Even the wife of Leonardo is a victim of the repetition of family history. Before Leonardo runs away with the bride, the wife suspects that he will not remain faithful, and referring to his lack of loyalty to her she says “it happened to my mother, now it is happening to me”. So there are four characters in the play who are afflicted by the history of their ancestors. The bride’s mother never loved her husband, the bridegroom’s father and older brother were both murdered by members of the Felix family, Leonardo’s ancestors murdered members of the bridegroom’s family, and the mother of Leonardo’s wife was also deserted by her husband. All of these links clearly show the importance of the blood line and the blood relationship in families which is a constant theme throughout the play, while also creating a strong sense of the inevitability of impending fate.
The second symbolic use of blood is its representation of the extreme passion. The characters use references to blood in order to express their anger, pain loss and desire. Throughout, blood is used to emphasise the feelings of Leonardo and the bride. The bride says to Leonardo “my blood boils to see how you’ve come here today”. In the final act of the play she also says to him that she wants to “tear the blue branches of your veins”. Leonardo uses this same imagery of blood to express his passion for the bride. In the final act he says to her: “those two silver wedding pins, they turned my blood black”. The blackness of Leonardo’s blood suggests that it has ‘turned bad’, the thought that she should belong to another man poisons him. The mother also uses this imagery of blood to express her extreme emotions. In reference to the death of her husband and sons in act two scene two she says: “every vein in my body aches with it”. The bride does not use the sort of passionate language when she is speaking to the bridegroom as she does when speaking to Leonardo, and neither does Leonardo use it when he is speaking to his wife. This difference emphasises the passion that the two feel towards each other. It is a passion which is deep and inescapable and is in their blood.
The above quote by the mother, and by the bride, both refer to the veins as a centre of passion and feeling. Veins carry the blood around the body, and it is as though they are carrying the passion and the pain around in the blood as well. This continues the symbolic linkage of family by blood. The mother’s son was part of her, as she states soon after: “when I got to my son he was lying in the middle of the street. I put my hands in his blood and licked them. Because it was me, mine”. When her son died the pain stayed in her veins, because he was part of her. The significance and importance that the blood of her son has for her is further shown when she says: “I would have kept that blood – soaked in dirt in a chalice of glass and topaz”. This also shows how precious the blood of her son, and indeed her own blood is to her. Her son is the one who is supposed to pass on her blood to the next generation, and to continue the bloodline. The mother again uses the imagery of blood to express the depth of her feelings towards the end of Act three, Scene two, when she says that her tears will “burn hotter than blood”. She is contrasting tears which are simply water from the eyes, as she says that the neighbour’s are; “your tears are just tears, they come from your eyes”, and those which can be compared to blood and therefore linked to greater emotion.
The idea of the blood of passion is taken further by the woodcutters in Act three, Scene one. The woodcutters are discussing the actions of the bride and Leonardo, and the opinion of the first woodcutter is that “when the blood chooses a path it has to be followed”. He affirms that their blood denied them choice. Here the blood takes on the role of almost controlling their destinies. The first woodcutter also says of the bride and Leonardo that it is better to be a “bloodless carcass than alive with the blood rotting in your body”. This reemphasises the passion of the two, and the idea that their passion cannot be denied. The word rotting creates the image of a slow death, and the gradual departure of life from the body. This also presents two contrasting capacities of blood. It is a life force, but at the same time it can have the ability to destroy that life.
The reference to blood also helps to reinforce the play’s continuing violence. Violence leads to the spilling of blood, as expressed mainly through two characters; the mother and the moon. The spilling of the blood also symbolises the breaking of the family lines, and the bloody violence of the death of Leonardo and the bridegroom helps to lay a sort of guilt upon the bride. The mother refers to the blood spilling when she is talking about the murder of her husband and her son: “it is terrible – when you see that blood emptied into the ground”. Then, at the very and of act two, the mother declares that “the bloody days are back”. The audience is aware that the mother is accustomed to blood and violence, and has lived through ‘bloody days’ before, which again drives home the sense of tragedy.
At the beginning of the following act the image of blood is once more presented to the audience by the second woodcutter, who states that “blood that sees the light is swallowed by the dust”, which creates an image of violence. This is also echoed by the mother when she speaks of her sons’ blood spilling into the earth. This statement has two levels of meaning, the one being that it helps to reinforce the image of violence, by creating the image of blood which is physically spilled into the ground, and also metaphorically in terms of the continuation of the blood line. When the blood of a person sees the light (when the person is killed) their blood will soak into the ground, once more becoming part of the earth and no longer being able to carry on to the next generation.
After the blood has been spilt, and Leonardo and the bridegroom have killed one another, the bride is described as returning “with their blood in her hair and on her skirt”. The blood in her hair and on her skirt is also an important symbol. The blood is not on her hands, which is the usual representation of quilt, but the blood is on her person, showing that she was indirectly instrumental in the death of these two characters. Hair was regarded as a very sexual element in the society in which Lorca lived, and the blood in her hair symbolises the sexual passion which was involved in her relationship with Leonardo, and which led to his death. This image again reinforces the violence of their death, and the extent of the spilling of the blood.
While the mother refers to the spilling of her son’s and her husband’s blood with a feeling of despair and anguish, the moon is a more blood-thirsty character, who enjoys the spilling of the blood in the many violent events. In his soliloquy, the moon anticipates the spilling of blood, saying “tonight there’ll be blood to warm my cheeks … warm, spilling warm”. The moon acts like a chorus in this part of the play. It represents those searching for the bride and Leonardo, and their need for justice. It is also introduced in order to provide the light by which the bridegroom and the townspeople may hunt for the bride and Leonardo. The light of the moon is cold, and this light is the mechanism by which the blood is able to be spilled. The moon brings in a surreal aspect to the play in that it is represented by a woodcutter, and has its own purpose and desires.
Blood represents three recurring themes in the play “Blood Wedding”. It creates a strong sense of inevitability of events by symbolising links to the past by family and blood line. It also enforces the idea of the inescapability of fate and the cyclical nature of life and recurring events across generations. It is also used to represent the extreme emotions felt by the characters, and to show the depth of their passion. The final theme is that of violence, which is present throughout the play.
