The Idolatry of Bernada Alba

We do not frequently attend the theatre, but on Saturday my husband and I ventured forth to see The House of Bernada Alba at TAPAC here in Auckland. We had many reasons for this, not least we both knew the main actor and the director (from a long time ago) and I, personally, like the writings of Frederico Garcia Lorca, the Spanish playwright who was executed by Franco's army shortly after the play was written - either because he was a communist or because he was gay - take your pick.

The play was pretty much standard socialist fare - ie, playing up the injustice and prejudice of the "upper classes" against the honest desires of the proletariat. The main character reminded me of many old women I knew in my childhood - bitter and oppressed and always worrying about what people think. Those who are ignorant believe this is the lot of Christian women. Others of us know such women have replaced the opinion of others for the genuine love of God.

The cast was entirely female - those who worship the idol of public (or the neighbours') opinion and those who worship the idol of sex. Bernada Alba, a widow with five daughters, was malevolently controlling, and her daughters by turn subservient and rebellious. Repressed passions abounded. Obviously they came to a bad end.

By the way - the production was fantastic and our friend in the title role was brilliant.

And the programme was a work of art - a bargain for a gold coin donation.

Fierce and endearing Joy Davidman

My favourite 20th century writer is probably C.S.Lewis. It has always seemed remarkable to me that, after a near life time of bachelorhood, he should marry Joy Davidman. They seemed an odd couple, he an elderly English don, her a younger American divorcee with two young sons. Furthermore she was a Jewish, ex-communist Christian convert.
I am presently reading a book of her letters which enlightened me considerably (Out of My Bone, edited by Don W King published by Eerdmans). As Debra Winger (who played her in the movie Shadowlands) says on the cover she was both fierce and endearing. In fact a kind of female American C.S.Lewis. She had a razor sharp mind and a quick wit and didn't mind commiting both to paper (in the equivalent of blogging in the 1940s). She was a ruthless but fair critic, writing to one poet that basically he needed a better education and appending a reading list (everything from Homer to T.S Eliot)!
This volume is most fascinating however in her detailing her disillusionment with communisim. She has the intellectual honesty to admit that she had been lazy and had joined the party without fully investigating it's philosophy. When she finally did she found it completely without substance. She came to believe, at the height of McCarthyism, that the American Communist Party wasn't so much dangerous as inept.
She remained a sharp social critic to the end of her life. The book includes a largely tangential description of her relationship with Lewis and an honest portrait of the trials and severe tribulations of being a freelance writer. It ends with her letters written during her final illness - a testimony to her wit and her faith.
All in all a role model for intelligent Christian women, and writers.