Why everything you have been told about La Casa de Bernarda Alba is Wrong

 La Casa de Bernarda Alba. Everything you have been told about it is wrong.

1. The Stage Set

A white-walled bare stage set with stark lighting making a binary contrast with the cast of characters wearing mourning black, symbolising the triumph of purity over life and representing Lorca's "documental fotográfico". Or something. Because it's actually nothing of the sort. 

Act one specifies curtains with bows and frills, pictures on the wall of fantastic scenes of kings and nymphs from legends. The daughters refer to these, recalling fondly how the bizarre stories of the black man fighting the lion coloured their childhood imaginations. Yes, in act three, it specifies that the decor should be of utmost simplicity. But if you think the setting of the play is like that from the beginning, you are missing the point. The point is there is a slow transition, starting from something realistic, to something more symbolic.

The stage directions for act one describe what could be a typical rural house in Andalucia. Thick white walls, rounded arched doorways with jute curtains and wicker seats. And if anything it resembles this kind of house in Sacromonte [video in link] rather than some aristocratic mansion. (More on this later.)

It's daytime; we start with humdrum chat and menial tasks from the servants. Things seem normal. By act three we find ourselves in a different world. The "thick walls" are now more of an effect of light, "azuladas" with the "fulgor" of the interior rooms projected onto the stage. It's night time and the characters look up to the stars and outside to the world of animal noises in the corral. Things have changed. The walls that keep you in are in your mind.

2. Bernarda is in control

Before we meet Bernarda, La Poncia describes her as "dominanta, mandona" and says she is capable of sitting on your heart for a year to watch you die. Although it turns out La Poncia is very fond of saying this kind of thing. And everywhere you look, you see analysis of the play claiming Bernarda is tyranical, and that the tragedy of the play is the direct result of her over-bearing control. Except even before we meet her, her own servants are stealing her chickpeas and sausage. And one of them had been stealing Bernarda's late husband. Famously her first and last words are "Silencio" and this is important. Because far from controlling anything, all Bernarda can do is hush things up or lie about them. Her opening "Silencio" is to the servant who has just told us about her relationship with Bernarda's dead husband. Her closing "Silencio" is to insist on the lie that her daughter died a virgin.

The play is full of examples of Bernarda denying reality. Almost immediately, she corrects the neighbour who says that Pepe el Romano was in the church. As the drama develops, La Poncia constantly tries to warn Bernarda, but she refuses to see. She claims her vigilance puts her in control, but she is clearly blind to what is going on, and ridicules La Poncia for supposedly maliciously inventing "la cosa muy grande". And as Bernarda says, even if something was going on, news of it wouldn't get beyond the walls of the house. Because Bernarda isn't in control. She's in denial.

3. Martirio doesn't like men

There is an idea that the sisters are well-delineated characters with their own voice and defined symbolic roles. You could just as well say that they are hard to tell apart visually, linguistically and thematically. Are they characters or more of a chorus? Is it the case that Lorca's women have individual voices, or is it (as in Blood Wedding), the poet's voice that we hear? Anyway, supposedly Martirio is the doesn't like men one. She feels she is ugly and scared and has happily put aside any desire for a man. Somehow this also makes her twisted and destructive.

In the play she does talk about being scared of men. She tells us how since she was little, she would look out into the corral at the men. She was struck by how strong, loud and masculine they were. And she would nervously imagine that one day one of them might want to come and embrace her. She seems to have spent quite a lot of time imagining this! And of course there was the frustrated episode where she stood in her nightshirt at the window waiting for Enrique Humanes to come as promised. And the sly comment by one of her sisters, probably Amelia, that Martirio seems much better since the new doctor came to the village. So Martirio's desire and jealousy isn't some unfathomable wrench away from her true character. It was there all along.

4. Bernarda is an aristocrat

Bernarda has a house. And some land and an "era" for threshing. And servants and farm hands. And some animals that live in a corral attached to the back of the house. She's a farmer. 

She thinks she's better than other people, including Enrique Humanes because although he now has his own farm hands working for him, his own father had once been a gañán. And she thinks that none of the local men are good enough for her daughters. But as La Poncia says, if she went to another town looking for husbands, then her daughters would be the poor ones. Their only inheritance is "pan y uvas" and their tragedy at the end of the play is as much being trapped in poverty as it is about desire.

5. Bernarda bricks up the house and no-one is allowed in for 8 years

Bernarda does not brick up the doors and windows. She doesn't even say she is going to. She says, "think of it as if...". When she talks about eight years, we already know that this house is full of people who throw out exaggerated timeframes. Sitting on someone's heart for a year. Sitting in a locked room spitting on someone... for a year. It's also not the case that no-one comes into the house. Or even that men are banned from the house. There are 200 women on stage at one point. And a presumably similar number of men in the patio. The lace salesman comes into the house after the supposed edict of mourning, and the man who comes to sort out the inheritance. And the neighbour Prudencia pops in. And Pepe el Romano is hanging around at people's windows. At the end of act two it's quite possible that most of the family go out into the street to throw stones at someone. There is a period of mourning, and it seems the trip to the noria to eat watermelons is cancelled. But people come and go, life goes on.

6. It is a portrayal of the morals of society of the time

Lorca gave the play the sub-title of "Drama de Mujeres en los Pueblos de España". And it is set in small town society in the early 20th Century that is timeless in its conservative attitudes. But what goes on in the house is down to Bernarda's delusions rather than a strictly puritan society.

The world outside the house is one of nature, crops and animals rivers and norias, flowers and olive groves, songs and music and dancing, desire and fertility. The harvesters with their music and fun and their bodies like árboles quemados. The lady in the sequined dress with the accordeon. Paca la Roseta who went "muy conforme" with flowers in her hair, carried like a guitar by Maximiliano on his horse to spend the night in the olive grove while her husband was tied up to a pesebre.

This all contrasts with the thirst, heat, stagnant water and poison referred to inside the house.

Of course, there is the horrifying example of la hija de la Librada, beaten and stoned to death by the neighbours after killing and hiding her illegitimate child. But it's Bernarda who equates her sin with her sexual transgression, "carbón ardiente en el sitio de su pecado", rather than for the death of the child. And Adela knows that the whole village will be against her if she steals her sister's husband and that she will have to go and live in a shack by the river, like Pagnol's baker's wife.

But Bernarda's motto that "una hija que desobedece deja de ser una hija y se convierte en una enemiga" is just Bernarda's personal morality. La Prudencia, for example, has another view. She says "yo dejo que el agua corra". And we have the ridiculous example of La Prudencia's husband who having fallen out with his family, refuses to go out of his front door and instead sneaks out the back with a ladder. Bernarda thinks this makes him "a real man".

I am not going to get further into the idea that this is a portrayal of Franco's Spain. Because it's clearly not. Whatever the internet says.

7. It is Lorca's masterpiece

It is possible to cover up for some of the unfinished elements of the play. Straight forward textual "corrections" in details like "el día de la muerte de tu padre" being changed to "el día de la misa de tu padre". Or the confusion over ages. Or the difference between "the one who loved their father" and "the only one their father loved" in reference to Magdalena.

Then there's the inconsistencies. In act one there is famously no river. Whereas in act three one has now been provided. Or the ambiguity over whether the action takes place over the afternoon, evening and night of a single day, or a longer period of time. Or whether the daughters are clearly delineated characters or an undifferentiated chorus. We can construe this as a clever shift in reality, undermining our certainties in a transition to a crescendo of symbolic meaning taking over from reality. But much as we like to write about these ideas in our essays, the play doesn't really bear them out.

Especially with the ending. As well shall see.

8. Lorca is criticising an anti-feminist society

I can't get away from the idea that Lorca is deeply misogynistic. He puts women's suffering on stage for our entertainment. He uses exotic stereotypes of Andalucian passion, death, violence, extremes, in an act of cultural appropriation where women are decorative and disposable. Just as in Romance Sonámbulo.

The "tragedy" of the play is only in its final moments. Until then it's about the vigorous stuggle of desire against ineffective repression. With extra ingredients of jealousy and denial for good measure. With a bit of superficial prefiguring with the bad luck of the spilled salt, shooting stars and pearl engagement ring. And the clumsy "te vas a tronchar el cuello".

We can find other ways to explain away the offensive ending, to pretend it's not about the spectacle of disposable women. We could say that the play is a projection of Lorca's own suppressed desires. I am sure it is. But how do we interpret the ending? That all of a sudden the manipulating super ego leads to the death of the id? What psychological lesson does Lorca want us to learn? Or is it still just drama for drama's sake?

Or we can intellectualise it and say that in Ancient Greek theatre this form of non-penetrative death is coded for virginity? Antigone in her innocence. Jocasta, rejecting her marriage and her motherhood. And the idea of death predicated on a lie like Theseus killing Hippolytus. Does this help? Or is this further incrimination of Lorca using the death of women to display his erudition?

This is the Lorca play that leaves me feeling uncomfortable with the idea of a man portraying a drama of feminine desire and suffering, for our entertainment, ending with the contrived spectacle of the death of a young woman. It's the work that acts as the key to unlock the adoration and hagiography of the Lorca of whom no criticism will be admitted. Especially when so many of the things written about it are wrong...

GCSE Results 2026

 There seems to be some improvement in some of the grades allocated to Languages at GCSE this year.  We know that in terms of the key points of grade 4+ and grade 7+, the allocation of grades has been kept in line with previous patterns. But there may be some shifts for example to more 6s and fewer 5s in French. I am waiting for FFT education datalab to update their series of blog posts on severe grading.

Meanwhile, what can we say about the grades?

Firstly, we should question any narrative that this is in some way down to the new GCSE being better. When a new GCSE is introduced, Ofqual are very careful to make sure there is parity of grading carried over from the previous GCSE. The grade boundaries are shifted to make sure the number of pupils awarded each grade is kept the same year on year (with small tweaks depending on the cohort's KS2 SATs results).

There are 3 possible reasons for improved grades being allocated in languages.

1. A deliberate decision to allocate better grades as a tacit recognition of long-standing unfairness.

2. A stronger cohort of pupils taking languages. This could accompany the drop in numbers taking languages, possibly as a result of some schools starting to remove compulsion at KS4, seeing a change to the profile of the cohort. This would be particularly hard to judge this year, given that there was no KS2 SATs baseline for this year group.

3. A deliberate decision to allocate better grades to make the new exam look successful. This could take advantage of the lack of SATs results to address some of the unfairness in grading without having to acknowledge it.

On this third point, there are some aspects associated with the new GCSE that may have needed finessing. The Sample Assessment Materials produced by the board were generally recognised as being much more accessible than previous materials, with pupils scoring much higher marks especially in Listening. This opened the possiblity of two implications for the new exam. Firstly that if unfair grading was carried over to the new GCSE, it would look ridiculous that pupils were being given low grades for very high raw scores. In the event, I think the actual exam papers were not as easy as the SAMs.

Secondly, the accessible SAMs could have led to more pupils being entered for Higher Tier. And in the event, it is the case that more pupils were entered for Higher papers this year. This could have meant an embarrassing number of pupils dropping to a U if they were incorrectly entered for Higher Tier when the actual papers weren't as accessible as the SAMs. What we see in fact, is fewer grade 5s allocated this year and an increase in 6s, presumably as a result of some schools entering more pupils for Higher Tier. And only a very small increase in Us.

So a potentially embarrasing situation was avoided, without compromising Ofqual's intention of maintaining parity with previous years at the key grades of Grade 4 and Grade 7. It will be interesting to find out as more information becomes available, exactly how this was negotiated.

The important questions are whether this goes far enough to bring MFL grading into line with other subjects. And whether it will be sustained. There is the famous "sawtooth" mechanism whereby when a new specification is introduced, grading becomes gradually harsher as teachers gain expertise in the new course and the new exam. Is this year's grading a step in the right direction? Or just a one-off to ease in the new exam?

Unfair grading has a huge impact on the narrative of national "failure" in language learning. Any steps to address it would be hugely welcome, and could be transformative alongside very necessary changes post-16. Let's hope this is a first step in the right direction!

Update following the ALL webinar. There is no movement towards ending severe grading. The allocation of grades at 4+ and 7+ was always going to be maintained. There are shifts in French with more 3s and more 6s. This is arithmetically determined rather than deliberate adjustment. It may be explained by changes to the profile of the pupils taking French as numbers drop. Or the higher numbers entered for Higher tier. Languages remains graded nigh on a grade lower than other ebacc subjects in the range 4 to 7. In fact it is the 50th anniversary of Nuttall's research confirming severe grading at O Level.

Challenging the System Part 6: Next Steps...

 In a previous post, I offered a vision of what a functioning languages ecosystem in the English state sector could look like. With a positive experience of languages in Primary and Secondary School, and with mainstream pathways post-16 and beyond. A contrast with the stark reality of the current situation, where you could hardly design a worse system for teaching and learning languages.

The question is, what practical steps can we take to move away from where we are now. And this is really serious. We are facing a crisis where the impending lack of language teachers will only be managed by reductions to incentives for schools to teach languages, leading to total collapse of the system. This excellent article by Juliette Claro (click the link) shows the unsustainable situation.

What steps can we take?

Fortunately there is one cost-free and immediate step that will have a huge impact. GCSE grading. At the stroke of a pen, we can eliminate the unfair disincentive for pupils to take languages. There is no reason for it to be on average a whole grade harder to get a good grade in languages. It is simply a historical anomaly that we have got stuck with. Ofqual's brief is to maintain the "value" of grades in languages year on year, not to compare it to grades in other subjects. In most subjects, if an exam is too hard one year, they use grade boundaries to bring grades into line. Or if an exam is too easy, then they use the grade boundaries to bring it into line. Except for languages, where grade boundaries are used every year to keep grades out of line with other subjects. 

The only people who supposedly would suffer from ending this would be pupils in previous years whose grade in languages would look bad compared to pupils going forward. This argument is bogus. In fact, it would be an overdue recognition for all those pupils over the years, that their languages grade that looked lower than their other subjects was not in fact any reflection on them. Just a reflection of how grades were allocated in different subjects.

And of course schools are sensitive to these figures. The government has taken to using school performance measures such as the ebacc and changes to Progress 8 to encourage schools to promote certain subjects. Ending unfair grading would feed into this system of controlling what subjects are valued and incentivised in school.

It would help address the narrative of "failure" that we see in the national press when it comes to languages. And the culture wars which distort language teaching initiatives, driven by the perceived "failure" to recruit pupils to an unfairly graded subject. The reputation for "difficulty" of languages GCSE isn't based on the content of the course or of the exams. It's an artificial outcome of the decision to grade languages unfairly compared to other subjects.

And if anyone tries to tell you that it's because of the quality of teaching, you can tell them that that calibration has not been made. At no point did they make that assessment and apply it to how grades should be set. And if they tell you it's because it's hard to recruit language teachers so there must be an impact on teaching quality, you can ask them why that doesn't apply to maths. No-one is going around suggesting maths grading should be made harsher. And if languages grades were in line with other subjects, no-one would be clamouring for them to be made harsher either. Going back through the history of grading, it's been like that since the 1970s and we've just got stuck with it.

It would end the blight on the careers of language teachers, tired out by the moral bankrupcy of having to hide the truth of the grading from pupils, and scorned as a blot on the school's results in performance tables.

It's free, it's transformative, it's easy. To maintain the unfair grading would be perverse.

Another area currently under review is Primary language teaching. The CAR review seems to have gone with the "substantial progress in one language" model and to want to tackle transition from KS2 to KS3 head-on. Their ambition is for KS2-KS3 to see uninterrupted progression.

This is a hugely ambitious demand. I think that whatever demands the government makes of schools, the teachers will perform miracles towards making them work. Despite the system (in the case of languages) working against them.

What is happening here, is the government doubling down on the demands. While doing nothing to solve the systemic issues. We need to have as our starting point that transition from KS2 to KS3 will be disruptive. 

Pupils will go into classes in Year 7 where there will be pupils who are continuing with the same language, and other pupils who previously studied a different language. All at different levels. Primary school recruitment is not built around who can teach the language taught at one or other of the local Secondary schools. Secondary school timetables are not built around what languages different pupils studied in Primary school.

Recognising that there is a hiatus here is not necessarily a bad thing. What it means is that Primary languages needs to be valued on its own merits. Not just seen as a preparation for Secondary school. We can stress the lived experience of meeting new languages, rather than some imposed concept of "progression". Pupils' immediate initial focus is on learning to say and understand things, rather than on grammar. By exploring other languages, they inevitably make discoveries about the nature of language including learning that English isn't the natural innate and default language of thought and communication, and that other languages work differently. They can learn through rhyme, song, stories, routines, games and cultural aspects, seeing how languages and cultures are part of the world they are growing up in.

This approach isn't inimical to the idea of progression in a language. But it puts the starting point perhaps more comfortably in a style of learning more suitable to the age group and the confidence of teachers in their own language ability. It's absolutely vital that the voices of Primary teachers are heard here. They are the ones making this work, and finding what works is fundamental to what we should be developing. And of course, when we remove unfair grading at GCSE, we will see more recruits into Primary teaching who have a GCSE in a language.

Recruiting teachers is the key to the impending crisis in languages teaching. Currently we depend on non specialists in Primary and increasingly in Secondary, alongside immigration to boost numbers. Without changes to the system, these are only temporary emergency sticking plasters. So what else can we do to make things work?

The answer is NOT to try to get more people to study A Level Languages or do Philology degrees at University. 

I am not unsympathetic to the demise of Language degrees for the tiny minority who want specialist academic study of the language through linguistics and through literary and other texts and its socio-historical context with essays (in English) and translation. Indeed, if we can solve the systemic issues, then there may be a wider pool of takers for such courses. 

But these are not mainstream language learning pathways. And the idea that language learning is only valid if it has the added intellectual heft of essays, literature, grammar, linguistics is dangerously inimical to language learning in this country. It means as well as being harshly graded at GCSE, languages is a dead-end subject. With no suitable pathways post 16 for the vast majority of pupils. Even if we somehow doubled the number of people taking languages A Level, it would still be all but irrelevant. And who are these people for whom it would be suitable? A Level languages feels like a fraud perpetrated on the few students who do take it, with the workload and harsh grading driving most into disillusion despite their love of the subject and the huge progress they make. In my school, we are into the last cohort to take A Level languages, and it will be a huge relief not to feel guilty for letting keen bright students commit themselves to something they will regret.

So what is the alternative? How do we have a post-16 offer which means pupils can enjoy continuing with a language that they studied at GCSE (in greater numbers once unfair grading is removed), or start a new language or multiple languages? One answer is staring us in the face. Because it's already vastly more popular than A Level: online apps and AI. British young people who supposedly don't study languages, are avid users of Duolingo.

Is it OK for sixth forms and colleges to abdicate responsibility for language learning to an app? I am uneasy about this. But could we or should we be trying to replicate this within the education system? The aim would be for students to study the range of languages they want at the level and pace that suits them. Just as at Primary school, rather than focusing on "progress", we should be looking at experience and attitudes. And with a large number studying online, more formal learning may perhaps follow?

Could colleges do more to incentivise this? To create the expectation that learning a language independently is something to be shared, documented and accredited. Even if they can't themselves offer lessons on demand in Korean or Japanese. And Universities. It must be possible for Universities to send a stronger message to applicants: When you come to university, you are stepping into an international community with international horizons, and we will take an interest in evidence of language learning you have done. And when you come to university, you will have the possibility, whatever your subject, of studying abroad. And alongside your degree subject, you can study a language either as part of your degree or as an add on.

And this should be huge: Erasmus.

When we took pupils on the Spanish exchange, our kids were always stunned at how the Spanish kids saw this as part of a strategic plan. The exchange in Year 10. Spending a year across the border as a boarder in a French lycée. Doing an Erasmus year in England. And a masters in the States. All planned out from age 14.

How do we inspire this ambition in our pupils?

Erasmus+ has to be a huge part of this. In Primary and Secondary it funds teachers and pupils to collaborate and travel internationally. We need to make all the things we say in the blurb on our Programmes of Study actually come true. Languages needs to be a normal thing in a world where we work with people around the globe. In person and virtually. We need to convince our Year 9 pupils so that they arrive at university demanding that they can study abroad for a year, whether they do History or Engineering or Architecture or Maths. We have to create this expectation, because otherwise University departments won't bother. Last time we were in Erasmus, although students from other countries and all disciplines came to study here, the majority of British young people who went abroad were studying languages. So limited to a tiny minority.

And then we will have cracked it. We will have enough people who have continued with a language post 16, many of whom will have lived and studied abroad for a year. They may not have written essays on Fray Luis de León or André Gide. But they will have the confidence they can pass on to young people the real-world benefits of learning a language.

Nothing pie in the sky. Easy changes to the system and its demands and incentives. Then you can let teachers and learners get on with the job. I promise you they won't let you down.