Cover of Sydney Owenson's novel, The Missionary
From my book, pp. 33-34:
In her 1811 novel, The
Missionary, Sydney Owenson (Lady Morgan) uses
realism in conjunction with an icon to illustrate her views on cultural
adaptation. In the following passage, she describes the realistic nature of
Hilarion as
a young, conflicted priest, who sacrifices earthly pleasures to honor his
faith:
All
that could touch in the saint, or impose in the man breathed around him: the
sublimity of religion, and the splendour of beauty, the purity of faith, and
the dignity of manhood; grace and majesty, holiness and simplicity, diffusing
their combined influence over his form and motions, his look and air. (The Missionary, p. 82)
In contrast, Luxima, the Hindu Priestess, embodies beauty
with spirituality as she interacts with the Missionary through her “dovelike
eyes and innocent hands…raised in same direction, for gazing on the glories of
the firmament, a feeling of rapturous devotion, awakened and exalted by the
enthusiasm of the Missionary, filled her soul.” (The Missionary, p. 121) Not only do her characters contain
realistic qualities that independently represent their iconic associations, but
her setting this tale in India, provides the other realistic aspect of
Owenson’s novel, for in the seventeenth century, India is the focus of European
nations, who are seeking new economic and political territories to whet their
imperial appetites. Moreover, the Catholic Church, having made so many
dissenters from its powerful stance, needed to expand its philosophical
territories, so the emergence of missionaries became a reality in India during
the early seventeenth century. Portuguese missionaries do
travel to India for the purpose of religious conversion of the
non-Christian Hindus. Owenson draws
upon observations from the historical documentations of Francois Bernier
(1625-1688) to provide anthropological references as a means to create
realistic characterizations, as she brings two people together in a Garden of
Eden to form the genesis of a consciousness that alerts her audience to the
possibilities of overzealous proselytizing of any stalwart community.
Owenson
represents iconic realism with the placement of Hilarion, the Franciscan
Priest, an icon of Jesus Christ and European philosophy, physically and
spiritually immersed with Indian culture through his interaction with an Indian
Priestess, the icon of 17th century Hindu community and victimized
follower of a faith and culture that is targeted for conversion. As Thomas
Kavanagh points out:
The
signified meanings, instead of being accepted as such, instead of taking us
outside the text as text, become themselves the signifiers of the iconic signs,
of a continuing movement, of a second temporality definable only within the
parameters of the text.” [1]
Hilarion is a Catholic Missionary because he is the nephew
to the Archbishop of Lisbon. Although her description of his qualities is quite
flattering, under his cloak of religiosity, his true nature is simply that of
an ordinary man. As a true follower of Jesus Christ, he transfigures into a
real person with real emotions and real anxieties regarding the bureaucracy of
his organized religion. In Owenson’s portrayal of him as an icon set within the
realism of seventeenth century India, he signifies two elements: the Catholic
Church of the Inquisition period and imperialistic England, whose
dogmatic government maintains its own mission to convert the Irish to the
British consciousness. John Locke, in
his essay on the “Powers of the Commonwealth” refers to this form of bureaucracy in
government and religion:
For no man or society of men having
a power to deliver up their preservation, or consequently the means of it, to
the absolute will and arbitrary dominion of another, whenever anyone shall go
about to bring them into such a slavish condition, they will always have a
right to preserve what they have not a power to part with, and to rid
themselves of those who invade this fundamental, sacred, and unalterable law of
self-preservation for which they entered society. And thus the community may be
said in this respect to be always the supreme power, but not as considered
under any form of government, because this power of the people can never take
place till the government be dissolved. [2]
Thus, the
hierarchy of authority within human society creates significant conflict of
interest for those whose mindset differs from the status quo. Owenson
demonstrates this conflict through her disparate characterizations.
Thomas
Kavanagh, “Time and Narration: Indexical and Iconic Models” in Comparative Literature, MLN, 86. 6
(1971), p. 832.
