evokes a peaceful image, and “I would call almond cream” suggests purity and innocence, as the almond trees are covered in white blossoms.
The Holy Innocents
This film portrays a family trapped in poverty, serving various landowners. Their miserable conditions persist until they are eventually evicted. The daughter works as a maid in the house, the parents work outside with their uncle, and the son is doing national service. The youngest daughter requires constant care.
The film’s narrative unfolds with the death of Iván, the landowner, caused by Azarías, the uncle, who seeks revenge for the death of his beloved pig, Milana. Azarías ends up in a psychiatric hospital, the parents are thrown out of the house, the youngest daughter dies accidentally, the older daughter continues serving in the house, and the son works in the city.
Characters
- Paco: The father, accustomed to servitude. A genuine, innocent, noble, and kind character.
- Azarías: The uncle, mentally disabled. His sole motivation is his love for Milana, making him an obsessive, loyal, and kind character.
- Régula: The mother, resigned to her life of service. Accepting, thoughtful, friendly, and dedicated, but also capable of taking action when necessary.
- Iván: The landowner, arrogant, and self-absorbed. He represents the wealthy and powerful.
- Doña Pura and Don Pedro: The landowner’s wife and his friend. Doña Pura is unfaithful to her husband.
- Children: The daughter is resigned to servitude, the son is rebellious, and the youngest daughter is weak and needs constant care.
Resources
- Flashback: Used to maintain suspense and intrigue until the end.
- Color Contrast: Emphasizes the difference between the environments of the rich and the poor.