Previous
White, Black, and Color
Embroidery represents not just women’s traditional role in the honor code governing Spanish village life, but also the collapse of this code as those roles start to shift in modern times. Customarily, upper-class men in a village like Bernarda’s spend their lives breeding horses and overseeing their farm estates, while women stay inside, embroidering, having children, and keeping up with the news on family and neighbors. (Because of their class, Bernarda and her daughters don’t have to cook, clean, or raise their children—they have servants for that.) Thus, while embroidering represents the pinnacle of feminine refinement according to tradition, in this play, it also comes to stand for how tradition renders them powerless and irrelevant.
Traditionally, as part of a wedding dowry, women would offer an ajuar—a collection of embroidered linens and furnishings for their new home. Bernarda orders her daughters to spend their eight years of mourning embroidering, and at the beginning of Act 2, Magdalena is helping embroider sheets for her sisters’ ajuares. But since the play makes it clear that none of them will likely ever marry—at least not if they stay in their village—it also becomes apparent that their embroidery is an act of folly. The women’s embroidery is evidence of how Bernarda wants her daughters to waste their lives in pursuit of an outmoded value system.
Embroidery Quotes in The House of Bernarda Alba
The The House of Bernarda Alba quotes below all refer to the symbol of Embroidery. 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.
Related Characters:
Related Symbols:
Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
Get the entire The House of Bernarda Alba LitChart as a printable PDF.
Embroidery Symbol Timeline in The House of Bernarda Alba
The timeline below shows where the symbol Embroidery appears in The House of Bernarda Alba. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
Act 1
...windows for the traditional “eight years of mourning.” She tells Magdalena to spend this time embroidering her ajuar (the clothes and linens that a woman traditionally makes in preparation for her...
(full context)
...from a wealthier family instead. Magdalena arrives from the storage room, describes Maria Josefa’s old embroidery, and comments that life has gotten worse because everyone worries about their reputation now. She...
(full context)
Act 2
Bernarda’s daughters, except Adela, are embroidering with Poncia. As she embroiders sheets for Amelia, Magdalena jokes to Angustias that she is...
(full context)
...says she just feels sick. She tells the others to leave her alone and keep embroidering, and she complains that she can’t go anywhere without all her sisters finding out. The...
(full context)
...arguing about errands. Satisfied, Angustias leaves. Martirio, Amelia, and Magdalena enter and chat about Angustias’s wedding lace , but agree that they won’t go on sewing for Angustias if she chooses to...
(full context)
