The House of Bernarda Alba

Characters:

Bernarda, age 60

Maria Josefa, Bernarda's mother, age 80, senile

Angustias, Bernarda's oldest daughter, age 39

Magdalena, Bernarda's daughter, age 30

Amelia, Bernarda's daughter, age 27

Martirio, Bernarda's daughter, age 24

Adela, Bernarda's daughter, age 20

Poncia, the maid who understands the house more than Bernarda does, age 60

Comments by Brian Wilkie and James Hurt (Literature of the Western World. 2nd ed. New York: Macmillan, 1988. 1986-88):

. . . a tough, compassionate study of the suffering of women under a repressive, male-oriented code of sexual roles and behavior. The cruelty implicit in the conservative sexual code becomes horrifyingly explicit in the episode the ends Act II. But Lorca also places his social theme within a more general context. His concern throughout his life with the tragic conflict between primitive passions and rigid conventions that frustrate their expression achieves its fullest statement in this play. . . . the tragedy of Bernarda Alba's daughters becomes a tragedy of human beings in general. The house, with its thick, whitewashed walls against which a stallion obsessively kicks (opening of Act III), is only one of a number of images of enclosure and imprisonment that dominate the play. Bernarda Alba and her daughters are imprisoned not only in their house but also in the past, in their culture, in their female bodies, and finally in the human condition, trapped between the soaring demands of the human spirit and the bonds of the earth.