Sydney Owenson, Dynamic of Anglo- Irish relation and the Missionary

Abstract

This dissertation reads Sydney Owenson, Dynamic of Anglo- Irish Relation and The Missionary. The word “enthusiasm” occurs several times in the narrative with reference to its two protagonists, Portuguese missionary Hilarion and Indian priestess Luxima. This trope's use with Hilarion confirms the Romantic Era's hidden worries about whether Romanticism's refined version of enthusiasm was no better than its crude religious counterpart. On the other hand, its use with Luxima shows that enthusiasm can heal. Despite his abundance of zeal, Hilarion relinquishes opportunities to turn his suffering to benefit the community. Luxima’s enthusiasm, on the other hand, projects it as a cross-cultural phenomenon that is oppositional to colonial and proselytizing values. By privileging her enthusiasm over that of Hilarion, Owenson provides an alternative account of cross-cultural relations distinct from the masculinist and Orientalist representations of these relations. Owenson's fictional intervention gives voice to Luxima's ideal, a gesture towards the utopian vision of a peaceful and productive coexistence between East and West, as if to counter these shortcomings of masculine agency.