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I don’t remember Jane Eyre being this much fun last time I read it, but I can certainly say that I’ve been reluctant to put it down, and even miffed when daily activities have demanded I do so.

One of the things that tends to get lost when people talk about the novel is that Mr. Rochester is placed in deliberate contrast to St. John Rivers, Jane’s clergyman cousin (as it turns out) who is every bit as full of deep passionate desires as any character in the novel.  He is, in fact, far more volcanic than Rochester except that he has set his soul on being a missionary and so he cannot even think about the delectable heiress Miss Oliver, who does all she can to encourage him.  When we see St. John taking an interest in Jane as his fellow missionary to India we can’t help noticing that he insists on her marrying him.  They can’t go just as ‘brother and sister’, he claims.

Those fiery passions are not going to lie dormant, evidently. Given half a chance he’ll engulf her the way a python swallows a lamb whole.

Jane’s wisdom - and it’s a real wisdom - lies in recognizing that even though being a missionary would be ‘good’ in conventional terms, she knows she just isn’t cut out for that. She’s not an idealist, and can’t pretend she is.  For her it has to be Rochester if it is to be real love. The soul connection has to be with him as a person, not with God, not with an ideal of conduct.

Her genius (to hark back to that theme) is to recognize that this is what she needs and that is who she is - and there’s no judgment attached to being authentic.  For if we are truly ourselves, fully, that is where we are supposed to be.

A quotation I once heard says roughly the same thing.  I’ll mangle it here, but it went something along these lines: “When I get to Heaven I suspect that God won’t look at me and tell me he wishes that I’d been more like Him.  He’ll look at me and wish that I’d been more like myself.” 

Ms. Bronte speaks the truth, too.