Though it is in Elisabeth's stillness that Bergman best describes her character. The voicelessness, voluntary or not, initiated in the first scene, and confirmed in the later, disputes with the articulated voices of the two other characters. But Elisabeth remains neither silent nor wordless: her words are conveyed with the voices of the doctor and Alma. The absence of her voice is presented to the viewer simultaneously with the gaze and the gesture. What seems to be, at first, lifeless is revealed as fully temperamental; a dormancy awaken at precise dramaturgical moments. Her unexpected rage creates a rupture in the discourse. It becomes, in the dramaturgy of these scenes, a place where gaze and gesture emerge as definers of Elisabeth's character. In this sense, it is the burst of rage that reiterates the dialectical relationship, initiated with the reading of the letter, between Elisabeth and Alma.