Yerma

Yerma ('Barren') is a play by the Spanish playwright and poet Federico García Lorca. It was written in 1934, and first performed the same year.

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 mores.

This desperation is heightened by the social traditions of her culture and Yerma becomes trapped in social conventions and attitudes. Because of this, she grows to be an easy target for mockery and village woman look at her in a different way because she is not a mother, considered one of the most natural things in the world.

It is one of the plays that form Lorca's famous 'rural trilogy' of tragedies, the others being Bodas de sangre ('Blood Wedding') and La casa de Bernarda Alba ('The House of Bernarda Alba').

Yerma deals with the themes of Isolation, Passion and Frustration. Social Conventions of the period also play a large part in the play's plot.