Federico Garcia Lorca is a famous Spanish playwright and poet. His work transcends the Spanish theater before and after the Civil War and continues to influence the theater today. The genius behind Lorca's theater is demonstrated through the creation of female characters. Lorca uses his female characters as tragic heroes to comment on the social role of women in a patriarchal society. However, Lorca does not let his women's needs go unnoticed. She gives her female characters a voice, universally representative of all women, as they try to survive in circumstances that suppress their true desires. All of Lorca's women are grappling more with the conflict between conformity and rebellion, and with the conflict between reason and passion. This essay will analyze the evolution of Lorca's women through a consideration of Blood Wedding, Yerma, and The House of Bernarda Alba. In Blood Wedding, Lorca's women are used as a vehicle to represent the social constraints and expectations of women in society, and their struggle against these restrictions. This is clearly depicted through the characters of the mother and the bride. The mother is a manifestation of the constraints of society. Her views are very repressed because she has internalized the moral codes and gender roles of a woman living in rural life. She believes that men belong in the fields and women belong in the house embroidering linen. She relies so much on her belief in gender roles that she sometimes wishes her last child was a girl. He says, “No…If I talk about it, it's because—how can I not talk about it, watching you walk out that door? I don't want you to carry a knife. I just... I just wish you didn't go to the fields... how I wish you were a girl! You wouldn't have fallen... middle of paper... responsible for the death of her husband and children. The mother lacks vitality and hunger for life. Lorca instills that hunger in the bride's character. The bride is a juxtaposition of the mother, although not initially. Lorca gradually allows the bride to come to terms with her rebellion. There is something disturbing about the bride's behavior in the first two acts. He acts as if he is happy with the arranged marriage with the groom in front of him, his mother and his father. However we see that he is only keeping up appearances. Behind closed doors he commits small tantrums that show his true desires are being stifled. In the first act, third scene, after meeting the groom and his mother, the bride retreats to her room and is unable to contain her dismay. The maid eagerly asks to see her gifts, but the bride brutally rebuffs her: