Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Blood Wedding, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Love, Passion, and Control
History and Fate
Violence and Revenge
Ownership and Unhappiness
Summary
Analysis
Leonardo’s mother-in-law cradles his baby and sings a lullaby at his home. Joining in, Leonardo’s wife helps her mother tell the tale of a horse who won’t drink from a river because its hooves are bleeding into the water. “Go to sleep, carnation, / For the horse will not drink deep,” she sings, trading verses with her mother until the child falls asleep, at which point they put him down. Leonardo enters, claiming he’s just come from the blacksmith’s, who put “new shoes” on the horse because they never stay on the animal’s hooves. “I reckon he rips them off on the stones,” Leonardo says, but his wife suggests that perhaps the horseshoes fall off because Leonardo rides him so much. “I hardly ever ride him,” Leonardo says, but his wife reveals that their neighbors claim to have seen him on “the other side of the plains.”
The lullaby that Leonardo’s wife and mother-in-law sing in this scene serves as a metaphor for the destructive properties of violence and revenge. In the same way that the horse bleeds into the same water it’s supposed to drink, the Bridegroom’s family and the Felix family essentially poison themselves by feuding with one another, as evidenced by the fact that the Bridegroom’s mother can’t even allow herself to live a normal life in the present because she won’t let go of her bitterness toward her enemies. As the play progresses, it will be helpful to keep this metaphor in mind, as García Lorca uses this imagery throughout the play to comment on the nature of violence and death.
Themes
Leonardo upholds that he wasn’t riding his horse on “the other side of the plains,” which is quite far away. In fact, he vehemently rejects this notion, though his mother-in-law—who briefly left and now reenters the house—says, “Who’s racing the horse like that? He’s down there stretched out with his eyes bulging as if he’s come from the end of the world.” This comment visibly sets Leonardo on edge, but Leonardo’s wife quickly changes the subject, telling him that her cousin is soon to marry the Bridegroom. The mother-in-law, for her part, adds that she doesn’t think the Bridegroom’s mother is happy about the union, and Leonardo suggests the old woman is perhaps right to feel this way, saying that the Bride “needs watching.” After all, he would know, since he was in a relationship with her for three years.
It seems obvious in this moment that Leonardo is lying about how far he has ridden his horse, since his mother-in-law unknowingly corroborates his wife’s assertion that he was spotted on “the other side of the plains.” However, García Lorca doesn’t reveal yet why he might be lying about this, though his unwillingness to tell the truth to his wife suggests that their relationship is strained.
Themes
A young girl enters Leonardo’s house and tells his mother-in-law that the Bridegroom came to her family’s store and “bought all the best things” for the Bride, going on at length about the beautiful stockings he and his mother purchased. When Leonardo hears this, he vehemently says, “We couldn’t care less,” and when Leonardo’s wife and mother-in-law scold him for being so rude, he simply tells them to leave him alone, storming out of the house and waking the baby with his angry words as he goes. When he’s gone, his wife and mother-in-law try to soothe the child by singing the same lullaby about the horse who “will not drink deep.”
Leonardo’s sudden anger upon hearing about the Bride and the Bridegroom’s wedding suggests that he hasn’t gotten over the Bride. In turn, this clarifies why he has a strained relationship with his own wife, to whom he has no problem lying. As he leaves the house, it seems obvious that he’s still attached to his former lover, as the mere mention of her wedding enrages him and causes him to rudely rush away from his family, not even caring that he has woken the baby.
Themes
