Freedom, Desire, and Tragedy
The House of Bernarda Alba begins with the tyrannical title character, Bernarda Alba, locking her five daughters in their small village house to mourn the passing of their father Don Antonio. Tradition dictates that they spend eight years inside, wearing only black—just as it states that their value as women depends on whom they marry. Fed up with their circumscribed lives and Bernarda’s rigid social codes, the daughters start dreaming of escape…
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Patriarchy and Domination
Twenty-first-century audiences might consider The House of Bernarda Alba a feminist masterpiece, but not because its characters are empowered or independent. While it’s true that all of the characters who appear in this play are women, the whole work is also set within the four white walls (and interior patio) of Bernarda Alba’s house because these women are simply not allowed to leave. In the conservative, Catholic rural Spain of the 1930s, women were…
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Class and Honor
Bernarda Alba’s obsession with purity, reputation, and the family bloodline stems from her family’s traditional place in the Spanish class hierarchy. Much like García Lorca’s family, Bernarda’s family belongs to the lower nobility and was once powerful and respected in their small, traditional Andalusian village; Bernarda clings desperately to this identity, but she recognizes that passing it down to her daughters depends on marrying them to men of a similar class. This is why…
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Tradition and Modernity in Spain
Federico García Lorca wrote The House of Bernarda Alba in the weeks immediately preceding the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War—and his own death at the hands of a fascist firing squad. But to intellectuals like him, the war was not altogether unexpected; rather, it emerged from the exact decades-old social and political tensions that he explored throughout his work. This play is no exception. Bernarda Alba’s conflict with her daughters is in large…
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