Hanan Mohamed 12KMHCandidate Number: 5161

English LiteratureMs MackenzieMarch 2011

Word Count: 2, 183

'To be female in society is to be a prisoner, yet to be male is to be free'.Compare the ways that Friel and Lorca convey how gender roles extend or limit freedoms in Dancing at Lughnasa and The House of Bernarda Alba.

There is a severe lack of freedom evident in the overall tone of both the House of Bernarda Alba and Dancing at Lughnasa in regards to women. It is mainly women who make up the cast of both plays, and so it is seen through their eyes how imprisoned they feel; quite literally in The House of Bernarda Alba where the girls have been sentenced to be housebound and figuratively so in Dancing at Lughnasa where their lack of freedom is seen in their desperation in dancing, wishing to be free. Dancing is only a momentary distraction that makes a poor substitute for freedom, with Marconi’s music only a temporary balm. Musicality is a symbol of freedom, and releases the Mundy sisters from their usual ‘kind, sensible’ characters and takes them back to their carefree youth so they are dancing, ‘laughing – screaming! – like excited schoolgirls’. Yet, this momentary freedom of expression is fragile: the music is coming ‘all the way from Dublin’, where people are more free than the Mundy sisters are in Ballybeg. Similarly, the only music which is ever heard in Bernarda’s house is the sound of funeral bells ringing, then again later the ‘jingling of bells in the distance’ as men come back from the fields where they have been working – music only comes from the outside because it is the privilege of the free, which has become synonymous with men.

The women are only ever seen in the context of the home – it is within the household that lays the feminine world, whereas men by and large remain on the outside where they may not feature much but still indirectly have devastating effects on the women’s circumstances. When Friel’s play begins, the first characters seen on stage are all engaged in very domestic tasks. Maggie is making mash to feed the hens, Agnes is knitting in order to sell her gloves later, Rose is getting rid of the turf and Chris is ironing clothes. This domestic lifestyle is fitting as they are conforming to the typical woman’s lifestyle of the times. Friel set this play in 1936, in the summer before de Valera’s constitution of Ireland – the women’s domestic lifestyle is foreboding the constitution’s future words, in which women are referred to as having ‘her life within the home’; in this same spirit, Friel’s women are usually in the house. At a stretch, they may also be in the garden – Kate is the only exception as she takes on the traditionally male role of being the breadwinner, and so acting in the place of a man has some small measure of freedom as she works as a teacher. Knowing the power this pseudo-male role gives her, she is not shy of using it to exert control of her sisters when they want to buy a new radio: ‘I certainly don’t see any of [your glove money] being offered for the upkeep of the house’. She earns the most money and maintains the household like a husband or a father, and so she expects them to owe her by complying with her orders.

The message is that if you overstep boundaries and pass the limit of the house door, where the house ends and the rest of the world begins there shall be terrible

1

consequences: Agnes and Rose go to London to find work but are unsuccessful in finding jobs, suffer from illness and die from exposure. They cannot travel free like Father Jack, who spent twenty-five years in Africa as a missionary with no one raising a brow. The same rings true for Gerry who on a whim decides he shall travel to Spain and fight for the International Brigade though he has no true investment in their ideals – it’s just ‘somewhere to go’. In turn, in Lorca’s play Adela trespassed beyond the grill and went outside the house in order to fulfil her desires. ‘She’s the youngest of us, and she has dreams’ [Magdalena]. She carried on an illicit affair with Pepe despite her sister’s engagement and her overstepping her limits, both physically leaving the house walls and the more abstract idea of propriety, leads only to eventually result in her tragic suicide.

Lorca’s women are housebound in respect of the recently deceased husband of Bernarda, and in the wake of his funeral we learn that none of them may leave these walls – for propriety’s sake – for eight years, stripped of their freedom. Lorca’s description of their homely prison emphases the feeling of suffocation: ‘thick walls’ increasing the distance to the outside, with ‘rush-bottomed’ chairs that stand rigid and comfortless – the ‘great, shady silence envelops the stage’, hanging over in a stifling manner suppressing all light and sound. They can never leave. Bernarda’s daughters are only within these rooms, the patio, by the grill but cannot be outside because it is not their place for they are women, and that is the way of the world. Bernarda rules them with an iron fist, echoing Franco’s authoritarian regime in Spain – in the post-civil war climate all opposing political parties were silenced. In the same manner, Bernarda’s opening and closing words within the play are ‘Silence!’ stifling any freedom of speech.

The restrictive culture of bourgeois Spanish society had very gendered traditions, which Bernarda has grown up in and continues to follow in adulthood. To justify the eight year mourning in the house, she tells us ‘that was how it was in my father’s house, and in my grandfather’s house’. Franco’s Spanish propaganda, highly influenced by Pope Pius who declared it as God’s chosen nation to guide the rest of the world, encouraged women to stay in the home to play their role of being wives and mothers because ‘this is what it means to be a woman’. She has completely absorbed the patriarchal ideology that a women’s place is in the home, and respect for men should be to the point where the women is considered subservient so she is taking these extreme measures for a man who is no longer alive: ‘If only out of decency. Out of respect!’ Adela in particular feels the injustice of these measures. ‘This period of mourning has caught me at the worst possible time’. His life has been taken away, so Bernarda in turn is taking away the best years of her daughter’s lives while they are in the prime of their youth: ‘I don’t want to waste away and grow old in these rooms’. Kate too acts as a vessel for patriarchal ideology. When the Mundy sisters decide they want to go dancing at Lughnasa, at first she wavers but then puts a stop to it when she reminds them that ‘this is Father Jack’s home [...] no, no, we’re going to no harvest dance’. She does not want to embarrass him by having the household full of ‘mature women’ dancing, with ‘the whole countryside laughing’ at them.

Jack does not know about this argument, and never forbade them to attend the dance but he indirectly influences Kate’s decision who acts in his place to deny them the opportunity of going – just as Bernarda’s deceased husband from beyond the grave continues to control his household, as the daughters do not leave the house only out of respect towards him.

2

Male gender roles extend the freedom of promiscuity without consequence, despite a rigid Catholic society – and this is present in both Friel and Lorca’s households. It appears that males have an entirely different code of morality to women which is acceptable. Gerry is shameless in flirting, boldly using the exact same lines on sisters Chris then Agnes when they dance, telling them both: ‘You should be a professional dancer’. He wants them both, similar to how Pepe el Romano pursues both Adela and Angustias though he is already engaged to Angustias. In Lorca’s play, the maid is lamenting the late loss of Bernarda’s husband Antonio: ‘Never again will you lift up my skirts behind the back corral!’ This implies that there was an adulterous affair between the husband and the maid, although it is unclear whether any coercion was used; all the same, in a lower status and dependent upon the husband for her job, it would be a very difficult position in which to reject Antonio. Adela passionately cries ‘I will put on a crown of thorns, like any mistress of a married man!’ Mistresses were a social norm of the times, due to the accepted double standards of sexuality where men may be promiscuous and express their desires but a woman cannot. ‘Do you want to make a pagan of yourself?’ Agnes reprimands Chris for putting on lipstick as the make-up indicates her desire and has sinful connotations; Maggie tells her ‘tomorrow it’s the gin bottle’ and it’s all hinted as being on the road to hell. Conversely, male promiscuity is encouraged and even endorsed as Poncia pays for her son to have his turn with the local whore. ‘I myself gave money to my oldest son so he could go. Men need these things’. Men need sexual fulfilment, and experience but Poncia’s words insinuate that women do not need these things.

The high status of virtuous chaste women was based on Catholic ideals, shared by both 1930s Ireland and Spain who were predominantly Catholic. The religion is within itself patriarchal, and so Catholicism oppresses women by its very nature regardless of its good intentions. Women are in an idealised virginal state as

promoted by the Castī Connūbiī (released by Pope Pius XI in 1930), which holds important the sanctity of marriage without which intercourse should not take place. ‘I try to think of you as a sister, but I see you only as a woman!’ [Martirio]. Martirio’s repressed sexuality means that she cannot see Adela as both; her tragedy is that her own love for Pepe will never be realised due to Angustias arranged marriage, as well as Adela already having captured Pepe’s heart. Even if Martirio did get her own chance with Pepe she would be unable to consummate the relationship as she has been brought up afraid to even look at men, or be outside, for so long. ‘Women should look at no man but the priest’. Bernarda’s imposed extreme modesty has put Martirio in an unrealistic, unnatural state where she is afraid of her own sexuality. Her gender role limits her as a woman according to society’s definition of what a woman should be like.

However, sexual intercourse within the sanctity of marriage does not apply to men. Continuing the theme of male promiscuity Friel’s narrator Michael discovers what happened to Agnes and Rose years after their disappearance via ‘ a curt note from a young man of my own age and also called Michael Evans’. Although Gerry proposed to Chris, he must have also been seeing another woman at the same time which is consistent with his track record of failing to commit – but Michael never told his mother about the letter. ‘Men cover up for each other, on this kind of thing, and no one dares to make accusations’ [Martirio, on the story of how Adelaida’s father got his land but did not go to prison for it]. Had Chris known, the injustice of it would have stung her that Gerry did not suffer social ostracization and a stain on his honour like she did for having a child out of wedlock, but still had the chance to

3

begin again and have his own family – even appearing to try and replace the son Michael he already had by naming his newborn Michael Evans. Men simply do not suffer the same consequences as women do for breaking society’s conventions and rules – usually because they were the ones to have set them in the first place, and so enjoy the privilege of being able to bend them or ignore them completely.

Men are free to roam the earth as they please, but a woman who dreams of doing so is thought to be mad. If she continues to express her dreams of freedom then she is threatened and locked up – for Maria Josefa, it is too late and Adela would have suffered the same fate had she not made her escape through death, at last away from Bernarda’s overreaching grasp. Maria only wants ‘to get away from here! [...] to get married at the edge of the sea’ – Bernarda only responds with a rather cold ‘Lock her up!’ When Bernarda sees Adela in her petticoats covered with straw having just come from a night-time meeting with Pepe, she moves towards her ‘furiously’ shouting at her ‘that is the bed of sinful women!’ It can only be assumed that, as in other instances during act one, she is going to physically punish her and then lock her up had Adela not been confronted her for the first time and broke her cane. From a feminist perspective, at first it seems like she has asserted her own independence from Bernarda’s microcosm of patriarchy in rejecting her mother’s oppressive rule, only to replace it with another man’s: ‘No one gives me orders but Pepe!’.

After close analysis of both plays in their parallels, social and historical contexts, it is concluded that overall what it would have meant to be a woman in 1930s Spain and Ireland would mean to be a prisoner, and to be male free – confirming the essay’s original statement. To be a man would mean to be free, to be able to pursue careers in selling gramophones like Gerry and travel to Spain to be in the army on a whim like Gerry, or spread the word of God abroad by working as a missionary as Father Jack did: to be able to begin an affair with a woman and leave behind a child, which through immoral would still be a viable option as opposed to having to choose to carry the illegitimate baby to term or undergo an abortion.

‘To be born a woman is the worst punishment’ because it means being a prisoner, to repress sexuality because it is inappropriate for a woman to show it – even if it will make your ‘breast explode like a bitter pomegranate’ from jealousy and unresolved attraction. Women should remain at home because that is their place, and they are responsible to keep themselves chaste for a future husband. To overstep the boundaries of the home is to be punished; it will only lead to tragedy, and a bad end as conveyed by Adela, Agnes, Rose, Chris and so on. There is no choice but to submit to the ideology and the religion of the land. There is no escape – unless it is through death, whether involuntarily like Agnes and Rose’ example of failing to find work in London and dying of illness and exposure, or voluntarily like Adela in her final defiant act of passion thus escaping the endless cycle of being oppressed by society’s narrow expectations of her gender role.

4

BIBLIOGRAPHY

1. Lorca, F. G. (1992), The House of Bernarda Alba, Great Britain.2. Friel, B. (1990), Dancing At Lughnasa, London, Great Britain.3. De Valera, É. (1937), “Article 41.2: Subsection 2”, Constitution of Ireland

[accessed 31 March 2011] <http://www.courts.ie/supremecourt/sclibrary3.nsf/(WebFiles)/242860F2D11AFE5B802573160045FD06/$FILE/Constitution%20of%20Ireland_English.pdf>

5