Lorca’s play on tragic love

Lorcas play on tragic love, The House of Bernarda Alba, is his last complete play. It is interpreted as a illustration of repression with its topic focused on frustration, honour and death. The play contains both the passion and the torment in the intense struggle of a group of women held in check steady from the thought of love by a tyrannical mother, Bernarda. The play investigates and provides a response, still not a solution, to the problems of oppression, transgression, sexuality and being a victim. Bernardas unforgiving rule is as tendinous as the wilful nature of the youngest woman who betrays the family.Her ability to satisfy her sexual desire symbolically shatters the order of extreme repression and tyrannical control. Her rebellion and death mark the reasons and effects of the repressed atmosphere. Ultimate protest, despair, and madness emphasize the even more extreme control, unhealthy fear, mindlessness, and especially silence that go on the women who remain in th e house. However more scrutinizing approach to the issue of victim in the play reveals that not only Bernardas daughters appear as victims but Bernarda herself being a victimizer is a victim.Bernarda Alba is the mother, a dramatic personality, whose words carry the authority of the supreme ruler and whose life shows little emotion. In this nonindulgence she rules her household, never sparing from her wrath anyone who attempts to revoke the stifling atmosphere she has superimposed on herself and her daughters. As a result, all Bernarda, the daughters, the servants exist in darkness and drop-off ultimately leading to sterility of emotions and finally to suicide.Bernarda is a selfish and tyrannical matron who eventually forces her daughters into the despair. They lose every vestige of hope this loss leads directly to the example death of each daughter and to the physical death of the youngest. Slowly, but unequivocally, Bernarda drains the minds and hearts of her daughters until th ey become as white and barren as the walls of their physical prison the metaphor of which is conveyed by the visual nature of the house with its thick walls and a few windows and doors leading to the outside world.However, this significant visual image exceeds its literal meaning and, higher up all, represents a sociocultural institution keeping all the main characters of the play in subordination to social dogmas and rules. Within the confines of its walls Bernarda and her family repeat the old traditions, worry many generations of women that preceded them. This repetitive and collective act obliterates the uniqueness of the individual for the sake of preserving patriarchal hegemony.When reading The House of Bernarda Alba it becomes obvious that the plays most powerful strength is in its dialogues, period the characters are limited in their movement and space within a closed location. By dint of auditory means, Lorca reaches the explication of the secern in the midst of girls and their mother. This contrast is emphasized by the other devices like contras of black and white, and these two colours are highlighted throughout the play the black dresses of the women in mourning, in contrast to the very white walls of the house.Moreover, Bernardas authoritarian voice stands out as she commands, Silence p. 161 at the opening, throughout, and end of the play, closely related in each part to the death of one member of the family and the spiritual death of those living. Despite Bernardas call for silence, other sounds succeed in penetrating the thick walls and contribute to delimit the nature of their society and the dichotomy between life inside and outside the house. Bernardas house is a household without men. This is by fate as wellhead as by authors intention to establish controversial circumstances.Upon the death of her husband, she must assume the patriarchal role of protecting her daughters honour and forbids the aim of men within the confines of the h ouse, thus limiting the world her daughters are allowed to know. Her house is clearly governed by patriarchal forces. Pepe el Romano, the male character we do not see but hear about, is the strongest motivating force in the play. Bernardas authoritarian discourse stubbornly reproduces what she learned from her father and her grandfather.This concept associates home with social class, as Bernarda is well aware. When one of her daughters has the opportunity of marrying, she does not allow it BERNARDA, loudly. Id do it a thousand times over My blood wont mingle with the Humanas while I live His father was a shepherd. (p. 191). The situation within the walls of her house would have been quite different had Bernarda engraft enough men of her social term to marry her daughters. Lorca indicts society, and the reader might be inclined to condemn Bernarda as well.Although she is not aware of it, Bernarda is a victim turned victimizer. In the same style that her daughter, Adela, is symb olically suffocated by her mothers oppression, as she commits suicide by hanging, Bernardas maternal feelings have been suffocated by society. As a widow, she uses her newly found powers to perpetuate those values that benefit men. She becomes their accomplice. Her husband was a womanizer, and she claims that men should enjoy the freedom of the streets. Women should be confined in the house, against their natural instincts.Bernarda is, at best, an imperfect man, as exemplified in her failed attempt to use the gun a phallic symbol. BERNARDA The gun Wheres the gun? She rushes out. La Poncia runs ahead of her. Amelia enters and looks on frightened, leaning her head against the wall. Behind her comes Martirio. ADELA No one can hold me back She tries to go out. A shot is heard. BERNARDA, entering Just try looking for him now MARTIRIO, entering That does away with Pepe el Romano. ADELA Pepe My God Pepe She runs out. PONCIA Did you kill him?MARTIRIO No. He raced away on his mare BERNARDA It was my fault. A woman cant aim (p. 210) Within the play another mother figure, mare Josefa, vehemently distances herself from Bernarda and approaches Adela, thus leaving Bernarda without support and helpless. She sings a lullaby while holding a baby (a lamb) in her arms, an act that Bernarda devoid of maternal instincts seems incapable(p) of performing. Bernarda as a mother figure becomes dehumanized and therefore closer to the dimensions of a grotesque caricature.At the beginning of the play the maid La Poncia threatens Bernardas popular image with her gossip. At the end of the play, and despite Bernardas call for silence, we know that the neighbours have awakened. The thick walls have been rendered useless and the tyrannical figure of Bernarda fall a prey to societal judgement. Bibliography LORCA, Federico Garcia Three Tragedies Blood Wedding, Yerma, Bernarda Alba. Translated by J. G. Lujan and R. L. OConnell. New York, New Directions Publishing, 1955.