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 part a metaphor for the growing conflict between traditional and modern ways of life in early 20th-century Spain. Given her obsession with class, reputation, women’s honor, and above all the church, Bernarda clearly represents her society’s longstanding social mores and hierarchies. In contrast, her daughters begin questioning and even outright rejecting repressive traditions as part of their quest for freedom and independence. For instance, contrary to her name (“martyrdom”), Martirio declares that “God must have abandoned me” during her argument with Adela; shortly thereafter, Adela breaks her mother’s cane, which she calls a “tyrant’s rod.” Bernarda responds by escalating the conflict: she gets her gun and shoots at Pepe el Romano, which leads indirectly to Adela’s suicide. This escalating family conflict reflects the escalating generational and geographical conflict that led to Spain’s civil war: while tradition still ruled in places like Bernarda’s village, it was fast dissolving in the cities, particularly under the left-wing, pro-worker government that redistributed land and limited the church’s power in the years immediately leading up to the war. While seldom overtly political, García Lorca was undoubtedly a man of the left, and it’s little coincidence that critics have long read the novel’s tragic conclusion and haunting final line—Bernarda telling her daughters they must mourn Adela’s death and screaming “Silence!”—as an unwitting metaphor for the coming Franco dictatorship’s reign of terror over the Spanish population (and artists in particular).
Related Themes from Other Texts
Tradition and Modernity in Spain ThemeTracker
Tradition and Modernity in Spain Quotes in The House of Bernarda Alba
(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!
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!
MARTIRIO: No. But things have a way of repeating themselves. And I see how it all follows a terrible pattern. And she’ll suffer the same fate as her mother and her grandmother—the two wives of the man who fathered her.
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!
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
PRUDENCIA: It’s lovely. Three pearls! In my day, pearls meant tears.
ANGUSTIAS: But things have changed now.
ADELA: I don’t think so. Things always mean the same. Engagement rings are supposed to be diamonds.
PRUDENCIA: It’s more appropriate.
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.
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.
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!
BERNARDA: I want no weeping. We must look death in the face. Silence! (To another daughter) Be quiet, I said! (To another daughter) Tears, when you’re alone. We will all drown ourselves in a sea of mourning. The youngest daughter of Bernarda Alba has died a virgin. Did you hear me? Silence! Silence, I said! Silence!
CURTAIN
