Popular Culture Review Vol. 4, No. 2, June 1993 | Page 49

Oiuda's Family Romance 47 down to the "instinctive fatalism, the strange passivity, that are in the Southern temper" (774). Freud writes on the repetition compulsion that persons may give the impression "of being pursued by a malignant fate or possessed by some 'daemonic' power; but psychoanalysis has always taken the view that their fate is for the most part arranged by themselves and determined by early infantile influences." Nor is it necessary that the person take a deliberate part in the action: "we are much more im press^ by cases where the subject appears to have a passive experience, over which he has no influence, but in which he meets with a repetition of the same fatality" (18: 21, 22). Musa demands punishment for consummating her love because she has confused it with incestuous love; more precisely, she desires punishment for what she has not done. In Ouida's mind, sexuality is identified with incestuous longing, which creates such guilt that both parties—father and daughter—must be punished by death. Musa's punishment begins by her suffering, for the first time, a physical weakness from the Maremma. Este sends a messenger with money, which she refuses, and she does not say that she is pregnant. Her son, child of another absent father, dies shortly after birth. Discovered with the dead baby and Joconda's coffin, Musa is imprisoned with a prostitute. Word spreads, and the sununer-stricken townspeople accuse her of having the evil eye (792), a sign of the uncanny, and want to execute her: she becomes a scapegoat for all the ills inflicted by the Maremma. As her once robust health fails her, Villamagna comes to her aid; proven innocent, she is released and returns to the tomb. Summer passes to autumn, news spreads of her goodness, and the people begin to think well of her. In Ouida's myth-making, Musa is a plague goddess who controls the seasons. One recalls that, unlike other children, Musa was inunune to the unhealthy summers. Mastama visits Musa to learn what had happened and, in what Ouida calls the noblest act of his life, keeps the secret of her origins, ostensibly not to deepen her grief. Then, followed by Musa, he leaves for Este's palazzo in Rome to exact vengeance. In the sensational climax she struggles with Mastama to prevent the murder and faints from exhaustion, and Este's men have had just enough time to restrain the intruder. She is unconscious when Mastama curses Este, cries out that Musa is his daughter, then dies of apoplexy. Now Este knows the secret too. The next day, discovering Este with a courtesan, Musa