Introduction

72
Vanessa Mangione
St. John makes her fear that her “vivacity is disdainful.” Once again, Jane is
trapped in the symbolic and St. John’s influence over her even progresses. She is
unable to fight and about to surrender her will and spirit to him. She is well aware
that she is constantly torn between submission and revolt in his presence:
I know no medium; I never in my life have known any medium in my dealings
with positive hard characters, antagonists to my own; between absolute
submission and determined revolt. I have always faithfully observed the
one, up to the very moment of bursting, sometimes with volcanic vehemence,
into the other; and as neither present circumstances warranted, nor
my present mood inclined me to munity, I observed carful obedience to St.
John’s directions (352).
Jane recognises and acknowledges the interdependency between the symbolic and
the semiotic in herself, between self-oblivion and self-assertion, and although she
usually breaks away when one of these forces becomes too powerful, she knows
that she cannot defend herself against St. John Rivers:
As for me, I daily wished more to please him; but to do so, I felt daily more
and more that I must disown half my nature; stifle half my faculties, wrest
my taste from their original bent, force myself to the adoption of pursuits
for which I had no natural vocation. He wanted to train me to an elevation
I could never reach; it racked me hourly to aspire to the standard he uplifted.
(351)
St. John is preparing to go to India as a missionary and he wants Jane to go with
him as his wife, although he completely rejects the perception of her as a woman.
Moglen comments that “he wants her to deny her sexuality (feeling/body) to subordinate
that which is most vital in her to his own spiritual quest. St. John uses his
predestinarian religious belief to make her to obey him, he argues that submitting
to him would mean election; a refusal would make her a ‘castaway’” (364). He
further argues: “God and nature intended you for a missionary’s wife. It is not
personal but mental endowments they have given you; you are formed for labor,
not for love. A missionary’s wife you must – shall be. You shall be mine; I claim
you” (354). She rejects his judgement: “I am not fit for it; I have no vocation”
(354). When she offers to accompany him as a sister, he refuses: “I, too, do not
want a sister; a sister might any day be taken from me. I want a wife; the sole helpmeet
I can influence efficiently in life, and retain absolutely till death” (357). He
wants the power to completely control her as his wife. He wants to make her his
property and turn her into an object. Jane recognises that being in a loveless marriage,
being with St. John would be her death: “if I were to marry you, you would
kill me. You are killing me now” (363).
She tries to resist the assumption that he is an agent of God but the temptation
to give in is strong: