Stained Glass Image of Mary Magdalene, surrounded by roses
from Google Images
From my book, Innovation in Rhetoric in the Writing of Sydney Owenson...
pp. 208-209:
In her novel, St. Clair, Owenson presents autonomy through her lexical choices to illustrate the dichotomy of ritual, be it societal or religious. In doing so, she presents the conundrum of political ritual, that of electing or promoting individuals into public office in order to appease an elitist few at the expense of the majority who must abide by the established legalities:
I remember to have seen in a Benedictine convent at Vendome a relic which raised a considerable revenue to its possessors, from the superstitious devotion which was paid to it; it was a crystal vial, presented by an angel to Mary Magdalene, and supposed to have contained the tear dropped by her divine Reformer to the memory of his departed friend. The allusion may be profane; but my faded rose-leaf, with the tear of genius and sensibility, is to me what the sacred vial is to the monks of St Benedict; from a motive less devout, I confess, in one sense, but certainly more disinterested in another. (St. Clair, vol. I, pp. 166-167)
As Sydney Owenson interweaves the blind devotion to rituals of Catholics with those of the French Revolution, she carefully demonstrates the affiliation of church and state, contrary to legislative decrees in the British Act of Union 1801, which states that those of a particular religious affiliation would not be permitted to hold public office. Thus, those jurisdictions, which primarily consist of Catholic citizens, would not receive representation within the governmental forums and subsequently, would not receive legislation in their favor. Owenson presents this conflicting belief system by cleverly choosing Mary Magdalene, the woman chosen by a few selected medieval scribes to be represented historically as a woman scorned, yet in Owenson's narrative, St. Clair, Mary Magdalene is the source of a worshipped relic. In her revolutionary, albeit romantic, style, Owenson challenges her aristocratic audience to reconsider its dependence on ritualistic prejudice against the population it wishes to control.
Owenson concludes this passage with a reference to a rose, her personal symbol for Ireland. She uses the adjectives, ‘faded, with a tear of genius and sensibility,’ to describe this weathered bloom. This incongruous set of descriptions for a flower held as a ‘sacred vial’ indicates a conflicted perspective. In the following sentence, she reveals with more clarity her conflict, “I confess in one sense but certainly more disinterested in another.” If Owenson attempts to confess to her reading audience her own disinterest in the viability of questionable sacredness in religious relics, she does so by linking her beloved countrymen and women with the possibilities of becoming more conscious of their political reality through their symbolic treasures, such as the weathered rose as the symbol of ancient luster.
