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Magdalena
Twenty-seven-year-old Amelia is Bernarda’s middle daughter. Compared to her sisters, she is agreeable, conventional, and relatively uninterested in men and marriage. As a result, she does not play a significant part in the play’s main conflicts. However, she also fears her mother and often misses the subtext to the other characters’ conversations. Indeed, much like her mother, she thinks only about fulfilling what society asks of her, and she simply does not acknowledge or pursue her own desires. The play captures this character trait through metaphor by having Amelia say she prefers to shut her eyes rather than look at the stars. In this sense, Amelia represents how people like Bernarda pass down their repressive value systems from generation to generation.
Amelia Quotes in The House of Bernarda Alba
The The House of Bernarda Alba quotes below are all either spoken by Amelia or refer to Amelia. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
).
Act 1
Quotes
MAGDALENA: Neither mine nor yours. I know I’m not going to get married. I'd rather carry sacks to the mill. Anything but sit in this dark room, day after day!
BERNARDA: That’s what it means to be a woman.
MAGDALENA: To hell with being a woman!
BERNARDA: Here you do what I tell you to do! You can't run to your father with your stories anymore. A needle and thread for females; a mule and a whip for males. That’s how it is for people born with means.
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MARTIRIO: No. But things have a way of repeating themselves. And I see how it all follows a terrible pattern. And she’ll suffer the same fate as her mother and her grandmother—the two wives of the man who fathered her.
Act 2
Quotes
AMELIA: To be born a woman is the worst punishment.
Act 3
Quotes
ADELA: Mother, when there’s a shooting star or a flash of lightning, why do we say:
Blessed Santa Barbara, why
Are you writing, up so high,
With holy water in the sky?
BERNARDA: In the old days they knew many things that we have forgotten.
AMELIA: I close my eyes so I won’t see them!
ADELA: Not me. I like to see things blazing through the sky, after being motionless year after year.
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Amelia Quotes in The House of Bernarda Alba
The The House of Bernarda Alba quotes below are all either spoken by Amelia or refer to Amelia. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
).
Act 1
Quotes
MAGDALENA: Neither mine nor yours. I know I’m not going to get married. I'd rather carry sacks to the mill. Anything but sit in this dark room, day after day!
BERNARDA: That’s what it means to be a woman.
MAGDALENA: To hell with being a woman!
BERNARDA: Here you do what I tell you to do! You can't run to your father with your stories anymore. A needle and thread for females; a mule and a whip for males. That’s how it is for people born with means.
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Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
MARTIRIO: No. But things have a way of repeating themselves. And I see how it all follows a terrible pattern. And she’ll suffer the same fate as her mother and her grandmother—the two wives of the man who fathered her.
Act 2
Quotes
AMELIA: To be born a woman is the worst punishment.
Act 3
Quotes
ADELA: Mother, when there’s a shooting star or a flash of lightning, why do we say:
Blessed Santa Barbara, why
Are you writing, up so high,
With holy water in the sky?
BERNARDA: In the old days they knew many things that we have forgotten.
AMELIA: I close my eyes so I won’t see them!
ADELA: Not me. I like to see things blazing through the sky, after being motionless year after year.
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Related Symbols:
Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
