Federico Garcia Lorca wrote a tragic drama titled The Blood Wedding. The play is about a bridegroom who is looking for the lady of his dreams. The lady of his dreams, however, had been previously married to a man by the name of Leonardo. Leonardo was a member of the Felix family, which presented an issue for the bridegroom. There was a violent family fight going on between the Felix family and the man's family. The bridegroom's father and sibling had been brutally murdered as a result of the family dispute. The bridegroom and his mother consequently suffered an emotional scar as a result of the loss of the sibling and father. As the plot of the play progresses, the audience learns that the bride is still in love with Leonardo, even though he was already married to her cousin. Therefore, her marriage to the bridegroom was just a façade she used to mask her emotions and love for Leonardo. After the wedding, the bride and Leonardo run away. What followed was a lively manhunt, as the bridegroom tried to find his bride. The play is unique and captures the emotional drama of relationships. In addition, it provides an interesting view of the Andalusian and Spanish culture. This article provides an in-depth analysis of the Blood Wedding, with a specific focus on the main themes of violence, language, motherhood, social class, masculinity, & femininity, and institution marriage.
Analysis of Themes/Motifs in the Play
Even though the author main aim is to show rural tragedy, the Blood Wedding is an artefact, which portrays many other societal issues, such as feminism, masculinity, and oppression. The basic premise of feminism asserts that the society shapes a woman’s view and understanding of herself. Lorca wrote the Blood Wedding to show the oppressive attitudes and habits of Spanish men towards women. The play is set up in a society that uplifts masculinity and condemns femininity. Hence, the men oppress and treat the women as sex objects. Even though the play recognizes the beauty of a woman, it is largely viewed as a decorative element for male objectification. According to Kousar and Sarfaz (4404), the women in the play Blood Weeding are portrayed as inferior beings, with no free will or freedom to pursue what they want. According to Bonallod (5), women's oppression is evident where the men deny them a social, political, or economic voice. For example, the father of the bride denied her marriage to Leonardo because of the notoriety of his family.
The institution of marriage is viewed as a sacred bond between man and wife. However, the men in the society control the marriage proceedings and determine the fate of the woman. This is evident where the play shows that the bride did not have a voice in choosing her suitor. Her father was the chooser. As such, the bride is caught between two difficult choices. The first choice the bride would have to follow her father’s wishes and marry the bridegroom, where she would live a stagnant, unhappy life, or she could follow her heart and go after Leonardo. In the end, the bride eloped with learned but her lover and husband died. However, prior to eloping, the bride’s father pushes her into an arranged marriage. The marriage not only showed the extent of sexual inequity in the Spanish culture, but also highlighted the issue of women domestication. From the play, it is obvious that the men in the society are bossy and communicate to women as inferior beings. The society, in the play Blood Wedding, does not allow the women to express their feelings. This is seen in the case of the bride who suffers in silence as she tries to forget Leonardo.
Lorca also focused on the language as well as the nature of the participants. Earlier in the play, the author indicates that the characters are Spanish speakers. Hence, the audience can assume that the initial language of the characters is Spanish. Each of the characters has a specific tone. Noticeably, the men are authoritarians, while the women are soft-spoken and compassionate. For instance, the bridegroom is very rude to the bride. He often addressed his bride and mother rudely. He also refused to listen to them. For instance, after the bride eloped with Leonardo, the bridegroom angrily stated, “Be quiet. I am sure of meeting them there. Do you see this arm? Well, it is not my arm. It’s my own brother’s arm and my father’s, and that of all the dead ones in my family” (Lorca 84). This statement served to show the bridegroom’s authority and the need for revenge. His language was violence-oriented, and it showed the authority that the bridegroom believed he had.
In contrast, the women were more reserved due to the constant oppression of the men. However, the few courageous women, such as the bridegroom’s mother, showed eccentricity in her language. For instance, in Lorca (34) she said “Knives, Knives. Cursed be all knives and the scoundrel who invented them.” This statement was used to show the bridegroom’s mother's psychological condition, as well as her anxiety and phobia towards knives. Her language is very expressive and specific, thus showing the trauma she felt when she thought about knives. Lorca uses language and tone to bring out the attributes of the different characters in the book. Through their language, the audience can tell whether an individual is good, evil, loving, or caring.
Another predominant theme in the play is violence. Throughout the play, the audience is informed about violent acts. The story focuses on the violent family feud. The first instance of violence is evident when the audience is informed that the Felix family killed the bridegroom’s father and brother. This issue was so traumatic that it affected the bridegroom’s mother. From a psychoanalytic point of view, violence is a limiting factor. This is because it contributed to the eccentricity of the groom’s mother and it affected the bride after her lover and husband died in combat. The society in the play encouraged violence. This is particularly true because nobody dissuaded the bridegroom from hunting Leonardo and his bride.
In the play, the moon sings about how it is cold and lonely, but he expects blood to warm his cheeks. A beggar woman comes in and recites a poem about how she expects the bride and her lover to die violently in the woods. The beggar woman and the moon relish the violence. This praise for violence showed that the society in the Blood Wedding was psychologically predisposed to violence. Even though most people enjoy violence, Fisher argues that some members of the society are weary of the senseless killing. The mother of the bride is specifically more concerned because she lost her husband and son to knife related violence. She is afraid that she would lose her son because he wants to marry into the family of killers. Her fears are eventually realized when her son and Leonardo kill each other.
The theme of motherhood is also very clear. Lorca utilizes motherhood as to show compassion, concern, and guidance. The mother of the bridegroom shows compassion and concern to her son, as he intends to marry a woman who was engaged to Leonardo of the Felix family. She tries to warn her son that his father and brother lived a short life. For this reason, the bridegroom should try to avoid death by not marrying the woman of his dreams. The mother is not only compassionate but also a great guide to his son. However, the bridegroom was brought up in a society that objectified women and he had shown very little consideration to his mother’s concerns. Lorca also uses the notion of motherhood to show how gender roles were divided. Based on the context of the play, the audience is meant to understand that mothers belonged to the house. Evidently, the bridegroom’s mother and mother-in-law agree that women should remain in the confines of their house because they have weak spirits. The bride is expected to take the role that all the mothers in the society have taken.
Lorca adopted a Marxist approach in identifying the different classes of people in the story. According to Ayaz and Iqbal (50), Lorca’s notion of the social class holds that a person’s class is not determined by his wealth, but rather the source of his income and his relations to means of production, as well as labour. Based on this definition, Ayaz and Iqbal asserted that there are three major social classes. These classes include individuals who live on wages, ground rent, and profits. All these classes are portrayed in the play Blood Wedding. The social class of the families in blood wedding can be discerned by looking at the manners, attitude, and dialogues of the different characters. The bridegroom’s, Felix, and the bride’s family were the proprietors, middle class, and the workers (lower class) respectively. These families were interconnected and interdependent on each other. For instance, the groom’s family was making alliances and friendship with the Bride’s family. The Felix family were enemies of the Bridegroom’s family. Lastly, the Bride’s family and the Felix family were friends. Lorca used social classification to show the different categories of people that the society has.
Conclusion
Lorca’s play the Blood Wedding is a tragic drama that expresses some of the realities of the modern society. Not only does the author focus on important social issues such as feminism and masculinity, but also shows how violence, motherhood, and marriage impacted on daily activities of families. Lorca shows how the enmity between the bridegroom’s and the Felix family arose. This enmity was a result of knife violence, which contributed to the death of the bridegroom’s father and brother. The concept of violence was well supported in the society. Hence, people committed violent acts without regrets. Besides the violence, Lorca portrays how Spanish women were oppressed and denied rights. The women in the play suffered silently and had to be subservient to their men. Lorca’s play has gained positive reception because it addresses some of the common social issues and provides a basic framework for criticizing old and rigid mentalities.
Works Cited
Ayaz, Gohar and Nadeem, Muhammad Iqbal. "Class Conflicts Ends With Tragedy: Tracing Marxism in Federico Garcia Lorca's Blood Wedding." Journal of Institute of Social Sciences 1.1 (2011): 49-55.
Bonalodd, Federico. A companion to Frederico Garcia Lorca. Wood bridge: Boydell & Brewer Ltd., 2007.
Fisher, Mark. "Blood Wedding review." The Guardian 10 March 2015. .
Kousar, Rehana and Nida Sarfaz. "Feminist Analysis of Lorca's "Blood Wedding"." European Academic Research (2014): 4404-4411.
Lorca, Federico Garcia. Blood Wedding. Trans. Simon Scardifield. London: NHB, 2005.
