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Repression, rebellion, death, and desire : the political and Freudian dialectic in Federico Garcia Lorca’s The House of Bernarda Alba

University of British Columbia

Federico Garcia Lorca's The House of Bernarda Alba finds the point of contact between Freud's theory and contemporary politics. The main dramatic conflict is between a tyrannical mother, Bernarda, who represses the instincts of her daughters and Adela who rebels against Bernarda in order to assert her passion. Bernarda's tyranny corresponds to the Freudian concept of civilization which has gone wrong and to Franco's regime in Spain. Part of Bernarda's political agenda is to keep the inhabitants of the house in enmity by fomenting discord and hatred within the group. All the sisters love Pepe, see each other as rivals, and become each other's oppressors. They are psychologically deformed by the system. Adela embodies Freudian Eros and rebels against Bernarda in the name of freedom, including sexual freedom, for which the Republic fought against Franco. In Freudian theory, apart from the struggle between civilization and an individual, there is another battle between the instinct of life, Eros, and the instinct of death, Thanatos. Thanatos is present in Adela; she commits suicide in the end. I have analyzed this play as a psycho/political drama to make a statement about tragic inevitability vs. the possibility of change. The problem arises whether The House of Bernarda Alba is a play about a rebellion that fails because humankind is trapped in an unresolvable contradiction - or can there be a return to happiness once fascism is overthrown? I used Freud's Civilization and Its Discontents. Lorca's writing and secondary sources written on Lorca and The House of Bernarda Alba to investigate this problem. My conclusion is that Bernarda's tyranny, like Franco's regime, is not invincible and could be defeated if the inhabitants of the house united in a common fight against it. A single individual cannot defeat the regime. However, even if fascism were overthrown, according to Freud, the return to happiness would still be impossible because every form of civilization produces unhappiness. Therefore, even if there is a way out of the political dilemma, there is no escape out of the Freudian dilemma because of the irreconcilable battle between civilization and an individual and even more so between Eros and Thanatos.

Thesis/Dissertation

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2009-06-16

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http://hdl.handle.net/2429/9296

Theatre

University of British Columbia

UBCV

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