In Lorca’s masterpiece, “The House of Bernarda Alba,” the title character controls everything.  Most specifically, she wishes to control everything and everyone in her house and does not let her daughters or Maria Josefa leave.  She also tries to control Poncia, her paid servant, and the maid as much as possible.  Bernarda obviously realizes the difficulty that being a woman in this Andalusian farming village entails.
     Bernarda exerts all of her energy into keeping her daughters from courting and marrying.  Male reapers, like tides, come and go by the season, but leave the land parched and hearts broken.  (“Reaping the hearts of the women they claim”).  When Pepe el Romano becomes engaged to Bernarda’s daughter Angustias, Angustias begins to suspect that Pepe is hiding something.  In response to this, Bernarda tells her that it is not her place, or any woman’s place to figure men out.  Bernarda also encourages the female ideal at the time of the woman at home with a broken leg.
     Men have a clear amount of freedom that women lack; however the grandmother and daughter Adela both desire this freedom.  The grandmother, presented in the performance wearing a nightgown and a crown of flowers, retains an almost insane hippie-like idealism about love, freedom, inner peace and children.  Adela, the parallel, clad in a green dress to symbolize the breaking of authority and fertility, also desired freedom that she was unable to obtain until her suicide at the end.
     On page 34, the women discuss a girl who got pregnant and killed her child.  This girl was dragged through the street with “fiery coals in the place that she sinned.”  In reaction to this, Adela holds her stomach, for she is committing this same sin with Pepe el Romano.
     Throughout the play, a stallion is present, banging at the door for freedom in the same way that Maria Josefa does.  Bernarda controls both of these characters by locking them away.  The stallion clearly represents sexual freedom and manhood, wanting to go in the fields with some mares.  On page 45, Adela comments that she could “bring a wild stallion to its knees with the strength of one finger.”  In other words, Adela could tame this passion had she only freedom.  On page 44, Pepe is referred to as “a giant” and a “frog without a tongue.”  Both of these are very nature-oriented references.  The giant reference suggests that Pepe, representative of men, is overpowering of women.  The frog reference, however, indicates that Pepe and the men that he represents require something sexual, natural and necessary from women.
     On page 46, Adela breaks Bernarda’s cane.  Since the beginning of the play, when Bernarda’s first demand (and first line) was “Silence!,” the cane has been her symbol of authority.  Bernarda also keeps this to herself, almost as a phallic symbol that she was able to possess, yet keeps her daughters away from possessing.
     Bernarda also maintains control by stifling expression: she makes her daughters wear black for eight years after their father died; when Adela has a fan on pages 9-10 of the text, Bernarda gets angry because the fan contained flowers: symbols of color, growth and fertility.  She exclaims that it is severely disrespectful to Adela’s father.
     The sisters also try to control each other throughout the play.  When Adela appears in bare feet and dressing gown with only a shawl over the gown, the other sisters yell that Bernarda will catch her.  Martirio, who had had a courtship years ago and had stood in her nightgown at the window waiting until daybreak (page 14), knows of the affair between Adela and Pepe through much of the play.  Martirio uses this knowledge as spiteful threat and recompense for her own past on occasion toward Adela, but to her credit never reveals this to Angustias.
     Adela also has control issues with Angustias due to her affair with Pepe and the jealousy regarding the engagement.  On page 15, it is suggested that Adela hand her green birthday dress, again the symbol of fertility that was worn by a bride at the time, over to Angustias.  If she did not do this, she was told, she should dye it black.  Adela does neither, attempting to break through the control of all of her sisters.
     Bernarda, one may argue, is a product of her society, merely a vehicle through which control is emitted.  She often reflects and advocates gender roles in society such as when she comments on page 10 “Needle and thread for women, whip and mule for men.”  Adela, however, wants to come and go as the reapers do.  Again, the grandmother also desires this freedom.
     The ultimate question toward the closing of the play that one might actually face was one not discussed in class.  Adela comes downstairs and lets Pepe in, yet she does not leave.  None of the sisters do.  The door is right there.  The grandmother, likewise, gets a chance but tries (in the production), and Adela holds her back. Why, one might ask, did Adela not simply leave?
     Pepe did have an amount of control over her due to her passion about him. He was clearly marrying Angustias for her small fortune that she received due to being the eldest sister, so Adela remained trapped, unable to run away with him.  Had any of the sisters simply gone out and run away, they probably would have been shamed by their family (and most definitely Bernarda) and would have had to enter a life of a monetarily poor marriage because they would have possessed no money, or into a profession of prostitution.
     Even after Adela’s eventual death, Bernarda has control.  She does not cry just as she did not cry when her husband passed away; furthermore she states that Adela officially died a virgin, controlling her daughter’s sexual freedom even in death and memory.