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 she refuses to let Martirio marry the fieldhand’s son Enrique Humanas, and why she jumps at the opportunity to marry Angustias to Pepe el Romano, even though he is clearly just interested in her money. Bernarda’s investment in social hierarchy is also clear from her classist attitudes: she tells working-class Poncia that “the poor are like animals” and taunts her because her mother ran a brothel; when Poncia tries to share her sincere concerns about the five sisters’ marriage prospects, Bernarda dismisses her because “you are my servant, and I pay you.” Most of all, Bernarda is obsessed with appearances, rumors, and reputation because she knows that any blemishes could permanently diminish her family’s status in the community’s eyes. Yet her emphasis on class backfires: she ignores Poncia’s warnings to her own peril, loses others’ respect by mistreating them in the name of honor codes, and keeps her daughters single because she can’t find anyone high-class enough for them. Through Bernarda’s self-defeating obsession with class, García Lorca shows that, in unequal societies where status depends on honor and descent, people sacrifice their freedom and happiness for the sake of appearances.
Related Themes from Other Texts
Class and Honor ThemeTracker
Class and Honor Quotes in The House of Bernarda Alba
VOICE: Bernarda!
PONCIA: (Calling out) She’s coming! (To the MAID) Scrub everything clean. If Bernarda doesn’t see things shine, she’ll tear out the little hair I have left!
MAID: What a woman!
PONCIA: She tyrannizes everyone around her. She could sit on your heart and watch you die for a whole year without taking that cold smile off her damn face! Scrub! Scrub those tiles!
PONCIA: Thirty years, washing her sheets. Thirty years, eating her leftovers. Nights watching over her when she coughs. Entire days peering through cracks, to spy on the neighbors and bring her the gossip. A life with no secrets from each other. And yet—damn her! May she have a horrible pain—like nails stuck in her eyes!
(As the two hundred women mourners finish coming in, BERNARDA ALBA and her five daughters appear. BERNARDA is leaning on a cane)
BERNARDA: (To the MAID) Silence!
BERNARDA: The poor are like animals; they seem to be made of other substances.
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!
MAGDALENA: Neither mine nor yours. I know I’m not going to get married. I'd rather carry sacks to the mill. Anything but sit in this dark room, day after day!
BERNARDA: That’s what it means to be a woman.
MAGDALENA: To hell with being a woman!
BERNARDA: Here you do what I tell you to do! You can't run to your father with your stories anymore. A needle and thread for females; a mule and a whip for males. That’s how it is for people born with means.
PONCIA: No one can talk to you. Can we or can we not be honest with each other?
BERNARDA: We cannot. You are my servant, and I pay you. Nothing more!
ADELA: (Sitting down) Oh, if only I could go out to the fields, too!
MAGDALENA: (Sitting down) Each class does what it must.
MARTIRIO: (Sitting down) That’s how it is.
(AMELIA sits down with a sigh)
PONCIA: There’s no greater joy than being in the fields at this time of year! Yesterday morning the harvesters arrived. Forty or fifty good-looking young men.
PONCIA: (With unrelenting cruelty) Bernarda, something monstrous is happening here. I don’t want to blame you, but you haven’t allowed your daughters any freedom. Martirio is romantic, no matter what you say. Why didn't you let her marry Enrique Humanas? Why did you send him a message not to come to her window, the very day he was coming?
BERNARDA: (Loud) And I would do it a thousand times again! My blood will never mix with that of the Humanas family—not as long as I live! His father was a field hand.
PONCIA: This is what comes of putting on airs!
BERNARDA: I do because I can afford to! And you don’t because you know very well what you come from.
(Outside, a woman screams, and there is a great uproar)
ADELA: They should let her go! Don’t go out there!
MARTIRIO: (Looking at ADELA) Let her pay for what she did.
BERNARDA: (In the archway) Finish her off before the Civil Guard gets here! Burning coals in the place where she sinned!
ADELA: (Clutching her womb) No! No!
BERNARDA: Kill her! Kill her!
CURTAIN
BERNARDA: You shouldn’t ask him. Especially after you’re married. Speak if he speaks, and look at him when he looks at you. That way, you won’t quarrel.
ANGUSTIAS: Mother, I think he hides many things from me.
BERNARDA: Don’t try to find out about them. Don’t ask him. And, above all, don’t ever let him see you cry.
ANGUSTIAS: I should be happy, and I’m not.
MARTIRIO: (Pointing at ADELA) She was with him! Look at her petticoats, covered with straw!
BERNARDA: That is the bed of sinful women! (She moves toward ADELA, furious)
ADELA: (Confronting her) The shouting in this prison is over! (She seizes her mother’s cane and breaks it in two) This is what I do with the tyrant’s rod! Don’t take one step more. No one gives me orders but Pepe!
