| Analysis of extract from ‘The House of Bernarda Alba’ | Act Three, pages 95 to 99 | | |
English: World Literature: 2c Word Count: 1414
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BERNARDA: What does Pepe have to say?
ANGUSTIAS: I find him distracted. He always talks to me as if his mind is on something else. If I ask him what’s wrong, he says: ‘We men have our own problems.’
BERNARDA: You shouldn’t ask him. And when you marry, less still. Speak if he speaks, and look at him when he looks at you. Do that and you won’t have disagreements.
ANGUSTIAS: Mother, I think he’s hiding things from me.
BERNARDA: Don’t try and find out what they are. Don’t ask him, and, above all, never let him see you cry.
ANGUSTIAS: I ought to be happy but I’m not.
BERNARDA:…show more content… Donned, in mourning for their father and husband’s death, the black garments also allude to the later suicide of Adela. In contrast to the white walls which enclose the stage and represent the monotonous lives led inside them, the long shadows shroud the scene, reflecting the repressed thoughts shuttered off in their minds. Here in Act three they completely devour it giving a growing impression of misery and the shadowy life of increasing despair and emotional darkness that the characters are lost in.
However, the stallion which looms out of the darkness as mentioned by Adela is a manifestation of the sexual tension in the play; a representation of the strength and wild energy in men, seen and accepted by the women in the house. The stallion is referred to on multiple occasions and the furore with which it pounds against the wall of its stable is echoed by the pent up sexual desires of the daughters. The starkness of the image Lorca creates, ghostlike in the surrounding night, creates a metaphorical image of the stallion, or men, as an ‘otherworldly’ being, stressing the general physical and emotional distance between men and Bernarda’s daughters. Furthermore the stallion is used as a portrayal of the hierarchy men held over women as, when it is previously released into the yard to cool down, the mares are left tied up. This representation is repeatedly alluded to
