#st john rivers

[problematic-faves-appreciation]

Illustrations from the FreeSchool Simplified Classics version of Jane Eyre 

[adobongsiopao]

Zelah Clarke, Timothy Dalton and Andrew Bicknell as Jane, Mr. Rochester and St. John from "Jane Eyre" 1983 version.

[incorrectjaneeyre]

jane, after rejecting st john: the path to inner peace begins with ten words... "if i were to marry you, it would kill me."

jane: i am so peaceful right now.

meanwhile...

mr rochester, about to yell across the moors: i am so not peaceful right now

[showmethesneer]

Jane Eyre's cousin: You should marry me..

Me:

Jane Eyre's cousin: ...and do missionary work with me in India...

Me:

Jane Eyre's cousin: ...because you were made for labour, not love.

Me:

[gaiusjuliuswheezer]

TO THE CHOPPING BLOCK

[emeraldspiral]

So I'm getting near the end of Jane Eyre and I've gotten to the part where St. John proposes. And the way he talks about being entitled to her because it was what god wanted and her rejecting him is therefore a rejection of god is so eerily similar to a villain I wrote whose motives were based on people like Papa Pilgrim and the guy who kidnapped Elizabeth Smart. People who used religion to justify their crimes because "God said I could do it. He put these girls/women on this earth specifically for me, to have. He wanted that for me, therefore I had a right to take them. The real criminals are those who would deny me what God said was rightfully mine." Like, the only difference is St. John thinks Jane exists for him because he isn't attracted to her at all and thinks that's a good thing because he considers it a sacrifice to have a passionless marriage and sacrifice/suffering/self-denial = a one way ticket heaven and pleasure/indulgence/comfort/ease = sin.

And like, I think St. John is explicitly identified as a Calvinist, who even Jane thinks is like, kind of a wackjob, even though she's highly religious too. Which is exactly what most of British society thought of people like that back in the 1600s, which is why they ended up getting kicked out of England and ending up in America, where that kind of theological philosophy is normalized to this day.

[winter-wise]

Saw someone say Jane Eyre would have been improved if she went off with St John and I just... you want her to marry her cousin? her cousin who doesn't care about her feelings? her cousin who doesn't care about her feelings and only wants to marry her so that she can come with him to India to do colonialism? You think it would have been better if she married that guy?

[bethanydelleman]

So I read Jane Eyre after I watched a confusing adaptation (2011, I literally never figured out who Adele was), and hearing a lot about it from friends. I expected to hate Rochester. I also expected to hate the final ship.

and I DID hate Rochester! He was such a jerk! The chapter where he proposes was awful. Why is he making her believe he’s going to marry Blanche if he’s in love with Jane? What is wrong with this man?!?

But then I met St. John Rivers and I was so extremely and totally creeped out that I honestly thought: 

BRING ME BACK THE BIGAMIST

Cheered when she went back to find Rochester and then married him. Did not hate the final ship at all.

So I guess my assessment of men is mediated by the goodness of other men within book? Maybe I like Henry Crawford of Mansfield Park because the Bertrams suck so much? Maybe I like Gilbert Markham because the other men in Tenant are the bottom of the barrel? Like the scum under the bottom of the barrel or the bugs hiding under the barrel...

I don’t know. I try to be objective. But then I think the point of Mansfield Park is that you start to root for Henry and Fanny, or at least for Henry to be better. If I believe Gilbert is as bad as Arthur, than the ending of Tenant is just so freaking depressing. I guess I’m accepting the world the author built, she tells me Gilbert is essentially a good guy who messed up but is capable of growth, I’m in.

But I guess who is really objective anyway? As much as I true to use quotes and sources, are we not all half running on vibes?

[miss-eyre-of-nowhere]

Did Rivers truly attempt to tell you your own feelings with regard to marrying him? The more I hear about the man, the more I wish I could punch him in the teeth.

He may have said - in no uncertain terms - that he would speak for my heart. And insisted that my refusal to marry him was some lapse in judgement or deficiency of mine . . .

I won't say outright that I wish you to punch him in the teeth, but perhaps it would do him some good.

[asteria-of-the-stars]

“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.”

- Jane Eyre about St. John Rivers

[maniczamo]

miss oliver from Jane Eyre is so fleabag actually

[adobongsiopao]

St. John: *Explains to Jane why she should be the only one to inherit their deceased uncle's money*

Jane:

[incorrectjaneeyre]

assorted chaotic jane eyre musings

mr rochester is definitely on AITA reddit

jane would love going birdwatching. she yells at people who litter at national parks

georgiana reed would 10000% be on ground zero of brat summer

pilot would sell mr rochester for 1 corn chip (previously established)

adele is forever trapped on "host like a french" tiktok

diana and mary take archery classes one day and are shockingly good at it. in a modern au they'd be accidentally catapulted to an olympian level, win, and be shocked about it

take a moment to just imagine st john rivers as a youth pastor at your local church

[showmethesneer]

How is this conversation still going? Is this really the whole chapter?

He's like "come to India withh me as my wife to do missionary work" and she's like "I'll go but not as your wife. Just say I'm your sister" and he's like "i can't do that, we have to get married" and this argument has been repeated 34 times. Please just end this conversation so i can die.

[janeeyreheresy]

Happily Ever After

Jane and Rochester have now been married for ten years. So everything that Jane has been narrating took place at least as long ago as that. How much of this is misremembered or revised is up to the reader to decide. The conflicting descriptions of the madwoman, the inconsistency of the time of sunrise on two July days in a row, the puzzling attitude towards her uncle, whom she wanted to meet, but not really.

The Rochesters are one happy couple.

No woman was ever nearer to her mate than I am: ever more absolutely bone of his bone and flesh of his flesh.

Are they Siamese twins?

We talk, I believe, all day long: to talk to each other is but a more animated and an audible thinking.

Ah, Rochester and his monologues.

She goes on about how she was his eyes and never tired of it, yadda yadda yadda, until, two years on, he partially recovered eyesight in one eye. It starts like this:

“Jane, have you a glittering ornament round your neck?”

I had a gold watch-chain: I answered “Yes.”

“And have you a pale blue dress on?”

She had.

Hold it right there. She wore a glittering ornament? A dress that was not black or grey?? A light coloured dress???

Right, so a watch chain is not as big a crime to her as, say, a diamond necklace would be (she never mentions the pearls again) but the dress? Mayhaps our plain Jane has discovered that she won't go to hell for wearing something pretty? She's not wearing it for her husband's benefit--as when she put it on, she didn't know he regained some of his sight. I wonder, did she, after all, have that shopping trip with the girls? 

My Edward and I, then, are happy: and the more so, because those we most love are happy likewise. 

She's calling him Edward now, when we're like, 99.99% though with the book. "Those we love most" refers to Diana and Mary Rivers. Who are Jane's relatives/friends, not Edward's. There's no mention of any friends of Edward's. He doesn't have any. 

The Rivers sisters also found their marital bliss: Diana married Captain Fitzjames of the navy (good for you, girl!) and Mary married Mr Wharton, a clergyman who was a college classmate of St John. They all visit each other every year.

Am happy for them. I hope Diana gets to travel the world with her hubby and makes the best of her inheritance. 

There is also one interesting line in the paragraph where Jane talks about Edward's sight:

When his first-born was put into his arms, he could see that the boy had inherited his own eyes, as they once were—large, brilliant, and black.

So Jane tells us a boy was born. A son of Rochester, with the same eyes.

However, nowhere does she state that she's the kid's mother.

It's... an interesting way of putting things. The passive voice, the detached way she says it. Not "we named our first born [whatever]", or "we were blessed with a son". His first-born was put into his arms. It's the only sentence in the whole book that makes any reference to any child or children of theirs. Considering what a large part their relationship plays in the story, it's... odd. Jane talks a lot about side characters, including those she hates, but this child gets one sentence. His first-born, his eyes. Was he not Jane's son too?

Given Rochester's philandering ways, who knows. But then, it's likely he had kids all over Europe and this would not therefore be his first born. I don't believe Adele was his, but he's been with many women. And there is, of course, the small detail of him him having been married before. Imagine one day a young man with dark hair, flanked on one side by his uncle Richard, on the other by a lawyer, turns up on their doorstep: "what's up, dad, I'm of age now and came here to claim my inheritance." I only accept a dead Bertha in a timeline where she had a son with Edward. But I don't like this timeline. I prefer her not to have children, not with Edward at least. She's suffered enough.

I'm sure nobody wants that. Let Jane and her master be happy and let Bertha be happy too. Any potential European offspring will be illegitimate, therefore of no threat. 

St John went to India and never married and never will, as he will soon die. In his last letter he writes he is anticipating the hour in which his Lord Maker will come for him. We're not given any more information, but as far as I understand, the Indian climate didn't agree with the young missionary.

Let me quote the last line of the book, which is a line from St John's letter:

“My Master,” he says, “has forewarned me. Daily He announces more distinctly,—‘Surely I come quickly!’ and hourly I more eagerly respond,—‘Amen; even so come, Lord Jesus!’”

My Master. The phrase I have been laughing about for half the recap. You can't fucking make it up.

St John has got it right. Thou shalt have no other gods before me. I'm not religious, or a believer, but I understand that's how it works. And Jane did worry she was making too much of Rochester, back in their engagement days, many moons ago. She still had a chance then. 

I don't know, maybe if you spell it with lowercase "m", it's not a sin?

[problematic-faves-appreciation]

It's so much worse than Darcy's first marriage proposal. 🤣

oh my god worst marriage proposal ever