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La Casa de Bernarda Alba

In this piece, Saskia (Year 13) considers the question of which character is the most important in our A-level set text, La Casa de Bernarda Alba by Federico García Lorca.

Antes de comenzar, es necesario que definamos la idea de ser ‘importante’. Por supuesto, todos los personajes son ‘importantes’ y no se podría haber una obra si no fuera por cada uno. Por lo tanto, en este ensayo voy a definir la palabra ‘importante’ como ‘influyente’ sobre los otros personajes. Siguiendo con esta idea, la respuesta obvia es Bernarda – la cabeza de la familia. Sin embargo, Adela demuestra su influencia al desafiar el poder de su madre, sugiriendo que ella es el personaje más importante. Pero, de verdad, es Pepe el Romano que tiene el poder total sobre los personajes, haciéndolo el más importante.

Es esencial que barajemos la posibilidad de Bernarda – el personaje que títula la obra – como la más importante, debido a su poder sobre sus hijas y sus empleadas. Se representa esto en la acotación “dando un golpe de bastón”. Aquí, Lorca utiliza el bastón como símbolo de la autoridad moral de Bernarda, destacando su influencia sobre las otras mujeres y por lo tanto insinuando que ella es el personaje más importante en la obra.

Sin embargo, la influencia de Bernarda no es omnipotente, y Adela la amenaza mucho, suponiendo que aquella es más importante que ésta. El dramaturgo describe cómo Adela “arrebata un bastón a su madre y lo parte en dos”, que representa cómo ha habido un cambio en el equilibro de poder entre madre e hija a medida que se avanza en la película. De esa manera, hay un argumento fuerte para clasificar a Adela como el personaje más importante.

No obstante, aún más importante para mí es Pepe el Romano, que tiene control total sobre los personajes a pesar de no estar en escena durante la obra entera. Martirio describe cómo Pepe “es capaz de todo” debido al amor sentido por él por parte de casi todas las hermanas. Para confirmar esto, Adela dice al final, “en mí no manda nadie más que Pepe” cuando denuncia a su madre. Por lo tanto, se puede deducir que Adela puede rebelarse contra su madre pero no contra Pepe, mostrando el poder de este hombre y así haciéndolo el personaje más influyente en la obra.

Todo bien considerado, para mí no cabe la menor duda de que Pepe el Romano es el personaje más importante en la obra. Sí que no se puede negar que Bernarda tiene muchísima influencia sobre su hogar, pero Adela mina su poder a lo largo de la obra, lo que sugiere que quizás sea ella que es la más importante. Sin embargo, la influencia de Pepe se antepone tanto a Adela como a Bernarda. De verdad, como María Josefa señala, las mujeres son “granos de trigo” al lado de Pepe, mostrándonos claramente su importancia. Por lo tanto, aunque se podría decir que un “personaje más importante” no existe, si tuviera que elegir uno, yo diría que es Pepe debido a su poder enorme sobre las mujeres en esta obra.

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Lorca’s Women

Federico García Lorca explored the female soul as no other male writer had done before. His vivid presentation of the effects of oppression and the internalisation of emotion that women endure, in the plays Bodas de Sangre, Yerma and La Casa de Bernarda Alba, is unique and profound. Moreover, Lorca was highly influenced by the period of “modernismo” that was ensuing in Spain during his lifetime. He was, indeed, close friends with Cubist painter Salvador Dalí. Modernist writing reflects less on society and more on individuals, thus it gave Lorca the opportunity to delve deeper into the psychological “state” that is womanhood. Bella Gate (Year 12) summarises her findings to tell us more about Lorca’s work.  

When Lorca first published Bodas de Sangre (Blood Wedding), Yerma and La Casa de Bernarda Alba (The House of Bernarda Alba) as a complete set he called them Duende: Obras Completas. Whilst “Obras Completas” quite simply means “Complete Plays”, “duende” has a myriad of different possible translation. Its literal translation is “goblin” or “elf”, however, in this case Lorca seems to be referring to the “soul” which some of his characters have and quite notably others don’t. The “soul” that Lorca was most interested in exploring was certainly female as one can see in these plays. 

The theory of Canadian poet and critic Janis Rapoport is that these plays should be seen as a complete set with Bodas de Sangre, Yerma and La Casa de Bernarda Alba being seen as a thesis, antithesis and synthesis, respectively. She sees the women in Bodas de Sangre as being like mirrors due to their ability to make the audience reflect on social conventions. Yerma to her is a prism – a self-contained entity that refracts and distorts the qualities of light and image with both internal and external barriers. In La Casa de Bernarda Alba she sees the women as collectively forming a kaleidoscope as they reflect and refract off each other. She goes so far as to say that the house in the play represents the soul of one individual woman.

In Bodas de Sangre women are bound by their social functions. The characters are not endowed with names, thus they lose a sense of their identity. The principle women are the Bride, Mother and Beggar Woman. Perhaps the most interesting woman to analyse is the Bride. The Bride is continually bound by her circumstances. We see women oppressing women in the form of her servant lady attempting to instil morality into her. For the Bride this acts as an imprisoning ideology which hinders her in her pursuit of sexual fulfilment. However, this pursuit results in tragedy due to the societal expectations of virginity before marriage that are put on the Bride. The Mother, Janis Rapoport notes, is an affected character rather than an affecting one. She is greatly affected by the grief that she feels for her husband and son (and eventually sons). She is continually let down by men and her entire identity is defined by this. The Beggar Woman symbolises one of the play’s more profound themes – the mysteries of life and death – conveying that she is somewhat liberated by old age. However, Lorca highlights how all women are bound throughout the generations in different ways. A young woman’s predicament is centred around her sexuality whereas an older woman’s is centred around the lives of her sons. Lorca uses water imagery to portray a contrast between a free and a controlled woman. The control and oppression of women is very much the central theme of the play.

Yerma’s themes are, perhaps, a little more nuanced. There is again the representation of women of all generations, the eldest being the Pagan Crone who has been long repressed by the requirements of honour and strict morality placed upon her. The middle-aged Dolores represents a dichotomy of faith and the supernatural. She prays frequently yet she practises magic in her fertility rituals with Yerma. Then, there is Yerma herself. Yerma quite literally means “barren” – ostensibly referring to her inability to produce a child with her husband Juan. However, this barrenness is also symptomatic of the psychological and emotional (as well as physical) emptiness of womanhood. One may see Yerma’s quest for a child as a yearning for confirmation of feminine identity. However, like the Mother in Bodas de Sangre, she is, bizarrely, indirectly responsible for the death of her own son. By strangling her husband Juan in the end she essentially ruins all chances of having a child. In both Bodas de Sangre and Yerma women’s passionate sexuality, in the case of the bride, or erotic deficiency, in the case of Yerma, lead to tragedy. Thus, Lorca highlights the lack of agency over their sexuality that women had in rural Spain.

Rapoport puts forward the idea that the house in La Casa de Bernarda Alba, with its “thick walls”, embodies the soul of a single woman. Each of the sisters become fragments of a woman’s soul. Adela is the most significant of the sisters perhaps due to her naïveté. She longs for freedom but does not appreciate that it may result in more oppression under the sexual authority of Pepe El Romano – her lover. Bernarda, despite her tyrannical behaviour, is as much a victim of the patriarchy as her daughters, if not more as she has absorbed such oppressive values into her own psyche. The different views and lives of the women reflect off each other in the play.

Fundamentally, Lorca, remarkably whilst being a man himself, strikingly presents life for women in rural Spain and the psychological and philosophical impact of oppression – perhaps because he, himself, was a homosexual who would later be killed under Franco’s fascist regime.

Twitter: @English_WHS, @SpanTweetsWHS