Lorca subtitles this play "A Drama of Women in the Villages of Spain".
It is the story of a house of women. Bernada, a recently widowed mother of five daughters under the shadow of the church and the tyranny bred from a need to protect the family's honour orders an eight year mourning period.
The authority and repression which characterised the life of women in Spain in the early 20th century contrasts with the freedom and different moral values applied to men.
As Poncia, the longstanding practical and earthy maid and contemporary of Bernarda says, "two weeks after the wedding a man leaves the bed for the table and then the table for the tavern. And the woman who doesn't accept it wastes away crying in a corner".
Jealous passions flare amongst the five daughters under the oppressive heat of the Andalucian sun when Angustias the eldest daughter, who has a significant inheritance is courted by a handsome (unseen) suitor. The tensions build rapidly amongst the imprisoned women, including a demented grandmother and female servants and neighbours until the dramatic violent climax.

This is a study in family relationships under the strain of culturally and socially imposed taboos which Lorca wrote in 1936 as the turbulent Spanish society erupted into civil war.

As a republican, he was murdered three months after its completion. The play was banned by the Franco regime and had its first performance in 1945 in Argentina

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