Yerma
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'''''Yerma''''' ('Barren') is a tragic [[Play (theatre)|play]] by the [[Spain|Spanish]] [[playwright]] and poet [[Federico García Lorca]]. It was written in 1934, and first performed the same year.
==Plot==
The play tells the story of a childless woman living in rural [[Spain]]. Her desperate desire for motherhood becomes an obsession that eventually drives her to commit a horrific crime. This desperation is produced by the social norms of her culture, and the work functions as a critique of those norms. Living in a society of women who have children with their husbands as part of a ritual, this hurts Yerma even more.
Yerma kills her husband in the end because he is a frugal, economically driven man who has no desire to have children. For him, children are a costly transaction. The ending where she kills him is ironic however because she kills him at "Ermita" which is a religious place with the possibility of fertility.
==Themes==
Yerma deals with the themes of isolation, passion and frustration, but also the underlying theme of nature, marriage, jealousy and friendship. Social conventions of the period also play a large part in the play's plot. It is an allegory of the Spanish Civil War of the time, and as a Republican Lorca would have identified with oppression, another theme.
==Background Information==
Yerma is one of the three tragic plays which form Lorca's famous 'Rural trilogy'. The others being ''[[Bodas de sangre]]'' ('Blood Wedding') and ''[[La casa de Bernarda Alba]]'' ('The House of Bernarda Alba'). The trilogy similarly emphasise the submissive position of women who desire freedom in a traditional society which denies them social or sexual equality.
{{Lorca plays}}
[[Category:Federico García Lorca plays]]
[[Category:1934 plays]]
{{1930s-play-stub}}
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[[es:Yerma]]
[[it:Yerma]]
[[pt:Yerma]]