Popular Culture Review Vol. 4, No. 2, June 1993 | Page 41

Oiuda’s Family Romance

39

Ouida, who had undoubtedly read Dennis, exploits the
strangeness of the swampland, the seasonal extremes, and the
Etruscan sites to evoke a quality of mythic timelessness. She ignores
history, and the Unification of Italy passes as if it were the loss of
natural autonomy; it is called negatively "the dependence" (when it
is actually the "independence"), of which the Maremma peasants
"heard much but understood l ]K