Popular Culture Review Vol. 4, No. 2, June 1993 | Page 47

Oiuda's Family Romance

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Eventually every main character knows who Musa's father is-except
Musa herself.
Some psychoanalysts and critics argue that one keeps a secret
because it is either a "treasure" or a "guilt feeling" and "disgrace."
Giuseppe Sertoli notes that more often they stress the idea of the
hidden treasure rather than the disgrace. A secret is kept to preserve
the self from a "traumatic reality," but also in some measure to keep
it suspended. "The 'secret'(s) space . . . is a 'potential space' where
the subject preserves those nuclei of mental experiences which he does
not yet have the capacity to actualize in the real world." In
withholding the secret of her birth, the circle around Musa preserve
her from a traumatic reality—knowledge of the father—but also keep
it susp>ended. Musa has a secret too, the tomb, which contains the
Etruscan treasure and the lost lucumo. Both secrets are the same: the
archetypal father who lives again. It is astonishing how closely
Ouida's treasure and tomb metaphors conform to the psychoanalytic
description. "The secret, like a casket, guards the subject's identity in
a utopian exp>ectation of being able to give back to the sociality of
real life" (Sertoli 99, 103).
The third suitor is Count Luitbrand d'Este, a decadent aristocrat
who has been convicted on a trumped up charge of murdering his
mistress. His name joins the fierce Longobard "Luitprand" with the
courtly Renaissance Este. He had escaped the Gorgona prison with
Mastama from whom he has knowledge of the tomb as a potential
hiding place (Mastama said, if the girl is difficult "a fawn's neck is
soon slit" [613]). Roaming the Maremma in search of Musa's tomb,
Este has caught marsh-fever (like Sanctis). She finds him half dead
(like Mastama), nurses him back from certain death, and falls in
love, though in an innocent, restrained manner that Este, eager for
another conquest, misinterprets as deliberately provocative coldness.
To fetch quinine for him she goes to Orbetello where she sees
Mastama tehind a prison fence. Ouida must find a way to express
ambivalent feelings towards the father consistent with her plot: she
makes Musa angry with Mastama for robbing the grave (the dead
lucumo), but grateful to him for sending Este (the living lucumo). The
living wins out and she gives Mastama some money. During the
encounter he in turn realizes that she is his daughter— H