Do not touch, danger! Strange and sinister objects in Silvina Ocampo's stories.

Abstract

The short stories of Argentine writer Silvina Ocampo (190-1993) are characterized by a grotesque expression of everyday reality, which often includes elements of the fantastic, supernatural, and mysterious. Her characters, frequently children, servants, and women, live in a world where anything is possible. It is a world of cruelty and humour, but above all a world where conventions are broken, values and meanings are questioned, where, in short, things happen that should not happen (as Sylvia Molloy states, “what we would expect to read occurs alongside what we would not expect to read”; 1978: 244). One of the key elements through which the strange enters her fictional world is banal, everyday objects, which nevertheless have properties and abilities that also alter the established order. This article will analyze several of these stories to see how Silvina Ocampo handles the strange in relation to the most normal: photographs, dresses, mirrors, etc.