Jane Eyre by Charlotte

It is sometimes pointed out (by Q. D. Leavis, for example) that Brontë’s use of the name St John must be ironic, given the particular reputation of this Apostle and Evangelist for love and gentleness. This, however, is to forget that as well as the Fourth Gospel, tradition also ascribes to him the fiery apocalypse that ends the Bible. Revelation’s version of Christ is by far the harshest and most unyielding portrayal of the Saviour found in the New Testament: ‘his eyes were like a flame of fire, his feet were like burnished bronze’ (Rev 1: 14b,15a). The significance of Revelation to Jane Eyre, and to Rivers in particular, is confirmed by the fact that the novel’s last words are a quotation of the book’s penultimate verse: ‘“Amen; even so, come Lord Jesus!”’

Charlotte Brontë’s final page also, significantly, contains the novel’s only direct allusion to The Pilgrim’s Progress , describing Rivers as possessing the ‘sternness of the warrior Greatheart, who guards his pilgrim convoy from the onslaught of Apollyon.’ Given that Jane deliberately refuses to accompany Rivers on his missionary journey to India (and given that Rivers, at this point in the novel, may be more than partially identified with Bunyan’s Christian), she can only be seen, in terms of the novel, as actively rejecting, or at least fundamentally undermining, the whole mechanism of a virtuous life of sacrifice and evangelical pilgrimage towards God. This is unmistakeably Charlotte Brontë’s intention for her character. She makes some considerable play of the fact that one of Jane’s major reasons for rejecting Rivers is her fear that living in India will lead to her early death: ‘God did not give me my life to throw away; and to do as you wish me would, I begin to think, be almost equivalent to committing suicide’ (Chapter 35, p439). Not only does Jane refuse to cross Bunyan’s River of Death, she also commits the unpardonable sin, in Bunyan’s terms, of returning. The whole point of The Pilgrim’s Progress is that one must carry on, and never turn back, come what may, and the book is full of failures like Pliable who do turn back, whereas Jane finds happiness and fulfilment only because she has the courage to return to Thornfield, her ‘City of Destruction.’

All of these factors, demonstrate the sophistication of Charlotte Brontë’s use of Bunyan, whose great work provides Jane Eyre with a structural foundation, but which is also a text that, on a semantic level, the novel itself works hard to undermine. This insight is also a useful reminder of the complexity of the relationship that exists between author and protagonist in this first-person novel: the Jane who piously eulogises St John Rivers does not represent Charlotte’s views, obviously, nor, in fact, is she being true to her own deepest feelings. It is almost tempting to see this final page as a sop to Victorian pieties, but a more satisfying reading is to appreciate the continuing doubleness in Jane’s own character, something that has been latent throughout the novel since her attempts to assimilate herself to Helen Burns (without success) and then to Miss Temple (with significant, if temporary results).