Unitarian Universalist Church of Palo Alto

A Distant Mirror: A Victorian Romantic’s Search for God while Looking for Love

Jonathan Harvey
August 5, 2007
Palo Alto, CA

I will now tell a story for grownups set in a time of religious ferment polarized between liberals, evangelicals, traditionalists, and esoteric piety. That would be the early 19th century England. Much like America, though In England humanists had a head start, and Romantic poets instead of Transcendentalists were in the mix. Looking at this ferment puts our own in perspective.

I have called this sermon A Distant Mirror: A Victorian Romantic’s Search for God while Looking for Love and I focus a novel by a clergyman’s daughter in which the lead is now and then on a religious quest that mirrors some of ours. She meets many pious sorts as reflected in my working title Varieties of Religious Expression. When we hear of novels of religious quest, most of us think of writers like Hermann Hesse, Nikos Kazantzakis, or Starhawk. However, spirituality is a secondary subplot cut from all films of my book which is Jane Eyre.

A lot of hornet’s nests were stirred up in the Church of England in our time era. A huge stir was made by a forgotten fellow F.D. Maurice. Raised Unitarian, he converted to the Church of England after which he advocated for Universalist belief, the notion that no one is in hell. This snowballed into questioning lots of other established dogmas. The staid Anglican Church was defined by common ritual rather than by common dogma, it now had traditional liturgies with incense and chanting but with room for fairly radical theologies. In the 1860s, matters came to a head when the Church of England ruled you could believe no one is in hell and still be good member of the Church of England. [The Archbishop of Canterbury was overruled by Parliament, and so the non-separation of church and state came to the aid of the liberal position.] Our story is set in the decades immediately before this decision.

At first this book was thought scandalously critical of religion. In 1847, Eliza Rigby declared “It is true Jane does right, and exerts great moral strength, but it is the strength of a mere heathen mind which is a law unto itself. No Christian grace is perceptible upon her”.

In reply to the critics, Bronte in the second edition writing under the male pseudonym of Currer Bell noted

Conventionality is not morality. Self-righteousness is not religion. To attack the first is not to assail the last. To pluck the mask from the face of the Pharisee, is not to lift an impious hand to the Crown of Thorns. These … are diametrically opposed: … as distinct as vice from virtue. Men too often confound them: appearance should not be mistaken for truth; narrow human doctrines, that only tend to elate and magnify a few, should not be substituted for the world-redeeming creed of Christ. There is a difference; and it is a good, and not a bad action to mark broadly and clearly the line of separation between them. The world may not like to see these ideas dissevered, for it has been accustomed to blend them; finding it convenient to make external show pass for sterling worth — to let white-washed walls vouch for clean shrines. It may hate him who dares to scrutinise and expose — to raze the gilding, and show base metal under it — to penetrate the sepulchre, and reveal charnel relics: but hate as it will, it is indebted to him.

In this tale we meet many religious folk, a brutal sadist, a sweet innocent, a nature mystic, and a sincere but socially inept missionary. Jane’s path starts with bewilderment and defiance, moves to a crisis of despair in which she needs God, followed by meeting a nice but weird minister. Her final piety is focused on peace in the here and now. One observer wrote

Brontë accepted that religion was highly personal and very important, as she showed with each of her characters’ different approaches to faith … St.John is fanatic and totalitarian, Helen frustratingly martyrlike, Miss Temple kind and gentle, Jane troubled but persevering, and the sisters peaceful and good in their attitudes toward religion. The way the inhabitants of Brontë’s book deal with theological convictions is closely entwined with their identities.

Our story’s first encounter with faith is indeed irreverent. Early on Jane is sent to a terrible boarding school not unlike the school for children of clergy to which she was sent. Before going, the sadistic schoolmaster quizzes Jane about religion.

“And what is hell? Can you tell me that?”

“A pit full of fire.”

“And should you like to fall into that pit, and to be burning there for ever?”

“No, sir.”

“What must you do to avoid it?”

I deliberated a moment; my answer, when it did come, was objectionable: “I must keep in good health, and not die.”

…

“Do you read your Bible?”

“Sometimes.”

“With pleasure? Are you fond of it?”

“I like Revelations, and the book of Daniel, and Genesis and Samuel, and a little bit of Exodus, and some parts of Kings and Chronicles, and Job and Jonah.”

“And the Psalms? I hope you like them?”

“No, sir.”

“No? oh, shocking! I have a little boy, younger than you, who knows six Psalms by heart: and when you ask him which he would rather have, a gingerbread-nut to eat or a verse of a Psalm to learn, he says: ’Oh! the verse of a Psalm! angels sing Psalms;’ says he, ’I wish to be a little angel here below;’ he then gets two nuts in recompense for his infant piety.”

She replies that the Psalms are boring.

This same cruel schoolmaster insists on short cropped hair and generally not allowing the girls to look good, because at this school we are governed “not by nature but by grace.” There was a long-standing theological debate about whether the grace enhances nature or overrides it. This may seem rather abstract but when it pans out to saying that because you live by grace you have to look ugly, it raises new questions.

At Lowood school we meet young Helen Burns, dying due to malnutrition but sure that she is going to heaven. She asks Jane not to cry for her. Helen (once played by an angelic looking unknown Elizabeth Taylor) is utterly sweet and has absorbed none of the nastier messages floating around though she seems impressionable. Jane loves Helen but her faith has limited credibility. When Helen is dying we get this conversation:

“But where are you going to, Helen? Can you see? Do you know?”

“I believe; I have faith: I am going to God.”

“Where is God? What is God?”

“My Maker and yours, who will never destroy what he created. I rely implicitly on his power, and confide wholly in his goodness: I count the hours till that eventful one arrives which shall restore me to him, reveal him to me.”

“You are sure, then, Helen, that there is such a place as heaven; and that our souls can get to it when die?”

Jane does not want to rob Helen of her source of solace, but Jane isn’t quite buying it.

Jane and Helen also disagree over non-violence. Helen is a 10-year-old Gandhi. She says

It is not violence that best overcomes hate — nor vengeance that most certainly heals injury.

and again …

What a singularly deep impression her injustice seems to have made on your heart …

Would you not be happier if you tried to forget her severity, … the passionate emotions it excited?

Life [is] too short to be spent in nursing animosity, or registering wrongs.

and again …

I can so clearly distinguish between the criminal and his crime; I can so sincerely forgive the first while I abhor the last.

Jane replies,

If people were always kind and obedient to those who are cruel and unjust; the wicked people would have it all their own way: they would never feel afraid, and so they would never alter, but would grow worse and worse. When we are struck at without a reason, we should strike back again very hard; I am sure we should — so hard as to teach the person who struck us never to do it again.

Well, Helen does die of malnutrition just as two of Charlotte Bronte’s sisters did at their boarding school for clergymen’s daughters. Her gravestone reads “I shall rise again” making her a sort of Christ-figure whose killer was a highly sadistic Christian himself. Jane is sad, but moves on.

Jane’s next moment of piety is when she prays to be let out of this place, prayers which at first dissipate into emptiness.

I tired of the routine of eight years in one afternoon. I desired liberty; for liberty I gasped; for liberty I uttered a prayer; it seemed scattered on the wind then faintly blowing. I abandoned it and framed a humbler supplication; for change, stimulus: that petition, too, seemed swept off into vague space: “Then,” I cried, half desperate, “grant me at least a new servitude!”

She gets this when she is employed as a governess by the dynamic and mysterious Mr. Rochester, with whom a romance blossoms. Her pious side worries. “my future husband was becoming to me my whole world; and more than the world: almost my hope of heaven. He stood between me and every thought of religion, as an eclipse between man and the broad sun. I could not, in those days, see God for his creature: of whom I had made an idol.” The Rochester is also seeking a kind of redemption or salvation in Jane. “You think me, I daresay, an irreligious dog [which is true] but my heart swells with gratitude to the beneficent God of this earth just now.”

But idol or not, Rochester has limited sway over her. When Rochester mistreats her she appeals to the equality of men and women in God’s sight. She says “I am not talking to you now through the medium of custom, conventionalities, nor even of mortal flesh: it is my spirit that addresses your spirit; just as if both had passed through the grave, and we stood at God’s feet, equal — as we are!”

She is very much a feminist . To us she says

Women are supposed to be very calm generally: but women feel just as men feel; they need exercise for their faculties, and a field for their efforts as much as their brothers do; they suffer from too rigid a restraint, too absolute a stagnation, precisely as men would suffer; and it is narrow-minded in their more privileged fellow-creatures to say that they ought to confine themselves to making puddings and knitting stockings, to playing on the piano and embroidering bags. It is thoughtless to condemn them, or laugh at them, if they seek to do more or learn more than custom has pronounced necessary for their sex.

Now there is a major rift in her relationship with Rochester concerning which I should not give away very much, except to say that although Rochester loves her, he has lied to her and betrayed her in a very serious way. Jane leaves Rochester’s home and en route loses her bags. At one of the worst moments of her life, she has a deep but despairing religious experience. It is peculiar because there is a sense of presence but not a sense of hope.

My eyes were covered and closed: eddying darkness seemed to swim round me, and reflection came in as a black and confused flow. Self-abandoned, relaxed, and effortless, I seemed to have laid me down in the dried-up bed of a great river; I heard a flood loosened in remote mountains, and felt the torrent come: to rise I had no will, to flee I had no strength. I lay faint, longing to be dead. One idea only still throbbed life-like within me — a remembrance of God: it begot an unuttered prayer: these words went wandering up and down in my rayless mind, as something that should be whispered, but no energy was found to express them -

“Be not far from me, for trouble is near: there is none to help.”

It was near: and as I had lifted no petition to Heaven to avert it — as I had neither joined my hands, nor bent my knees, nor moved my lips — it came: in full heavy swing the torrent poured over me. The whole consciousness of my life lorn, my love lost, my hope quenched, my faith death-struck, swayed full and mighty above me in one sullen mass. That bitter hour cannot be described: in truth, “the waters came into my soul; I sank in deep mire: I felt no standing; I came into deep waters; the floods overflowed me.”

She describes the conflict between Conscience and Passion. Her advice to Rochester when she makes it clear she is leaving is to ”Do as I do: trust in God and yourself. Believe in heaven. Hope to meet again there.” As she is leaving, she on the one hand states that “God must have led me on”, she shortly after says “Gentle reader, may you never feel what I then felt! May your eyes never shed such stormy, scalding, heart-wrung tears as poured from mine. May you never appeal to Heaven in prayers so hopeless and so agonised as in that hour left my lips; [for never may you, like me, dread to be the instrument of evil to what you wholly love.]

Shortly after leaving, she has a second and more positive religious experience.

We know that God is everywhere; but certainly we feel His presence most when His works are on the grandest scale spread before us; and it is in the unclouded night-sky, where His worlds wheel their silent course, that we read clearest His infinitude, His omnipotence, His omnipresence. I had risen to my knees to pray for Mr. Rochester. Looking up, I, with tear-dimmed eyes, saw the mighty Milky-way. Remembering what it was — what countless systems there swept space like a soft trace of light — I felt the might and strength of God. Sure was I of His efficiency to save what He had made: convinced I grew that neither earth should perish, nor one of the souls it treasured. I turned my prayer to thanksgiving: the Source of Life was also the Saviour of spirits. Mr. Rochester was safe; he was God’s, and by God would he be guarded.

Much of the final third of the book deals with an episode relegated to only 10 to 15 minutes in most films. While Jane is on the mend, she meets a minister planning to be a missionary and his two female cousins who share a household and take her in out of charity. This fellow’s name reads “Saint John”, but is pronounced “Sinjun”. He falls in love with Jane, but these feelings are not returned. He is sincere, but stilted. He is cordial, but restrained — nice, but not passionate. He is both earnest and phony. She likes him but develops more and more doubts about him. She states that he has not ”that mental serenity, that inward content, which should be the reward of every sincere Christian and practical philanthropist” Her doubts come into to focus when he gives a sermon.

I first got an idea of [his] calibre when I heard him preach in his own church … I wish I could describe that sermon: but it is past my power. I cannot even render faithfully the effect it produced on me. It began calm- and indeed, as far as delivery and pitch of voice went, it was calm to the end: and earnestly felt, yet strictly restrained zeal breathed soon in the distinct accents, and prompted the nervous language. This grew to force — compressed, condensed, controlled. The heart was thrilled, the mind astonished, by the power of the preacher: neither were softened. Throughout there was a strange bitterness; an absence of consolatory gentleness; stern allusions to Calvinistic doctrines — election, predestination, reprobation — were frequent; and each reference to these points sounded like a sentence pronounced for doom. When he had done, instead of feeling better, calmer, more enlightened by his discourse, I experienced an inexpressible sadness; for it seemed to me … that the eloquence to which I had been listening had sprung from a depth where lay turbid dregs of disappointment — where moved troubling impulses of insatiate yearnings and disquieting aspirations. I was sure St. John Rivers — pure-lived, conscientious, zealous as he was — had not yet found that peace of God which passeth all understanding.

Before he proposes to her, Jane evaluates his prospects this way

St. John was a good man; but … he had spoken truth of himself when he said he was hard and cold. The humanities and amenities of life had no attraction for him — its peaceful enjoyments no charm. Literally, he lived only to aspire — after what was good and great, certainly; but still he would never rest, nor approve of others resting round him. As I looked at his lofty forehead, still and pale as a white stone — … — I comprehended all at once that he would hardly make a good husband: that it would be a trying thing to be his wife. I understood, as by inspiration, the nature of his love for Miss Oliver; I agreed with him that it was but a love of the senses. I comprehended how he should despise himself for the feverish influence it exercised over him; how he should wish to stifle and destroy it; how he should mistrust its ever conducting permanently to his happiness or hers. I saw he was of the material from which nature hews her heroes — Christian and Pagan — her lawgivers, her statesmen, her conquerors: a steadfast bulwark for great interests to rest upon; but, at the fireside, too often a cold cumbrous column, gloomy and out of place.

Well, he asks Jane Eyre to marry him, and he is utterly taken aback by her refusal. His passion is missionary work, and he thinks Jane Eyre would make a “suitable missionary’s wife”. Saint-John subtly uses a sort of religious blackmail, yet he seems unaware that this is just what he’s doing. Finally, he virtually threatens her with damnation if she doesn’t marry him.

After his first proposal, she attempts to settle by saying “I scorn your idea of love I scorn the counterfeit sentiment you offer: yes, St. John, and I scorn you when you offer it.” Saint-John replies, “I shall be absent a fortnight — take that space of time to consider my offer: and do not forget that if you reject it, it is not me you deny, but God. Through my means, He opens to you a noble career; as my wife only can you enter upon it. Refuse to be my wife, and you limit yourself for ever to a track of selfish ease and barren obscurity. Tremble lest in that case you should be numbered with those who have denied the faith, and are worse than infidels!”

Jane Eyre sums up her perceptions to the reader as such “In short, as a man, he would have wished to coerce me into obedience: it was only as a sincere Christian he bore so patiently with my perversity, and allowed so long a space for reflection and repentance.” They have a token reconciliation at which point Jane decides “No happy reconciliation was to be had with him — no cheering smile or generous word: but still the Christian was patient and placid; and when I asked him if he forgave me, he answered that he was not in the habit of cherishing the remembrance of vexation; that he had nothing to forgive, not having been offended.”

Jane has never forgotten her beloved Rochester. Things are ultimately set right between her and Rochester whom she does marry after he has lost all his fortune and become half-blind. When they reconcile (for reasons I won’t tell you) and Rochester is now destitute, Rochester has a makeshift sort of religious conversion which I was never quite sure what to make of. In the midst of destitution, Jane has returned, they have children, and his sight begins to return, so Jane has brought him some redemption. He briefly says: “Of late, Jane — only — only of late — I began to see and acknowledge the hand of God in my room. I began to experience remorse, repentance; the wish for reconcilement to my Maker. I began sometimes to pray”. And later he prays “my redeemer to give me strength to lead henceforth a purer life than I have done hitherto” Still, all this new piety has nothing to do with getting to heaven, and has everything to do with finding tranquility in the here and now. It’s a down-to-earth practical piety. At the very end, Jane’s thoughts turn again to Saint-John hoping he’s doing well as a missionary in India. Indeed, Saint-John has the last words of the novel, and the last line of the novel is the next to last line of the Book of Revelation indeed of the Bible.

St. John is unmarried: he never will marry now. Himself has hitherto sufficed to the toil, and the toil draws near its close: his glorious sun hastens to its setting. The last letter I received from him drew from my eyes human tears, and yet filled my heart with divine joy: he anticipated his sure reward, his incorruptible crown. I know that a stranger’s hand will write to me next, to say that the good and faithful servant has been called at length into the joy of his Lord. And why weep for this? No fear of death will darken St. John’s last hour: his mind will be unclouded, his heart will be undaunted, his hope will be sure, his faith steadfast. His own words are a pledge of this —

“My Master,” he says, “has forewarned me. Daily He announces more distinctly, — ‘Surely I come quickly!’ and hourly I more eagerly respond, — ‘Amen; even so come, Lord Jesus!’”

Thus after a parade of good and bad religiosity, we end on a somewhat conventionally pious note. This is the book that was denounced as irreverent, and featuring a heroine whose virtue was merely that of a heathen.

Perhaps the absence of a clear conclusion makes this book a lot like real life. Bronte is clearly toying with Christianity without wholeheartedly embracing or rejecting it. She’ll take religion on her own terms. It may be objected that Jane Eyre has settled for a piecemeal Christianity, but she never compromises her own personal integrity. St.-John is a bit like the other St. John who wrote the Book of Revelation, which our St.-John quotes, ferocious and unyielding. Saint-John is a strident missionary, who can love on command but not as a person. Are the criticisms of St.-John criticisms of Christianity, or just of him as a person, or perhaps specifically of Calvinism given that Bronte’s family was very anti-Calvinist? Rochester is what some Christians would call a repentant sinner, but his love is genuine. Rochester and Jane find a faith that works for them without getting on a soap-box, and once they are situated, there is even room at their end for goodwill to St.-John. Jane walked a lonesome valley to find peace, but find it she does on here terms without having ever compromised herself.

I hope this sermon has made a better impression on you than “St.-John’s” sermon did on Jane Eyre.

 

Postscript

For further reading on Jane Eyre on many levels, Jon Harvey recommends two online collections of articles.

The Victorian Web is the WWW translation of Brown University’s Context 61, a resource for courses in Victorian literature. [Please note that the links from this site’s home page to Charlotte Bronte are broken although the material available from the above link.]

There is also Charlotte’s Web, constructed by students in a class on The Nineteenth-Century English Novel at the University of Michigan-Dearborn. [The title here refers to Charlotte Bronte, not E.B.White’s spider.]

And finally, for a particularly provocative reading, see Jane Eyre and the Secrets of Furious Lovemaking.

Reflecton: What Is Religion? by Dave Weber