La casa de Bernarda Alba
Place on List:
IV. Special Area: Literary
Social Criticism
2. Primary
Texts: Drama
Federico
García Lorca.
La casa
de Bernarda Alba.
Supporting References:
- "House of Bernarda Alba." . : , 2005-01-01. Oxford Reference. 2006-01-01. Date Accessed 3 Sep. 2013
“Quick Reference. A: Federico
García Lorca W: 1936 Pf: 1945, Buenos Aires Pb:
1945 Tr: 1947 G: Trag. in 3 acts; Spanish prose S:
Spanish farm, early 20th c. C: 10f, extrasBernarda Alba's
second husband has just died, and she orders her five daughters to
lock up the house and observe eight years of mourning. During this
time, they are to see no men, and ‘not a breath of air will get in
this house from the street’. The youngest daughter, 20-year-old
Adela, rebels unsuccessfully against her tyrannical mother. But
despite the old servant's warnings, Bernarda insists that none of her
daughters need husbands. Only the oldest daughter of 39, from
Bernarda's first marriage, who has inherited her father's money, is
allowed to be wooed by a handsome young man, who is never seen. The
previous night, having spoken to his intended through a grille, the
fiancé then went to Adela's window and talked to her passionately
until dawn. A hunchback daughter, jealous of her older sister's
impending marriage and of Adela's success with the fiancé, steals
his picture. The frustrations of these three daughters surface in the
ensuing fight. The other two daughters, one stupid, the other
cynically resigned to her fate, seem unaffected by Bernarda's
tyranny. When a village woman is discovered to have murdered her
illegitimate baby, Bernarda urges that hot coals should be put ‘in
the place where she has sinned’. A stallion, kicking at the stable
from sexual frustration, is released by Bernarda. Adela creeps back
in after meeting her lover and is denounced by her hunchback sister.
Far from wilting under Bernarda's angry reproaches, Adela breaks
Bernarda's cane and declares that she belongs to her lover. Furious,
Bernarda rushes out with a gun. A shot is fired, and the hunchback
triumphantly tells Adela that her lover is dead. Adela goes out and
hangs herself, although in fact her lover has escaped. Bernarda
suppresses her grief and orders that Adela be buried as a virgin.
“A: Federico García Lorca W:
1936 Pf: 1945, Buenos Aires Pb: 1945 Tr: 1947 G:
Trag. in 3 acts; Spanish prose S: Spanish farm, early 20th c.
C: 10f, extras
“The last of his ‘rural trilogy’,
this play was completed shortly before Lorca's death. It is arguably
his finest, and a reminder of the terrible loss to theatre caused by
his execution by Fascists at the age of 38. Although Lorca intended
the piece to be ‘a photographic document’, his writing, though
not as surreal as in Blood Wedding, is nevertheless full of symbolic
undertones. The restless stallion and the image of the enclosed house
in the summer heat powerfully suggest suppressed passion that boils
over to bring about tragedy. It may well be that Lorca, as a
homosexual, experienced similar desperation as he tried to hide and
suppress his emotions in a society which condemned such yearnings.”
- "García Lorca, Federico." Who's Who in the Twentieth Century. : Oxford University Press, 1999. Oxford Reference. 2003. Date Accessed 21 Aug. 2013
The article offers
an overview of the author and less a discussion on the above-cited
text.
“García Lorca, Federico
(1898–1936) Spanish poet and dramatist, regarded as one of
the most prominent figures of Spanish literary life in the twentieth
century.
“Born at Fuente
Vaqueros, Granada, the son of a wealthy landowner, García Lorca
studied literature and law and planned a career as a musician before
he turned to writing. Whilst at Madrid in 1919 he met such
influential figures of the avant-garde movement as Salvador Dali,
Rafael Alberti,
Luis Buñuel,
and Pablo Neruda.
García Lorca's first play, El maleficio de la mariposa
(1920; ‘The Evildoing of the Butterfly’), was not a success, but
his first volume of verse, Libro de poemas (1921; ‘Book of
Poems’), was an early indication of his talent. García Lorca
became the centre of a group of poets known as ‘The Generation of
1927’ and in 1928 he published his most celebrated book of poems,
Romancero gitano (translated as Gypsy Ballads,
1953). His reputation was consolidated with Poema del Cante Jondo
and Llanto por Ignacio Sánchez Mejías (1934; translated as
Lament for the Death of a Bullfighter, 1937); all three drew
on life in his native Andalusia and were characterized by a highly
original imagery. His work during a six-month visit to New York
(1929) showed a marked change in tone; a sense of mortality and
rebellious disgust is evident in his book of surrealistic poems Poeta
en Nueva York (1940; translated as Poet in New York,
1955).
“A spirit of
revolt also showed itself in García Lorca's plays, for example La
zapotera prodigiosa (1930; translated as The Prodigious
Wife, 1941), which attacked the fashionable realism of the
Spanish theatre and showed the influence of Cocteau
and Valle-Inclán. In 1932 he became co-director of the La Barraca
theatrical company and toured Spain. García Lorca wrote a number of
farces for the troupe but it is his trilogy of plays, Bodas de
sangre (1933; translated as Blood Wedding, 1939), Yerma
(1934; translated 1941), and La casa de Bernarda Alba (1936;
translated as The House of Bernarda Alba, 1947) on which his
reputation as a playwright rests. These ‘folk tragedies’, dealing
with the subject of frustrated womanhood, combine savage passion with
a strong dramatic construction. By this time García Lorca was
recognized as supreme master of the Spanish language and unequalled
in his expression of the dark forces underlying life and death and
love and hate. However, when he was at the peak of his creativity,
the Spanish civil war broke out and García Lorca, arrested for his
republican sympathies, was shot by a nationalist firing squad and
buried in an unmarked grave.”
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