Blood Wedding

The Bride is a young woman who lives with her Father on an isolated and struggling farm. At first, her agreement to marry the Bridegroom and secure the legacy of his vineyard for her Father’s ambitions appears to suggest a prudent and conventional nature. However, she had very little choice. She is deeply unhappy and dissatisfied. She is sullen during discussion of the wedding and her marital duty, and refuses to look at the presents the Mother brought her. That said, her trust in the oppressive system is evident as well as her belief in its ability to curtail desires: She rushes the wedding ceremony to quell the rising desire she feels for Leonardo.

She displays little agency in her early scenes. It is only in the forest, at great effort from Leonardo, that she admits that she made choices—bridling the horse and attaching his spurs—that led them to this point. Her only other significant decision— to not marry Leonardo because he would be unable to provide for her family—is what establishes the framework for marrying the Bridegroom. Her second decision—to run away with Leonardo—assures the tragic end.

The Bride can be seen as the engine that drives the tragedy, but it would be a mistake to blame her. Lorca’s framing suggests that it is her submission to the social order that caused the tragic circumstances, and the cold functioning of that universal system that is responsible. Even the Bride seems to recognize this. In wanting to be put to death by first Leonardo, and then the Mother, she appeals to the system of honor, longing to be killed for her transgressions. But the Mother shares the consciousness of the play; she realizes that the Bride is a victim and allows her to huddle in the doorway and weep. The Bride’s suffering and desire shape the play’s emotional and thematic core.

The Bridgegroom is a young man who has inherited a prosperous vineyard in rural Andalusia. He is the last surviving male of his family—his father and older brother having been killed in a blood feud with the Felix family—and as such is zealously protected by his Mother. Having lived closely with her his whole life, he is unperturbed by her emotional outbursts and paranoia. He generally seems non-violent. He is happy to marry the Bride and fulfill the next steps in his conventional life, but doesn’t recognize her obvious unhappiness, nor suspect her romance with Leonardo, even though it is well-known in the community. After their engagement is secured, the Bridegroom addresses the Bride with a romantic declaration that he feels “great emptiness” (20) without her. He gives the impression of simply performing lines. The next time he talks to the Bride, on his wedding day, he asks about her shoes.

It isn’t until the Bride’s elopement with Leonardo that he becomes aware. As he marches into the forest in search of vengeance, the Woodcutters remark that he carries his family’s fate with him. In his last scene he begins to imbue the role that he is meant to play, recognizing himself as the figure that stands for his murdered line. He holds out his arm and announces: “This is my brother’s arm, my father’s arm, the arm of my whole dead family” (55). Death, as a Beggar Woman, soon guides him to his fate, to die as a symbol of conventional social order undermined and overwhelmed by desire.

Leonardo is a passionate and impulsive young man who has been in love with the Bride since his early adolescence. When she rejected him under the auspice that he wouldn’t make enough money to support her father’s ambitions, he followed her advice and married her cousin. At the time of the Bride’s wedding he has been married for two years, with one child and another on the way, but his passionate love for the Bride is unabated.

As the sole named character in the play, he is individuated, and his bearing of a singular name suits his highly individuated nature. He is the freest character in the work. Being a landowning male, he can ignore social convention and basic niceties with very little consequence, though his abrasive and brusque manner clearly wear on those around him. His lack of love for his wife is clear to her, and his sense of unhappiness pervades each scene.

Horses are symbolic of Leonardo. On the physical side, their power and passion mirror his temperament. They also evoke his solitary determination and restless energy. His relationship with the horse he owns reflects his character, revealing his self-interest even in the face of the horse’s suffering. He is forced to ride in the cart with his wife, yet drives the horse like it has a single rider—an apt portrait of his marriage. For most of the play he charges about like a loosed stallion, but in the forest, with the Bride, his passion is quelled. He confesses that he allows her to guide him wherever she’d like—a revelation that comes through questions about readying a horse. The Bride is the only solution to his agitation and thwarted desire. His choice to elope with her indicates his character; he would readily burn down his life. For Leonardo, desire is more important than following convention.

Leonardo’s Wife is a young mother who is pregnant with her second child. She is a cousin of the Bride, who arranged for Leonardo to marry her after rejecting him. At the start of the play, she has been married for two years and is fully aware of Leonardo’s lingering love for her cousin. Her frustration at her situation boils over at the wedding; she demands that Leonardo ride with her, which he does, but it is a hollow victory. She admits that he has “already thrown me away” (36), much in the same way her father discarded her mother and her.

Leonardo’s Wife ultimately accepts her situation. She says: “That’s how it is” (36). Her plight provides insight into the domestic plight faced by Andalusian women. We have a sense of fatalism: Leonardo’s Wife is fated, like her mother, to be relegated to her home with her children, unable to change the behavior of her husband.

The Moon, assuming the form of a folkloric woodcutter, and Death, wearing the form of a beggar, personify powerful natural forces. The Moon represents nature’s embrace of death and recognizing it as part of the life cycle which sustains the planet. While the Moon’s zest to see Leonardo and the Bridegroom killed seems malicious, it is nor cruel, only eager to see fate play out. Death herself, despite her aims, is soothing when she confronts the Bridegroom, and carefully guides him to where he will be murdered. The Moon and Death’s lack of viciousness, and the careful deliberateness in which they undertake their task, reflect the universe’s indifference to human lives. The universe is apathetic, in contrast to the moralizing self-interest of a creator god.