Mother Character Analysis

MOTHER (muttering and looking for [the knife]). The knife, the knife…Damn all of them and the scoundrel who invented them.

BRIDEGROOM. Let’s change the subject.

MOTHER. And shotguns…and pistols…even the tiniest knife…and mattocks and pitchforks…

BRIDEGROOM. Alright.

MOTHER. Everything that can cut a man’s body. A beautiful man, tasting the fullness of life, who goes out to the vineyards or tends to his olives, because they are his, inherited…

If I lived to be a hundred, I wouldn’t speak of anything else. First your father. He had the scent of carnation for me, and I enjoyed him for three short years. Then your brother. Is it fair? Is it possible that a thing as small as a pistol or a knife can put an end to a man who’s a bull? I’ll never be quiet.

MOTHER. I won’t stop. Can someone bring your father back to me? And your brother? And then there’s the gaol. What is the gaol? They eat there, they smoke there, they play instruments there. My dead ones full of weeds, silent, turned to dust; two men who were two geraniums…The murderers, in gaol, as large as life, looking at the mountains…

BRIDEGROOM. Do you want me to kill them?

MOTHER. No…If I speak it’s because…How am I not going to speak seeing you go out that door? I don’t like you carrying a knife. It’s just that…I wish you wouldn’t go out to the fields.

No. I can’t leave your father and your brother here. I have to go to them every morning, and if I leave, one of the Felixes could die, one of the family of murderers, and they’d bury him next to mine. I won’t stand for that. Never that! Because I’ll dig them up with my nails and all on my own I’ll smash them to bits against the wall.

NEIGHBOUR. […] I often think your son and mine are better off where they are, sleeping, resting, no chance of being crippled.

MOTHER. Be quiet. It’s all talk that, but there’s no comfort in it.

NEIGHBOUR. Calm down. What good does it do you?

MOTHER. None. But you understand.

NEIGHBOUR. Don’t stand in the way of your son’s happiness. Don’t tell him anything. You’re an old woman. Me too. You and me, we have to keep quiet.

MOTHER. I won’t say anything.

NEIGHBOUR (kissing her). Nothing.

MOTHER (calmly). Things!...

NEIGHBOUR. I’m going.

BRIDEGROOM. These are the dry lands.

MOTHER. Your father would have covered them with trees.

BRIDEGROOM. Without water?

MOTHER. He’d have looked for it. The three years he was married to me, he planted ten cherry trees. (Recalling.)

FATHER. In my day this land didn’t even produce esparto. I’ve had to punish it, even make it suffer, so it gives us something useful.

MOTHER. And now it does. Don’t worry. I’m not going to ask you for anything.

FATHER (smiling). You are better off than me. Your vineyards are worth a fortune. Each vine-shoot a silver coin. What I’m sorry about is that the estates are…you know…separate. I like everything together. There’s just one thorn in my heart, and that’s that little orchard stuck between my fields, and they won’t sell it to me for all the gold in the world.

[…]

If we could use twenty teams of oxen to bring your vineyards here and put them on the hillside. What a joy it would be!

MOTHER. But why?

FATHER. Mine is hers and yours his. That’s why. To see it all together. Together, that would be a thing of beauty!

MOTHER. My son’s handsome. He’s never known a woman. His name’s cleaner than a sheet spread in the sun.

FATHER. What can I tell you about my girl? She’s breaking up bread at three when the morning star’s shining. She never talks too much; she’s as soft as wool; she does all kinds of embroidery, and she can cut a piece of string with her teeth.

MOTHER. Come! Are you happy?

BRIDE. Yes, señora.

FATHER. You mustn’t be so serious. After all, she’s going to be your mother.

BRIDE. I’m happy. When I say ‘yes’ it’s because I want to.

[…]

MOTHER. […] You know what getting married is, child?

BRIDE (solemnly). I do.

MOTHER. A man, children, and as for the rest a wall that’s two feet thick.

BRIDEGROOM. Who needs anything else?

MOTHER. Only that they should live. That’s all…that they should live!

BRIDE. I know my duty.

SERVANT (combing). Such a lucky girl…to be able to put your arms around a man, to kiss him, to feel his weight!

BRIDE. Be quiet!

SERVANT. But it’s best of all when you wake up and you feel him alongside you, and he strokes your shoulders with his breath, like a nightingale’s feather.

BRIDE (forcefully). Will you be quiet!

SERVANT. But child! 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.

It hurts to the ends of my veins. On the face of every one of them I can only see the hand that killed what was mine. Do you see me? Do I seem mad to you? Well I am mad from not being able to shout what my heart demands. There’s a scream here in my heart that’s always rising up, and I have to force it down again and hide it in these shawls. They’ve taken my dead ones from me and I have to be silent. And because of that people criticize.

I want them to have many [children]. This land needs arms that are not paid for. You have to wage a constant battle with the weeds, with the thistles, with the stones that come up from who knows where. And these arms must belong to the owners, so that they can punish and master, so that they can make the seed flourish. Many sons are needed.

FATHER. It can’t be her. Perhaps she’s thrown herself into the water-tank.

MOTHER. Only decent and clean girls throw themselves into the water. Not that one! But now she’s my son’s wife. Two sides. Now there are two sides here. […] My family and yours. All of you must go. Shake the dust from your shoes. Let’s go and help my son. (The people split into two groups.) He’s got plenty of family: his cousins from the coast and all those from inland. Go out from here! Search all the roads. The hour of blood has come again. Two sides. You on yours, me on mine. After them! Get after them!

Won’t you be quiet? I don’t want weeping in this house. Your tears are tears that come from your eyes, that’s all. But mine will come, when I’m all alone, from the soles of my feet, from my roots, and they’ll burn hotter than blood.

Here. Here’s where I want to be. At peace. All of them are dead now. At midnight I’ll sleep, I’ll sleep and not be afraid of a gun or a knife. Other mothers will go to their windows, lashed by the rain, to see the face of their sons. Not me.

You would have gone too. I was a woman burning, full of pain inside and out, and your son was a tiny drop of water that I hoped would give me children, land, health; but the other one was a dark river, full of branches, that brought to me the sound of its reeds and its soft song. And I was going with your son, who was like a child of cold water, and the other one sent hundreds of birds that blocked my path and left frost on the wounds of this poor, withered woman, this girl caressed by fire. I didn’t want to, listen to me! I didn’t want to! Your son was my ambition and I haven’t deceived him, but the other one’s arm dragged me like a wave from the sea, like the butt of a mule, and would always have dragged me, always, always, even if I’d been an old woman and all the sons of your son had tried to hold me down by my hair!

MOTHER (muttering and looking for [the knife]). The knife, the knife…Damn all of them and the scoundrel who invented them.

BRIDEGROOM. Let’s change the subject.

MOTHER. And shotguns…and pistols…even the tiniest knife…and mattocks and pitchforks…

BRIDEGROOM. Alright.

MOTHER. Everything that can cut a man’s body. A beautiful man, tasting the fullness of life, who goes out to the vineyards or tends to his olives, because they are his, inherited…

If I lived to be a hundred, I wouldn’t speak of anything else. First your father. He had the scent of carnation for me, and I enjoyed him for three short years. Then your brother. Is it fair? Is it possible that a thing as small as a pistol or a knife can put an end to a man who’s a bull? I’ll never be quiet.

MOTHER. I won’t stop. Can someone bring your father back to me? And your brother? And then there’s the gaol. What is the gaol? They eat there, they smoke there, they play instruments there. My dead ones full of weeds, silent, turned to dust; two men who were two geraniums…The murderers, in gaol, as large as life, looking at the mountains…

BRIDEGROOM. Do you want me to kill them?

MOTHER. No…If I speak it’s because…How am I not going to speak seeing you go out that door? I don’t like you carrying a knife. It’s just that…I wish you wouldn’t go out to the fields.

No. I can’t leave your father and your brother here. I have to go to them every morning, and if I leave, one of the Felixes could die, one of the family of murderers, and they’d bury him next to mine. I won’t stand for that. Never that! Because I’ll dig them up with my nails and all on my own I’ll smash them to bits against the wall.

NEIGHBOUR. […] I often think your son and mine are better off where they are, sleeping, resting, no chance of being crippled.

MOTHER. Be quiet. It’s all talk that, but there’s no comfort in it.

NEIGHBOUR. Calm down. What good does it do you?

MOTHER. None. But you understand.

NEIGHBOUR. Don’t stand in the way of your son’s happiness. Don’t tell him anything. You’re an old woman. Me too. You and me, we have to keep quiet.

MOTHER. I won’t say anything.

NEIGHBOUR (kissing her). Nothing.

MOTHER (calmly). Things!...

NEIGHBOUR. I’m going.

BRIDEGROOM. These are the dry lands.

MOTHER. Your father would have covered them with trees.

BRIDEGROOM. Without water?

MOTHER. He’d have looked for it. The three years he was married to me, he planted ten cherry trees. (Recalling.)

FATHER. In my day this land didn’t even produce esparto. I’ve had to punish it, even make it suffer, so it gives us something useful.

MOTHER. And now it does. Don’t worry. I’m not going to ask you for anything.

FATHER (smiling). You are better off than me. Your vineyards are worth a fortune. Each vine-shoot a silver coin. What I’m sorry about is that the estates are…you know…separate. I like everything together. There’s just one thorn in my heart, and that’s that little orchard stuck between my fields, and they won’t sell it to me for all the gold in the world.

[…]

If we could use twenty teams of oxen to bring your vineyards here and put them on the hillside. What a joy it would be!

MOTHER. But why?

FATHER. Mine is hers and yours his. That’s why. To see it all together. Together, that would be a thing of beauty!

MOTHER. My son’s handsome. He’s never known a woman. His name’s cleaner than a sheet spread in the sun.

FATHER. What can I tell you about my girl? She’s breaking up bread at three when the morning star’s shining. She never talks too much; she’s as soft as wool; she does all kinds of embroidery, and she can cut a piece of string with her teeth.

MOTHER. Come! Are you happy?

BRIDE. Yes, señora.

FATHER. You mustn’t be so serious. After all, she’s going to be your mother.

BRIDE. I’m happy. When I say ‘yes’ it’s because I want to.

[…]

MOTHER. […] You know what getting married is, child?

BRIDE (solemnly). I do.

MOTHER. A man, children, and as for the rest a wall that’s two feet thick.

BRIDEGROOM. Who needs anything else?

MOTHER. Only that they should live. That’s all…that they should live!

BRIDE. I know my duty.

SERVANT (combing). Such a lucky girl…to be able to put your arms around a man, to kiss him, to feel his weight!

BRIDE. Be quiet!

SERVANT. But it’s best of all when you wake up and you feel him alongside you, and he strokes your shoulders with his breath, like a nightingale’s feather.

BRIDE (forcefully). Will you be quiet!

SERVANT. But child! 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.

It hurts to the ends of my veins. On the face of every one of them I can only see the hand that killed what was mine. Do you see me? Do I seem mad to you? Well I am mad from not being able to shout what my heart demands. There’s a scream here in my heart that’s always rising up, and I have to force it down again and hide it in these shawls. They’ve taken my dead ones from me and I have to be silent. And because of that people criticize.

I want them to have many [children]. This land needs arms that are not paid for. You have to wage a constant battle with the weeds, with the thistles, with the stones that come up from who knows where. And these arms must belong to the owners, so that they can punish and master, so that they can make the seed flourish. Many sons are needed.

FATHER. It can’t be her. Perhaps she’s thrown herself into the water-tank.

MOTHER. Only decent and clean girls throw themselves into the water. Not that one! But now she’s my son’s wife. Two sides. Now there are two sides here. […] My family and yours. All of you must go. Shake the dust from your shoes. Let’s go and help my son. (The people split into two groups.) He’s got plenty of family: his cousins from the coast and all those from inland. Go out from here! Search all the roads. The hour of blood has come again. Two sides. You on yours, me on mine. After them! Get after them!

Won’t you be quiet? I don’t want weeping in this house. Your tears are tears that come from your eyes, that’s all. But mine will come, when I’m all alone, from the soles of my feet, from my roots, and they’ll burn hotter than blood.

Here. Here’s where I want to be. At peace. All of them are dead now. At midnight I’ll sleep, I’ll sleep and not be afraid of a gun or a knife. Other mothers will go to their windows, lashed by the rain, to see the face of their sons. Not me.

You would have gone too. I was a woman burning, full of pain inside and out, and your son was a tiny drop of water that I hoped would give me children, land, health; but the other one was a dark river, full of branches, that brought to me the sound of its reeds and its soft song. And I was going with your son, who was like a child of cold water, and the other one sent hundreds of birds that blocked my path and left frost on the wounds of this poor, withered woman, this girl caressed by fire. I didn’t want to, listen to me! I didn’t want to! Your son was my ambition and I haven’t deceived him, but the other one’s arm dragged me like a wave from the sea, like the butt of a mule, and would always have dragged me, always, always, even if I’d been an old woman and all the sons of your son had tried to hold me down by my hair!