If I were to marry you, you would kill me. You are killing me now.

St. John continues to make life miserable for Jane.

He deferred his departure a whole week; and during that time he made me feel what severe punishment a good yet stern, a conscientious yet implacable man can inflict on one who has offended him. Without one overt act of hostility, one upbraiding word, he contrived to impress me momently with the conviction that I was put beyond the pale of his favour.

Basically, he’s wearing her down with passive-aggressive behavior!

He did not abstain from conversing with me: he even called me as usual each morning to join him at his desk; and I fear the corrupt man within him had a pleasure unimparted to, and unshared by, the pure Christian, in evincing with what skill he could, while acting and speaking apparently just as usual, extract from every deed and every phrase the spirit of interest and approval which had formerly communicated a certain austere charm to his language and manner. To me, he was in reality become no longer flesh, but marble; his eye was a cold, bright, blue gem; his tongue, a speaking instrument – nothing more.
All this was torture to me – refined, lingering torture. It kept up a slow fire of indignation, and a trembling trouble of grief, which harassed and crushed me altogether. I felt how, if I were his wife, this good man, pure as the deep sunless source, could soon kill me: without drawing from my veins a single drop of blood, or receiving on his own crystal conscience the faintest stain of crime. Especially I felt this when I made any attempt to propitiate him. No ruth met my ruth. He experienced no suffering from estrangement – no yearning after reconciliation; and though, more than once, my fast falling tears blistered the page over which we both bent, they produced no more effect on him than if his heart had been really a matter of stone or metal. To his sisters, meantime, he was somewhat kinder than usual: as if afraid that mere coldness would not sufficiently convince me how completely I was banished and banned, he added the force of contrast: and this I am sure he did, not by malice, but on principle.

She doesn’t want to blame him for doing things that hurt her, because he’s doing nothing “wrong”, but he’s still guilting her into accepting a loveless marriage! He’d probably continue this sort of behavior after they were married, and Jane would have even less recourse.

Then, the night before he departs for Cambridge arrives, and Jane attempts to conciliate him (I refuse to say “reconcile”, because she’s done nothing wrong!).

“St. John, I am unhappy, because you are still angry with me. Let us be friends.”
“I hope we are friends,” was the unmoved reply; while he still watched the rising moon, which he had been contemplating as I approached.
“No, St. John, we are not friends as we were. You know that.”
“Are we not? That is wrong. For my part, I wish you no ill and all good.”
“I believe you, St. John; for I am sure you are incapable of wishing anyone ill: but, as your kinswoman, I should desire somewhat more of affection than that sort of general philanthropy you extend to strangers.”
“Of course,” he said. “Your wish is reasonable; and I am far from regarding you as a stranger.”
This, spoken in a cool tranquil tone, was mortifying and baffling enough. Had I attended to the suggestions of pride and ire, I should immediately have left him: but something worked within me more strongly than those feelings could. I deeply venerated my cousin’s talent and principle. His friendship was of value to me: to lose it tried me severely. I would not so soon relinquish the attempt to reconquer it.

and he continues to act infuriatingly like he’s done nothing wrong

“Must we part in this way, St. John? And when you go to India, will you leave me so, without a kinder word than you have yet spoken?”
He now turned quite from the moon, and faced me.
“When I go to India, Jane, will I leave you? What! do you not go to India?”
“You said I could not, unless I married you.”
“And you will not marry me? You adhere to that resolution?”
Reader, do you know, as I do, what terror those cold people can put into the ice of their questions? How much of the fall of the avalanche is in their anger? of the breaking up of the frozen sea of their displeasure?
“No, St. John. I will not marry you. I adhere to my resolution.”
The avalanche had shaken and slid forward; but it did not yet crash down.
“Once more, why this refusal?”
“Formerly,” I answered, “because you did not love me; now, I reply, because you almost hate me. If I were to marry you, you would kill me. You are killing me now.”
His lips and cheeks turned white – quite white.

Once again, she’s entirely correct! But St. John naturally takes offense at the implication that he’s doing anything wrong.

“I should kill you – I am killing you? Your words are such as ought not to be used: violent, unfeminine, and untrue. They betray an unfortunate state of mind: they merit severe reproof: they seem inexcusable; but that it is the duty of man to forgive his fellow, even until seventy-and-seven times.”
I had finished the business now. While earnestly wishing to erase from his mind my former offence, I had stamped on that tenacious surface another and far deeper impression: I had burnt it in.
“Now, you will indeed hate me,” I said. “It is useless to attempt to conciliate you: I see I have made an eternal enemy of you.”
A fresh wrong did these words inflict: the worse because they touched on the truth. That bloodless lip quivered to a temporary spasm. I knew the steely ire I had whetted. I was heart-wrung.

SHE DOESN’T NEED TO BE FORGIVEN FOR SAYING THE TRUTH! OR FOR TURNING YOU DOWN! it’s amazing how much i can hate a character who’s not supposed to be a villain

“You utterly misinterpret my words,” I said, at once seizing his hand: “I have no intention to grieve or pain you – indeed, I have not.”
Most bitterly he smiled – most decidedly he withdrew his hand from mine. “And now you recall your promise, and will not go to India at all, I presume?” said he, after a considerable pause.
“Yes I will, as your assistant,” I answered.
[…]
“I before proved to you the absurdity of a single woman of your age proposing to accompany abroad a single man of mine. I proved it to you in such terms as, I should have thought, would have prevented your ever alluding to the plan. That you have done so, I regret – for your sake.”
I interrupted him. Anything like tangible reproach gave me courage at once. “Keep to common sense, St. John: you are verging on nonsense. You pretend to be shocked by what I have said. You are not really shocked; for, with your superior mind, you cannot be either so dull or so conceited as to misunderstand my meaning. I say again, I will be your curate, if you like, but never your wife.”

No, she did not promise to go to India off-screen, but she’ll address that after she straightens him out on the question of marriage…

Again he turned lividly pale; but, as before, controlled his passion perfectly. He answered emphatically, but calmly: “A female curate, who is not my wife, would never suit me. With me, then, it seems, you cannot go: but if you are sincere in your offer, I will, while in town, speak to a married missionary whose wife needs a coadjutor. Your own fortune will make you independent of the Society’s aid; and thus you may still be spared the dishonour of breaking your promise, and deserting the band you engaged to join.”
Now I never had, as the reader knows, either given any formal promise, or entered into any engagement; and this language was all much too hard, and much too despotic for the occasion. I replied: “There is no dishonour; no breach of promise; no desertion in the case. I am not under the slightest obligation to go to India: especially with strangers. With you I would have ventured much; because I admire, confide in, and, as a sister, I love you: but I am convinced that, go when and with whom I would, I should not live long in that climate.”
“Ah! you are afraid for yourself,” he said, curling his lip.
“I am. God did not give me my life to throw away; and to do as you wish me would, I begin to think, be almost equivalent to committing suicide. Moreover, before I definitively resolve on quitting England, I will know for certain whether I cannot be of greater use by remaining in it than by leaving it.”

It’s perfectly reasonable for her to take her longevity into consideration when making such a huge life decision! Just because YOU’RE willing sacrifice all at the altar of martyrdom doesn’t mean everyone else will follow suit!

“I know where your heart turns, and to what it clings. The interest you cherish is lawless and unconsecrated. Long since you ought to have crushed it: now you should blush to allude to it. You think of Mr. Rochester?”
It was true. I confessed it by silence.
“Are you going to seek Mr. Rochester?”
“I must find out what has become of him.”
“It remains for me, then,” he said, “to remember you in my prayers; and to entreat God for you, in all earnestness, that you may not indeed become a castaway. I had thought I recognised in you one of the chosen. But God sees not as man sees: His will be done.”

Reading this charitably, he might just mean “the chosen” as the martyrs or missionaries or something, but it still sounds an awful lot like he’s questioning her salvation because SHE TURNED HIM DOWN. Just because she’s worried about Mr. Rochester doesn’t mean she’d enter a “sinful” relationship with him! But in his view, any consideration at all of “desires of the flesh” is a stumbling block on the road to Heaven.

So that conversation backfired spectacularly, and Jane retreats to the house and his sisters, who don’t know exactly what’s going on, but they know something’s off.

“That brother of mine cherishes peculiar views of some sort respecting you, I am sure: he has long distinguished you by a notice and interest he never showed to any one else – to what end? I wish he loved you – does he, Jane?”
I put a cool hand to my hot forehead: “No, Die, not one whit.”
“Then why does he follow you so with his eyes – and get you so frequently alone with him, and keep you so continually at his side? Mary and I had both concluded he wished you to marry him.”
“He does – he asked me to be his wife.”
Diana clapped her hands. “That is what we hoped and thought! And you will marry him, Jane, won’t you? And then he will stay in England.”
“Far from that, Diana; his sole idea in proposing to me is to procure a fitting fellow-labourer in his Indian toils.”
“What! He wishes you to go to India?”
“Yes.”
“Madness!” she exclaimed. “You would not live three months there, I am certain. You never shall go: you have not consented – have you, Jane?”
“I have refused to marry him -“
“And consequently displeased him?” she suggested.
“Deeply: he will never forgive me, I fear: yet I offered to accompany him as his sister.”

They naturally rebuke Jane for considering going to India in any capacity (because they’d already be losing a brother that way).

“You are much too pretty, as well as too good, to be grilled alive in Calcutta.” And again she earnestly conjured me to give up all thoughts of going out with her brother.
“I must, indeed,” I said; “for when just now I repeated the offer of serving him as a deacon, he expressed himself shocked at my want of decency. He seemed to think I had committed an impropriety in proposing to accompany him unmarried: as if I had not from the first hoped to find in him a brother; and habitually regarded him as such.”
“What makes you say he does not love you, Jane?”
“You should hear himself on the subject. He has again and again explained that it is not himself, but his office he wishes to mate. He told me I a formed for labour – not for love: which is true, no doubt. But, in my opinion, if I am not formed for love, it follows that I am not formed for marriage. Would it not be strange, Die, to be chained for life to a man who regarded one but as a useful tool?”
“Insupportable – unnatural – out of the question!”
“And then,” I continued, “though I have only sisterly affection for him now, yet, if forced to be his wife, I can imagine the possibility of conceiving an inevitable, strange, torturing kind of love for him: because he is so talented; and there is often a certain heroic grandeur in his look, manner, and conversation. In that case, my lot would become unspeakably wretched. He would not want me to love him; and if I showed the feeling, he would make me sensible that it was superfluity, unrequired by him, unbecoming in me. I know he would.”
“And yet St. John is a good man,” said Diana.
“He is a good and a great man: but he forgets pitilessly, the feelings and claims of little people, in pursuing his own large views. It is better, therefore, for the insignificant to keep out of his way; lest, in his progress, he should trample them down.”

At least these two have some sense!

But of course, Jane can’t avoid him forever. He selects the last chapter of the Bible for their evening devotions.

“He that overcometh shall inherit all things; and I will be his God, and he shall be my son. But,” was slowly, distinctly read, “the fearful, the unbelieving, &c. shall have their part in the lake which burneth with fire and brimstone, which is the second death.”
Henceforward I knew what fate St. John feared for me.
A calm, subdued triumph, blent with a longing earnestness, marked his enunciation of the last glorious verses of that chapter. The reader believed his name was already written in the Lamb’s book of life, and he yearned after the hour which should admit him to the city to which the kings of the earth bring their glory and honour; which has no need of sun or moon to shine in it, because the glory of God lightens it, and the Lamb is the light thereof.

And then he prays in a very condescending manner…but as often happens when someone’s caught up in religious passion, Jane perceives it as a “working of the Spirit” and is more inclined to listen to him.

I was almost as hard beset by him now as I had been once before, in a different way, by another. I was a fool both times. To have yielded then would have been an error of principle; to have yielded now would have been an error of judgment. So I think at this hour, when I look back to the crisis through the quiet medium of time: I was unconscious of folly at the instant.
I stood motionless under my hierophant’s touch. My refusals were forgotten – my fears overcome – my wrestlings paralysed. The impossible – i.e. my marriage with St. John – was fast becoming the Possible. All was changing utterly, with a sudden sweep. Religion called – Angels beckoned – God commanded – life rolled together like a scroll – death’s gates opening, showed eternity beyond: it seemed, that for safety and bliss there, all here might be sacrificed in a second. The dim room was full of visions.
“Could you decide now?” asked the missionary. The inquiry was put in gentle tones: he drew me to him as gently. Oh, that gentleness! how far more potent is it than force! I could resist St. John’s wrath: I grew pliant as a reed under his kindness. Yet I knew all the time, if I yielded now, I should not less be made to repent, some day, of my former rebellion. His nature was not changed by one hour of solemn prayer; it was only elevated.

She still knows in her heart that it would be miserable for her, but he’s worn her down.

“I could decide if I were but certain,” I answered: “were I but convinced that it is God’s will I should marry you, I could vow to marry you here and now – come afterwards what would!”
“My prayers are heard!” [exclaimed] St. John. He pressed his hand firmer on my head, as if he claimed me: he surrounded me with his arm, almost as if he loved me (I say almost – I knew the difference – for I had felt what it was to be loved; but, like him, I had now put love out of the question, and thought only of duty): I contended with my inward dimness of vision, before which clouds yet rolled. I sincerely, deeply, fervently longed to do what was right; and only that. “Show me, show me the path!” I entreated of Heaven.

She quite sensibly entreats God to clear the matter up…and he responds promptly!

I was excited more than I had ever been; and whether what followed was the effect of excitement, the reader shall judge.
All in the house was still; for I believe all, except St. John and myself, were now retired to rest. The one candle was dying out: the room was full of moonlight. My heart beats fast and thick: I heard it throb. Suddenly it stood still to an inexpressible feeling that thrilled it through, and passed at once to my head and extremities. The feeling was not like an electric shock; but it was quite sharp, as strange as startling: it acted on my senses as if their utmost activity hitherto had been but torpor; from which they were now summoned, and forced to wake. They rose expectant: eye and ear waited, while the flesh quivered on my bones.
“What have you heard? What do you see?” asked St. John. I saw nothing: but I heard a voice somewhere cry – “Jane! Jane! Jane!” nothing more.
“Oh God! what is it?” I gasped.
I might have said, “Where is it?” for it did not seem in the room – nor in the house – nor in the garden: it did not come out of the air – nor from under the earth – nor from overhead. I had heard it – where, or whence, for ever impossible to know! And it was the voice of a human being – a known, loved, well-remembered voice – that of Edward Fairfax Rochester; and it spoke in pain and woe wildly, eerily, urgently.
“I am coming! I cried. “Wait for me! Oh, I will come!” I flew to the door, and looked into the passage: it was dark. I ran out into the garden: it was void.
“Where are you?” I exclaimed.

Because whatever this is, it’s clearly a sign from God that she shouldn’t marry St. John.

“Down superstition!” I commented, as the spectre rose up black by black yew at the gate. “This is not thy deception, nor thy witchcraft: it is the work of nature. She was roused, and did – no miracle – but her best.”
I broke from St. John, who had followed, and would have detained me. It was my time to assume ascendancy. My powers were in play, and in force. I told him to forbear question or remark; I desired him to leave me: I must, and would be alone. He obeyed at once. Where there is energy to command well enough, obedience never fails. I mounted my chamber; locked myself in; fell to my knees; and prayed in my way – a different way to St. John’s, but effective in its fashion. I seemed to penetrate very near a Mighty Spirit; and my soul rushed out in gratitude at His feet. I rose from the thanksgiving – took a resolve – and lay down, unscared, enlightened – eager but for the daylight.

Until next time…