Major Themes
Class
Bernarda's family
is a landowning family and as such is wealthier than other families in the
village. This explains much of both Bernarda's disdain for lower class people
and her daughters' aloofness. La Poncia makes clear that the Alba family is
only rich in the terms of a poor village, suggesting that they are not as
wealthy as they believe. Lorca then is making a critical observation about the
human need to keep others below, to find a way in which we can consider
ourselves superior. The poor characters (the servants and La Poncia) are
corrupted by these class distinctions and are made bitter in no small part
because of their envy and their belief that the world has treated them unfairly
by forcing poverty on them. Overall, Lorca's sympathy lies with the servants,
in a tragic rather than political way: they are the underdogs, the ones whom
fate has left with less freedom.
Sex/Love
Lorca's play, set
in the deep heat of a remarkably hot summer, drips with sexuality. To some
extent, this theme is inseparable from that of repression, since it is the
sexuality of the daughters that is most strictly repressed. But it deserves its
own consideration since Lorca's insights on sexuality are many. He seems to
suggest that sexuality is an entirely natural facet of humanity - something all
of us, women included, face in severe ways, but that does not mean it lacks
danger. On the contrary, sexuality seems to be the driving force that brings
tragedy to the play, and some of the stories told highlight how lust and desire
have led to terrible ends in the past. For certain, the play stresses the
importance of acknowledging our sexual desires and not hiding them behind
veils, whether of religion, morality, guilt, or fear. Love deserves a bit of
its own consideration if only because it is almost never discussed outside of
its sexual component. Whether that is a symptom of the repression that has
corrupted love, or the natural state for all humans, is a subject worth
discussion.
Repression
Because it is
perhaps the most intense theme of the play, understanding repression is the key
to understanding both the characters and the story. Bernarda seems to
understand that her children are capable of sexual desire, but she makes it her
explicit purpose to tyrannically keep them from expressing those desires. They
are forced into an eight-year mourning period at the beginning of the play, and
she is terrified they might give in to the demands of a man like Pepe if they
are not kept from exploring their desires. Even when La Poncia tells her that
the children will break free the second they are given an inch of freedom, she
believes she is doing the right thing. The claustrophobic atmosphere of the
play is a reflection of the steady bitterness and hatred that exists between
these sisters because they are so repressed. Their animosity towards one
another is easiest to understand when one considers how desperately they all
need Pepe as an object of admiration in their repressive world. Lorca might be
ambivalent about the powers of human sexuality, but he is clear about the cost
of repression: it causes people to shrivel up into suffering, which ultimately
makes us into worse, uglier people.
Individuality
On the flip side of
repression is the idea of individual freedom. Perhaps the most severe cost of
repression is that it keeps a truly poetic soul, like Adela's, from
flourishing. She shows time and time again that she is an eccentric with her
own ideas of love and life. She ends the play willing to give up any security
and safety just to be Pepe's mistress, arguably a decision more about freedom
from Bernarda than about love for the selfish Pepe. Throughout the play, we see
her attempt to flaunt her individuality, leading her to eventual suicide. As a
poet in a conservative country, Lorca clearly sympathizes with this woman who
is unable to realize her true personality and who dies for having tried to
realize it.
Death
The play begins and
ends with death. While the characters do not discuss the topic at length, their
awareness of impending doom hangs like a shroud over the whole play. Martirio's
depression can easily be attributed to an attitude of just filling the time, a
suffering hunchback, until she dies. Where Adela equates repression with death,
La Poncia suggests that giving in to one's sexuality leads to death. Indeed,
Adela's tragic end confirms La Poncia's perspective. It is as though you cannot
escape the force, an idea which indeed falls in line with Lorca's common use of
the theme. In a way, one can read the play as a question: considering we are
all to die at some point, how is it we should live our lives? By subscribing to
a set of moral codes that limit us, or by courting danger through unfettered
individuality?
Gossip
Bernarda herself
exemplifies the provincial attitudes of the village where the play is set.
Though she is criticized by the mourners in the funeral scene for gossiping too
freely, it is clear that other neighbors are also interested in learning each
other's dirty secrets. Fear of being seen as wicked by neighbors seems to
motivate Bernarda's tyranny more than any particular moral code, in fact; her
biggest concern when dealing with Adela's body at the end of the play is that
the neighbors have woken up. Because of the harshness of gossip - and the physical
danger that the group dynamic can cause, like with the young girl who murders
her baby to avoid censure and then is herself killed - Bernarda seeks to have a
squeaky clean house, unconcerned with the ironic darkness that bubbles up due
to her demands.
Religion
Though not an
explicit part of the story, religion permeates the world of the play. It can be
understood in several ways. First, it is the primary cause of the strictures
that lead to repression. The play opens immediately after a visit to the church
for the funeral, and Bernarda expresses her belief that the church is the only
place where women can look at men, suggesting that sexuality can only be hinted
at in the confines of extreme respectability. Further, the church-related
sacrament of marriage is understood to be the only outlet for a woman to show
love for a man. Prudencia's visit in Act III poses the influence of religion as
a larger duplicity that society uses to hide itself. Prudencia goes to church
to deal with her sadness and shame over having banished her daughter,
suggesting that it can be used as a salve for us to avoid action (in her case,
opposing her husband's wishes to banish their daughter). Of course, as
Prudencia is soon to leave her church ritual because she is being mocked there,
Lorca again reminds us that as an institution of man, religion is subject to
the pettiness of man.
Source: www.gradesaver.com › The House of Bernarda Alba › Study Guide-21.09.2014
D.N. Aloysius
Lecturer in English
Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities
Rajarata University of Sri Lanka
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