Popular Culture Review Vol. 4, No. 2, June 1993 | Page 43

Oiuda's Family Romance

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stone by her gaze—a fit presider for a murderer of feral and handsome
aspect.
Naming, the first step towards definition, is an obsession with
Ouida, so it is significant that Mastama did not think of telling
Joconda his child's name. Only later does this lapse of "refusing to
name" reveal his complicity in an incestuous love. Joconda renames
her Maria Penitente after an obscure Eastern sinner-saint, the "Syrian
Magdalene" (481), but keeps the child's father a secret from all save
the parish priest, who soon dies. The child grows up to be proud, selfsufficient, and uncorruptibly innocent, like Joconda, but also untamed
and courageous, like Mastama. No more than Joconda, "an alien and a
stranger" (461), do the villagers accept her. She is nicknamed
alternately Velia, after the fierce seabird (the shrike or sea-mew);
Musoncella, meaning "the one who pulls the long face" or "the girl
that turns her face away" (484-5) from social or sexual advances {far
il muso, to be sullen); and Musa, a diminutive of M \