Explaining Miss Jane Eyre.

Remember the difficulty I had squaring the servile Jane with the tough, uncompromising Jane? Well, she explains everything on page 354:

‘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’d say that makes for an interesting and believable character, and I wonder whether Charlotte was speaking for herself in that admission.

Jane's Current Dilemma:

She and Mr stone-cold-fish St John Rivers are a bit at odds. St John has tried to browbeat her into accompanying him to India when he goes off to be a missionary – in a most arrogant, pompous and patronising way, it has to be said – and further insisted that she must marry him if the arrangement is to work properly. Poor Jane! She agrees to the work, but flatly refuses the nuptials. It’s the only point in the book so far when she makes reference to… erm… wifely duties? The after hours kind? She does so briefly and very obliquely. (Remember this book was written when Queen Victoria was still a young woman. I have no comparable excuse.)

St John is a bit miffed and goes off to bed that night without shaking her hand, a fact which upsets our poor heroine greatly. ‘I would rather he had knocked me down,’ she says. Interesting character indeed.

I don’t like St John. He’s cold, arrogant and self-righteous, and I think somebody should come along and knock him down. I want Mr Rochester back. So does Jane.