La Casa De Bernarda Alba

“I’ve got blood on my hands from so much polishing of everything.”

The Servant delivers this line two pages into Act I, bemoaning the severity of the cleaning and scrubbing that Bernarda has demanded from the household staff to prepare the house for the wake. This comment, though delivered innocently enough, foreshadows the tragic end of the play. Bernarda’s ruthless insistence on “polishing” everything—the house, the family’s reputation, the bare truth of her daughters’ various secrets and transgressions—leaves her with Adela’s blood on her hands by the final moments of the play.

“What other way is there to talk about this cursėd village with no river—this village full of wells where you drink water always fearful it’s been poisoned?”

Bernarda uses the fact that this village has no river as proof of some perceived taint of ill will pervading its people. A town with only wells for water is a town to remain suspicious of. This line is evidence of the bitter paranoia that always possesses Bernarda when it comes to the public reputation of her family and the house they occupy.

“For eight years of mourning, not a breath of air will get in this house from the street. We’ll act as if we’d sealed up doors and windows with bricks. That’s what happened in my father’s house—and in my grandfather’s house.”

This line of Bernarda’s serves as an explanation for the origins of the familial mourning period practice which forms the framework of the play’s. By explaining that this practice has been passed through multiple generations in her house, Bernarda reveals how this method for suppressing and repressing the freedoms of unmarried young women has been woven into the very fabric of family history and culture. The duration of mourning is not proportional to the grief felt by the family, but rather is set at its eight-year length according to custom.

“I do things without any faith, but like clockwork.”

Martirio says this to Amelia when she asks her if she is taking the new medicine given to her by the doctor. Martirio intends it as a comment on the purposeless, almost mechanical, obedience that their lives in the house has become— they do the tasks set before them not because they have “faith” in the virtue of Bernarda’s mastery over their lives, but because the habit of absolute obedience she has instilled in them leaves no room for anything else.

“[…] history repeats itself. I can see that everything is a terrible repetition.”

Martirio says this to Amelia by way of explaining why Bernarda and the rest of the town have shunned their friend, Adelaida; Adelaida has not committed any transgressions herself, but she is still marked by the taint of family scandal. This line also functions as an ominous premonition of the terrible events that unfold throughout the play. History indeed repeats itself: Angustias is jilted by her suitor just as Martirio is jilted by hers; Adela suffers a violent end just the same as every other woman from the town who seek sexual freedom does; and the surviving daughters remain locked up long past the fading of their youth, just as Bernarda has locked up their grandmother. Martirio’s line ominously foreshadows the plays many tragedies.

"It’s better never to look at a man. I’ve been afraid of them ever since I was a little girl. I’d see them in the yard, yoking the oxen and lifting grain sacks, shouting, and stamping, and I was always afraid to grow up for fear one of them would suddenly take me in his arms.”

Martirio delivers this quote to Amelia in Act I as a poignant admission of the fear growing up so sheltered and protected from the opposite sex has instilled. It stands as one of the many dangers put forth by the play regarding keeping men and women so segregated; instead of offering protection, separation only increases a fearful fascination with the dangerous and taboo unknown.

“Tomorrow I’m going to put on my green dress and go walking in the streets. I want to go out!”

Adela makes this proclamation towards the end of Act I when she finally realizes the full extent of what Bernarda is denying her through the strictures of household mourning. Ultimately, her sisters are able to talk her out of actually doing this, but the outburst foreshadows the even greater act of defiance that will become Adela’s lusty affair with Pepe by the end of the play.

“Don’t fool yourselves into thinking you’ll sway me. Until I go out of this house feet first I’ll give the orders for myself and for you!”

This quote, delivered by Bernarda early in Act I, demonstrates the extent of the pride and arrogance that will eventually lead to her downfall. Her insistence on exercising every means of control over her daughters, even going so far as to claim that right until the day she is carried out of the house dead for her own funeral, is an impulse springing more from a place of tyranny than of love

“Bring four thousand yellow flares and set them about the walls of the yard. No one can stop what has to happen.”

Adela says this to La Poncia when the housekeeper threatens to expose her in the event that she and Pepe continue their affair. Adela speaks about her actions as if they have already happened, as if she has no choice but to continue to act on the powerful feelings she has for Pepe. Ironically, she foreshadows her own fate.

“Years ago another one of those women came here, and I gave my eldest son some money so he could go. Men need things like that.”

In Act II, La Poncia tells the daughters about a prostitute who follows the harvest laborers. She admits that a long time ago, she gave her son money so he could buy the services of a similar woman, explaining that “men need things like that.” This line serves to illustrate the double standards of sexual behavior governing men and women in this time and place. Men have a certain amount of leniency in pursuing their desires, where women do not.

“You’ve always been smart, Bernarda; you’ve seen other people’s sins from a hundred miles away. Many times I’ve thought you could read minds. But your children are your children and now you’re blind.”

Here, La Poncia tactfully tries to get Bernarda to understand the dangers of ignoring what is happening in her own house in favor of busying herself with the scandals of others. Bernarda is obsessed with preserving the family’s image of moral superiority over the rest of the community, and it is this same tendency for pride and sanctimoniousness that will be her downfall, as it will make her incapable of seeing the secrets stacking up among her own daughters.

“I didn’t want him to, it’s as if I were dragged by a rope!”

Adela delivers this line to Martirio after the latter confronts her over seeing her and Pepe embrace through her bedroom window. The reference to the rope in this line foreshadows how Adela will eventually hang herself by the play’s end, but it also illustrates a progression in Adela’s agency through the course of her and Pepe’s affair; here at the start, she tells Martirio that Pepe is the one who forces her into their first moment of intimacy. By the climax of the play, she takes full ownership of her choices and recounts how she freely chooses to meet Pepe in the corral. At the end of the play, she is the one who chooses to hang herself in her bedroom.

“Librada’s daughter, the unmarried one, had a child and no one knows whose it is! [...] And to hide her shame she killed it and hid it under the rocks. [...] Now they want to kill her.”

La Poncia brings this story to the family to explain the cause of the angry mob they’ve just witnessed drawing closer to the house at the end of Act II. The mob has discovered the crimes this unnamed girl committed and have responded by dragging her through the streets to torture and ultimately kill her. This event occurs directly on the heels of Martirio and La Poncia uncovering Adela’s secret late-night liaisons with Pepe at her bedroom window; it serves both as a horrific warning to Adela of the dangers she could risk by giving into her desires for Pepe, and also as a moment of foreshadowing pointing to the tragedy that will ultimately occur when she does.

“A daughter who’s disobedient stops being a daughter and becomes an enemy.”

Bernarda says this to Prudencia when discussing Prudencia’s daughter, not realizing the unforgivable act of disobedience that her own daughter Adela is already planning to commit by giving in to her desire for Pepe.

“And she has the best herd in these parts. It’s a shame that prices are low.”

La Poncia makes this quip during Prudencia’s visit in Act III, interrupting the conversation Prudencia and Bernarda are having about Bernarda’s renowned success with breeding horses. The comment makes a clever insinuation that, much like her horses, Bernarda has done well in breeding top quality daughters. The low demand within the community for such a high-bred commodity, however, ensures that such fine horses (and fine daughters) remain undervalued against their worth. The comment also characterizes La Poncia: inveterately witty and clever, yet discreet enough to avoid overstepping her place. She cannot help pointing out how arrogantly short-sighted Bernarda has been to keep her daughters so sheltered for so long.

“I can do nothing. I tried to head things off, but now they frighten me too much. You feel the silence?—in each room there’s a thunderstorm—and the day it breaks, It’ll sweep all of us along with it.  But I’ve said what I had to say.”

La Poncia delivers this line late in Act III, just as the building pressure from the various conflicts at play within the house reaches the brink of explosion. The silence, she warns, is not an indicator of peace or diminished discontentment, but rather a kind of calm before a storm.

“I know it’s a lamb. But can’t a lamb be a baby? It’s better to have a lamb than not to have anything.”

This line of María Josefa’s, which she delivers to Martirio, is almost a mocking echo of what Martirio says to Amelia in Act I: “It’s better to never look at a man” (170). Martirio’s grandmother seems to be telling her that it is better to desire things and then have those desires be disappointed than to forego ever wanting anything at all. To want and to seek is part of being human.

“Just because I have white hair doesn’t mean I can’t have babies, but I can—babies and babies and babies. This baby will have white hair, and I’d have this one, and another, and this one other; and with all of us with snow white hair we’ll be like the waves—one, then another, and another. Then we’ll all sit down and all of us will have white heads, and then we’ll be seafoam. Why isn’t there any seafoam here? Nothing but mourning shrouds here.”

María Josefa delivers this seemingly unintelligible monologue to Martirio in Act III, when she wanders back into the house late at night with a lamb held in her arms. The excerpt above folds back in the motif of the color white that appears through the play. Here, the elderly María Josefa muddles together the symbolic white of youth, marriage, and virginity with the aged white of her own hair. She adds the confusion of white from the natural world—the white of ocean waves, seafoam, and the wool of the lamb she’s carrying in her arms and has confused with a baby. The muddling of the motif at this point in the play reflects the unraveling order within the house.

“Pepe el Romano is a giant. All of you love him. But he’s going to devour you because you’re grains of wheat.”

María Josefa’s reference to “grains of wheat” calls back to the reaper song that the sisters overheard in Act II. Much like the lyric in the song that equates the male laborers’ reaping of ripe wheat with the reaping of young girls’ hearts, María Josefa’s cautions Martirio against Pepe’s appetite for devouring the Benavides daughters.

“This is just the beginning. I’ve had strength enough to push myself forward—the spirit and looks you lack. I’ve seen death under this roof, and gone out to look for what was mine, what belonged to me.”

This powerful line, uttered by Adela to Martirio in the midst of their confrontation at the climax of the play, illustrates how the youngest Benavides daughter has not simply been tempted or seduced into transgressing with Pepe, but rather quite the opposite—if anything, she is the one who has ensnared Pepe.  She has chosen to defy all societal rules of sexual conduct governing her body and what she chooses to do with it, knowing full well what consequences she is risks. In this way, her choice to go out and meet and make love to Pepe is an act of reclaiming her bodily agency. To choose not to assert her strength in this regard is to embrace what she recognizes as “death under this roof.” Even if this act leads to her actual death, and under the roof she has sought to escape no less, it is a death she walks into while in full possession of her own body.

“I have a heart full of a force so evil that, without my wanting to be, I’m drowned by it.”

Martirio says this in the midst of her final confrontation with Adela. Her jealousy of Adela and Pepe’s love affair has filled her with such intense animosity that she even goes so far as to denounce Adela as her sister. Up until this moment, she has been able to convince herself that the sabotage she has sought to enact on Adela and Pepe’s secret affair has been motivated by a sense of virtue; here, however, even she acknowledges the bitter hatred she feels towards Adela is so overwhelming that it must be “evil.”

“You show us how to love our sisters. God must have meant to leave me alone in the midst of darkness, because I can see you as I have never seen you before.”

Adela responds to Martirio with this line after Martirio’s explosion of jealous rage at discovering that she and Pepe have already consummated their romance in the corral leads her to denounce Adela as her sister. Although Adela has just tried to reconcile with her by crying, “Martirio, Martirio, I’m not to blame!” (208), the completeness of this rejection gives Adela a sudden moment of terrible clarity. She is alone “in the midst of darkness,” a place of absolute separation from which she can’t return, yet this very separation is what frees her to see to the heart of her family’s true nature and circumstances. The blindness of innocence lifts; From here, there is no going back.

“Cut her down! My daughter died a virgin. Take her to another room and dress her as though she were a virgin. No one will say anything about this! She died a virgin. Tell them, so that at dawn, the bells will ring twice.”

Bernarda delivers these orders in the immediate aftermath of discovering that Adela has hanged herself. Knowing that the neighbors have all been roused by the gunshot that drove Pepe from the house, she appears to jump straight into managing the public appearance of what’s happened. The most important thing to her in this moment is to hide Adela’s affair with Pepe and protect the family’s reputation. As if by orders alone she could reverse the course of events, she demands that they dress Adela’s body as a virgin.