Ursus’s foster-parent care for Dea

Ursus’s foster-parent care for Dea began when he took her in as an infant and continued as she grew into a blind young woman. His grumbling did not lessen the substance of his care: he nourished and raised her, made her part of his wandering household, and placed her within an imaginative family that joined the human, animal, and divine worlds.

Naming and place in the household

Ursus had kept Dea and Gwynplaine with him as the children of a small company of wanderers. When he had to name the infant girl, he consulted Wolf. He assigned the members of their hut three orders: Ursus represented beasts, Wolf represented humanity, and the child represented the world above. Wolf offered no objection, and Ursus named her Dea. The scene makes naming an act of welcome: a foundling whom winter and loss had left vulnerable was given a distinct place in the household’s conception of the universe.

That symbolic place accompanies Dea’s blindness, which had been caused by the same winter night that killed her mother. As she grew, she remained physically dependent on the people around her, but the account does not reduce her to that dependence. Ursus’s name for her expresses his recognition of her importance within their shared life, even as her sightless eyes leave her unable to see the world outside.

Daily care and shared burdens

The narrator describes Ursus’s relation to Dea and Gwynplaine as almost that of both father and mother. He brought them up and nourished them, complaining all the while. Their adoption made the hut’s travels harder: the increased burden meant that Ursus more often had to harness himself beside Homo to help draw the van. His care is thus shown not only as affection but as sustained work with material consequences for the household.

As the children grew, the physical burden shifted. When Gwynplaine was nearly grown and Ursus had become old, Gwynplaine took his turn drawing him. This change gives the household’s care a reciprocal dimension: the children Ursus had carried through their early years eventually helped carry him.

Teaching and the meaning of care

Ursus distinguished between what he taught the two children. In a monologue, he said he had taught Gwynplaine everything, Latin included, and had taught Dea nothing, music included. Yet he also taught both children to sing. He played the flute and the hurdy-gurdy, instruments that attracted crowds, and used music as part of the education and performance they shared. The contrast suggests that Dea’s place in the family was not defined by the same instruction as Gwynplaine’s, even though music brought them together in a common practice.

The relation’s significance lies in the gap between Ursus’s grumbling manner and his continuing acts of care. He gives Dea a place in the household, raises and nourishes her, and includes her in its music and wandering life. His care does not remove the loss and blindness that shape her existence; it gives her a family within which she can grow and belong.