Two of the most popular set "texts" for AQA A Level Spanish are Almodóvar's Volver and La Casa de Bernarda Alba by García Lorca. In a recent post, I looked at how having a clear idea of the "meaning" of Volver can give clarity to an argument. In this post, I am going to look at how embracing ambiguities and different interpretations can help structure an essay on La Casa de Bernarda Alba.
There are different views of the play, and rather than causing confusion, this is a gift to the student in the exam, offering the opportunity to explore an aspect of the play from different perspectives.
Here is a list of the opposing view points that might be confusing:
Is La Casa de Bernarda Alba García Lorca's masterpiece, or is it incomplete and flawed? It's survived the test of time, still being performed around the world and finding its way onto A Level syllabuses. So it must be good. But also it was never performed in García Lorca's lifetime and it maybe lacks the final polishing. The text itself in different editions has had to be "corrected". But does the lack of "finish" explain some of the ambiguities on this list, or are they deliberately creating tension between realism and drama?
Is García Lorca a "popular" poet and playwright or a heavy-weight intellectual? He famously took the theatre to the regions of Spain, was inspired by folk song and cante jondo, and loved puppet theatre. He was also an intimate friend of Salvador Dalí and Luís Buñuel, having moved away from Andalucía to Madrid.
So is his work realist or surrealist? There is a tension and a transition. The stage directions in Act One specify pictures on the wall, doors with curtains and bows, chairs. By Act Three, the set is to be of complete simplicity, with the walls described more as an effect of light. The Acts represent morning, afternoon and night. But not on the same day. So the audience experience an ambiguity in the passing of time. And each Act has a similar movement from the everyday to something more violent or dramatic.
And in his plays is Andalucía a deep and intimate source of roots and passion? Or a stereotype of a passionate land of black and white contrasts of life and death, love and hatred? Is it a "costumbrista" setting giving local colour or is it a world his immediate audience were familiar with in their everyday life? Or is Andalucía irrelevant in a work that is about the universal human condition?
Are his characters well defined individuals? Or are they more like a chorus of women, sisters all dressed alike, speaking with the same voice? The voice not of a dramatist, but of a poet.
And is that language poetic or vulgar? Does La Poncia speak in images and metaphors of a campesina, or is it the language of poetry? Is the play a web of symbols that accumulate poetic resonance, or are they concrete references to the world in which the play is set?
Bernarda. Is she in control, "dominanta"? Or is she in denial, in a permanent state of self deception? Before we even meet her, even as her servants are describing her in terrifying terms, they are stealing her chickpeas and chorizo. When she arrives and commands, "Silencio" it is in response to the servant talking about her relationship with Bernarda's late husband. Bernarda can command nothing except to silence the truth, even from herself.
So many questions. And great to challenge students to approach the play with an open mind. But also an excellent framework for any essay question. Pupils can use the ambiguities to write separate paragraphs looking at the title from different angles.
In an emergency, almost any essay can be tackled using this plan:
If you consider the play to be a melodrama of a family in conflict...
If you consider the play to be a sociological study of life in rural Spain...
If you consider the play to be a study of the human psyche, the conflict of the id and the superego...
Perhaps the play is about... a. García Lorca or b. All of us...
So ambiguity, tension, interpretation of different perspectives are there not to be resolved, but to be exploited. That's what writing an essay involves!
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