Blood Wedding

The rural Andalusian society presented in Blood Wedding is highly regimented and traditional, with specific roles played by each gender relative to hierarchical social position. Lorca underscores this social order by foregoing character names and using relational titles. This reinforces the communal connections each character shares and the importance of maintaining and playing roles within an insular society. Lorca’s choice has two key consequences. First, namelessness highlights how characters are folk or fairy tale figures, and evokes universality. Secondly, Lorca depicts how an indifferent social order crushes human individuality.

Blood Wedding is rife with ritual and social tradition, albeit traditions which Lorca slightly alters. The first act details the social maneuvers and procedures that launch the wedding, with the Mother, the Bridegroom, and the Father all performing their roles dutifully. In the second act, the characters are concerned with shoring up customs and conducts. The verse serves a ritualistic function, echoing the traditional figures and languages of the characters’ ancestors. The interlaced singing physically represents the entwined community. The surrealism and violence of the dark forest is countered by the return to convention, a communal procession of the dead. Much of the dialogue between the women concerns traditional practices of marking one’s mourning and advice on how to curtail grief.