The Mother is a widow who has seen her husband and son swept away in waves of a blood feud with the Felix family. Her remaining son, the Bridegroom, is her constant worry, the last of his line. She continually justifies her protectiveness by referring to her losses. Her worry over something as innocuous as a vineyard knife cast tension. Her first words presage her son’s fate; her last words are the confirmation of what she has always feared.

While she holds considerable social power, the Mother is also restricted to the limited domestic sphere to which all women in Andalusian society are subject—to the point where she is unaware of the Bride’s history with Leonardo. She is also an emphatic supporter of the social order that so severely restricts women, counselling the Bride to stay at home behind a wall after marriage and rounding up a murderous posse of relatives to pursue the Bride and Leonardo.

The arc of the play is formed by the Mother’s shifting understanding of the vengeance system. She begins in an agitated state, set off by even the mention of a knife, damning the objects and the maker of the objects, but finding no relief in the practice; she only manages to perpetuate her own sense of fear and unease.