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Characters
The play’s central character is the 60-year-old mother of Angustias, Magdalena, Amelia, Martirio, and Adela. She is the matriarch of the house where the action takes place. Preoccupied with tradition, status, and the dictates of the Catholic Church, Bernarda stubbornly imposes her beliefs on her daughters and only grows more tyrannical the more they resist. To maintain her reputation in her village, she spends much of her time spying on the neighbors and treats lower-class characters with arrogance and disdain—including Poncia and the Maid, who have worked in her house for decades. Her five daughters remain single (and desperate to leave Bernarda’s house) because she has rejected all of her daughters’ past suitors on the grounds of class. In this way, her fixation on the honor code enables her to dominate and control her family. During the play, she imposes eight years of mourning inside the house on her daughters after her husband, Antonio’s, death—although she seems to care more about playing the part of a mourning widow than actually grieving his death. Later, she finally accepts Pepe el Romano’s proposal to Angustias, but refuses to see all the clear warning signs that he is simply using her for her money and loves Adela instead. When Adela finally confronts Bernarda, she attacks Pepe, which indirectly leads to Adela’s suicide. Bernarda never admits the error in her ways. Bernarda’s character serves as a stand-in for Spanish womanhood in general: she demonstrates how women internalize and pass on patriarchal honor codes that confine them to the home and prevent them from living free, complete lives.
Bernarda Alba Quotes in The House of Bernarda Alba
The The House of Bernarda Alba quotes below are all either spoken by Bernarda Alba or refer to Bernarda Alba. 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
VOICE: Bernarda!
PONCIA: (Calling out) She’s coming! (To the MAID) Scrub everything clean. If Bernarda doesn’t see things shine, she’ll tear out the little hair I have left!
MAID: What a woman!
PONCIA: She tyrannizes everyone around her. She could sit on your heart and watch you die for a whole year without taking that cold smile off her damn face! Scrub! Scrub those tiles!
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PONCIA: Thirty years, washing her sheets. Thirty years, eating her leftovers. Nights watching over her when she coughs. Entire days peering through cracks, to spy on the neighbors and bring her the gossip. A life with no secrets from each other. And yet—damn her! May she have a horrible pain—like nails stuck in her eyes!
(As the two hundred women mourners finish coming in, BERNARDA ALBA and her five daughters appear. BERNARDA is leaning on a cane)
BERNARDA: (To the MAID) Silence!
BERNARDA: The poor are like animals; they seem to be made of other substances.
ADELA: Here you are. (She gives her a round fan decorated with red and green flowers)
BERNARDA: (Hurling the fan to the floor) Is this the fan you give to a widow? Give me a black one, and learn to respect your father’s memory!
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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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PONCIA: No one can talk to you. Can we or can we not be honest with each other?
BERNARDA: We cannot. You are my servant, and I pay you. Nothing more!
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.
BERNARDA: Help her! All of you!
(They all drag the old woman off the stage)
MARIA JOSEFA: I want to get away from here! Bernarda! To get married at the edge of the sea, at the edge of the sea!
FAST CURTAIN
Act 2
Quotes
PONCIA: Afterwards, he behaved himself. Instead of doing something else, he took up breeding finches—until he died. Anyway, it’s best for single women like you to know that fifteen days after the wedding a man leaves the bed for the table, then the table for the tavern. And any woman who doesn’t accept it rots away crying in a corner!
ADELA: She follows me everywhere. Sometimes she peeks into my room to see if I’m asleep. She won’t let me breathe! And it’s always, “What a shame about that face!” “What a shame about that body, which will never belong to anyone!” No! My body will be for anyone I please.
PONCIA: Besides, who says you can’t marry him? Your sister Angustias is sickly. She won't survive her first childbirth. She's narrow in the hips, old, and from what I know, I can tell she’ll die. Then Pepe will do what all widowers do in this country: he’ll marry the youngest, the most beautiful, and that will be you. Live on that hope or forget him, whatever you want: just don’t go against the law of God!
ADELA: (Sitting down) Oh, if only I could go out to the fields, too!
MAGDALENA: (Sitting down) Each class does what it must.
MARTIRIO: (Sitting down) That’s how it is.
(AMELIA sits down with a sigh)
PONCIA: There’s no greater joy than being in the fields at this time of year! Yesterday morning the harvesters arrived. Forty or fifty good-looking young men.
AMELIA: To be born a woman is the worst punishment.
PONCIA: (With unrelenting cruelty) Bernarda, something monstrous is happening here. I don’t want to blame you, but you haven’t allowed your daughters any freedom. Martirio is romantic, no matter what you say. Why didn't you let her marry Enrique Humanas? Why did you send him a message not to come to her window, the very day he was coming?
BERNARDA: (Loud) And I would do it a thousand times again! My blood will never mix with that of the Humanas family—not as long as I live! His father was a field hand.
PONCIA: This is what comes of putting on airs!
BERNARDA: I do because I can afford to! And you don’t because you know very well what you come from.
(Outside, a woman screams, and there is a great uproar)
ADELA: They should let her go! Don’t go out there!
MARTIRIO: (Looking at ADELA) Let her pay for what she did.
BERNARDA: (In the archway) Finish her off before the Civil Guard gets here! Burning coals in the place where she sinned!
ADELA: (Clutching her womb) No! No!
BERNARDA: Kill her! Kill her!
CURTAIN
Act 3
Quotes
BERNARDA: You shouldn’t ask him. Especially after you’re married. Speak if he speaks, and look at him when he looks at you. That way, you won’t quarrel.
ANGUSTIAS: Mother, I think he hides many things from me.
BERNARDA: Don’t try to find out about them. Don’t ask him. And, above all, don’t ever let him see you cry.
ANGUSTIAS: I should be happy, and I’m not.
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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PONCIA: There’s nothing I can do. I tried to put a stop to all this, but now it frightens me too much. Do you hear this silence? Well, there’s a storm brewing in every room. The day it bursts, we’ll all be swept away! I’ve said what I had to say.
MARTIRIO: (Pointing at ADELA) She was with him! Look at her petticoats, covered with straw!
BERNARDA: That is the bed of sinful women! (She moves toward ADELA, furious)
ADELA: (Confronting her) The shouting in this prison is over! (She seizes her mother’s cane and breaks it in two) This is what I do with the tyrant’s rod! Don’t take one step more. No one gives me orders but Pepe!
(A shot is heard)
BERNARDA: (Entering) I dare you to find him now!
MARTIRIO: (Entering) That’s the end of Pepe el Romano!
ADELA: Pepe! My God! Pepe! (She runs out of the room)
BERNARDA: I want no weeping. We must look death in the face. Silence! (To another daughter) Be quiet, I said! (To another daughter) Tears, when you’re alone. We will all drown ourselves in a sea of mourning. The youngest daughter of Bernarda Alba has died a virgin. Did you hear me? Silence! Silence, I said! Silence!
CURTAIN
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Bernarda Alba Quotes in The House of Bernarda Alba
The The House of Bernarda Alba quotes below are all either spoken by Bernarda Alba or refer to Bernarda Alba. 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
VOICE: Bernarda!
PONCIA: (Calling out) She’s coming! (To the MAID) Scrub everything clean. If Bernarda doesn’t see things shine, she’ll tear out the little hair I have left!
MAID: What a woman!
PONCIA: She tyrannizes everyone around her. She could sit on your heart and watch you die for a whole year without taking that cold smile off her damn face! Scrub! Scrub those tiles!
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Explanation and Analysis:
PONCIA: Thirty years, washing her sheets. Thirty years, eating her leftovers. Nights watching over her when she coughs. Entire days peering through cracks, to spy on the neighbors and bring her the gossip. A life with no secrets from each other. And yet—damn her! May she have a horrible pain—like nails stuck in her eyes!
(As the two hundred women mourners finish coming in, BERNARDA ALBA and her five daughters appear. BERNARDA is leaning on a cane)
BERNARDA: (To the MAID) Silence!
BERNARDA: The poor are like animals; they seem to be made of other substances.
ADELA: Here you are. (She gives her a round fan decorated with red and green flowers)
BERNARDA: (Hurling the fan to the floor) Is this the fan you give to a widow? Give me a black one, and learn to respect your father’s memory!
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Explanation and Analysis:
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:
PONCIA: No one can talk to you. Can we or can we not be honest with each other?
BERNARDA: We cannot. You are my servant, and I pay you. Nothing more!
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.
BERNARDA: Help her! All of you!
(They all drag the old woman off the stage)
MARIA JOSEFA: I want to get away from here! Bernarda! To get married at the edge of the sea, at the edge of the sea!
FAST CURTAIN
Act 2
Quotes
PONCIA: Afterwards, he behaved himself. Instead of doing something else, he took up breeding finches—until he died. Anyway, it’s best for single women like you to know that fifteen days after the wedding a man leaves the bed for the table, then the table for the tavern. And any woman who doesn’t accept it rots away crying in a corner!
ADELA: She follows me everywhere. Sometimes she peeks into my room to see if I’m asleep. She won’t let me breathe! And it’s always, “What a shame about that face!” “What a shame about that body, which will never belong to anyone!” No! My body will be for anyone I please.
PONCIA: Besides, who says you can’t marry him? Your sister Angustias is sickly. She won't survive her first childbirth. She's narrow in the hips, old, and from what I know, I can tell she’ll die. Then Pepe will do what all widowers do in this country: he’ll marry the youngest, the most beautiful, and that will be you. Live on that hope or forget him, whatever you want: just don’t go against the law of God!
ADELA: (Sitting down) Oh, if only I could go out to the fields, too!
MAGDALENA: (Sitting down) Each class does what it must.
MARTIRIO: (Sitting down) That’s how it is.
(AMELIA sits down with a sigh)
PONCIA: There’s no greater joy than being in the fields at this time of year! Yesterday morning the harvesters arrived. Forty or fifty good-looking young men.
AMELIA: To be born a woman is the worst punishment.
PONCIA: (With unrelenting cruelty) Bernarda, something monstrous is happening here. I don’t want to blame you, but you haven’t allowed your daughters any freedom. Martirio is romantic, no matter what you say. Why didn't you let her marry Enrique Humanas? Why did you send him a message not to come to her window, the very day he was coming?
BERNARDA: (Loud) And I would do it a thousand times again! My blood will never mix with that of the Humanas family—not as long as I live! His father was a field hand.
PONCIA: This is what comes of putting on airs!
BERNARDA: I do because I can afford to! And you don’t because you know very well what you come from.
(Outside, a woman screams, and there is a great uproar)
ADELA: They should let her go! Don’t go out there!
MARTIRIO: (Looking at ADELA) Let her pay for what she did.
BERNARDA: (In the archway) Finish her off before the Civil Guard gets here! Burning coals in the place where she sinned!
ADELA: (Clutching her womb) No! No!
BERNARDA: Kill her! Kill her!
CURTAIN
Act 3
Quotes
BERNARDA: You shouldn’t ask him. Especially after you’re married. Speak if he speaks, and look at him when he looks at you. That way, you won’t quarrel.
ANGUSTIAS: Mother, I think he hides many things from me.
BERNARDA: Don’t try to find out about them. Don’t ask him. And, above all, don’t ever let him see you cry.
ANGUSTIAS: I should be happy, and I’m not.
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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Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
PONCIA: There’s nothing I can do. I tried to put a stop to all this, but now it frightens me too much. Do you hear this silence? Well, there’s a storm brewing in every room. The day it bursts, we’ll all be swept away! I’ve said what I had to say.
MARTIRIO: (Pointing at ADELA) She was with him! Look at her petticoats, covered with straw!
BERNARDA: That is the bed of sinful women! (She moves toward ADELA, furious)
ADELA: (Confronting her) The shouting in this prison is over! (She seizes her mother’s cane and breaks it in two) This is what I do with the tyrant’s rod! Don’t take one step more. No one gives me orders but Pepe!
(A shot is heard)
BERNARDA: (Entering) I dare you to find him now!
MARTIRIO: (Entering) That’s the end of Pepe el Romano!
ADELA: Pepe! My God! Pepe! (She runs out of the room)
BERNARDA: I want no weeping. We must look death in the face. Silence! (To another daughter) Be quiet, I said! (To another daughter) Tears, when you’re alone. We will all drown ourselves in a sea of mourning. The youngest daughter of Bernarda Alba has died a virgin. Did you hear me? Silence! Silence, I said! Silence!
CURTAIN
