The House of Bernarda Alba

1294 Words3 Pages

“May God strike you dead, you two-faced scorpion! You thorn in my flesh” , “You are out of your mind! I won’t allow it! I forbid you!’ “The House of Bernarda Alba” is a play written at the brink of the 1930s Spanish civil war by Fredrico Garcia Lorca. “A Doll’s House”, is a play written by the Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen in the late 1800s. Both plays portray domination as a contributory of love, predominantly by the heads of households of the respected plays.

In both plays “A Doll’s House” and “The House of Bernarda Alba”, domination and love have been key elements in the development of the plays. Characters that are by nature dominating over their family portray love in many different ways. Love is not as easy to interpret from these characters as compared with the straightforward Aunt Polly in “The Adventures of Tom Sawyer”. Love is defined in the characters of Torvald and Bernarda in the form of domination. Torvald is a lot more subtle about his feelings and more open for interpretation, while Bernarda is more complex and closed in the form of expressing love.

In both plays name calling is a defining factor used by the playwrights, Ibsen and Lorca, to ridicule the antagonist’s subjects. For instance, in “A Doll’s House”, Ibsen emphasizes the name calling by creating a dehumanizing tone where Torvald often refers to animals such as ‘skylark’, ‘little squirrel’ and ‘little singing bird’. This is one example of how domination is used to portray his love for his wife, despite forming a sense of constriction; whereas in “The House of Bernarda Alba” Lorca uses a more direct and powerful method of name calling to establish Bernarda’s dominating nature. Through Bernarda, Lorca has used harsh words such as ‘Weakling!’ This part...

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...ehold with an iron fist, a sense of affection and love exist in them.

Works Cited

http://www.enotes.com/dolls-house/discuss/nora-macaroons-63873

http://classiclit.about.com/od/dollshousehenrikibsen/a/A-Dolls-House-Questions-For-Study-And-

Discussion.htm

http://classiclit.about.com/od/dollshousehenrikibsen/a/A-Dolls-House-Quotes.htm

http://www.novelguide.com/ADoll'sHouse/novelsummary.html

http://www.shmoop.com/dolls-house/torvald-helmer.html

http://www.sparknotes.com/lit/dollhouse/section3.rhtml

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Doll's_House 7/2/2012

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_House_of_Bernarda_Alba 7/2/2012

“A Doll’s House”, Henrik Ibsen, translated by Stanley Appelbaum, Modern Classics first edition

“The House of Bernarda Alba”, Fredrico Garcia Lorca, translated by Michael Dewell and

Carmen Zapata, Dover Thrift Editions

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