From my book:
Sydney Owenson
acknowledges the spiritual connection between humanity and natural law, a
common theme occurring in Goethe’s works. In one of his conversations with
Johann Peter Eckermann, he explains:
Freedom consists
not in refusing to recognize anything above us, but in respecting something
which is above us; for, by respecting it, we raise ourselves to it, and, by our
very acknowledgment, prove that we bear within ourselves what is higher, and
are worthy to be on a level with it.[1]
Owenson, then,
incorporates the Romantic concept of nature’s influence on humanity’s
intellectual actions while she introduces the reality of political and societal
constraints through her characters struggles with self-awareness. Through this
conflict, Owenson personifies the dichotomous nature of glory in which her
birth nation struggles with true autonomy and its native glór (voice) to be heard.
[1] Johann Goethe, quoted in Conversations of Goethe with Johann Peter Eckermann, translated by
John Oxennford, edited by J.K. Moorhead (New York: Da Capo Press, 1998), p.
157.