I scorn your idea of love…

Just when Jane’s life finally seems to be looking up, St. John comes in and makes a mess of things.

To begin with, Jane quits her job as the schoolmistress at the end of the year.

Good fortune opens the hand as well as the heart wonderfully; and to give somewhat when we have largely received, is but to afford a vent to the unusual ebullition of the sensations. I had long felt with pleasure that many of my rustic scholars liked me, and when we parted that consciousness was confirmed: they manifested their affection plainly and strongly. Deep was my gratification to find I really had a place in their unsophisticated hearts: I promised them that never a week should pass in their future when I did not visit them, and give them an hour’s teaching in their school.

Then St John greets her on the way out.

“Do you consider you have got your reward for a season of exertion?” asked Mr. Rivers when they were gone. “Does not the consciousness of having done some real good in your day and generation give you pleasure?”
“Doubtless.”
“And you have only toiled a few months! Would not a life devoted to the task of regenerating your race be well spent?”
“Yes,” I said; “but I could not go on for ever so: I want to enjoy my own faculties as well as to cultivate those of other people. I must enjoy them now; don’t recall either my mind or body to the school: I am out of it, and disposed for full holiday.”

She plans to give Moor House a thorough deep cleaning, and refurbish it somewhat, in anticipation of the return of Mary and Diana for the holidays.

“My purpose, in short, is to have all things in an absolute perfect state of readiness for Diana and Mary before next Thursday; and my ambition is to give them a beau-ideal of a welcome when they come.”
St. John smiled slightly: still he was dissatisfied.
“It is all very well for the present,” said he: “but seriously, I trust that when the first flush of vivacity is over you will look a little higher than domestic endearments and household joys.”
“The best things the world has!” I interrupted.
“No, Jane, no: this world is not the scene of fruition; do not attempt to make it so: nor of the rest; do not turn slothful.”
“I mean, on the contrary, to be busy.”
“Jane, I excuse you for the present: two months’ grace I allow you for the full enjoyment of your new position, and for pleasing yourself with this late-found charm of relationship; but then I hope you will begin to look beyond Moor House and Morton, and sisterly society, and the selfish calm and sensual comfort of civilised affluence. I hope your energies will then once more trouble you with their strength.”

I mean, he’s not wrong that living in a rustic home with family and abundance IS a privilege not many people have, regardless of whether they choose to do work themselves. But his chiding her for enjoying her prosperity is sadly a foretaste of what’s to come…

“St. John,” I said, “I think you are almost wicked to talk so. I am disposed to be as content as a queen, and you try to stir me up to restlessness! To what end?”
“To the end of turning to profit the talents which God has committed to your keeping; and of which He will surely one day demand a strict account. Jane, I shall watch you closely and anxiously – I warn you of that. And try to control the disproportionate fervour with which you throw yourself into common-place home pleasures. Don’t cling so tenaciously to ties of the flesh; save your constancy and ardour for an adequate cause; forbear to waste them on their transient objects. Do you hear, Jane?”
“Yes; just as if you were speaking Greek. I feel I have adequate cause to be happy, and I will be happy. Good-bye!”

Thus, she accomplishes her project with Moor House, but St. John isn’t as thrilled with the fruits of her labor as she hoped.

St. John was a good man; but I began to feel he had spoken truth of himself when he said he was hard and cold. The humanities and amenities of life had no attraction for him – its peaceful enjoyments no charm. Literally, he lived only to aspire – after what was good and great, certainly; but still he would never rest; nor approve of others resting round him. As I looked at his lofty forehead, still pale as a white stone – at his fine lineaments fixed in study – I comprehended all at once that he would hardly make a good husband: that it would be a trying thing to be his wife. I understood, as by inspiration, the nature of his love for Miss Oliver; I agreed with him that it was but a love of the senses. I comprehended how he should despise himself for the feverish influence it exercised over him; how he should wish to stifle and destroy it; how he should mistrust its ever conducing permanently to his happiness, or hers. I saw he was of the material from which nature hews her heroes – Christian and Pagan – her lawgivers, her statesmen, her conquerors; a steadfast bulwark for great interests to rest upon; but, at the fireside, too often a cold cumbrous column, gloomy and out of place.
“This parlour is not his sphere,” I reflected; “the Himalayan ridge, or Caffre bush, even the plague-cursed Guinea Coast swamp, would suit him better. Well may he eschew the calm of domestic life; it is not his element: there his faculties stagnate – they cannot develop or appear to advantage. It is in scenes of strife and danger – where courage is proved, and energy exercised, and fortitude tasked – that he will speak and move, the leader and superior. A merry child would have the advantage of him on this hearth. He is right to choose a missionary’s career – I see it now.”

But when his sisters arrive, Jane’s promtply distracted, and Mary and Diana have much more satisfactory responses to when she did with Moor House.

I am afraid the whole of the ensuing week tried his patience. It was Christmas week: we took to no settled employment, but spent it in a sort of merry domestic dissipation. The air of the moors, the freedom of home, the dawn of prosperity, acted on Diana’s and Mary’s spirits like some life-giving elixir: they were gay from morning till noon, and from noon till night. They could always talk; and their discourse witty, pithy, original, had such charms for me, that I preferred listening to, and sharing in it, to anything else. St. John did not rebuke our vivacity; but he escaped from it: he was seldom on the house; his parish was large, the population scattered. and he found daily business in visiting the sick and poor in its different districts.
One morning after breakfast, Diana, after looking a little pensive for some minutes, asked him, “If his plans were yet unchanged?”
“Unchanged and unchangeable,” was the reply. And he proceeded to inform us that his departure from England was now definitively fixed for the ensuing year.
“And Rosamond Oliver?” suggested Mary: the words seeming to escape her lips involuntarily: for no sooner had she uttered them than she made a gesture as if wishing to recall them. St. John had a book in his hand – it was his unsocial custom to read at meals – he closed it, and looked up.

He informs them (with is usual aloofness) that Miss Oliver is engaged to a wealthy man in a nearby town.

I was out of practice in talking to him: his reserve was again frozen over, and my frankness was congealed beneath it. He had not kept his promise of treating me like his sisters; he continually made little chilling differences between us, which did not at all tend to the development of cordiality: in short, now that I was acknowledged his kinswoman, and lived under the same roof with him, I felt the distance between us to be greater than when he had known me only as the village schoolmistress. When I remembered how far I had once been admitted to his confidence, I could hardly comprehend his present frigidity.
Such being the case, I felt not a little surprised when he raised his head suddenly from the desk over which he was stooping, and said: – “You see, Jane, the battle is fought and the victory won.”
Startled at being thus addressed, I did not immediately reply: after a moment’s hesitation I answered: – “But are you sure you are not in the position of those conquerors whose triumphs have cost them too dear? Would not such another ruin you?”
“I think not; and if I were, it does not much signify; I shall not again be called upon to contend for such another. The event of the conflict is decisive: my way is clear; I thank God for it!” So saying, he returned to his papers and his silence.

So, he’s clearly relieved that Miss Oliver will no longer be a potential threat to his plans.

But after the holidays, Jane keeps her promise and teaches weekly in the school still…and St. John takes an interest in this, pushing her to attend in all weather conditions, much like himself with his parish service.

“Jane is not such a weakling as you would make her,” he would say: “she can bear a mountain blast, or a shower, or a few flakes of snow, as well as any of us. Her constitution is both sound and elastic; – better calculated to endure variations of climate than many more robust.”
And when I returned, sometimes a good deal tired and not a little weather-beaten, I never dared complain, because I saw that to murmur would be to vex him: on all occasions fortitude pleased him; the reverse was a special annoyance.

And this is where we begin to see her hiding parts of herself from St. John (well, she hid her identity from him for a while, but this is different).

“Jane, what are you doing?”
“Learning German.”
“I want you to give up German, and learn Hindostanee.”
“You are in earnest?”
“In such earnest that I must have it so: and I will tell you why.”
[…]
St. John was not a man to be lightly refused: you felt that every impression made on him, either for pain or pleasure, was deep-graved and permanent. I consented. When Diana and Mary returned the former found her scholar transferred from her to her brother: she laughed; and both she and Mary agreed that St. John should never have persuaded them to such a step. He answered, quietly: “I know it.”

His excuse is that he wants a partner in learning a new language…the language he’s learning because that’s the common language in India.

I found him a very patient, very forbearing, and yet an exacting master: he expected me to do a great deal; and when I fulfilled his expectations, he, in his own way, fully testified his approbation. By degrees, he acquired a certain influence over me that took away my liberty of mind: his praise and notice were more restraining than his indifference. I could no longer talk or laugh freely when he was by, because a tiresomely importunate instinct reminded me that vivacity (at least in me) was distasteful to him. I was so fully aware that only serious moods and occupations were acceptable, that in his presence every effort to sustain or follow any other became vain: I fell under a freezing spell. When he said “go,” I went; “come,” I came; “do this,” I did it. But I did not love my servitude: I wished, many a time, he had continued to neglect me.

And this isn’t the dynamic you’d expect with siblings…something that his sisters notice.

“St. John! you used to call Jane your third sister, but you don’t treat her as such: you should kiss her too.”
She pushed me towards him. I thought Diana very provoking, and felt uncontrollably confused; and while I was thus thinking and feeling, St. John bent his head; his Greek face was brought to a level with mine, his eyes questioned my eyes piercingly – he kissed me. There are no such things as marble kisses, or ice kisses, or I should say my ecclesiastical cousin’s salute belonged to one of these classes; but there may be experiment kisses, and his was an experiment kiss. When given, he viewed me to learn the result; it was not striking: I am sure I did not blush; perhaps I might have turned a little pale, for I felt as if this kiss were a seal affixed to my fetters. He never omitted the ceremony afterwards, and the gravity and quiescence with which I underwent it seemed to invest it for him with a certain charm.

Then, after some months attempting to learn what became of Mr. Rochester in her spare time (and learning Hindi in the bulk of it), she just has a bad day…and that’s when St. John chooses to have a talk with her.

I know no medium: I never in my life have known any medium in my dealings with positive, hard characters, antagonistic to my own, between absolute submission and determined revolt. I have always faithfully observed the one, up to the very moment of bursting, sometimes with volcanic vehemence, into the other; and as neither present circumstances warranted, nor present mood inclined me to mutiny, I observed careful obedience to St. John’s directions; and in ten minutes I was treading the wild track of the glen, side by side with him.

He’s anticipating his voyage to India now.

“God will protect you, for you have undertaken His work,” I answered.
“Yes,” said he, “there is my glory and joy. I am a servant of an infallible master. I am not going out under human guidance, subject to the defective laws and erring control of my feeble fellow-worms: my king, my lawgiver, my captain, is the All-perfect. It seems strange to me that all round me do not burn to enlist under the same banner, – to join in the same enterprise.”
“All do not have your powers: and it would be folly for the feeble to wish to march with the strong.”

But then he cuts to the chase:

“I do not speak to the feeble, or think of them: I address only such as are worthy of the work, and competent to accomplish it.”
“Those are few in number, and difficult to discover.”
“You say truly: but when found, it is right to stir them up – to urge and exhort them to the effort – to show them what their gifts are, and why they were given – to speak Heaven’s message in their ear, – to offer them, direct from God, a place in the ranks of His chosen.”
“If they are really qualified for the task, will not their own hearts be the first to inform of it?”
I felt as if an awful charm was framing round and gathering over me: I trembled to hear some fatal word spoken which would at once declare and rivet the spell.
“And what does your heart say?” demanded St. John.
“My heart is mute, – my heart is mute,” I answered, struck and thrilled.
“Then I must speak for it,” continued the deep, relentless voice. “Jane, come with me to India: come as my help-meet and fellow-labourer.”

So he just asked her to marry him, and Jane is forced to acknowledge that it makes sense on a purely utilitarian level.

“Oh, St. John!” I cried, “have some mercy!”
I appealed to one who, in the discharge of what he believed to be his duty, knew neither mercy nor remorse. He continued: – “God and nature intended you for a missionary’s wife. It is not personal, but mental endowments they have given you: you are formed for labour, not for love. A missionary’s wife you must – shall be. You shall be mine: I claim you – not for my pleasure, but for my Sovereign’s service.”

After making his case, St. John retreats to allow her time to think it over.

“I can do what he wants me to do: I am forced to see and acknowledge that,” I meditated – “That is, if my life be spared me. But I feel mine is not the existence to be long protracted under an Indian sun. – What then? He does not care for that: when my time came to die he would resign me, in all serenity and sanctity, to the God who gave me. The case is very plain before me. In leaving England, I should leave a loved but empty land – Mr. Rochester is not there: and if he were, what is, what can that ever be to me? My business is to live without him now: nothing so absurd, so weak as to drag on from day to day, as if I were waiting some impossible change in circumstances, which might reunite me to him. Of course (as St. John once said) I must seek another interest in life to replace the one lost: is not the occupation he now offers me truly the most glorious man can adopt or God assign? Is it not, by its noble cares and sublime results, one best calculated to fill the void left by uptorn affections and demolished hopes? I believe I must say, Yes – and yet I shudder. Alas! If I join St. John, I abandon half myself: if I go to India, I go to premature death. And how will the interval between leaving England for India, and India for the grave, be filled? Oh, I know well! That, too, is very clear to my vision. By straining to satisfy St. John till my sinews ache, I shall satisfy him – to the finest central point and farthest outward circle of his expectations. If I do go with him – if I do make the sacrifice he urges, I will make it absolutely: I will throw all on the altar – heart, vitals, the entire victim. He will never love me; but he shall approve me; I will show him energies he has not yet seen, resources he has never suspected. Yes: I can work as hard as he can; and with as little grudging.
“Consent, then, to his demand is possible: but for one item – one dreadful item. It is – that he asks me to be his wife, and has no more a husband’s heart for me than that frowning giant rock, down which the stream is foaming in yonder gorge. He prizes me as a soldier would a good weapon, that is all. Unmarried to him, this would never grieve me; but can I let him complete his calculations – coolly put into practice his plans – go through the wedding ceremony? Can I receive from him the bridal ring, endure all the forms of love (which I doubt not he would scrupulously observe) and know that the spirit was quite absent? Can I bear the consciousness that every endearment he bestows is a sacrifice made on principle? No: such a martyrdom would be monstrous. I will never undergo it. As his sister, I might accompany him – not as his wife: I will tell him so.”

This, again, is a sort of inverse of her relationship with Mr. Rochester. Where he asked her to go against her moral principles to be in a relationship with him, St. John is asking her to give up her sensibilities (and, in a sense, her freedom) for what she believes to be a great moral cause.

“You have hitherto been my adopted brother: I, your adopted sister; let us continue as such: you and I had better not marry.”
He shook his head. “Adopted fraternity will not do in this case. If you were my real sister it would be different: I should take you and seek no wife. But as it is either our union must be consecrated and sealed by marriage, or it cannot exist: practical obstacles oppose themselves to any other plan. Do you not see it, Jane? Consider a moment – your strong sense will guide you.”
I did consider: and still my sense, such as it was, directed me only to the fact that we did not love each other as man and wife should; and therefore it inferred we ought not to marry. I said so. “St. John,” I returned, “I regard you as a brother – you, me as a sister: so let us continue.”
“We cannot – we cannot,” he answered, with short, sharp determination: “it would not do. You have said you will go with me to India: remember – you said that.”
“Conditionally.”

because in that day and age, it was far simpler to MARRY a cousin that treat her like a relative

And the fact that he doesn’t even CONSIDER her idea of going as siblings seems to indicate that the problem is that he’s started thinking of Jane that way.

“Seek one elsewhere than in me, St. John: seek one fitted to you.”
“One fitted to my purpose, you mean – fitted to my vocation. Again I tell you it is not the insignificant private individual – the mere man, with man’s selfish senses – I wish to mate: it is the missionary.”
“And I will give the missionary my energies – it is all he wants – but not myself: that would only be adding the husk and shell to the kernel. For them he has no use: I retain them.”
“You cannot – you ought not. Do you think God will be satisfied with half an oblation? Will He accept a mutilated sacrifice? It is the cause of God I advocate: it is under His standard I enlist you. I cannot accept on His behalf a divided allegiance: it must be entire.”
“Oh! I will give my heart to God,” I said. “You do not want it.”

And this is veering dangerously close to religious abuse – he’s trying to coerce her into marriage by saying that it’s “God’s will.”

But Jane quickly realizes that she went a little too far here.

I will not swear, reader, that there was not something of repressed sarcasm both in the tone in which I uttered this sentence, and in the feeling that accompanied it. I had silently feared St. John till now, because I had not understood him. He had held me in awe, because he had held me in doubt. How much of him was saint, how much mortal, I could not heretofore tell: but revelations were being made in this conference: the analysis of his nature was proceeding before my eyes. I saw his fallibilities: I did, on the bank of the heath, and with that handsome form before me, I sat at the feet of a man as erring as I. The veil fell from his hardness and despotism. Having felt in him the presence of these qualities, I felt his imperfection, and took courage. I was with an equal – one with whom I might argue – one whom, if I saw good, I might resist.

Because up until now, she didn’t really think of him as an equal, but now she sees that he has as many failings as anyone else. He claims to be the voice of God, but is only using it here for his own ends.

“Once wrench your heart from man, and fix it on your Maker, the advancement of that Maker’s spiritual kingdom on earth will be your chief delight and endeavour; you will be ready to do at once whatever furthers that end. You will see what impetus would be given to your efforts and mine by our physical and mental union in marriage: the only union that gives a character of permanent conformity to the destines and designs of human beings: and, passing over all minor caprices – all trivia; difficulties and delicacies of feeling – all scruple about degree, kind, strength or tenderness of mere personal inclination – you will hasten to enter into that union at once.”
“Shall I?” I said briefly; and I looked at his features, beautiful in their harmony, but strangely formidable in their still severity; at his brow, commanding but not open; at his eyes, bright and deep, and searching, but never soft; at his tall, imposing figure; and fancied myself in idea his wife. Oh! it would never do! As his curate, his comrade, all would be right: I would cross oceans with him in that capacity; toil under eastern suns, in Asian deserts with him in that office; admire and emulate his courage and devotion, and vigour; accommodate quietly to his masterhood; smile undisturbed at his ineradicable ambition; discriminate the Christian from the man; profoundly esteem the one, and freely forgive the other. I should suffer often, no doubt attached to him only in this capacity: my body would be under rather a stringent yoke, but my heart and mind would be free. I should still have my unblighted self to turn to: my natural unenslaved feelings with which to communicate in moments of loneliness. There would be recesses in my mind which would be only mine, to which he never came; and sentiments growing fresh there, fresh and sheltered, which his austerity could never blight, nor his measured warrior-march trample down: but as his wife – at his side always, and always restrained, and always checked – forced to keep the fire of my nature continually low, to compel it to burn inwardly and never utter a cry, though the imprisoned flame consumed vital after vital – this would be unendurable.

Because he wants to take her whole being and dedicate it to God, with no aspect of heart and mind untouched by him, and that would be exhausting.

“It is known that you are not my sister; I cannot introduce you as such: to attempt it would be to fasten injurious suspicions on us both. And for the rest, though you have a man’s vigorous brain, you have a woman’s heart, and – it would not do.”
“It would do,” I affirmed with some disdain, “perfectly well. I have a woman’s heart; but not where you are concerned; for you I have only a comrade’s constancy; a fellow-soldier’s frankness, fidelity, fraternity, if you like; a neophyte’s respect and submission to his hierophant: nothing more – don’t fear.”
“It is what I want,” he said, speaking to himself; “it is just what I want. And there are obstacles in the way: they must be hewn down. Jane, you would not repent marrying me; be certain of that; we must be married. I repeat it: there is no other way; and undoubtedly enough love will follow upon marriage to render the union right even in your eyes.”
“I scorn your idea of love,” I could not help saying, as I rose up and stood before him, leaning my back against the rock. “I scorn the counterfeit sentiment you offer: yes, St. John, and I scorn you when you offer it.”

Because he only wants to control her, not truly love her, let alone undesrstand her. He wants only parts of her, but demands the whole.

“Forgive my words, St. John: but it is your own fault that I have been roused to speak so unguardedly. You have introduced a topic on which our natures are at variance – a topic we should never discuss; the very name of love is an apple of discord between us – if the reality were required what should we do? How should we feel? My dear cousin, abandon your scheme of marriage – forget it.”
“No,” said he; “it is a long-cherished scheme, and the only one which can secure my great end: but I urge you no further at present. To-morrow I leave home for Cambridge: I have many friends there to whom I wish to say farewell. I shall be absent a fortnight – take that space of time to consider my offer: and do not forget that if you reject it, it is not me you deny, but God. Through my means, He opens to you a noble career; as my wife only can you enter upon it. Refuse to be my wife, and you limit yourself for ever to a track of selfish ease and barren obscurity. Tremble lest in that case you should be numbered with those who have denied the faith, and are worse than infidels!”

And that’s DEFINITELY religious abuse! Implying that if she doesn’t marry you, she’ll lose her salvation?

And of course, his sisters sense that they’ve had a disagreement, but Jane isn’t able to tell them the details.

“Good-night, St. John,” said I.
Good-night, Jane,” he replied calmly.
“Then shake hands,” I added.
What a cold, loose touch he impressed on my fingers! He was deeply displeased by what had occurred that day: cordiality would not warm, nor tears move him. No happy reconciliation was to be had with him – no cheering smile or generous word: but still the Christian was patient and placid; and when I asked him if he forgave me, he answered that he was not in the habit of cherishing the remembrance of vexation; that he had nothing to forgive: not having been offended.
And with that answer he left me. I would much rather he had knocked me down.

AND SHE SHOULDN’T BE ASKING HIM FOR FORGIVENESS!

until next time