In her novel, The Missionary, Sydney Owenson presents two religious communities,
the Hindu community of 17th century India and the European Roman
Catholic community during the Spanish Inquisition. Set in the year, 1620, after
the establishment of the British East India Company in the lush jungles and
arid desert of Western and Northern India, this tale illustrates a political
genesis of European imperialism represented by the two central characters,
Hilarion, a 25-year-old Portuguese Franciscan Nuncio and Luxima, a young,
widowed Brahmin priestess.
To some readers of this narrative, Owenson may appear to be telling an adventurous romance in an exotic setting to entertain her aristocratic readers, and this may be partially true. However, her romantic novel illustrates much more, for iconic properties of parochial dynamism reside at the core of each character’s restrictive community. These properties include the intense need for the Missionary to convert non-Christians to Catholicism and the deep conviction of a Hindu’s integration of natural and spiritual beliefs. Furthermore, Owenson creates an unrestrictive, fertile setting, where the Catholic missionary represents dogmatic and imperious Britain and the Hindu priestess, faithful to her own belief and community, represents the fervent hope for freedom of faith found in Owenson’s Catholic Ireland.
Therefore, in her novel, The Missionary, Sydney Owenson illustrates the semiotic theory of iconic realism by representing two disparate icons, each placed within a realistic community, only to reveal a cultural reality that, without a truly spiritual connection, strict adherence to an intolerant dogma ultimately leads to the consequence of cultural cynicism.
To some readers of this narrative, Owenson may appear to be telling an adventurous romance in an exotic setting to entertain her aristocratic readers, and this may be partially true. However, her romantic novel illustrates much more, for iconic properties of parochial dynamism reside at the core of each character’s restrictive community. These properties include the intense need for the Missionary to convert non-Christians to Catholicism and the deep conviction of a Hindu’s integration of natural and spiritual beliefs. Furthermore, Owenson creates an unrestrictive, fertile setting, where the Catholic missionary represents dogmatic and imperious Britain and the Hindu priestess, faithful to her own belief and community, represents the fervent hope for freedom of faith found in Owenson’s Catholic Ireland.
Therefore, in her novel, The Missionary, Sydney Owenson illustrates the semiotic theory of iconic realism by representing two disparate icons, each placed within a realistic community, only to reveal a cultural reality that, without a truly spiritual connection, strict adherence to an intolerant dogma ultimately leads to the consequence of cultural cynicism.
