Bodas de sangre Analysis

Act 1 sc 3
In this scene, Lorca repeatedly emphasizes how remote the Brides farm is from the rest of
the town. Indeed, this sense of isolation does as much to characterize the Bride as anything
she says in the scene. There are several odd contradictions: Although the Brides Father
says that the Bridegrooms family is much wealthier than they are, he adds that his
daughter is well set up like her fianc. Furthermore, they can afford at least two servants
although the soil on the Brides farm is notoriously bad and her father seems to run the
farm by himself.
This sense of mystery and isolation sets the Bride apart from the rest of the characters. Her
geographical remoteness symbolizes and enforces her famous purity. Unlike the
Bridegroom, Mother, and Leonardos family, the Bride is entirely outside of the family feud
that has embroiled the town. Nevertheless, the poisonous rivalry threatens to draw her in
despite this isolation.
However, her extraordinary remoteness isnt the only mysterious thing about the Bride.
Although her interaction with Mother seems normal, she becomes violent and aggressive as
soon as Mother and her fianc leave. The Mother advocates for an old-fashioned type of
femininityaccording to her, a good wife bears children and keeps house behind a wall two
feet thick to hide her from the outside world. The Bride, though, has been isolated long
enough and lashes out against this received ideal of femininity, using physical force to
protect her wedding gifts from the nosy Servant.
It is useful to contrast the views of femininity espoused by Mother and by the Bride. Mother
wishes that her son, the Bridegroom, were a girl so that he could be safe from the dangers
of the outside world and keep her company. The Bride, however, wishes she were a man so
that she could have more agency and protect herself from danger. Although they have
opposite views, both women choose their preferred sex based on physical safety. This
reveals the deep entrenchment of violence in the towns culture, as well as the gendered
nature of this violence: Women are the true victims because they cannot defend
themselves, and the only way to avoid this is to stay cloistered, whether it is in a farm in
the countryside or behind a two-foot wall.
The Brides quick recourse to violence and cursing with the apparently well-intended Servant
raises questions about the characters judgment. The Bride is widely considered very
feminine and pure, and indeed, she seems to represent an impossible ideal of femininity to
many people in the town, including Leonardos Wife and the Bridegrooms Mother.
Nevertheless, she is hot headed and quick to attack her Servant over a seemingly minor
offense. This discrepancy between her actions and her reputation suggests that the towns
methods of evaluating a persons reputation are faulty, and that perhaps there is less of a
correlation between purity and virtue than people think.

Act 2 sc 1

The Brides ambivalence toward marriage in this scene further complicates Lorcas portrayal
of women in the Spanish countryside. She may love the Bridegroom but she rejects the
institution of marriage, lamenting that it may start out well but always results in endless
bitterness. Significantly, she is more concerned about disappointing her guests than her
fianc, and this is, ultimately, what leads her to go through with the wedding despite her
misgivings. Despite the tragic qualities of the story, Lorcas women are hardly romantic or
swooningthey pursue marriage out of duty, not passion.
The lengthy song that the guests sing merits scrutiny. The repeated refrain of Let the bride
awaken downplays the Brides individual agency; according to the song, at least, the Bride
can only ready herself for her wedding after receiving permission and encouragement from
her guests. However, this expected passivity is belied by the Brides furious and futile
attempts to control her wedding. Not only does she awake by herself, but she also nags at
the Servant and matches Leonardos anger and venom when he comes to ask about the
orange blossom.
Lorca also undercuts the notions of feminine purity that his characters embrace. When
the Neighbour first reveals the Brides relationship with Leonardo, he implies that Leonardos
love for the Bride was unreciprocated. However, the exchange between the Bride and
Leonardo suggests a rather more substantial history between the two young people.
It is useful to compare Blood Wedding to similar stories. In Romeo and Juliet, Tristan and
Isolde, and other theatrical depictions of forbidden love, the main female character is often
young, pure, and innocent. In Blood Wedding, the Bride is neither pure nor innocent, and by
the standards of rural Spain in the early twentieth century, she is relatively old to be getting
married. By adding these dimensions to the character, Lorca renders his tragedy all the
more significant, because the victim is a quirky, realistic character rather than an ideal.
Such a decision also precludes any interpretation of Blood Wedding as a straightforward
allegory. The characters do not represent ideals or segments of society. Despite its vague
setting and anonymous characters, the tragedy in Lorcas play is not didactic, but rather
reflective of real life, in which violence often erupts for no reason, and events do not result
in a pat moral or lesson.

Act 2 sc 2
Unlike the previous scenes, which follow one lengthy conversation, Act II, Scene 2 is
structured as a collage of conversation fragments. This allows the illusion of a large,
crowded party when in fact there are only a few people on stage. Besides its practical uses,
though, the device also reflects the Brides increasingly fractured resolve to go through with
the wedding, and it foreshadows the social fragmentation that will result from the deaths at
the end of the play.
The conversation between Leonardos Wife and the Bridegroom sets the two characters up
as foils for the troubled Bride and the vengeful, haunted Leonardo. By emphasizing the
Bridegrooms innocence through his suggestion that Leonardo move to a farm closer to him
and his Bride, Lorca focuses on the innocent victims in this scene rather than on the Bride
and Leonardo, who are responsible for their deception. The repercussions of the Brides bad

decisions extend far beyond her own relationship, and Lorca asserts that this tragedy
deserves just as much attention as the fates of the Bridegroom and Leonardo.
Numerous minor characters play roles in this scene, but they are primarily pretexts for the
main characters to discuss their thoughts and feelings. In the third act, a group of
anonymous woodcutters (as well as the Moon and Death himself) also have speaking roles,
but their role is similar to that of a Greek chorus, commenting on the plays events but
remaining aloof from them.
The wedding night song continues to incorporate ominous imagery. Rather than directly
foreshadowing events, the lyrics continue to set the mood of the scene. This suggests the
human fallibility of the townspeople who are singingunlike the Moon, which can comment
directly on events, they only have the vaguest presentiment of what will happen and can
only foreshadow it indirectly.
The Bridegrooms Mother remains an ambiguous figure in this scene. She vacillates between
whether or not the Bridegroom should pursue Leonardo and the Bride. For all of her earlier
talk about weapons and the importance of physical safety, it becomes clear that vengeance
is just as important to her as her sons livelihood. Her latent bloodthirstiness colors her
previous actions unfavorably, and suggests that she might have urged the Bridegrooms
father and brother into similar confrontations before they died.

Act 3 sc 1
Act III of Blood Wedding consists of a significant change in register from earlier scenes.
While Acts I and II consist predominantly of prose, the dialogue in Act III is highly stylized.
The characters speak almost entirely in lyric or song, a shift that signifies the ultimate
primacy of mans animal nature over the rules of society. The role of minor characters has
also changed. Unlike in Acts I and II, in which the minor characters served as mood setters
or even comic relief, in Act III, the Woodcutters, the Beggar Woman, and the Moon all seem
to know exactly what will happen to Leonardo and the Bridegroom.
The Moons role is unusual in the context of the play as a whole. In classical mythology, the
moon is traditionally associated with Artemis or Diana, the Greek and Roman goddesses of
the hunt, and European art and drama tends to reinforce this association of the moon with
women. Not so in Lorcas play, which portrays the Moon as a young male woodcutter. This is
perhaps fitting with the celestial bodys bloodlustit resents humanity for shutting it out of
their homes, and longs for blood to warm [his] cheeks.
The bloodthirstiness of the Moon speaks to one of the broader themes of Blood Wedding
namely, the inability of individuals to choose their own destiny in a society that is ruled by
heredity and the rhythms of nature. The sinister depiction of the Moon also calls into
question the morality of the characters.
The townspeople, and indeed, many audiences, might reasonably blame the Bride and
Leonardo for ruining the wedding and her happy marriage with the Bridegroom. However,
their portrayal as helpless victims at the mercy of a powerful and malevolent Moon arouses
sympathy, suggesting that no character is fully good or evil.

The three woodcutters serve as important foils to the Moon. Living even closer to nature
than the Bride in her remote farmhouse, the men are powerless to stop the impending
tragedy, but they nevertheless hope for the best. They are the only characters that suggest
that the Bride should be allowed to run away, since being married does not take away her
freedom to move and love as she wishes. This complicates the question of whether living in
a state of nature would be better than living in the conservative agricultural town in which
the play is set. Although the merciless Moon implies that the woods are as dangerous as any
blood vendetta, the fact remains that the Bride would not have been pressured into
marriage at all if the town were more liberal and accepting of womens rights.

Act 3 sc 2
Lorca employs a sophisticated framing device in this scene to prolong the suspense about
what happened to the Bride, the Bridegroom, and Leonardo. By focusing on the weaving
girls and gradually providing information through the townspeople that pass through the
white room, he wrenches the audience out of their previously privileged position as
witnesses to private conversations and dramatic moments.
Rather than portraying the double murder firsthand, Lorca distances readers and audiences
from the violent spectacle, and instead focuses on the repercussions that the deaths have
on people in the community. The striking lack of privacy in the Bride and Mothers
confrontation is one effect of the public nature of the murders. It evokes the role that
society, as represented by the constant stream of anonymous mourners, had in causing or
exacerbating the tensions that led to the conflict.
The Mothers final, poetic lamentation for her son is different from the other poetry and
songs that are used in the play. Featuring visceral, violent imagery and muscular, concise
verbs, it has more in common with a Modernist elegy than it does with a traditional village
rhyme. This shift in style suggests that the character has discarded the social norms that
she embraced earlier in the play, and is only consumed with deep, atavistic grief.
At the beginning of the scene, the two village girls (who may or may not be the
sameGirls from earlier acts) appear to have a supernatural vision of the deaths in the
woods. This suggests the culmination of the shift in tone in Act III, Scene 1, in which
domestic conversations were replaced by the Moons song.
Now, supernatural events are occurring not only in the woods, but also in the town during
the day, and are affecting even people who have nothing to do with the vendetta. This
suggests that the horror of the nights violent events will even affect strangers, because
they add to the towns already-significant culture of conflict.