Jane Eyre Religion and Morality Quotes

My cottage is clean and weather-proof; my furniture sufficient and commodious. All I see has made me thankful, not despondent. I am not absolutely such a fool and sensualist as to regret the absence of a carpet, a sofa, and silver plate; besides, five weeks ago I had nothing – I was an outcast, a beggar, a vagrant; now I have acquaintance, a home, a business. I wonder at the goodness of God; the generosity of my friends; the bounty of my lot. I do not repine.

– Charlotte Bronte

Jane Eyre, Chapter 31. After a long series of ups and downs, including being homeless and reduced to beggary, Jane is happy with her new home at Morton. God has been good to her, he believes. Home is a very important theme in Jane Eyre. It isn’t just a place to rest your head at night, but somewhere you can feel safe and comfortable and in a loving relationship with other people. That has been Jane’s lifelong quest. In this passage she is speaking to St. John Rivers.

A year ago, I was myself intensely miserable, because I thought I had made a mistake in entering the ministry; its uniform duties wearied me to death. I burned for the more active life of the world – for the more exciting toils of a literary career – for the destiny of an artist, author, orator; anything rather than that of a priest…After a season of darkness and struggling, light broke and relief fell; my cramped existence all at once spread out to a plain without bounds – my powers heard a call from Heaven to rise, gather their full strength, spread their wings, and mount beyond ken. God had an errand for me.

– Charlotte Bronte

Jane Eyre, Chapter 31. St. John explains to Jane how he decided to become a missionary. He went through a period of struggle and misery as a bored priest. During that time he “burned for the more active life of the world.” Then he received the summons from God to spread his wings and follow the missionary road.

I saw his solemn eye melt with sudden fire, and flicker with resistless emotion…His chest heaved once, as if his large heart, weary of despotic constriction, had expanded, despite the will, and made a vigorous bound for the attainment of liberty. But he curbed it, I think, as a resolute rider would curb a rearing steed.

– Charlotte Bronte

Jane Eyre, Chapter 31. An “earthly angel” in white suddenly appears at the side of St. John Rivers. Jane notices that St. John is in love with Rosamond Oliver, but he supresses his feelings for her. Using simile images Jane describes how his chest heaves as if his heart is trying to break free, but he curbs it like a rider restrains a steed. St. John believes that God has called him to be a missionary to serve the people of India. He is sacrificing his love for Rosamond for his vocation.

St. John, no doubt, would have given the world to follow, recall, retain her, when she thus left him; but he would not give one chance of heaven, nor relinquish, for the elysium of her love, one hope of the true, eternal Paradise.

– Charlotte Bronte

Jane Eyre, Chapter 32. St. John refuses to marry Rosamond even though they love each other. He simply cannot envisage her settling down to missionery life with him in India, a path he intends to follow. For him the love he will experience serving God is more important than human love.

“While something in me,” he went on, “is acutely sensible to her charms, something else is as deeply impressed with her defects; they are such that she could sympathise in nothing I aspired to; cooperate in nothing I undertook. Rosamond a sufferer, a labourer, a female apostle? Rosamond a missionary’s wife? No!”

– Charlotte Bronte

Jane Eyre, Chapter 32. St. John Rivers may have received the missionary call from God, but he doesn’t believe Rosamond Oliver has. He is responding here to Jane’s suggestion that he should marry Rosamond. While he admits being attracted by Rosamond’s charms, he rules her out as a missionary’s wife. Rivers is not looking for love, but a wife who will benefit his work.

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.

– Charlotte Bronte

Jane Eyre, Chapter 34. St. John makes the marriage proposal from hell to Jane, as he commands her to marry him and become a missionary in India. He believes that he knows God’s will for Jane better than she does. Instead of doing her the courtesy of asking her, St. John instead “claims” Jane as his wife. God and nature made her for this role, he feels. Not a man given to romantic gestures, St. John treats Jane like she is a possession. He displays a shocking lack of regard for Jane’s feelings, telling her that she was made for work, not love. He sees her, not as a woman, but a tool to enhance his missionary work.

Refuse to be my wife, and you limit yourself forever to a track of selfish ease and barren obscurity.

– Charlotte Bronte

Jane Eyre, Chapter 34. St. John uses bullying and manipulative language to make Jane feel guilty for declining his proposal to be his missionary wife. His cold, unkind and tyrannical nature is very much in evidence as Jane stands her ground against her despotic suitor. Unable to accept Jane’s refusal to be his wife, he virtually threatens her. Immediately after the above pass, he suggests that rejecting his proposal means rejecting God: “Tremble lest in that case you should be numbered with those who have denied the faith, and are worse than infidels!” These certainly aren’t the words a woman wants to hear from the man who is asking her to marry him. This is the marriage proposal from hell!

I broke from St. John, who had followed, and would have detained me. It was my turn to assume ascendency. 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 to my chamber, locked myself in, fell on my knees, and prayed in my way – a different way to St. John’s – but effective in its own 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.

– Charlotte Bronte

Jane Eyre, Chapter 35. Immediately after hearing Rochester’s voice calling her, Jane feels empowered to break away from St. John. Asserting herself against St. John’s religious strength, she commands him to go away and leave her alone. This is a powerful act of self-assertion in which she takes her power back from St. John. Then she goes to her bedroom and offers a thanksgiving prayer to God – for her rescue from the despotic clergyman. Having experienced St. John’s unloving and controlling ways, Jane knows that she loves Rochester.

I recalled the voice I had heard; again I questioned whence it came, as vainly as before: it seemed in me – not in the external world. I asked, was it a mere nervous impression – a delusion? I could not conceive or believe: it was more like an inspiration. The wondrous shock of feeling had come like the earthquake which shook the foundations of Paul and Silas’s prison: it had opened the doors of the soul’s cell, and loosed its bands – it had wakened it out of its sleep, whence it sprang trembling, listening, aghast; then vibrated thrice a cry on my startled ear, an din my quaking heart, and through my spirit; which neither feared nor shook, but exulted as if in joy over the success of one effort it had been privileged to make, independent of the cumbrous body.

– Charlotte Bronte

Jane Eyre, Chapter 36. Jane believes that hearing Rochester’s voice calling her is no delusion, but an inspiration. Using a Biblical simile, she compares the moment to the earthquake which shook the apostle Paul and Silas’s prison, freeing them. It has opened the doors of her soul’s cell and freed it from St. John’s restraints. She describes how the joy she feels is like a spiritual experience – “independent of the cumbrous body.”

Jane! you think me, I daresay, an irreligious dog: but my heart swells with gratitude to the beneficent God of this earth just now. He sees not as man sees, but far clearer; judges not as man judges, but far more wisely. I did wrong: I would have sullied my innocent flower – breathed guilt on its purity: the Omnipotent snatched it from me. I, in my stiff-necked rebellion, almost cursed the dispensation: instead of bending to the decree, I defied it. Divine justice pursued its course; disasters came thick on me: I was forced to pass through the valley of the shadow of death…Of late, Jane – only – only of late – I began to see and acknowledge the hand of God in my doom. I began to experience remorse, repentance; the wish for reconcilement to my Maker. I began sometimes to pray: very brief prayers they were, but very sincere.

– Charlotte Bronte

Jane Eyre, Chapter 37. Rochester apologizes to Jane for his attempt to marry her in deceit and then trying to make her his mistress. He metaphorically compares Jane to an “innocent flower” that he would have sullied. Now a profoundly changed man, he reveals how he has turned to God and repented the wrong he did Jane. The disasters that he suffered were, he believes, divine justice for his transgression against Jane. He is now grateful to God for returning Jane to him.

As to St. John Rivers…He entered on the path he had marked for himself; he pursues it still. A more resolute, indefatigable pioneer never wrought amid rocks and dangers…His is the ambition of the high master-spirit, which aims to fill a place in the first rank of those who are redeemed from the earth – who stand without fault before the throne of God…No fear of death will darken St. John’s last hour.

– Charlotte Bronte

Jane Eyre, Chapter 38. In the final passages of the novel, Jane tells us what happens to St. John Rivers, who played a major part in her life. He entered the missionary life with a pioneering zeal and stands before God “without fault” and with no fear of death.

“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!'”

– Charlotte Bronte

Jane Eyre, Chapter 38. The novel ends on a religious note, with Jane quoting from one of St. John’s letters to her in the book’s final lines. Here St. John is anticipating his own death and calmly accepts it and prays for God to take him. The unmarried St. John is a missionary in India and is near death. It is the kind of life he prayed for and the one he received.
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