New stories, new characters

an analysis of the extended life of the doctor’s wife in Seeing, by José Saramago

Abstract

One of the possibilities for a character to have his/her life extended, from the perspective of a theory of figuration, designed by the critic Carlos Reis, is his/her incorporation into a subsequent story to the one in which he/she was originally created. The doctor’s wife, for example, is conceived in the famous narrative Blindness, by José Saramago, and refigured as a secondary character in Seeing, by the same author. This article analyzes the constitutive elements of this character, in both stories, from the intersection of the voices of the narrator and the character, as proposed in the dialogic relationships described by Bakhtin. In the light of Brian Richardson’s conceptions about the transtextuality of characters, this article aims to identify aspects that remain faithful to the characterization of the doctor’s wife in both works and to analyse those that have changed in this process of refiguration or reconstruction of the same entity, thus contributing to the revitalization of character studies.