Rosamond Oliver Quotes

A vision, as it seemed to me, had risen at his side. There appeared, within three feet of him, a form clad in pure white – a youthful,
graceful form: full, yet fine in contour…What did St. John Rivers think of this earthly angel? I naturally asked myself that question as I saw him turn to her and look at her.

– Charlotte Bronte

Jane Eyre, Chapter 31. St. John and Jane’s conversation is interrupted by the arrival of a beautiful young woman dressed in white. Rosamond Oliver is one of the benefactors of the school in Morton. When she appears at St. John’s side, Jane wonders what he thinks of her.

I saw his solemn eye melt with sudden fire, and flicker with resistless emotion…His chest heaved once, as if his large heart, weary of despotic constriction, had expanded, despite the will, and made a vigorous bound for the attainment of liberty. But he curbed it, I think, as a resolute rider would curb a rearing steed.

– Charlotte Bronte

Jane Eyre, Chapter 31. An “earthly angel” in white suddenly appears at the side of St. John Rivers. Jane notices that St. John is in love with Rosamond Oliver, but he supresses his feelings for her. Using simile images Jane describes how his chest heaves as if his heart is trying to break free, but he curbs it like a rider restrains a steed. St. John believes that God has called him to be a missionary to serve the people of India. He is sacrificing his love for Rosamond for his vocation.

St. John, no doubt, would have given the world to follow, recall, retain her, when she thus left him; but he would not give one chance of heaven, nor relinquish, for the elysium of her love, one hope of the true, eternal Paradise.

– Charlotte Bronte

Jane Eyre, Chapter 32. St. John refuses to marry Rosamond even though they love each other. He simply cannot envisage her settling down to missionery life with him in India, a path he intends to follow. For him the love he will experience serving God is more important than human love.

“It is strange,” pursued he, “that while I love Rosamond Oliver so wildly – with all the intensity, indeed, of a first passion, the object of which is exquisitely beautiful, graceful, fascinating – I experience at the same time a calm, unwarped consciousness that she would not make me a good wife; that she is not the partner suited to me; that I should discover this within a year after marriage; and that to twelve months’ rapture would succeed a lifetime of regret. This I know.”

– Charlotte Bronte

Jane Eyre, Chapter 32. St. John Rivers displays his cold and unemotional side in this speech. Describing his mixed feelings about Rosamond, he speaks in a calm, almost disinterested way about his intense love for her, and how unsuitable she is as a missioner’s wife.

“While something in me,” he went on, “is acutely sensible to her charms, something else is as deeply impressed with her defects; they are such that she could sympathise in nothing I aspired to; cooperate in nothing I undertook. Rosamond a sufferer, a labourer, a female apostle? Rosamond a missionary’s wife? No!”

– Charlotte Bronte

Jane Eyre, Chapter 32. St. John Rivers may have received the missionary call from God, but he doesn’t believe Rosamond Oliver has. He is responding here to Jane’s suggestion that he should marry Rosamond. While he admits being attracted by Rosamond’s charms, he rules her out as a missionary’s wife. Rivers is not looking for love, but a wife who will benefit his work.

“You are original,” said he, “and not timid. There is something brave in your spirit, as well as penetrating in your eye; but allow me to assure you that you partially misinterpret my emotions…When I colour and when I shake before Miss Oliver, I do not pity myself. I scorn the weakness. I know it is ignoble – a mere fever of the flesh; not, I declare, a convulsion of the soul…Know me to be what I am – a cold, hard man.”

– Charlotte Bronte

Jane Eyre, Chapter 32. There you have it! St. John admits to Jane to being emotionally cold and hard. When it comes to duty to serving God versus passion for a woman, duty comes first. The affairs of the soul take precedence to the desires of the flesh, which St. John dismisses as weakness. So for the unfortunate Miss Oliver there is no place in St. John’s scheme of things. However, he appears to be taking an interest in Jane, admiring her for her brave spirit.
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