Blood Wedding: Act Two, Scene One Summary & Analysis

On the wedding day, the servant combs the Bride’s hair, saying, “Such a lucky girl…to be able to put your arms around a man, to kiss him, to feel his weight!” Instead of delighting in this kind of talk, though, the Bride tells her to stop talking about such matters, pouting sullenly as she prepares to get married. “But child!” the servant says. “What is marriage? That’s what marriage is. Nothing more! Is it the sweetmeats? Is it the bunches of flowers? Of course it’s not! It’s a shining bed and a man and a woman.” Despite this enthusiasm, though, the Bride tells her servant to be quiet. When the servant tries to put a wreath of orange blossoms in her hair, the Bride takes it from her, tells the servant to leave her alone, and throws the flower crown on the floor.

“Don’t you want to get married?” the servant asks, adding that the Bride can still back out of the arrangement. However, the Bride responds vaguely, saying, “Dark clouds. A cold wind here inside me. Doesn’t everyone feel it?” This remark prompts the servant to ask the young woman if she even loves the Bridegroom, and the Bride says that she does, but points out that it’s “a very big step” to get married. “It has to be taken,” the servant says, and the Bride replies, “I’ve already agreed to take it.”

While the servant helps the Bride get ready, the first wedding guest arrives. To the servant’s surprise, she opens the door to find that the guest is Leonardo, who says he rode ahead of his wife. In the distance, a song about the Bride’s wedding day rises as the rest of the guests draw near, though they’re still only on the horizon. “I suppose the bride will be wearing a big wreath of flowers?” Leonardo says. “It shouldn’t be so big. Something smaller would suit her better.” Hearing Leonardo’s voice, the Bride steps into view. Still clad in her undergarments, she ignores the servant’s instructions not to show herself, and she asks Leonardo what he’s “hinting at” by asking about the orange blossoms. “You, you know me, you know I’m not hinting,” Leonardo answers.

Standing before the Bride, Leonardo asks what he meant to her, urging her to think back to their relationship. “But two oxen and a broken-down shack are almost nothing. That’s the thorn,” he laments. When the Bride asks why he’s come, he says he simply wanted to see her wedding—after all, she watched him get married, which he reminds her was her own fault, since she was the one who refused to marry him. Still, though, he says he won’t “speak out” because he doesn’t want people to hear his “complaints.” “Mine would be louder,” the Bride admits, at which point the servant tries to end the conversation, telling them they shouldn’t “talk about what’s gone.” Nonetheless, Leonardo says that even after his own wedding he has never been able to forget the Bride.

The Bride tells Leonardo that she will stick by her decision to marry the Bridegroom. “I’ll shut myself away with my husband, and I’ll love him above everything,” she says, but Leonardo points out that “to keep quiet and burn is the greatest punishment we can heap upon ourselves.” What’s more, he says that “when the roots of things go deep, no one can pull them up.” These statements cause the Bride to start shaking, as she admits that the mere sound of Leonardo’s voice makes her feel intoxicated. “And I know I’m mad,” she says, “and I know that my heart’s putrified from holding out, and here I am, soothed by the sound of his voice, by the sight of his arms moving.” Hearing this, the servant firmly puts an end to the conversation, and the voices of the wedding guests sound out in song as they approach.

The wedding guests enter, still singing about the Bride and her magnificent wedding day. After they settle in, the Bride—who ran out of the room just before they arrived—reappears, finally dressed in her wedding gown and the crown of orange blossoms. As the excitement sets in, the Bridegroom’s mother asks the Bride’s father why members of the Felix family are in attendance, and he tells her that “today’s a day for forgiveness”—after all, “they are family.” Still, the mother says she will “put up with” their presence but will not “forgive” them.

Meanwhile, the Bride rushes over to the Bridegroom and says she wants to hurry to the church, not wanting to delay any longer. When he asks why, she says, “I want to be your wife and be alone with you and not hear any other voices but yours.” Going on, she adds, “And to have you hold me so tight that, even if my mother were to call me, my dead mother, I couldn’t free myself from you.” With this, they set off for the church, the many guests following them as they go.

Just as Leonardo is about to leave for the church, his wife urges him to come with her in the cart instead of taking his horse, which he rode without her on the way to the Bride’s house. When he says he’s “not the kind of man to go by cart,” she responds that she isn’t “the kind of woman to go to a wedding” alone. “I can’t put up with it any more!” she cries. “Neither can I,” he says in turn, glaring at her. “I don’t know what’s happening,” she says. “But I think and I don’t want to think. One thing I do know. I’ve already been thrown aside.”