Crossing Boundaries

Crossing Boundaries


A boundary is a line that marks the limits of an area. Crossing a boundary would be stepping out of that area and quite often, crossing a boundary will have its consequences. Throughout this semester, we have read a couple of texts in which we identified how the characters crossed boundaries throughout the book or how boundaries were either erased or strengthened to protect people from harm and evil. Two specific readings in which we see these ideas are, The House of Bernarda Alba and War Requiem.
Parents always want the best for their children. In Lorca’s play, the mother, Bernarda, strengthens boundaries that she believes will protect her five daughters from harm and evil. However, by strengthening her beliefs and traditions, she ends up hurting her own daughters. In the play Bernarda says, “For the eight years we’ll be in mourning, not even the wind from the street will enter this house” (10). She basically imprisons her daughters and wants them to believe that the windows and doors are bricked up. This shows the reader how strict and cruel Bernarda is, strengthening boundaries that result in her daughters crossing those boundaries. She sets a boundary for her daughters to follow and she is very stern and harsh with what she expects from her daughters.
Her rigidness plays an important role for the rest of the scenes in the play. Her daughters end up crossing the boundaries she has set because they so desperately long for love and the outside world. Angustias, the eldest daughter, puts on makeup and wants to marry Pepe el Romano even though that is against her mother’s order. Adela, the youngest daughter, crosses Bernarda’s strengthened boundaries by wearing short dresses and being free spirited. She also takes Angustia’s picture of Pepe which informs the reader she is seeing Pepe. After finding this out, Bernarda says, “You’ve laid a heavy stone of hatred on my heart. But I’m not old yet, and I’ll chain the five of you in this house my father built, so...

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