I recently reread Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre, which I first read when I was a teenager; now, in my thirties, I have since reread this book countless times, each time showing a new facet to me. In this most recent re-read, I was struck by the different interior lives and the dimensions of the spiritual life that the characters reveal to us. In Jane, Mr. Rochester, and St. John, we see three very intriguing interior lives. In Mr. Rochester, we see a life ruled by passion, dependent on his senses being comforted at every turn. In St. John, we see one that is legalistic: He kills all passion and feelings, good or bad, and makes faith stagnant and almost dead. Finally, in Jane, we see a well-rounded and strong interior life, one that is not perfect, but well integrated in both her passions and morality.
Let’s begin with Mr. Rochester, in whom we see a familiar character. He is a man who has been given a heavy cross in life: married to a woman who has gone mad, he longs for human affection. Although Mr. Rochester rails against God and the heaviness of his situation in the affairs he had, and the life of wandering that he led before Jane, there is a desire for something lasting and deep. We see in his relationship with Jane a man who loves deeply and wishes to have a good relationship. When he declares his love for Jane, he says, “Because my equal is here, and my likeness, Jane, will you marry me?” (Chapter 23) His love for Jane is real and tender; however, we also see a man who is willing to compromise morality to get it. Mr. Rochester enjoys all the beauty and depth of Jane’s character and her devotion to divine things but does not want to be called to a higher level of sanctity himself, because that would require sacrifice. He wants all the benefits of Christian morals in a new wife without any of the virtues that such a wife would require upon himself.
We see this when Jane finds out about his wife in the attic on their wedding day. She is determined to leave him, and Mr. Rochester can’t understand why she will not bend her morals as he will: “Jane! Jane! You don’t love me, then? It was only my station and the rank of my wife that you valued? Now that you think I am disqualified to become your husband, you recoil from my touch as if I were some toad or ape.” (Chapter 27) Mr. Rochester is a man ruled by his passions, who blames others when he is doing wrong. He projects some of his own defects on Jane when he accuses her of only loving him for his title and money. In reality, it’s because Jane truly loves him and wants his good, that she refuses to allow him to live a life of immorality with her.
He is afraid to live by truth if it endangers his comfort, arguing with Jane to become mistress: “This life is hell, this is the air, those are the sounds of the bottomless pit! I have a right to deliver myself from it if I can. The suffering of this moral state will leave me with the heavy flesh that now encumbers my soul.” (Chapter 27)
This is familiar reasoning; those of us who have examined our consciences would find this speech familiar. The excuses we make for our sins: my situation is special, we tell ourselves; God wouldn’t want me to be unhappy. Indeed, God does not wish us to be unhappy, but we cannot be happy in sin. So, although we might find ourselves in temporary anguish, turning away from sin and feeling the bitter burning sensation in our flesh on fire for our own desires, we cannot be free and joyful in a life of sin. We’ve all inhabited the interior life of Mr. Rochester to some degree. Hopefully, we don’t have wives in our attics, but I think we all have locked away sins that we try to hide too live as we wish. Like Mr. Rochester, we cannot be fully ourselves or free until we let truth pervade our lives.
St. John shows us the interior life of a legalistic mind and heart, exacting in his idea of morality; it is all will, intellect and no emotion. St. John wants to change his metaphysical makeup to be pure spirit and no body. We see this in his denial of true love and affection for Rosamond Oliver, a beautiful and, yes, a tad frivolous and fun young lady, who would be a great help and balance to the legalistic St. John. The irony, of course, is that St. John views Rosamond as a temptation, when really she could have been in part his salvation. In fact, he and Jane debate this fact over a portrait she has drawn of Rosamond. Jane asks if he would like to take the portrait with him on his proposed missionary journey to Madagascar, India, or the Cape. St. John answers, “That I should like to have it, is certain: whether it would be judicious or wise is another question.” (Chapter 32) Jane to herself says, “It seemed to me that, should he become the possessor of Mr. Oliver’s large fortune, he might do as much good with it as if he went and laid his genius out to wither, and his strength to waste, under a tropical sun.” (Chapter 32) Jane makes a very astute assessment of St. John’s interior life. Here is a man gifted with beauty, brains, and a strong moral character, yet he fights against these gifts to choose a life that is not suited to them. He claims he is following God’s will, but he is following fear.
St. John is also a relatable interior life, which we can see in some of the current Catholic culture. From the trad wife influencers in floral dresses making sourdough, to the men with their tweed coats, pipes, and podcasts. There seems to be a trend to theologically nitpick, instead of diving in to intimacy with God. Like St. John, these people have the mind and will for God, but they lack the heart. Like St. John, there seems to be this thought that holiness is conformity to a certain look and disposition, that individuality needs to be crushed, that our personal gifts hamper us instead of freeing us to be as God wants us to be. If the saints have taught us anything, it’s that holiness is for everyone, but it will never look the same from one person to the next. How many men and women are straying from their personal callings because they believe they have to behave and even look a certain way to be holy? St. John is a good reminder that restricting our God-given gifts and passions doesn’t lead to a flourishing spiritual life. It leads to a very constricted view of grace and a limited intimacy and relationship with God. We cannot know God if we refuse to know ourselves.
Finally, in Jane, we see a well-rounded interior life. She is a fiery and passionate person. Jane, understandably, as a young girl, has a natural tendency to give in to her passions, especially anger and a desire for justice against her very mean Aunt Reed and cousins. When she is sent away to school, she befriends a saintly young lady named Helen. She tells Helen about her bad experiences and says, “I must dislike those who, whatever I do to please them, persist in disliking me. I must resist those who punish me unjustly.” (Chapter 6) Helen points to a path of forgiveness and charity to Jane, a way to temper her natural virtue of justice with the virtue of mercy. Helen tells her, “It is not violence that best overcomes hate nor vengeance that most certainly heals injury…..Love your enemies; bless them that curse you; do good to them that hate you and spitefully use you.” Helen is not telling Jane not to feel her emotions; she is calling on her to seek a higher power to navigate her passions. Helen and her teacher, Miss Temple, guide Jane in her spiritual life.
We see how Jane has tempered her natural inclination to justice with mercy when she grows up. Her Aunt Reed is ill, and asks her to come to her. Jane gets permission from her new employer, Mr. Rochester, to visit her Aunt. He is bewildered by her behaviour when she explains that her Aunt Reed disowned her long ago. When Jane visits her Aunt, her Aunt confesses to mistreating and hating Jane and can’t forgive her for her behaviour as a child. Jane forgives her Aunt and tells her, “My disposition is not as bad as you think: I am passionate but not vindictive. Many times, as a little child, I would have been glad to love you if you had let me, and I long to be reconciled to you now: kiss me, aunt.” (Chapter 21) Her Aunt refuses to forgive Jane, and Jane sees the long-suffering path of vengeance that she was spared by developing virtues into her passionate nature. Jane hasn’t suppressed her natural disposition for justice and passion; however, she has allowed grace and mercy to refine it.
When Jane finds out Mr. Rochester is already married, she plans to leave unannounced that same night to remove herself from temptation. As she goes to leave, we see the struggle of passion and intellect within Jane’s interior as she passes Mr. Rochester’s room. “There was a heaven—a temporary heaven—in this room for me, if I chose: I had but to go in and to say— “Mr. Rochester, I will love you and live with you through life till death,” and a fount of rapture would spring to my lips. I thought of this. That kind master, who could not sleep now, was waiting with impatience for the day. He would send for me in the morning; I should be gone. He would have me sought for vainly. He would feel himself forsaken; his love rejected: he would suffer; perhaps grow desperate. I thought of this too. My hand moved towards the lock: I caught it back, and glided on.” (Chapter 27)
Jane doesn’t try to stifle her love for Mr. Rochester like St. John with his love for Miss Oliver, but she doesn’t allow this emotion to guide her morality. Unlike Mr. Rochester, she is not ruled exclusively by her emotions; she allows her will and intellect to guide her decisions even when devastating to her own self-interests. Jane leaves her position, home and love with little money or prospects. Soon she finds herself starving, being humiliated and rejected by multiple people for food and work, she prays. “Oh Providence! Sustain me a little longer! Aid-direct me.” (Chapter 28) This is when she is directed towards a house where two sisters live and their brother, St. John. They take her in and aid her. They later find out they are distant cousins. God has provided for Jane as she trusted He would.
Later in the novel, when St. John offers Jane a loveless marriage to help him in his missionary work, she refuses. She understands, unlike St. John, that to enter into a vocation for which you have no natural desire, out of fear instead of love and service, is not a good path to holiness. However, there comes a moment when she is tempted to despair, tempted to think she should accept St. John’s proposal. That perhaps this life of drudgery is what God is calling her to. She is tempted to believe that the spiritual life is all intellect and will and no pleasure. Jane agrees and St. John is triumphant “He pressed his hand firmer on my head, as if he claimed me: he surrounded me with his arm, almost as if he loved me (I say almost—I knew the difference—for I had felt what it was to be loved; but, like him, I had now put love out of the question, and thought only of duty). I contended with my inward dimness of vision, before which clouds yet rolled. I sincerely, deeply, fervently longed to do what was right, and only that.” (Chapter 45) At this moment, Jane hears her name being called by Mr. Rochester in a clandestine manner. She leaves St. John and is determined to go see Mr. Rochester to offer any assistance she can, although not allowing herself to give in to any passion or desire that would go against her morality. She says, “My spirit,” I answered mentally, “is willing to do what is right; and my flesh, I hope, is strong enough to accomplish the will of Heaven, when once that will is distinctly known to me. At any rate, it shall be strong enough to search—inquire—to grope an outlet from this cloud of doubt, and find the open day of certainty.” (Chapter 46).
In Jane, we see a complex interior life. We see this because, unlike Mr. Rochester, who is ruled by passions, and unlike St. John, who is ruled by intellect and will, Jane allows the messiness of being a soul in a body to shape her interior life. It seems easier to be ruled by our body or mind, but we can’t fully be human when we fall on either side of those options. In Jane, we see the complex reliance on grace needed to live in both soul and body. Jane, by choosing the uncertainty of going back to see Mr. Rochester, assumes she won’t be able to be with him as she would desire; she assumes her passion will not be fulfilled. Yet she feels this is a better choice and more in line with her interior knowledge of herself than marrying St. John. She rejects St. John’s proposal because, although it might seem like a good vocation objectively and gives her security, Jane would rather listen to the call upon her heart from the Holy Spirit, even though it seems unconventional. Jane relies on grace and movements from the Holy Spirit to help guide both her intellect and her heart; she integrates both her soul and body in her choices. Jane returns to find out Mr. Rochester’s wife has died in a fire she started. Jane and Mr. Rochester are now free to marry. Jane didn’t know this would be the outcome, but she trusted in her interior life, in the pull she felt from her emotions and reason, and her relationship with God. Jane shows us how we walk out both morality and passion with God.
As humans, we want certainty and control. We want to know how it will turn out, that we will be comfortable, and that we will get what we want. So we see in Mr. Rochester and St. John’s interior lives that tend to extremes, trying to create security and control by desire, and one that is trying to create security and control by reason. In Jane, we see someone who understands that the spiritual life requires trust, surrender, and uncertainty, that to choose the good might result in temporary suffering. We see the reality of what a spiritual life should be: a relationship. A reliance on grace and hope in God, being open to the ever-evolving and unknown life that God sets out for us, by being in relationship with Him, attuned to the Holy Spirit, which we cannot be if we are ruled by our passion.
However, I also think what many Catholics are ignoring is that we also can’t hear the Holy Spirit if we are only adhering to our intellect and will. The Holy Spirit often speaks to our hearts and to our passions, as we see in Jane. We have to have a heart that is open to His voice and not constricted by a legalistic disposition like St. John. Jane shows us that the spiritual life is strengthened within us when we fully incorporate both our passion, reason, and will in our decisions, allowing our soul and body to be open to grace and guidance.
