Lorca's House of Bernarda Alba and William's Glass Menagerie

        While their mother Amanda flees back to her past to seek shelter from reality, Tom and Laura have their own way to vent their repression. Tom is a mediocre warehouse worker whose interest lies in poetry writing and adventurous expedition. Having a bosom of ambitions and prospects for himself, he is trapped in the job he is taking, which denies him of all the fanciful possibilities. By instinct, according to Tom, “man is a lover, a hunter, a fighter, but none of these instincts are given much play at the warehouse”. Nevertheless, his protest is soon refuted by Amanda: “Man is by instinct! Don’t quote instinct to me! Instinct is something that people have got away from! It belongs to animals! Christian adults don’t want it” (Williams 34). Instead, Amanda points out, that Christian adults are supposed to pursue those superior, spiritual things instead of being driven by their animalistic instinct. Therefore, movies become an imaginary escape whereby his suppressed self is able to work out to his heart’s content. Yet, due to the fact that he wants to personally engage in these adventures, watching these movies does not provide him with the excitement he seeks. He realizes these instincts by turning his back to his mother and sister and participating in the Union of Merchant Seaman, which nevertheless leaves him a strong sense of guilt for his sister. The play takes an ambiguous attitude toward the moral implications and even the effectiveness of Tom’s escape. As an able-bodied young man, he is locked into his life not by exterior factors but by emotional ones—by his loyalty to and possibly even love for Laura and Amanda. Escape for Tom means the suppression and denial of these emotions in himself, and it means doing great harm to his mother and sister. The magician is able to emerge from his coffin without upsetting a single nail, but the human nails that bind Tom to his home will certainly be upset by his departure. One cannot say for certain that leaving home even means true escape for Tom. As far as he might wander from home, something still “pursue[s]” him. Like a jailbreak, Tom’s escape leads him not to freedom but to the life of a fugitive. Laura, given her own physical disability and intimidated temperament, finds solace in retreating to the delicate world of her glass menagerie collection and playing the music on the victrola. Her glass animals are her escape mechanism, as the movies are Tom’s and the past is Amanda’s.

        In The House of Bernarda Alba, two of the most overwhelming feelings clinging to each word and character are those of both an intense hatred and an intense fear.  The fear is stifling—successfully smothering any sort of rebellion in the characters.  Perhaps even deeper and more powerful than this fear, however, is the hatred.  Not surprisingly, the two are often linked.  But, the outward expression of both fear and hatred are found more frequently in word than in action. The play begins by it, with Lorca using the opening conversation between Poncia and the unnamed servant to begin weaving the sense of hate, heat, violence, and fear.  “She crushes everything close to her” (Lorca 159), Poncia says of Bernarda, creating a perfect image to match the sense of stifling repression exerted by Bernarda and affects everyone it touches: the servants, the daughters, and the repressor herself. At the same time as her daughters cowers and duel, the harsh Bernarda rules her house with a rod of oppression that is finally symbolically snapped by Adela.

        This sense of repression is maintained from the opening onwards, and is always accompanied by fear and hatred.  Poncia describes her desire to see Bernarda “like a lizard [which] the boys have smashed with their stones” (Lorca 159); an image of startling violence.  The staggering imagery utilized by Lorca expresses to the reader a more comprehensive aspect of the repression that the characters experience. The olive grove is depicted as a place of freedom, nearer and more accessible than the impossibly far-away sea—yet what sort of freedom does the olive grove bring?  This so called freedom does not bring triumph, true escape, or lasting happiness—only a different sort of misery and fleeting sensation.

        Coincidentally, Adela and Laura both wear green dresses in moments when escape becomes crucial to their existence. Culturally, green has broad and sometimes contradictory meanings. Other than being associated with death, sickness, or the devil, green symbolizes life, hope and growth as well. In the context of these two plays, the colour green symbolizes life, hope and growth, meaning to start anew or to have hope of a true escape. Adela is wearing her green dress when she finds out that Pepe el Romano is going to marry her older sister, Angustias. This is a critically low point in the play for her, as she presumed that she genuinely had no purpose in life if Pepe el Romano was to marry Angustias. The green would then symbolize her yearning for an escape from reality or an entirely new life. On the other hand, Amanda forces Laura to wear a green dress in anticipation of her gentleman caller. The appearance of the colour green in this precise moment signifies the escape that Laura and Amanda hope to find by becoming acquainted with the young man.

        The general mood, tone and atmosphere of both plays are similarly dark, tense, and desperate because of the accumulated tension, fear, and hatred. Additionally, The Glass Menagerie is set In the midst of the 1930s Depression, when lower middle class America was trapped in teeny apartments, socially gridlocked, and smoldering with impossible dreams. Likewise, The House of Bernarda Alba is set during the Spanish Revolution of 1936 as well as the 1930s Depression. With these contributions to the general cultural setting of the two plays, readers can more likely understand the social frustration during the time period. The audience is left with a sense of anxiety and deep concern for the well-being of each individual character as arguments fly left and right. Since both pieces of work are meant to be performed on stage, Lorca and Williams have used intense dialogue and vivid imagery to clearly illustrate the repression embedded in the plays. Both playwrights managed to present the interactions of the characters so realistically that it seemed as if we could flawlessly blend into the scenes.

        According to the happenings in The House of Bernarda Alba and The Glass Menagerie, escape from repression is something each character dreams about constantly. Each one searches desperately for their own personal escape route for when life is too mundane or becomes intolerable. However, none of them are capable of achieving true escape. Each escape is temporary and very much like an illusion. It is a world they create to divert themselves from reality. Every time the illusion dissolves, they find themselves once again in the world they wish to escape from. Adela seems like the only character in both plays to have found true escape. Her decision to end her own life might arguably be the only true escape owing to the fact that physical death is not an illusion; therefore she will never “wake up” to reality again.

Word Count: 1,469

Bibliography

1. Author Unknown. Topic Tracking: Escape. Book Rags. [Online Available] . October 15, 2007.

2. Fisher, Philip. The House of Bernarda Alba. The British Theatre Guide. [Online Available] . October 12, 2007.

3. James, Katharine. The Glass Menagerie. Culture Wars. [Online Available] [. October 12, 2008.

4. Lorca, Federico García. Three Tragedies: The House of Bernarda Alba. New York: New Directions, 1955

5. Williams, Tennessee. The Glass Menagerie. New York: New Directions, 1966

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