General concepts from my book:
Sydney Owenson
acknowledges the spiritual connection between humanity, nature, and God's 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 God’s influence on humanity’s
intellectual actions in conjunction with natural law 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.
