Kitty, the Silent Swan in the Short Story “The Death of a Swan” by Teresa Veiga

Abstract

KITTY, THE SILENT SWAN IN THE SHORT STORY “THE DEATH OF A SWAN” BY TERESA VEIGA

The aim of the article is to explore the motif of silence in Portuguese prose, and primarily the phenomenon of “female” silence. This type of silence is not caused by the lack of voice or missing words, but by the absence of listeners. Kitty, the female protagonist of Teresa Veiga’s short story “The Death of a Swan” (A morte do cisne), published in her collection [Melancholically Crazy People] (Gente melancolicamente louca, 2015), uses her body and her seductive abilities for alternative communication. Later, the body is converted to an instrument of revolt. In the short story, a woman is compared to a swan. This motif will be interpreted with the support of Gaston Bachelard’s Water and Dreams, which assumes a psychoanalytic point of view.