If you wish to be in love properly and have not read Jane Eyre, stop now. Read the book.
If you are still reading, then you know that the worst moment in the book is when St John Rivers proposes to Jane Eyre. This proposal comes from a man who is called to a hard ministry in foreign lands. He rightly has seen that the woman he actually loved was unfit for this life. He makes the mistake of thinking marriage can be a corporate partnership for ministry and utterly failing to know Jane.
Jane Eyre is an independent woman as God created a woman to be. We cannot see the full image of God without the union of a man and a woman. I believe that different roles exist in that union, but the union must not and cannot deny the full equality of both partners. Every fiber of a woman is God’s image. Every fiber of man is God’s image. St John would reduce her to a dependent and this is contrary to the spirit of God, even if it fit the spirit of his age.
Jane Eyre is formed for love and not for service. No human being exists to serve another involuntarily. There is no “duty” to be a slave, not even to parents. I owe my parents honor, as they are honorable, and care as I can care for them, but they may not demand it of me. Even more so, the loving relationship of a husband and wife has duties for the individual that must be freely taken onto self (no forced marriages in Christendom!). If I owe my wife honor, my wife cannot demand honor of me. The Christian ethic is one of duty, but not one of tyrannical demands. St John takes duties on himself that he would impose on others.
St John forgot that it was better to be single and serve (in the way he was called to serve) than to be married. He had to choose between celibacy and his calling. He could not unselfishly demand both of anyone. Like all human beings, he could not love one thing totally, his work, and get married, because marriage demands love.
Poor St John would have forgotten the joy of the Gospel in a truncated, warped Calvinism. This is not an attack on Calvinism, but the sort of religious person who finds whatever is negative in the Faith and embraces it while ignoring the comfortable happy bits. Teaching a kingdom of denial, he is the reverse of the prosperity gospel preacher. He is not better and because his heresy is masked by the appearance of virtue, the error is more dangerous.
St John loved ideas more than people and was tyrannical in his demands. The worst fault of St John is his tendency to use people for his program, a vice as odious as it is easy for those in humanitarian service to commit. St John is building Christ’s kingdom on the wasted bodies of Christ’s bride.
His faults were many, but we must remember the novel ends with his death and apotheosis. St John is better than Jane or Rochester, but also inferior to them. His calling is higher, greater, but his understanding of life is smaller and defective. He is a better man, but a worse human being than the redeemed Rochester.
It is easy to despise St John because his virtues are not ones we like and his vices are those we hate most. We must recall that the sin of St John, making a great good an idol and using ministry to trample people, is one that still tempts us. We cannot allow this error to crop up even if the manifestation is more lovable and more appealing than that of St John Rivers.
St John tried to love God well without loving people better, but how can you love the God you have not seen if you cannot love the Jane you do see? God help us avoid the vice of St John while still finding his virtues.
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