Act One of The House of Bernarda Alba (Federico García Lorca, written in 1936 and first staged in 1945). Bernarda comes back from burying her second husband, and the first thing she says as she walks in is “Silence!” She dismisses the mourners with a blow of her cane and, once they have gone, wishes that many years may pass before they cross her threshold again. Then she lays down the law of the house to her five daughters, Angustias, Magdalena, Amelia, Martirio and Adela: for the eight years the mourning lasts, not even the wind from the street will come in. That is how it was, she adds, in her father’s house and her grandfather’s. The play is what happens inside that walled-up house. Pepe el Romano courts Angustias, the eldest, because she is the one with money, but he meets Adela, the youngest, at night. Martirio, also in love with him, discovers it. When everything explodes, Bernarda fires at Pepe, who flees, and Martirio says he has been killed. Adela locks herself in and hangs herself. Bernarda’s last words are an order: silence, and let it be said that her daughter died a virgin. Lorca opens and closes the play with the same word in the same mouth.
// The theoryThe shame that casts out
In Crime, Shame and Reintegration (1989), John Braithwaite argued that social disapproval is one of the most powerful tools of control, and that its effect depends on how it is exercised. Reintegrative shaming condemns the act but keeps respect for the person and offers a way back; it reduces reoffending. Stigmatising shaming humiliates the person, makes them an outcast and leaves no way out; it pushes towards subcultures, defiance or despair. The theory was born for crime, but it describes any community that controls its members through the gaze of others.
What people will say, as law
In Bernarda’s house, the law is dictated not by courts or the church but by the village’s gossip. Everything Bernarda does is measured by what the neighbors will say: the mourning, the confinement, the marriages, the punishment. It is social control in its purest and cruellest form. And it is stigmatizing shame in its purest state: there is no way back for the daughter who fails. Adela knows it. When her relationship with Pepe is discovered, she sees no way out except flight or death, because in that house a fault is not forgiven: it is hidden or punished for ever.
// The subjectA tyrant who thinks she is a guardian
Lorca does not simply make Bernarda a monster. She is the guardian of an order that formed her too: a rural society in which women’s honor decides the place of the whole family, and in which a widow with five unmarried daughters is always under surveillance. Bernarda reproduces violently what she learned, and the play shows how the control she exercises over her daughters is also the control the village exercises over her. But that does not exonerate her: her tyranny, her cane and her final refusal to mourn her daughter are her own decisions.
The end of the second act shows where that law comes from. La Poncia comes in with the news: Librada’s daughter, unmarried, had a child, killed it to hide her shame and buried it under some stones; dogs dug it up, and now the village is dragging her down the street. Bernarda does not hesitate: “Kill her! Kill her!” Adela, clutching her belly, is the only one who begs them to let her escape. In Braithwaite’s terms, the scene is stigmatizing shame taken to its extreme: the whole community hunts the culprit down to destroy her, not to bring her back into the fold, and what it punishes is the dishonour that led to the infanticide as much as the infanticide itself. The logic of the village and the logic of the house are the same. In the third act, Bernarda boasts to La Poncia that in her house there is neither a yes nor a no, because her vigilance can do everything. The servant replies that no one can keep watch over what goes on inside people’s breasts. Shortly afterwards Adela snatches the cane from her and breaks it in two, “the tyrant’s rod” (our translation). It is the only way out she finds, and it lasts as long as it takes for a shot to ring out in the yard.
Bernarda Alba
Get the map of theories for free
Subscribe to the criminal archive —one case a week, no spam— and I'll send you The map of theories: the great currents of criminology on a single sheet.
// The crackA theory about crime applied to a family
Braithwaite’s theory was designed for the penal system and for communities responding to a crime. Applying it to a family requires a translation: here the “wrong” is not a crime but a daughter’s desire, and the shame is imposed not by a court but by a mother. That distance is useful, because it shows that the mechanisms of stigmatization work in the same way outside the law, but it also limits the reading.
The theory has another limit. Braithwaite defends well-administered shame as a tool of control; Lorca’s play is a denunciation of any control based on women’s shame. The theory distinguishes between good and bad shame; the drama suggests that the problem lies in who decides what is shameful.
Reintegrating instead of casting out
Restorative justice grew largely out of Braithwaite’s ideas: meetings between victim, offender and community in which the harm is acknowledged and a reparation is agreed, without humiliating the person. Research shows that these processes reduce reoffending for many types of crime and improve victims’ satisfaction. Their principle is the opposite of Bernarda’s: condemn the act without casting out the person, so that they have a place to return to.
Three key ideas
- Braithwaite’s theory (1989) distinguishes reintegrative shaming, which condemns the act and welcomes the person back, from stigmatizing shaming, which marks and casts the person out.
- Bernarda Alba imposes eight years of mourning on her daughters and rules the house through fear of gossip; when Adela breaks the siege for love, she finds no way out and hangs herself.
- The crack: the theory was designed for crime and defends well-administered shame; Lorca’s play denounces any control based on women’s shame.
Sources · further reading
- Braithwaite, J. (1989). Crime, Shame and Reintegration. Cambridge University Press.
- Goffman, E. (1963). Stigma: Notes on the Management of Spoiled Identity. Prentice-Hall.
- Sherman, L. W. and Strang, H. (2007). Restorative Justice: The Evidence. The Smith Institute.
- García Lorca, F. (1945). La casa de Bernarda Alba. Editorial Losada.
Case-file questionsFrequently asked questions
Who is Bernarda Alba?
Bernarda Alba is a villain from The House of Bernarda Alba, analysed on KRIMINIS through the lens of criminology. The first thing she said on learning that her daughter had hanged herself was that no one should say a word.
Why does Bernarda Alba become a villain?
Braithwaite’s stigmatizing shame finds its domestic version in Bernarda Alba: eight years of mourning, a cane and a village listening through the walls, with no way back for the daughter who strays.
Which criminological theory explains Bernarda Alba?
Bernarda Alba's case is analysed through Vergüenza reintegradora. John Braithwaite’s theory of reintegrative shaming (1989) distinguishes two ways of condemning a wrong: one that condemns the act but welcomes the person back, and a stigmatizing one that marks and casts the person out, pushing them towards rebellion or despair. Bernarda Alba, the protagonist of The House of Bernarda Alba (Federico García Lorca, written in 1936), imposes on her daughters, after her husband’s death, an eight-year confinement of mourning, and rules the house through fear of gossip. When the youngest daughter, Adela, breaks the siege for love, the shame her mother has cultivated drives her to suicide.
