The Missionary: An Indian Tale

by Sydney Owenson Morgan

Set in seventeenth-century India, The Missionary focuses on the relationship between Hilarion, a Portuguese missionary to India, and Luxima, an Indian prophetess. Both are aristocratic, devoted to their religions, bound by vows of chastity, and begin the novel biased against other cultures. This Broadview Literary Texts edition also includes extensive primary source appendices that situate the novel in relation to Irish, Portuguese and Indian history, as well as to the literature of sensibility and travel writing.

Genres: Classics, Irish Literature, Historical Fiction, 19th Century

340 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1811

About the author

Sydney, Lady Morgan, née Owenson, was an Irish novelist.

She was one of the most vivid and hotly discussed literary figures of her generation. She began her career with a precocious volume of poems. She collected Irish tunes, for which she composed the words, thus setting a fashion adopted with signal success by Thomas Moore. Her St. Clair (1804), a novel of ill-judged marriage, ill-starred love, and impassioned nature-worship, in which the influence of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and Jean-Jacques Rousseau was apparent, at once attracted attention.

Reviews

[Kelsey · Rating 1 out of 5]

I only read Volume 1 (out of 3) because it was so overly verbose, and I didn't have the time to wade through it. It takes 88 pages for a Portuguese monk to go to India and convert a beautiful "heathen princess" to Christianity. Why does that take 88 pages? I feel as if each page could have been reduced to a sentence or maybe a paragraph, without losing meaning.

I might have enjoyed this story if I wasn't reading under a deadline.

Basically, this holds very little interest for me. The language is pretty, but that's about it, in my opinion.

[Meri · Rating 3 out of 5]

Beautifully written, tragic love story involving a Christian missionary and an Indian priestess. Their forbidden love is so heartbreaking to read about; I kept hoping they'd be able to overcome the religious and cultural differences and live happily ever after. But obviously, this isn't that kind of story. Love in the 19th century = tough for everyday people, let alone religious figureheads.

[Ewa Nowak · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fantastic story... yeah, it's overly sentimental... yeah, it's verbose.... but boy, is it erotic (in a 19th Century kind of way)! AND the underlying idea fascinates me: Why do we--Christians, Occidentals, Westerners, the Civilized--think we can impose our own religion on others? Why do we insist that our religion is the one that's true, good, worthwhile?

[Katarzyna Bartoszynska · Rating 4 out of 5]

2019: my students loved it this time! And I still found it fascinating.

2015: This is a bit of a slog (my poor students were absolutely miserable), BUT if you're interested in Orientalism, oh wow is it fascinating.

[Kirsten · Rating 1 out of 5]

DNF

[Connor Creech · Rating 1 out of 5]

Boring and so dense

[Savannah Chorn · Rating 3 out of 5]

Beautiful prose, though overly descriptive. Lots to think about in terms of Christian asceticism, religious hypocrisy, and 17th century Catholic missionary work in India. This is not the first time the Inquisition has shown up and ruined everything in an eighteenth century novel. Oh, and quite spicy for its time.