“Women in the Villages of Spain.”
We talked in the podcast about Lorca’s interest in highlighting the restricted position of women in rural Spain, and the play is a powerful representation of the limits imposed on women. Bernarda Alba’s daughters are literally locked up, which stands as a metaphor for their general social oppression. “To be born a woman is the greatest punishment” declares Amelia. There are very few options available to them, and even marriage, which they all hope for, may not offer any more freedom or fulfilment. Bernarda Alba counsels Angustias, for example, not to question her prospective husband: “Speak if he speaks, and look at him when he looks at you. Do that and you won’t have disagreements.”

And Poncia warns the girls that “two weeks after the wedding a man leaves the bed for the table, and then the table for the tavern. And the woman who doesn’t accept it wastes away crying in the corner.”  The men’s sexual freedom is particularly contrasted with the moral constraints the women live under. Poncia describes how the previous night fifteen of the men who arrived in the village to work in the fields, hired a woman who “arrived in the village dressed in sequins” and took her with them to the olive-grove. She adds that she herself gave her own son money to go with such a woman, to which Adela exclaims “They are forgiven everything!”, which of course they would not be, as we will see in the terrifying scene that closes Act 2 where the angry mob from the village are hunting down to kill the unmarried woman who has had a child and then killed it herself and buried it under stones to hide her shame.

By contrast to the men’s freedom, the daughters’ sexual desire is locked up in this house, “gnawing away at us” as Adela observes. Adela is the most explicit embodiment of desire – she deliberately stands “almost naked with the lamp lit and the window open, when Pepe passed by the second time.” A desire that is so powerful she says she will leap over her mother, “anything to put out this fire that rises up through my legs and my mouth”…Looking into his eyes is just like slowly drinking his blood.” She is passionately determined to escape to him: “I can’t stand the horror of this house anymore, not after knowing the taste of his mouth. I will be whatever he wants me to be. The whole village against me…”  Whatever the consequences, what compels her cannot be contained: “What will be will be” she intones.

The white stallion that kicks against the stable door is a potent symbol of sexual desire, particularly one might imagine Pepe Romano’s for Adela. Adela is aware of her power, claiming to Martirio: “I can bring a wild stallion to its knees with the strength of my little finger”. The metaphor goes further, because Bernarda Alba does in fact keep a stable of mares, which she locks away from the stallion. She manages her daughters like she manages her horses: the matchmaking is transactional, arranged for financial and social gain. Poncia understands the analogy, commenting sarcastically “She’s got the best stable in the whole region. A pity the prices are so low”. The tragedy for the daughters is that it isn’t actually a seller’s market here in their village.