S2E3: Motherhood in Lorca’s Yerma & The House of Bernarda Alba

Sonja and Vanessa are thrilled to welcome Dr. Jonathan Mayhew, an international scholar on Federico Garcia Lorca, to explore the theme of motherhood in Lorca’s 1934 play, Yerma, and The House of Bernarda Alba, the masterpiece Lorca finished writing just two months before he was assassinated by Spanish fascists in August 1936. Disappeared by Franco's Falange forces at age 38, Lorca never saw Bernarda performed. Both plays question the expectations and limits traditional society puts on women in terms of sexuality, marriage, and motherhood. Yerma lyrically portrays a wife who cannot conceive, trying to figure out what purpose she serves without motherhood...she asks if she is even a woman. In Bernarda Alba, Lorca forges a crucible within the walls of a locked house, in a Spanish village, at the height of a sizzling Andalusian summer, in which five young women live, caged by religious mores, fears of gossip, patriarchal traditions, and the demands of their own sexual desires. Bernarda–their own mother–appoints herself their jailer, and with cruel words and a walking-cane-cum-blunt-weapon, Bernarda dominates her daughters, her servants--even her own octogenarian mother. Dr. Jonathan Mayhew explains and offers insights on crucial textual elements, plus he fills in key information about Lorca’s biography and the complicated political landscape of 1930’s Spain, in the lead up to the Spanish Civil War. This episode showcases all the elements we value on In Walks a Woman: scholarship, history, enduring literature, and women’s stories. Treat yourself to an episode that examines a Spanish male writer who showcases passionate, powerful women in stories that refract larger social, religious, and political issues….many of which we are still negotiating in 2025.

LINKS:

Jonathan Mayhew's 2020 book, Lorca's Legacies

Johnathan Mayhew's 2009 book, Apocryphal Lorca

2015 Presentation: Conversations in the Observatorio: Jonathan Mayhew. Lorca's Modernist Self-fashioning in collaboration with Harvard Faculty of Arts and Sciences

Translation of Lorca's 3 Major Plays: Blood Wedding, Yerma, The House of Bernarda Alba (Dr. Mayhew recommends this translation)

Spanish Text of Lorca's Bodas de Sangre, Yerma, La Casa de Bernarda Alba

There are absolutely online translations of Yerma and The House of Bernarda Alba that are free, but the quality of the translation might vary.

Sonja mentions the BBC version of The House of Bernarda Alba with Glenda Jackson as Bernarda and Joan Plowright as la Poncia, but sadly it does not appear to be available via streaming online. You might have more luck at your local library or finding a used copy for sale. It’s a brilliant production with two of the greatest British actresses ever. Jackson passed away in 2023, and we just lost Plowright this January of 2025. If you can find this performance with these two legends, it is SO worth watching!

#lorca #garcialorca #federicogarcialorca #spanishcivilwar #womenintheater #bernardaalba #inwalksawoman