Who is Neighbor?

The Neighbor Woman provides important information for the audience; information that neither the Mother nor the Bridegroom can know if events are to have proceeded as far as they have when the play opens. Thus, a family outsider must appear in order for this information to be presented. The neighbor's conversation with the Mother in the first act apprises the audience of the Bride's past connection with Leonardo, such that it also comes out that Leonardo is of the dreaded Felix family, members of which are responsible for the deaths of the Mother's husband and son. This information establishes, from the play's start, a sense of foreboding and imminent tragedy.