The House of Bernarda Alba Lesson Plan

What does Bernarda mean when she says: "Here you do what I tell you to do! You can't run to your father with your stories anymore. A needle and thread for females; a mule and a whip for males. That's how it is for people born with means."

Bernarda has very strict ideas of what it means to be a woman versus a man. Here, she boils it down to a clear dichotomy. Whereas men are meant to engage with the world, women are kept to the house. Also, whereas men live their lives in relationship to their wild, animalistic selves (their mules), women are are only meant to engage with the sterile and small (their needles). She presents a clear binary between what men and women are...