The House of Bernarda Alba is suffused with the contrast between white and black, which represents the binary of virgin and widow that defines women’s social value in Bernarda’s village. The play is also occasionally punctuated with flashes of color that reflect the possibility of living outside of this binary.
The play’s opening stage directions highlight the blanquísima (very white) walls of Bernarda’s house, which soon become associated with Poncia and the Maid’s vigorous cleaning, as well as the white embroidered linens that represent Bernarda’s daughters’ virginity at the time of their marriages (if those marriages ever happen). These images of purity contrast with the black mourning clothes that Bernarda and her daughters wear throughout the play in Antonio’s memory. White and black seem to be the only two appropriate colors for Bernarda, as they reflect the only two socially appropriate roles for unmarried women: virgin and widow. But Adela defies Bernarda’s demands by giving her a red and green fan and then wearing her green birthday dress. Her use of color represents her intent to defy the social roles prescribed by her mother, but it also foreshadow her decision to commit suicide rather than accept those roles at the end of the play.
White, Black, and Color Quotes in The House of Bernarda Alba
ADELA: Here you are. (She gives her a round fan decorated with red and green flowers)
BERNARDA: (Hurling the fan to the floor) Is this the fan you give to a widow? Give me a black one, and learn to respect your father’s memory!
ADELA: I’m thinking that this period of mourning has caught me at the worst possible time.
MAGDALENA: You’ll soon get used to it.
ADELA: (Bursting into angry tears) I will not get used to it! I don't want to be locked up! I don't want my body to dry up like yours! I don't want to waste away and grow old in these rooms. Tomorrow, I’ll put on my green dress and go walking down the street. I want to get out!
ADELA: Mother, when there’s a shooting star or a flash of lightning, why do we say:
Blessed Santa Barbara, why
Are you writing, up so high,
With holy water in the sky?
BERNARDA: In the old days they knew many things that we have forgotten.
AMELIA: I close my eyes so I won’t see them!
ADELA: Not me. I like to see things blazing through the sky, after being motionless year after year.
MARIA JOSEFA: It’s true. Everything is very dark. Just because I have white hair you think I can’t have babies. And—yes! Babies and babies and babies! This child will have white hair, and have another child, and that one, another, and all of us with hair of snow will be like the waves, one after another after another. Then we’ll all settle down, and we’ll all have white hair, and we’ll be foam on the sea. Why isn’t there any white foam here? Here there’s nothing but black mourning shawls.
White, Black, and Color Symbol Timeline in The House of Bernarda Alba
