Blood Wedding: Act Three, Scene Two Summary & Analysis

Back at the Bridegroom’s house, two little girls wind “a skein of red wool” while a third talks about the fact that nobody has returned from the wedding yet. “Oh wool, oh wool, / What will you say?” says one of the girls playing with the wool, and the other says, “The lover’s dumb, / The young man red. / On the silent shore / I saw them spread.”

Leonardo’s wife and mother-in-law enter and worry aloud about what might have happened in the woods. When they leave several moments later, the old beggar woman appears at the door and asks for bread, and one of the little girls asks if she has been near the river. The beggar reveals that she did indeed walk along the stream, saying, “I saw them; they’ll be here soon: two rushing streams / Still at last amongst the great stones, / Two men at the horse’s feet, / Dead in the beauty of the night.” Going on, she says (without using their names) that both Leonardo and the Bridegroom have died but that the Bride is soon to return, her clothing stained by her lovers’ blood. Having said this, she departs.

The Bridegroom’s mother arrives with her neighbor, who is crying. “Be quiet,” the mother says. She then thinks about the fact that her son should have been there to greet her, saying that his voice is “fading” “beyond the mountains.” Wanting to help her friend, the neighbor says, “Come to my house. Don’t stay here.” However, the mother declines, saying that she wants to be at home and “at peace.” “All of them are dead now,” she says. “At midnight I’ll sleep, I’ll sleep and not be afraid of a gun or a knife.” She then notes that “other mothers” will look out their windows to find their sons, but that she won’t be able to do this anymore. Having said this, she sits down and resolves to remain strong, since mourners will soon come to visit.

The Bride enters wearing all black and weeping. Upon seeing her, the Bridegroom’s mother calls her a “serpent” and slaps her to the ground, at which point the neighbor tries to push her away. However, the Bride speaks up, telling the neighbor to leave the old woman alone. “I came so that she could kill me, so that they bear me away with them,” she says. She also says she wants the Bridegroom’s mother to know that she’s still a virgin, but the old woman tells her to be quiet, saying, “What does that matter to me?” “Because I went off with the other one!” the Bride replies, insisting that the Bridegroom’s mother would have done the same thing. Saying that she was a “burning” woman, the Bride likens the Bridegroom to a “drop of water” that might bring her “children, land, [and] health.”

The Bride says that while the Bridegroom was like a “drop of water,” Leonardo was like “a dark river.” Trying to explain herself to the Bridegroom’s mother, she says that the Bridegroom was her “ambition” but that Leonardo “dragged” her down “like a wave from the sea.” Unsurprisingly, the Bridegroom’s mother doesn’t care about any of this, refusing to forgive the Bride for being a “weak” woman. In utter anguish, the Bride pleads for the mother to take revenge on her, begging her to cut her throat. However, the mother refuses to do anything, simply saying, “What does your honour matter to me? What does your death matter to me? What does anything matter to me?”

Once it becomes clear that the Bridegroom’s mother will not do anything to harm the Bride, the Bride asks if she can “weep” with her, and the old woman allows her to cry “by the door.” In this fashion, the two women mourn their losses, speaking in verse about how even the smallest knife—one “that barely fits the hand”—can part flesh and drive into the body, where there “trembles” “the dark root of a scream.”