AI Overview
The Missionary - Broadview Press
Sydney Owenson's The Missionary: An Indian Tale (1811) is a tragic, sentimental romance about forbidden love between a Portuguese Franciscan missionary, Hilarion, and Luxima, a beautiful Indian prophetess, in 17th-century Kashmir, exploring themes of religious intolerance, cultural clashes, colonialism, and the limitations of Western perspectives on the East. Despite vows of chastity, they fall in love, leading to Hilarion's condemnation for heresy by the Inquisition and Luxima's attempted sati, highlighting the conflict between duty, passion, and imperialistic religious zeal.
Key Plot Points:
The Mission: Hilarion arrives in India to convert locals, finding resistance and discovering the powerful, spiritual Indian prophetess Luxima.
Forbidden Attraction: They feel an immediate, powerful bond despite being celibate religious figures from opposing cultures, finding common ground in their spirituality but struggling with their burgeoning passion.
Cultural Clash: The novel uses their romance to critique religious and cultural intolerance, showing how Hilarion's Western lens, even when seeking commonality (like equating Indian gods to Greek ones), often misunderstands and imposes his own framework.
Tragic End: Their love is discovered, leading to Hilarion's execution by the Inquisition, and Luxima, facing disgrace, attempts sati (widow-burning) in a defiant act of spiritual and cultural purity, tying her fate to Hilarion's.
Major Themes:
Colonialism & Orientalism: A critique of European imperial attitudes and the power dynamics between colonizer and colonized, examining how Western views often fail to grasp Eastern cultures authentically.
Religious Intolerance: A commentary on the conflict between Christianity and Hinduism, and the coercive nature of forced conversion.
Gender & Sensibility: Explores female agency, chastity, and passion, contrasting rational Christianity with feminine emotion, influencing later Romantic writers like Shelley.
In essence, The Missionary uses a passionate but doomed interracial romance to examine the complexities, hypocrisies, and devastating consequences of cultural encounter and religious imperialism in colonial settings.
Missionary, an Indian Tale, The by Sydney Owenson, Lady ...
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Springer Nature Link
Sati and the Lucretia Story in Sydney Owenson's The Missionary
Aug 6, 2025 — Abstract. As Britain expanded its global interests at the turn of the 19th century, reports of ritual suicide such as s...
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