“Not a Girl, but a Woman”
Once they are in his office, Carlo starts scolding Ciro, once again reducing his relationship to Angela to sex, incapable of thinking that his son could have serious feelings for a maid. Ciro is visibly profoundly frustrated by this.
He defends his intention and for the first time expresses verbally that he is in love with Angela. It’s very obvious to the audience and he has expressed it in different ways and terms, but it’s the first time he says the actual words, and it’s to his father and not Angela herself. It can be frustrating, but his love for Angela is so obvious that there really isn’t any need to say it explicitly. Being in love with her is literally his defining characteristic. The fact that Carlo doesn’t see it makes it obvious how little he knows his son.
Carlo continues to be dismissive and Ciro loses his patience and starts to snap, asking his father what is the problem. Early episodes Ciro would have never adopted such a tone in front of his father. There’s a sense that he’s really coming into his own, but it will be undercut shortly.
Carlo persists on refusing to explain and only says that Angela is not for Ciro. Ciro starts accusing his father of wanting Angela for himself. Without knowing the truth, it’s the only explanation that makes sense as to why Carlo is this opposed to the relationship. It would also be perfectly in character for him to sexually exploit a young woman: he does so everyday with his brothel.
Carlo answers: “I don’t plan on making Angela mine because she already is.” In a way, there is an underlying truth to this answer. Carlo sees his children as properties and extensions of himself, people to exert control over. But here, he distorts his sense of paternal ownership into a sexual one, pretending that he and Angela have been lovers for two years. It’s a socially intelligible lie that hides a truth he won’t say at all cost, a way for asserting ownership over Angela, as well as another way to humiliate his son.
Ciro angrily accuses his father of having taken advantage of a young girl. On one hand, he recognizes this immediately as abuse and exploitation, showing a certain awareness of power dynamics and instinctively blaming his father first. On the other hand, he immediately believes it, which gets worse when Carlo goes on to pretend that Angela willingly gave herself to him, despite the fact that it doesn’t fit her character and behavior at all. Obviously he has to believe in order for drama to unfold but it can seem strange and frustrating still. From a character perspective, we can argue that it shows the extent of Carlo’s control over the household and the narrative: whatever he says becomes truth, without question. It’s also a lie that plays on Ciro’s insecurities of being a lesser man than his father, insecuritues Carlo has cultivated all his life, and there is a form of self-loathing in believing it.
Carlo interestingly says that Angela is “not a girl but a woman”. In the scene where he humiliated Angela after the aborted Cinderella night out, which can be seen as a sort of parallel to this scene (confronting one child after witnessing incest to try and intimidate or lie his way into shutting down the relationship without telling the truth), he had told her to “not make the woman with my son”, as if she wasn’t worthy to be with people of their social standings, as if being a servant made her not quite a woman, a lesser being. Yet now that it’s convenient to him, he claims her as a woman, his woman, attempting to control even her identity.
Claiming that Angela gave herself to him is a way to completely destroy Ciro’s relationship with her, but I also wonder if he might also be retroactively defending the nature of his relationship with her mother. Estela says it was coercive, while he described it as a mere “folly”, clearly not thinking he did anything wrong to the poor woman.
He also adds that he doesn’t think Angela would trade him for anyone, which mirrors his very close and possessive relationship with Maria. He did marry her off, but he remains controlling of her and her life. Her husband is his employee, they still live in his house and he wants to be the most important man in her life and make the decisions for her.
Ciro calls his father a pig and storms off, still thinking his father committed some evil, yet already turning against Angela…
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