“Where love can have its way”: Conformity versus Resistance in Brendan Kennelly’s Version of Federico García Lorca’s Blood Wedding (Bodas de sangre)

• Main Author: Åke Persson
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Asociación Española de Estudios Irlandeses 2009-03-01
• Series: Estudios Irlandeses
• Subjects: Brendan Kennelly; Federico G. Lorca; Bodas de sangre; Blood Wedding; Irish drama; Irish Identity; Irish feminism; Resistance; Gender
• Online Access: http://www.estudiosirlandeses.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/pdfÅkePersson.pdf

Considerable critical attention has been paid to Brendan Kennelly’s versions of the ancient Greek plays, Antigone, Medea, and The Trojan Women, while his version of Federico García Lorca’s Blood Wedding (Bodas de sangre) has largely been ignored. This article examines the ways in which Kennelly’s Blood Wedding challenges fixed gender patterns and traditional social codes. Thus, although set in 1930s rural Spain, the play resonates with issues that have for long been central to Irish identity. Linking Lorca’s artistic concerns to Kennelly’s, and locating the play within areas of great importance to Irish feminism, which questions traditional constructions of womanhood, the article argues that Kennelly’s play proposes a resistance to dominant behaviour, represented as highly restrictive, as well as to the unquestioning conformity to oppressive norms that prevent women, and men, from leading fulfilling lives. In other words, the article suggests that the play ultimately voices the possibility of change, the driving force of which lies in a kind of sisterhood. The play therefore takes part in a questioning and a renegotiation of Irish identity.