Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in The House of Bernarda Alba, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Freedom, Desire, and Tragedy
Patriarchy and Domination
Class and Honor
Tradition and Modernity in Spain
Summary
Analysis
Church bells toll in a small southern Spanish village. The Maid starts cleaning Bernarda Alba’s white sitting room and remarks that the noise is giving her a headache. Poncia follows her inside, eating a sausage, and notes that Magdalena fainted at her father’s funeral; she was his favorite. They share snacks in secret because Bernarda is in mourning and refuses to eat. Someone (Maria Josefa) yells out Bernarda’s name; the Maid rushes to open Maria Josefa’s locked bedroom door while Poncia explains that Bernarda “tyrannizes everyone around her.” In fact, Bernarda’s husband’s family came to the funeral, but didn’t want anything to do with their daughter-in-law.
It’s telling that García Lorca chooses to introduce Bernarda Alba, her family, and her house through the eyes of the play’s three most peripheral characters: Poncia, the Maid, and Maria Josefa. This reflects Bernarda’s tyrannical rule over the house, her blindness to the power dynamics in her family, and the central role that gossip, reputation, and honor play in her village. Similarly, the church bells and the house’s white walls represent the village’s conservatism, and Maria Josefa’s confinement to her bedroom reflects how tradition renders all of the play’s women unfree.
Themes
Poncia laments that she has obediently cared for Bernarda for the last 30 years—ever since Bernarda’s father died. The whole time, Bernarda has scarcely left the house and spent all her time gossiping about the neighbors. Poncia dreams of telling Bernarda how she really feels, and she complains that Bernarda’s “five ugly daughters” won’t inherit much of anything. Still, they’re much wealthier than Poncia and the Maid. Poncia leaves to hear the last prayer in the church; she loves the priest’s singing voice.
Poncia demonstrates that she is the play’s voice of reason, the only person who truly understands the family dynamics that harm Bernarda’s daughters and ultimately lead them to tragedy. But Poncia also recognizes that, because of rural Spain’s strict class system, she depends entirely on Bernarda and can never share what she really thinks. But Poncia’s feelings about the priest show that she still believes in Spain’s traditional social hierarchy, even if she recognizes the injustice baked into it.
Themes
As the Maid cleans, a beggar woman enters, asking for Bernarda’s leftovers. But the Maid says she is keeping them for herself, and she kicks the woman out of the house. She curses Bernarda’s late husband, Antonio, who used to lift up her skirt. But then, all the mourning women enter the house. The Maid starts wailing and praising Antonio instead. Bernarda furiously tells her to stop screaming, work harder, and then get out. The Maid leaves. Bernarda comments that “the poor are like animals” and screams at the mourners who disagree.
Poncia and the Maid were clearly right about Bernarda’s explosive, tyrannical temperament. The Maid’s cruel response to the beggar woman parallels Bernarda’s cruelty towards the Maid, which she also justifies on the basis of social class. This shows that, even though the Maid belongs to the bottom rungs of the village’s social hierarchy, this hierarchy is so all-consuming that she still accepts and enforces it. The Maid’s revelation about Antonio complicates the image Bernarda projects of him as a pure, ideal husband—but later events in the play will make it clear that his philandering is the norm, rather than the exception, in rural Spain.
Themes
Poncia brings lemonade. Bernarda tells her to give some to the men outside, too—but not to let them come in. Bernarda curses the unholy women who look at men (besides the priest) at church, then leads the other women in a prayer and sees them out the door. Poncia brings a sack of money from the men, and Bernarda tells the weeping Magdalena to be quiet. She yells that the mourning women should never return to her house, which they have defiled.
Bernarda’s insistence on separating men and women reflects rural Spain’s strict patriarchal norms: no man can enter Antonio’s house while the women of his family are still mourning him. Similarly, Bernarda’s condemnation of women who look at men in church, one of the few places where genders mix in rural 1930s Spain, reflects her attempts to control her daughters’ sexual and romantic desires. Her desire to preserve the orderly appearance of mourning ironically leads her to silence Magdalena, the only person who truly loved Antonio and is mourning him sincerely.
Themes
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Bernarda makes her youngest daughter Adela give her a fan, but she throws it on the ground because it is red and green, and not a widow’s black. The fourth daughter, Martirio, says she isn’t warm and offers her fan; but Bernarda says that Martirio will need a new one because they won’t be opening the doors or windows for the traditional “eight years of mourning.” She tells Magdalena to spend this time embroidering her ajuar (the clothes and linens that a woman traditionally makes in preparation for her wedding). But Magdalena says she doesn’t care because she doesn’t plan to marry. But all women have to marry, Bernarda says. Magdalena responds, “to hell with being a woman!” Bernarda repeats that Magdalena has no choice.
Bernarda clearly treats her daughters with the same cruelty that she does Poncia and the Maid. For instance, she makes demands on them but rejects their efforts as inadequate, and she insists that they sacrifice eight years of their youth mourning in the service of outdated social codes. Arguably, Bernarda is more interested in asserting power over her daughters than actually maintaining harmony in her family. Adela’s red fan is an important symbol: throughout the play, García Lorca associates her rebelliousness with color. This contrasts with everything else, which, at Bernarda’s insistence, is either a virgin’s white or a widow’s black. Like Adela, Magdalena also tries to resist the social codes Bernarda imposes on her: she concludes that, if being a woman means playing by Bernarda’s rules, she would rather not play at all.
Themes
The Maid enters from Bernarda’s mother Maria Josefa’s room. Maria Josefa is 80 but still strong, the Maid explains, and kept screaming during the funeral to ask for “dishwater […] and dog meat,” which she says is all Bernarda gives her. At Bernarda’s orders, the Maid takes Maria Josefa out to the courtyard, by the well. Adela reports that Bernarda’s oldest daughter, Angustias, was peeking out the door at the men. Bernarda yells that a respectable woman would never chase men after her father’s funeral. Angustia denies doing this, but Bernarda starts beating Angustias with her cane. All the daughters go, leaving Poncia and Bernarda alone.
Maria Josefa’s complaints show that Bernarda does not offer her mother the same loyalty and attention she demands from her daughters. Indeed, they suggest that the family’s women face the same predicament from generation to generation, as they sacrifice their freedom to uphold a traditional culture that oppresses them.
Themes
Poncia explains that Angustias was just innocently eavesdropping on the men; Bernarda wants to know about their conversation. Poncia says that the men were bragging about taking Paca la Roseta to the olive grove and having their way with her—supposedly with her consent. Bernarda calls Paca the town’s “only loose woman,” and Poncia says it’s “because she’s not from here.” Poncia asks when Angustias will marry; she’s already 39 and hasn’t had any suitors. Offended, Bernarda says that no men are good enough for her daughters for miles around, but she won’t take them elsewhere “to sell them.” Frustrated, Poncia asks if she and Bernarda can talk honestly; Bernarda says no because “you are my servant, and I pay you.”
Bernarda’s curiosity further reflects her hypocrisy: she chastises Angustias for gossiping, but she proves quite the gossip herself. The anecdote about Paca la Roseta illustrates how rural Spain’s gendered culture of honor blames women for failing to resist men’s impropriety and even sexual violence—which are treated as normal and inevitable. Meanwhile, Bernarda’s criteria for marrying her daughters are completely self-defeating: if there are no suitable men in the village, but her daughters also cannot leave, then they will simply never get married. This means that they will never be able to leave Bernarda’s house, achieve true freedom, or give birth to the next generation and pass on their family legacy—which is the entire point of Bernarda’s gendered honor code to begin with.
Themes
The Maid enters to report that Don Arturo has come to talk about the will. Bernarda orders her to hide Antonio’s clothes and insists that they won’t part with any of his possessions. Bernarda and the Maid leave.
Bernarda’s concern about losing some of Antonio’s possessions suggests that, despite all her praise for him as an ideal husband, he may have other potential heirs elsewhere. This could include not only his side of the family, but also cherished friends, business associates, or even other wives, mistresses, and/or children. Bernarda’s behavior also shows that she is willing to subvert the norms of her culture’s moral code when it benefits her directly.
Themes
Amelia and Martirio enter the room. Amelia asks about Martirio’s medicine, which Martirio confirms she is taking. Martirio comments that their friend Adelaida didn’t attend the funeral because her fiancé forbids her to leave the house. Adelaida’s father is a horrible womanizer, Martirio explains, and her family history seems to be repeating itself. “It’s better never to lay eyes on a man,” Martirio comments, before lamenting how the man she once loved married a girl from a wealthier family instead. Magdalena arrives from the storage room, describes Maria Josefa’s old embroidery, and comments that life has gotten worse because everyone worries about their reputation now. She describes Adela wearing her green dress and yelling at the chickens; she laments that Adela, too, will have to give up her dreams.
Adelaida’s fate shows that the choice between singlehood and marriage is a lose-lose proposition for Bernarda’s daughters: they must live under either their mother’s domination or their husbands’. By passing on such traditions from generation to generation, García Lorca suggests, Spanish women trap themselves in an unending cycle of unfreedom and unrealized potential. But like Magdalena, Martirio is jaded about men and willing to forego marriage. This means that she may be able to break the cycle of violence—but only by sacrificing the prospect of love.
Themes
Angustias walks across the stage. Magdalena reveals that Pepe el Romano wants to marry Angustias, and Amelia and Martirio say he’s a good man, but Magdalena says he doesn’t love her and only wants her money. (Angustias is actually the other four women’s half-sister—her father was Bernarda’s first husband, and she has inherited all his money.) Adela enters in her beautiful green dress, which she wishes she could wear outside. When she learns the news about Pepe and Angustias, she grows furious and declares that she will go outside. The Maid comes to report that Pepe is coming down the street, and the four sisters rush off to watch him.
Angustias is the ugliest, sickliest, and oldest of all the sisters. So Pepe el Romano’s willingness to marry her for her wealth shows what really underlies Spain’s traditional marriage codes: greed and the desire to accrue status through wealth. Adela gets angry at her sisters because she is also in love with Pepe. Indeed, while Magdalena and Martirio imagine reclaiming their freedom by rejecting love altogether, Adela pursues an even more radical alternative: she wants to affirm her freedom through her desire for love, and specifically for Pepe el Romano. Her green dress represents her refusal to follow the scripts set out for her by her mother and her society—and her resistance to the notion that virginity (white) and widowhood (black) are the only appropriate roles for a single woman.
Themes
Bernarda and Poncia enter and complain that Don Antonio left too much to Angustias in his will. Angustias enters and Bernarda criticizes her for powdering her face after the funeral. Angustias points out that Don Antonio was not her real father, and Bernarda angrily starts wiping the powder off her face. The other sisters return and ask what the fight is about. Magdalena mentions the inheritance; Bernarda insists that it’s her house, and she will make the decisions.
Antonio left his wealth to the daughter who least needed it, and the only one who was not his by blood. While it’s impossible to know his motives, since he is dead, there are many ways to interpret his decision. For instance, perhaps he knew that conflict over marriage would tear the family apart and figured that, by giving Angustias most of the money, he could save his biological daughters from the unhappy marriages that await women of their class.
Themes
The Maid enters with the elderly Maria Josefa, who insists that none of the other women can have her clothes “because none of you is going to get married.” Maria Josefa says she wants to go to the seaside or back to her village and get married. Bernarda chastises the Maid for letting Maria Josefa escape, and all of the women work together to drag the screaming Maria Josefa back into her room and lock her inside.
Like fool and lunatic characters throughout Western literature, Maria Josefa gets to speak the truth directly in a way that the play’s other characters simply cannot. Her prediction that none of her granddaughters will marry foreshadows the play’s conclusion, and her desire to return to her village reveals that she is not actually from the same village where she raised Bernarda. This is noteworthy because Bernarda consistently views outsiders as suspicious and immoral, and yet at the end of the play it becomes clear that her daughters will only be able to marry if they, too, leave their home village. In this sense, Maria Josefa’s speech reveals Bernarda’s entire rural Spanish value system as a farce. But the fact that all the women collaborate to lock her back in her room symbolizes how deep-set this value system is for all of them. In fact, imprisoning Maria Josefa in this way seems to be the only thing they agree on throughout the play.
Themes
