Lorca #4

(Question 3: Youth)
I thought it was interesting how many children appear in the play, and in particular the second act. None of them have names or seem to be important characters but there are always children around asking questions and stuff. In general, children represent innocence so it's interesting to have all this innocence contrasted by the harsh past of the two families, where you have lies and cheating and murder.
In one scene, the bride is talking to two little girls and they both want pins from the bride which signify who gets married, kind of like throwing the bouquet at a typical American wedding. And the bride seems really exasperated with all of their questions about who she gave which pin to and who's going to get married first. Finally the bride says "Do you want it so badly?" and the little girl says "Yes." and the bride says "Why?" to which the other girl responds "Well...". It's interesting that they are so excited and anxious to get married but they don't really have an answer for why. This could connect also to Lorca's social commentary. He could be suggesting something about the way that women, even from childhood, are just focused on getting married. Maybe it's not a good thing that marriage is seen as being so important. So he could use these children to represent how these ideals of society start at such a young, innocent age and force women into this specific role that they maybe aren't happy with.

(Question 1: Misery)
The two main characters in misery are the bride and Leonardo. The bride hardly says one positive thing the entire play. At one point, when she speaks to the little girls she says "And I don't care! I have a lot to think about.". The fact that she's raising her voice to a young child simply asking her questions on her wedding day speaks volume about the amount of pain that she is in. She also repeatedly says that she "doesn't know anything". And the stage directions say she is 'restless, in a great inner struggle'. I think that it's most interesting that she is so awful, to her groom and family and so obviously miserable but they all almost pretend not to notice it and act like it's normal. It's almost like people just want everything to go with the societal norms and they don't even really care if she's happy or not. Again, this could be social commentary by Lorca about how the numerous expectations of society cause a persons feelings and desires to take a back seat to what other people want and it simply ends up making people miserable. This is definitely something that can be related to no matter what time, culture or generation a person is from.There's always some form of pressure from society and expectations, whether it's gender related or cultural or whatever, that a person feels like they have to live up to even if it makes them miserable.