music

Topic: How does music – the Tarantella dance in //A Doll’s House// and the songs in //The House of Bernarda Alba –// underline the theme of freedom and escape in the two plays?

The two musical activities, the Tarantella dancing in //A Doll’s House// and singing in //The House of Bernarda Alba,// underline the authority of the characters in control while emphasizing the restrictions on the lives of characters under the authorities’ control. In //A Doll’s House,// the Tarantella underscores Trovald’s control over Nora; Torvald is the authority that instructs and teaches Nora how to dance. Similarly, in //The House of Bernarda Alba,// Bernarda’s singing Requiem at the funeral serves to highlight Bernarda’s power. Now as the head of the family, Bernarda leads the Requiem at the funeral and others sing after her, thus characterizing Bernarda as the powerful authority that governs the family. The Tarantella dance and harvest songs both serve to underscore Nora and the daughters’ desires for escape and freedom. For Nora, her search for freedom gradually starts out as a struggle to acquire certain level of control over her situation. Nora’s attempt to use the Tarantella as a method for delaying the revelation of her crime reflects her wish to be in control of her troubled situation and free from her problems. Furthermore, her desperate wish to escape from fears and worries ends up resulting in the case where, although expressed indirectly as wild dance movements that Torvald cannot control, Nora ‘rebels’ against Torvald’s rule for the first time. Bernarda’s daughters’ singing of harvest songs also reflects their strong desire to be free like the harvestmen outside. However, differences lie on whether the two musical activities successfully lead to a positive achievement of freedom or not. In //A Doll’s House,// the Tarantella marks Nora’s transformation into a self-reliant individual with relatively more freedom than before. After the last dance at the party, Nora has successfully become a more realistic and determined woman who soon decides to live an independent life as she leaves the ‘doll’s house’ she has been entrapped in. Yet, the songs in //The House of Bernarda Alba// are representative of the unattainable dream of liberty for most of the daughters; for Adela, although she manages to escape from Bernarda’s rule in the end, freedom is only achieved in a negative form with a disastrous consequence – suicide.