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
Back at the Bridegroom’s house, two little girls wind “a skein of red wool” while a third talks about the fact that nobody has returned from the wedding yet. “Oh wool, oh wool, / What will you say?” says one of the girls playing with the wool, and the other says, “The lover’s dumb, / The young man red. / On the silent shore / I saw them spread.”
The three little girls and their “skein of red wool” resemble the Fates, or the three goddesses in Greek mythology who work with the threads of fate, spinning out destinies and determining when a person will die. As such, the fact that García Lorca opens the final scene with these three girls hints that someone has died—a notion that is supported when one of the girls talks about an unspeaking lover and a “young man” washed up on a “shore.”
Themes
Leonardo’s wife and mother-in-law enter and worry aloud about what might have happened in the woods. When they leave several moments later, the old beggar woman appears at the door and asks for bread, and one of the little girls asks if she has been near the river. The beggar reveals that she did indeed walk along the stream, saying, “I saw them; they’ll be here soon: two rushing streams / Still at last amongst the great stones, / Two men at the horse’s feet, / Dead in the beauty of the night.” Going on, she says (without using their names) that both Leonardo and the Bridegroom have died but that the Bride is soon to return, her clothing stained by her lovers’ blood. Having said this, she departs.
In this moment, the beggar woman confirms that both Leonardo and the Bridegroom are dead. As such, the audience sees that the Bridegroom truly was rushing toward his own death as he pursued his enemy, ultimately succumbing to the same destiny as his brother and father. This, of course, is quite absurd, considering that he was seemingly only chasing Leonardo down to fulfill this destiny—after all, it’s not as if he would have been able to convince the Bride to fall in love with him. As such, violence is the only thing the Bridegroom could have hoped to achieve, and achieve it he did, though at the cost of his own life.
Themes
The Bridegroom’s mother arrives with her neighbor, who is crying. “Be quiet,” the mother says. She then thinks about the fact that her son should have been there to greet her, saying that his voice is “fading” “beyond the mountains.” Wanting to help her friend, the neighbor says, “Come to my house. Don’t stay here.” However, the mother declines, saying that she wants to be at home and “at peace.” “All of them are dead now,” she says. “At midnight I’ll sleep, I’ll sleep and not be afraid of a gun or a knife.” She then notes that “other mothers” will look out their windows to find their sons, but that she won’t be able to do this anymore. Having said this, she sits down and resolves to remain strong, since mourners will soon come to visit.
When the Bridegroom’s mother says that she’ll be able to fall asleep at night without being “afraid of a gun or a knife,” there is a hint of relief in her voice. For years, she has worried about losing her son to the same kind of violence that claimed her husband and other son. Of course, this fear came true, but this means she can finally live her life in the present, getting the first peaceful night’s sleep in a long time.
Themes
The Bride enters wearing all black and weeping. Upon seeing her, the Bridegroom’s mother calls her a “serpent” and slaps her to the ground, at which point the neighbor tries to push her away. However, the Bride speaks up, telling the neighbor to leave the old woman alone. “I came so that she could kill me, so that they bear me away with them,” she says. She also says she wants the Bridegroom’s mother to know that she’s still a virgin, but the old woman tells her to be quiet, saying, “What does that matter to me?” “Because I went off with the other one!” the Bride replies, insisting that the Bridegroom’s mother would have done the same thing. Saying that she was a “burning” woman, the Bride likens the Bridegroom to a “drop of water” that might bring her “children, land, [and] health.”
As she tries to atone for eloping with Leonardo, the Bride accepts the old woman’s scorn. At the same time, though, she tries to defend herself by saying that she was a “burning” woman, an idea that suggests that her desires were out of her own control. When she says that the Bridegroom was like a “drop of water,” she implies that he wasn’t quite enough to satisfy her true yearnings or put out her passion for Leonardo. In turn, this confirms that the promise of “children” and “land” weren’t enough to convince the Bride to give up true love.
Themes
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The Bride says that while the Bridegroom was like a “drop of water,” Leonardo was like “a dark river.” Trying to explain herself to the Bridegroom’s mother, she says that the Bridegroom was her “ambition” but that Leonardo “dragged” her down “like a wave from the sea.” Unsurprisingly, the Bridegroom’s mother doesn’t care about any of this, refusing to forgive the Bride for being a “weak” woman. In utter anguish, the Bride pleads for the mother to take revenge on her, begging her to cut her throat. However, the mother refuses to do anything, simply saying, “What does your honour matter to me? What does your death matter to me? What does anything matter to me?”
Unfortunately for the Bride, the Bridegroom’s mother is unsympathetic, as she remains unmoved by the Bride’s inability to resist love. For her, all that counts is that the Bride’s elopement led to her son’s death. And now that this has happened, nothing “matter[s]” to her anymore, a fact that aligns with her previous assertion that she’s no longer “afraid” of anything.
Themes
Once it becomes clear that the Bridegroom’s mother will not do anything to harm the Bride, the Bride asks if she can “weep” with her, and the old woman allows her to cry “by the door.” In this fashion, the two women mourn their losses, speaking in verse about how even the smallest knife—one “that barely fits the hand”—can part flesh and drive into the body, where there “trembles” “the dark root of a scream.”
Blood Wedding ends with two women—who are at odds with one another—lamenting the same thing: the tragic fact that human beings find ways to kill each other with even the smallest of weapons. In this way, García Lorca illustrates that violence-related grief is universal, ultimately transcending interpersonal divisions and uniting people with an internal “scream,” which all humans possess because everybody on earth feels the pain of losing a loved one.
Themes
