Jane Eyre St. John Rivers Quotes

St. John Rivers

Quote 1

"It is strange," pursued he, "that while I love Rosamond Oliver so wildly—with all the intensity, indeed, of a first passion, the object of which is exquisitely beautiful, graceful, fascinating—I experience at the same time a calm, unwarped consciousness that she would not make me a good wife; that she is not the partner suited to me; that I should discover this within a year after marriage; and that to twelve months’ rapture would succeed a lifetime of regret. This I know." (3.6.45)

St. John’s radical separation of his emotional attachment to Rosamond from his calm, collected assessment of what a good wife should be sounds fairly rational at first—and really similar, in some ways, to Jane’s rejection of Rochester. But something’s bothering us about it. Oh, right, it’s the implication that he’s (someday) going to marry a woman he doesn’t love. On purpose. Now that’s just masochistic.

St. John Rivers

Quote 2

All 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 beat fast and thick: I heard its 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 as 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.

"O 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. (3.9.89-93)

If you want to impress your teacher, you should refer to this as a moment of "clairaudience," which means psychically hearing things that are far away. (Get it? Like "clairvoyance," only that’s for seeing things that are far away.)

And we’ll point out again, just in case you missed it in the "What’s Up With the Title?" section, that Jane’s last name can be pronounced "ear," like the things on the side of your head. So, special qualities of listening and hearing, plus an uber-special connection to Mr. Rochester, seem to make Jane clairaudient at this moment.

"You think so now," rejoined St. John, "because you do not know what it is to possess, nor consequently to enjoy wealth: you cannot form a notion of the importance twenty thousand pounds would give you; of the place it would enable you to take in society; of the prospects it would open to you: you cannot—"

"And you," I interrupted, "cannot at all imagine the craving I have for fraternal and sisterly love. I never had a home, I never had brothers or sisters; I must and will have them now: you are not reluctant to admit me and own me, are you?" (3.7.127)

So what would you do if you won the lottery? Move into a small house with three of your cousins so that you had somewhere to call home? Yeah, we didn’t think so. But that’s what Jane wants to do.