Episode 324: "Jane Eyre" by Charlotte Brontë, Ch. 34-End

Summary

The Literary Life Podcast – Episode 324: “Jane Eyre” by Charlotte Brontë, Ch. 34-End

April 14, 2026 | Hosts: Angelina Stanford & Thomas Banks

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Episode Overview

In this final installment of their “Jane Eyre” series, Angelina Stanford and Thomas Banks dive deeply into the novel’s conclusion (Chapters 34 through the end), exploring its rich symbolism, mythic structure, and the spiritual and literary significance of Jane’s ultimate choices. The discussion weaves together literary criticism, personal reflections, and frequent comparisons to fairy tales, religious allegory, and the broader Western literary tradition. The episode aims to show listeners how to read not just the surface plot, but the many strata of meaning Brontë has layered into the story.

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Key Discussion Points

1. The Enduring Power and Complexity of Jane Eyre (00:22–04:46)

• Thomas reflects on his deeper appreciation of the novel on reread, noting how new layers reveal themselves each time:
  “It seems obviously like one of those which one can return to profitably, a thousand times over—which is kind of what a classic is.” (02:30, Thomas)

• Angelina shares her anxiety about revisiting old favorites and her delight at finding “Jane Eyre” even better:
  “It's even better than I remembered. It's so much better.” (03:03, Angelina)

• Both hosts reinforce the idea that no reader can (or should) “exhaust” a good book:
  “No one ... should approach any particular good book with the desire to exhaust it.” (05:17, Thomas)
  “Art is about submitting yourself to the art and seeing what is being revealed to you at that time.” (05:39, Angelina)

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2. Approaching Symbolic and Mythic Layers: Not Just a Romance (16:31–18:00; 32:33–36:39)

• The hosts reject solely Freudian or literal “horizontal” readings—favoring instead a symbolic and archetypal approach.
• The story is “a journey of the soul,” using marriage as a symbol for the union of the soul with the divine.

Key Quote:
“This isn’t just a horizontal story about, you know, how to pick a spouse ... the real issue here is that this is symbols of the journey of her soul.” (40:33, Angelina)

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3. St. John Rivers: The Temptation of Passionless Marriage (18:00–36:39)

• St. John’s proposal presents a foil to Rochester’s passionate temperament:
  “We have these kind of firestorm with Rochester, ice storm with Sinjin Rivers.” (17:57, Angelina)

• Sinjin offers Jane a vocation but no love:
  “He’s a man who does ... nothing for pleasure at all … Everything he does seems to have been undertaken by him in the hope of fulfilling some kind of vocation.” (18:00, Thomas)

• The hosts discuss the historic understanding of “ambition as a sin” and how Sinjin’s zeal is spiritually corrosive.

• Jane’s resistance is profound and subversive for her era:
  “What I can’t do is pretend to be his wife … I will not tolerate that.” (32:08, Angelina)

• Both hosts compare Sinjin’s proposal to Mr. Collins’s infamous offer from Pride and Prejudice. Jane resists being spiritually manipulated:
  “He is a kind of death. He's a kind of imprisonment to her.” (65:00, Angelina)

Key Quote:
“She says that to please him would be to deny half her nature. That's also significant.” (28:05, Angelina)

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4. Rochester, Repentance, and Mythic Fairy-Tale Structure (43:56–77:07)

Beauty and the Beast, Bluebeard, Rapunzel, and Scheherazade (49:29–62:09)

• Angelina highlights how the novel integrates threads from multiple fairy tales:

  • When Jane runs to Rochester after hearing his voice across the moor, it’s a direct allusion to Beauty and the Beast:
    “That is straight out of Beauty and the Beast.” (49:29, Angelina)
  • Rochester is described as “metamorphosed into a lion” and Jane offers to “comb [his] long mane”—explicit beast imagery.
  • The Rapunzel motif culminates with Thornfield literally falling on Rochester (like thorns blinding the prince), and the ensuing restoration parallels Rapunzel’s tears:
    “In Jane Eyre, Thornfield Hall literally falls on top of Rochester and blinds him.” (62:08, Student Elizabeth Hobson, relayed by Angelina)

• Scheherazade/Arabian Nights reference: Jane promises to leave her tale half-told as a way to ensure she stays with Rochester, paralleling Scheherazade’s life-saving stories (55:44–59:31).

Spiritual and Symbolic Reading of Rochester’s Injuries

• Rochester’s loss of hand and sight echoes Jane’s earlier invocation of the Biblical verse about plucking out an eye/cutting off a hand—symbolizing repentance rather than punishment:
  “He plucked out his eye. He cut off his hand. He is repentant.” (53:42, Angelina)

Key Quote:
“She says to him, you need to be rehumanized. You have metamorphosed into a lion. ... Let me comb out your long mane. This is Beauty and the Beast, gang.” (49:47, Angelina)

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5. The Ending: Union and Properly Ordered Passion (63:52–77:07)

• Rejects dichotomy of passionless marriage (St. John) vs. lustful union (mistress):
  “We have various kinds of passion, all of which are destructive, and … the good kind of passion, that passion in where these things are integrated, properly ordered.” (76:21, Angelina)

• Draws parallels to Edmund Spenser’s The Faerie Queene, Britomart, and Chaucer’s “Franklin’s Tale”:
  “You can have a passionate love marriage in a committed marriage. You can have both. That is what Britomart gets. That is what I think Jane Eyre gets, too.” (75:05, Angelina)

• Cupid and Psyche as the ultimate mythic structure:
  “Cupid and Psyche is literally the journey of Psyche, which is the Greek word for soul to God. And it ends with a marriage.” (77:07, Angelina)

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6. Why Does the Book End with St. John? (65:22–68:40)

• The novel’s final lines are St. John’s letter from India, anticipating his heavenly reward—not Jane and Rochester’s happiness.

Key Quotes:
“Charlotte Brontë doesn't want to end the book condemning St. John ... He's not the right choice for Jane, but he's not a bad man.” (67:24, Angelina, paraphrasing Thomas)

• This choice respects the spiritual vocation of St. John, while affirming that it’s not Jane’s calling.

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7. Celebrating New Layers & Literary Community (03:35, 04:08–05:35)

• The hosts repeatedly mention how listeners and Patreon members have discovered new meanings and shared them, supporting the “conversation of many readers” approach:
  “You notice things, I notice things, we share what we notice.” (04:08, Angelina)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “Don’t be a literary squirrel, is what you’re saying.” (05:59, Thomas)
• “She is insisting on a passionate love match with her husband.” (63:54, Angelina)
• “In the modern world, we think of ambition as a virtue, but historically, it has always been seen as a sin.” (22:14, Angelina)
• “He’s not really looking for a wife so much as a colleague who happens to be wearing a wedding ring.” (25:55, Thomas)
• “She says, you being with you would make me deny half myself. You’re killing me.” (74:11, Angelina)
• “As soon as you get a conversation about who’s the boss in the relationship ... love will clap its wings and fly away.” (71:59, Angelina discussing C.S. Lewis)
• “Mastery is the enemy of love.” (71:42 paraphrasing The Franklin’s Tale)

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Important Timestamps

• 00:22–04:46: Opening reflections on rereading “Jane Eyre” and the nature of classic literature
• 17:57–32:08: Dissecting St. John’s proposal, the passion vs. ice motif, and Victorian ideals
• 32:33–36:39: Jane’s spiritual temptation and the choice of vocation vs. love
• 43:56–62:09: Fairy-tale, mythic, and romance structures (Beauty and the Beast, Rapunzel, Scheherazade)
• 53:07–53:48: The symbolic meaning of Rochester’s wounds and true repentance
• 63:52–77:07: Mythic union, Spenser, Chaucer, and the integration of passion and commitment
• 65:22–68:40: Why does St. John get the last word in the novel?
• 79:32–80:55: Charlotte Brontë’s place among her sisters and why “Jane Eyre” endures

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Tone & Banter

True to form, the episode features abundant wit, gentle spousal teasing, and asides that mirror literary dialogues of the past:

• “She says confinement on confinement ... That's why I got so excited when she says leaving him was like leaving prison.” (74:08–74:11, Angelina)
• “Can we smack [St. John]?” (21:27, Angelina relaying Discord feedback)

The hosts regularly reference their Discord and Patreon communities, blending the learned with the accessible.

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Closing & Announcements

(82:36–84:29)

• Next episodes: Deep dives into Neoclassical poetry (Alexander Pope and “The Rape of the Lock”) and then an interview with Malcolm Guite on his new book about Galahad and the Grail.
• Poetry reading: Thomas closes the episode with Philip Larkin’s “Whitsun Weddings.”

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Final Note

This episode is a masterclass in symbolic and mythic literary analysis, making a compelling case for reading “Jane Eyre” as both a spiritual journey and an exploration of how right-ordered love and passion can be achieved. Rich with references (“horizontal” and “vertical” readings, myth, fairy tales, and Christian allegory), it provides both high-level insights and practical encouragement for readers intimidated by the layers of great works.

“The reading life is like eating chocolate cake: you get to go back, and you see more each time.” (03:35, Angelina)

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For further engagement, join the community at HouseOfHumaneLetters.com or on Patreon, and tune in for poetry, literary interviews, and more “ever-unfolding discussions of how stories will save the world.”

Transcript

[Angelina Stanford]

This is not just another book chat podcast. Lifelong reader Cindy Rollins joins teachers Angelina Stanford and Thomas Banks for an ongoing conversation about the skill and art of reading. Explore the lost intellectual tradition and discover how to fully enter into the great works of literature. Learn what books mean while delighting in the sheer joy of imagination. Each week we will rescue story from the ivory tower and bring it to your couch, your kitchen, and your commute. The Literary Life is for everyone because in the words of Stratford Caldecott, to be enchanted by story is to be granted a deeper insight into reality. Join us for an ever unfolding discussion of how stories will save the world. This is the Literary Life Podcast. Hello and welcome back to the Literary Life Podcast. I'm Angelina Stanford and here with me is. Is my husband, who proposed to me exactly like St. John Rivers did to Jane. I remember it like it was yesterday. You looked at me and you said, I think you should marry me. Not for me because. But because this is what God requires of you. Yeah, it went just like that, didn't it?

[Thomas Banks]

Yeah. I said, you were not made for love.

[Angelina Stanford]

Yes. And after I slapped you, we started over. We tried again. It was like a take two.

[Thomas Banks]

I said, yeah, yeah, listener. She married me.

[Angelina Stanford]

Yeah.

[Thomas Banks]

Biggest mistake of her life.

[Angelina Stanford]

Yes. And just like Sinjin, you went off to India to teach Latin.

[Thomas Banks]

Oh, yeah.

[Angelina Stanford]

Yeah. If you didn't figure out we're talking about the end of Jane Eyre today and I have just been having a ball with this series.

[Thomas Banks]

No, this is. This is a strong book in a thousand ways, which I had not seen before.

[Angelina Stanford]

Goodness.

[Thomas Banks]

The first time I read it, I wasn't like, this is a classic. Rubbish. That was not my response at all. But I don't think I appreciated all the dimensions of this book. And it seems obviously like one of those which one can return to profitably, a thousand times over, which is kind of what a classic is.

[Angelina Stanford]

Exactly. That's what a classic is. And I have. I've surprised myself that, I mean, you know, maybe I'm not alone in this, but if I read something when I was younger and it's very, very important to me, sometimes I'm scared to revisit it because, like, what if it's not as good as I.

[Thomas Banks]

It's like revisiting the journal you kept when you were 15.

[Angelina Stanford]

Yeah, right. Okay. So I. I confess that, you know, I haven't touched this book in a couple decades or more, and I was a little nervous, but my goodness, it's even better than I remembered. It's so much better. And We've talked about this before, too. Whether or not my. My thesis holds up and, you know, I. I didn't see all the things that I see now, which, of course is. This is one of the ways that you gauge yourself as a reader, that. To say, oh, I'm. I'm learning, I'm growing, I see more things. I mean, that's what you want to see.

[Thomas Banks]

Amen.

[Angelina Stanford]

And so, no, it's not perfect. There are some things I definitely would say differently now, but I would say that for the framework I was working in in the early 90s, it. It definitely was a solid attempt to read this symbolically. And I think I did. I think I did. There was. There's some phrases that I would change now that were definitely the influence of my. My committee at the time.

[Thomas Banks]

It's not merely a reflection of the fashions of the time. No, you didn't drown in a sea of Foucault.

[Angelina Stanford]

Boy, did I not. That's a whole other episode. I. I was fighting everybody. So, you know, but no, I think it stands up and. But the point is, I really studied this book at one time, and here I'm coming back again and just seeing all these new layers. And that is what the reading life is like. It's going to forever unfold to you. You should never be discouraged that you, quote, didn't see all the things. Right? Like, that would be discouraging if you saw them all on one read. This would be like, you know, eating one piece of chocolate cake and saying, oh, I'm full. I'll never eat chocolate cake again. No, you get to go back. You get to have more chocolate cake. And it's been. Well, I've mentioned already how impressed I am with the Patreon and the things that they're seeing. But, you know, they're seeing things that I didn't necessarily see. I mean, I'm still not seeing everything. No one should put that kind of burden on themselves. And I think sometimes people listen to the podcast and they feel a lot of different things at the same time. Excited, exhilarated, but also a little frustrated and discouraged. Why didn't I see that? But, you know, you guys should know that you're saying things on the discord that I didn't notice. This is how it works. You notice things, I notice things. We share what we notice.

[Thomas Banks]

I would submit also that no one, whether they're a scholar, a lay reader, whoever, a student in their reading life should. Should approach any particular good book with the. With the desire to exhaust it.

[Angelina Stanford]

Absolutely.

[Thomas Banks]

I think you'll probably end up frustrated if you head down that road.

[Angelina Stanford]

And.

[Thomas Banks]

And I know I have when at times in my life when that was my objective.

[Angelina Stanford]

Sure. I think it undermines the process of what art can do because art is about submitting yourself to the art and seeing what is being revealed to you at that time. I mean, it's a living thing and different things are going to be revealed to you at different times. And if you go in thinking, you know, this is a nut, I'm going to crack it open, I'm going to make peanut butter out of these nuts, I'm going to smash it up.

[Thomas Banks]

Don't be a literary squirrel, is what you're saying.

[Angelina Stanford]

Exactly. Exactly. You always say it so much pithier than I do, dear.

[Thomas Banks]

Thank you.

[Angelina Stanford]

So this is our final episode of Jane Eyre. At the end of this episode, I'm going to tell you some exciting things that we've got coming up on the podcast because we're making a small but rather significant change to the schedule. So hang on to that at the end. But as we've said many, many times before, this is a completely member supported podcast. At no point we'll be interrupting to tell you, do you need to switch your phone plan or buy our pillows or any of the other bazillion ads I get when I try to listen to a podcast. If you're listening to this on YouTube and has ads, that's not us, that's YouTube. We have no control over that. We have tried to figure out a way to stop them from doing it and, and they will do what they want. So listen to us on a podcast app and you will have no, no, no commercials. But that said, we do have a day job. This is our side gig. We do have a day job. It's over at the House of Humane Letters if you're interested in going deeper into any of your studies. So just a quick reminder of all the things I got going on and then a couple of teases about some things we have coming up. More than a couple of teases, I should say. So remember that Jason Baxter's new book is out. Go to cassiodoruspress.com and pick up Falling Inward. You can also sign up for his class in the fall, which is sort of a sequel class to his first book, why Literature Still Matters. His first book was Cassiodorus Press. I should say you can pick up that book too. And then you can have him guide you in this class called Where Do We Go From Here? So that's coming up and that's very exciting. Again, we have Jen Rogers amazing webinar on the Pilgrim's regress by C.S. lewis coming up. That's on 4-27-20. But again, everything we do is live or later. The recordings are yours to keep. If you can't make it live, watch it in your pajamas after the kids go to bed with a glass of wine and, you know, get your master class. And that one's called Tell Me that Story Again how the Pilgrim's regress wrote C.S. lewis. I am really looking forward to that. There is already a Patreon group that has started reading the Pilgrim's Regress and talking about it in anticipation of this. So this is, this is exciting.

[Thomas Banks]

Some of our more recent webinars have convinced me that I need to be more creative with my own webinar titles. Not because mine are always like the Life and Times of Mary Queen of Scots or something like something kind of, I mean, which is, you know, it's not false advertising because I did do a webinar on the Life and Times of Mary Queen of Scots. But yeah, I need to do a bit more, maybe a bit more jazz it up a bit.

[Angelina Stanford]

Not very good with titles either. Maya Girl and Poe Webinar was called Edgar Allan Poe, American Defender of the Medieval Imagination.

[Thomas Banks]

But I mean, that at least suggests a side to him that probably most people don't see.

[Angelina Stanford]

That's true. That's what I was going for.

[Thomas Banks]

All I suggested was that Mary Queen of Scots had a life at times.

[Angelina Stanford]

Yeah, but you see, I'm not gonna get distracted here, gang. And even though I know you like the witty banter between us, but that is one of the reasons I fell in love with you is you were so direct and I needed that. I needed just direct.

[Thomas Banks]

There's a reason why I'm not in advertising.

[Angelina Stanford]

Thomas Banks Madman.

[Thomas Banks]

I think I would be better at naming subdivisions than the people who actually name them. Have we, have I talked about this to you before? Every subdivision feelings about like, it sounds like a Pheasant Hill or, or Quail Run or something. Yeah.

[Angelina Stanford]

And it's all these like pre made box houses. I mean, Quail Run like, like, like everything's an English squire, you know?

[Thomas Banks]

Yeah, yeah.

[Angelina Stanford]

All right, check off witty banter next. Right, so that's what we've got going on right now. But we've got some fun stuff coming up and I don't want you to miss that. Okay? So the big thing is sign up for our newsletter so you can stay up to date. That's HouseyHumaneLetters.com if the pop up thing doesn't, I'm. See, you can't see the. This is not a video. This is audio. I'm making the pop up, the universal pop up motion with my hand.

[Thomas Banks]

I have thought for a long time that even when you're podcasting, your hand gestures don't lose any of their natural, natural liveliness.

[Angelina Stanford]

It's true. It's a whole. It's a whole extra thing. They should just have a camera on my hands, you know, interpretive hand gestures. That's me. You know, I'm a Cajun. And when I was a kid, there was a running joke. How can you make a Cajun stop talking? Make them sit on their hands.

[Thomas Banks]

I've heard that about Italians as well.

[Angelina Stanford]

There's a lot us Hot, spicy, probably most good foods.

[Thomas Banks]

Yeah. Many creeds and nations.

[Angelina Stanford]

Yeah, yeah, exactly. Anyway, if the pop up doesn't pop up, asking you if you want to sign up for the newsletter, scroll to the bottom of the home page and there'll be something there where you can sign up for the newsletter so you can find out what's going on. So in May. So Jen is doing our April webinar. In May, we are doing something that has been long requested. It's because we see you guys struggling with this in the Facebook group. We see it struggling in other places online, different homeschool groups saying, why would we read this book? This seems crazy. And we have somebody on the HHL faculty who loves this book, loves this author, and it just kind of makes herself into a fit every time somebody says something negative about it, saying they're reading it all wrong. So we've had, we've had people ask us, do a webinar, explain to us. So the time has come. You're like, what book? What book? In May, our own Heather Goodman is going to give us a webinar on Mary Poppins and she will set the record straight about how to read Mary Poppins. Hint. It's an upside down story and that's why people get confused. That's coming up in May. You can also look for an announcement. We haven't put this on the website yet. Ah, maybe it might be. No, I don't think it'll be on there by the time this airs. But there's always things going on behind the scenes. So you've heard Dr. Drought a couple times? No, once on this podcast, but you've heard him several times through House of Human Letters. He was our conference keynote Speaker. He. Two years ago, he did a webinar for us on the Viking tradition. He's teaching a Viking class for us now. We've got some exciting projects coming up with him. He is going to be the keynote speaker for our 2027 Literary Life Conference, the theme of which is going to be the Tower and the Ru. I'm quite excited about this. More about that later. But just note. But in the meantime, before we announce the conference officially, we'll. We'll do this. We'll announce this. So look, for this, this will be probably announced in the next month so, but Dr. Drought's going to be doing another class for us, another semester long class. You're going to want to get on the mailing list. You're not going to want to miss out on this. It might just be that I'm going to say because he's humble, he's not going to want me to say he's the world's foremost Tolkien scholar, even though we all know he is. We'll say he's one of the world's foremost Tolkien scholars. He'd say, no, no, no. And he'd say, Tom Shippy is better than me. Okay, fine. Tom Shippy's 82 years old. We'll, we'll, we'll put Drought just like slightly under that. But guys, spring of 2027, Dr. Drought is going to teach a semester long class on the works of J.R.R. tolkien. And the crowd goes wild. Yes. You guys have been asking for a Tolkien class for a long time. The timing wasn person wasn't right. But when Dr. Drought walked through those digital doors of the House of Humane Letters, I knew he was the guy for this. So that's going to be coming up as well. We're also in the next few weeks, going to announce our summer schedule. You'll want to get on the newsletter for that as well. I will be teaching the next Harry Potter book at some point during the summer. And we have a few other offerings which I won't talk about now. But anyway, lots of good stuff coming up. Get up that newsletter sign up. Don't miss any exciting announcements. All right. Are we ready for some commonplace quotes?

[Thomas Banks]

Now that we are, yes. You want to go first?

[Angelina Stanford]

Do I?

[Thomas Banks]

I think ladies first.

[Angelina Stanford]

Okay. I'm gonna go back to the very first commonplace quote I did on this series when I quoted from an essay by Adrienne Rich. And I'm going to read this paragraph to you because I like that she throws shade at Freudian scholars and she's Writing this. When is this written? I want to say this is WR. In the 70s. Let me just double check. I assumed it was. Hold on. This is a very long essay. Let me go back to the front. Yeah, yeah. It's from her collected works, published in 1979, but the works are from 1966 to 1978, so. Yeah. So at a time when Freudian criticism is quite popular, she's throwing shade at it. Okay, so I like that reader. I married him. These words open the final chapter of Jane Eyre. The question is, how and why is this a happy ending? Jane returns to Thornfield to find it a blackened ruin. She discovers Rochester, his left hand amputated, and his eyes blinded by the fire in which he vainly attempted to save the life of his mad wife. Rochester has paid his dues. A Freudian critic would say he has been symbolically castrated, discarding this phallic, patriarchal notion of his ordeal. We can then ask, what kind of marriage is possible for a woman like Jane Eyre? Certainly not marriage with a castrate, psychic or physical. That's my introduction to today. Okay. No Freudian reading of the symbols.

[Thomas Banks]

I didn't know that castration was going to come into this, but all right.

[Angelina Stanford]

Because we all know that having your

[Thomas Banks]

eye fallout is true.

[Angelina Stanford]

Yeah. The Freudians just. Yeah, that's another story, another episode. Me ranting against the Freudians, how they. They anything is and everything.

[Thomas Banks]

So this is from, on a lighter note, Arthur Quiller Couch's the Art of Writing, which is one of a very few books about the art of writing that I actually enjoy. He says, whenever you feel an impulse to perpetrate a piece of exceptionally fine writing, obey it and delete it before sending your manuscript to press. It's in the same chapter that he says, murder your darlings. That's the one.

[Angelina Stanford]

Yeah.

[Thomas Banks]

Like, whenever you think, man, that sounds really smart. You're probably just amusing using yourself. Yeah, probably a good. A good principle to keep in mind.

[Angelina Stanford]

I've learned that about myself a very long time ago. Like, every time I think, man, we did a really good job on this podcast episode. It's crickets if I'm like, I don't think that was very good. That's always the one that people are like, you said it finally just perfectly, I got it.

[Thomas Banks]

It's the ones that drive you to doubt and despair. The audience really enjoys always. It's strange.

[Angelina Stanford]

Always tells me that I'm not a good assessor of my own teaching. All right, well, we're going to look at the last few chapters, we're going to focus in on some important scenes, and then we're going to try to make sense of the ending and see what we can do. So chapter 34, Sinjin Rivers proposes. Okay. I don't think anybody's surprised that it was leading up to this. And so many interesting parallels to Rochester that struck me. Okay, so we've already been seeing kind of the. In the last episode, the Jane Eyre quote where she says, I'm fire and you're ice and I'm gonna melt you. The ice imagery continued through this whole section. And by the time you get to chapter 35, when he's upset with her because she won't marry him, she describes him as giving her ice kisses and the avalanche of his disdain. And it's just growing and growing and growing. So it's. It's an. It's an ice storm. It's a storm of a different kind of nature. So we have these kind of firestorm with Rochester, ice storm with Sinjin Rivers. But it also really struck me, the scenes where he's sitting in the. The study and he's in the corner and he's observing her. That was just exactly what Rochester did. Observing her, watching her. He has his own versions of tests, you know, will you be willing to learn Hindustani? Could you do this? Could you do that?

[Thomas Banks]

It's interesting. He's a man who does observably, at least. He's a man who does nothing for pleasure at all.

[Angelina Stanford]

Right.

[Thomas Banks]

I mean, he doesn't marry because he thinks it will bring him happiness. He doesn't. His studies, though. I mean, he's a very learned man. It doesn't seem that he is.

[Angelina Stanford]

It doesn't bring him joy.

[Thomas Banks]

Yeah, I don't. I don't get the impression that any of the knowledge he has acquired is something that he has pursued because it adds to the sum of happiness in some ways, which is not the only reason, of course, one should study a thing or pursue a line of. Of pursue a line of inquiry. Everything he does, though, seems. Seems to have been undertaken by him in the hope of. In the hope of fulfilling some kind of vocation. And his. His vocation, as he senses it, is a very exalted one, but also one that demands. Also one that demands that sort of the natural man or woman be burned away entirely.

[Angelina Stanford]

Exactly. And I think when you consider what he said earlier, that what his heart's passion really was is he wanted glory. Right. He wanted. He had this ambition to maybe be a politician or something like that. And and then realize, well, I can. I can. I can achieve my ambition and my hopes and goals on the mission. So it's like the mission field is sort of plan B for him. And he's all in because this is

[Thomas Banks]

how he calls me. And it's kind of interesting that he also doesn't seem to show any particular interest in India or its people for their own sake. Not that he disdains them or that he disdains anyone. It's just that this is a theater in which I am to pursue spiritual greatness.

[Angelina Stanford]

I had really prepared myself. We'll talk about this when we get toward the end. But a lot of the original audience was quite upset that Jane ends up with Rochester and not St. John. And they thought St. John's the obvious choice. He's a good man. He's a missionary. What's wrong with you? Why. Why would you not.

[Thomas Banks]

No, I understand that. And it's. It's kind of like she. I mean, I could understand. I could understand some of the more prim and proper readers of this book feeling that they had been subject to a bait and switch or something.

[Angelina Stanford]

Right?

[Thomas Banks]

He gets away from the disreputable guy. And here's this very sorry. Very reputable guy. Sorry, I was looking for a synonym there that kind of fell flat. But, yeah, here's this very noble and conscientiously Christian man who wants to pursue a life of spiritual. Spiritual heroism with her as yoke fellows. He's the kind of man who would use the word yoke fellow a lot in lieu of wife or spouse.

[Angelina Stanford]

Please never call me that. Yeah, we do labor in the same.

[Thomas Banks]

He knew someone who did that once. Actually, no. Actually, I have no reason to believe he was other than a very good husband or yoke fellow. Yeah, I'll stop. I'll stop right there.

[Angelina Stanford]

The romance. I'm stop. I'm swooning right now. I've also. I'm aware that there are certain Christian school teachers who think that this book is flawed because Jane should have ended up with Sinjin and not Rochester. So I had sort of prepared myself that this was going to be a hard sell, that I was going to have to really convince you guys that Rochester is the right choice. So I was really delighted to see in the discord, everyone just hates Rivers. They all were just like, can we smack him?

[Thomas Banks]

I haven't been following the discord. Do people hate him?

[Angelina Stanford]

Oh, they're there. Yes, they really. I've never been prouder of you guys. Like, they find him completely repulsive, so they're reading him the right way. They are definitely reading him the right way. Yeah. Actually, on the Discord, they were wondering if we were going to talk about why ambition is wrong. And we can. It's just that there. We've talked about that on so many other episodes, and there are so many other things that I. There are so many other things that interest me to talk about more. But, I mean, we could say this. We could say this. In the modern world, we think of ambition as a virtue, but historically, it has always been seen as a sin. Always. Even the. Like, you told me the original Latin word for ambition, it refers to a crime.

[Thomas Banks]

Yeah. That would be like. Yeah. Political bribery. And yes. Without going into the technical details, ambitio in Latin designates a specifically defined crime.

[Angelina Stanford]

Right, right. The sin of Satan in paradise. Loss is ambition. Macbeth. Sin is ambition. And we tend to think, no, ambition is this sort of, like, neutral thing. And you can either want something good or want something bad. No, by literally, by definition, ambition is when you want something bad. It's when you want something that is not rightfully yours. Right. You're willing to kind of sort of have backhanded things, and I don't want to get it. I realized some people are like, yay, she's talking about ambition. But honestly, there's just other things I want to talk about. But we'll just say that this is a red flag, that this man is like, I'm so filled with ambition, and I feel like I'm a Christian and it's not right for me to just want to rule the world politically. So I think I can fulfill this.

[Thomas Banks]

Everybody wants to.

[Angelina Stanford]

I have. Yeah.

[Thomas Banks]

There you go.

[Angelina Stanford]

Thank you.

[Thomas Banks]

I was waiting. Yes.

[Angelina Stanford]

Another 80s. Saw you did it.

[Thomas Banks]

Yeah. I didn't get one in last time, but it was. Yeah, three for four.

[Angelina Stanford]

Check it off your bingo card, guys and girls. Well done. Well done. But, yes, this is a red flag, that this man is like, I'm burning with ambition. So I think what we're supposed to see is that he. He represents a certain way to respond to this fire. You feel. Right. He's a lot like Helen Burns, and he's got this fire, and he feels like, well, I can sublimate it to. To my Christian ideals. I can become this stoic to achieve. You know, this is. This is the way that I'm gonna sort of direct the passion in my heart. Right. And his sisters say, look, he looks like ice on the outside, but he has fire burning in his breast. Right. So the fire burning in his breast, that Calls back to Helen Burns, who literally has consumption. Right. She's literally being burned up from the inside. And so I think if we're chasing all these fire images and we're not going to be done with them until we get to the very end of the book. Book. But what we're seeing is a whole bunch of different ways we can respond to passion. And many of them are self destructive. And those are the temptations that Jane, in this very sort of almost Pilgrim's Progress esque allegory of the soul here, she goes from place to place and person to person and there's all these different temptations. You know, I'm this passionate person and how do I. How do I cope with that? That. And I mentioned this in an earlier episode that, you know, you'll hear people say that Helen Burns is the moral center of this book. And I absolutely disagree with that. The strongest reason I disagree with that is because Helen Burns's double is Sinjin Rivers. And if. If we to understand that this is the story of Jane learning to become like Helen Burns, then she marries Sinjin. Helena would have married Sinjin.

[Thomas Banks]

I thought of that. Yeah. That's an interesting counterfactual in this book. What if Helen had grown to adulthood and. Yeah, she probably wouldn't have hesitated at all.

[Angelina Stanford]

Well, right. So I think the fact that Jane rejects him is saying that Jane is not. This is not the journey of Jane to become Helen Burns. Helen is an important person in Jane's life and shows her genuine kindness. But I think Maria Temple is much more, Much more the model of what Jane becomes because Maria gets married to somebody she loves.

[Thomas Banks]

It's also, I think, telling that. That after Jane rejects St. John's advances, his sisters approve of the fact that she.

[Angelina Stanford]

They thought it was a terrible idea.

[Thomas Banks]

Yeah. That he's not really looking for a wife so much as a colleague who happens to be wearing a wedding ring.

[Angelina Stanford]

An appropriate colleague.

[Thomas Banks]

Yeah. Someone's had to hold down the mission, you know, with him. Distribute cracks.

[Angelina Stanford]

You know. One of the things I said to you the other day was this proposal of St. John to Jane is like right up there with Mr. Collins. Like, he's like, you're not made for love, so marry me, me. It's right up there with Mr. Collins. Like I. Yeah.

[Thomas Banks]

I guess I would only say in Sinjin's defense. I think he knows what he's asking. Whereas.

[Angelina Stanford]

Yeah, right. Mr. Collins is a clown.

[Thomas Banks]

Like. Okay, how about this? M. Mr. Singin Rivers, after he is rejected, he doesn't go to like the next girl and ask her. Then it's like, well, one's as good as another.

[Angelina Stanford]

No, no, I agree, but like it

[Thomas Banks]

doesn't exactly have proposal.

[Angelina Stanford]

Which is. What am I trying to say here?

[Thomas Banks]

It couldn't have been less romantic if it were a business. You were asking her to sign on the dotted line.

[Angelina Stanford]

It's not romantic. It's almost insulting. I mean, Mr. Collins's proposal is. I think you should marry me. And here's the three reasons why. Number one, it would be good for me. Number two, it would also be really good for me. And number three, I think it'd be good for me.

[Thomas Banks]

I have a five paragraph persuasive essay for you.

[Angelina Stanford]

You.

[Thomas Banks]

Yeah.

[Angelina Stanford]

No, that's exactly what it is. That's exactly what it is. I always tell the students that Jane Austen is making fun of the five paragraph essay there. No, I lost my. I've lost my place. Hang on. Lost my place. But some of the quotes that stood out to me about chapter 34 is Jane Has. She said she's fallen under a freezing spell. Right. So, I mean, Sinjin is a genuine temptation to her. A genuine temptation In. In a lot of ways, hearing Rochester's voice calling her is what gives her the strength to leave him. Because she is going to fall. Because. Because he appealing to God, saying it's God's will that we get married. And you're not rebelling against me, you're rebelling against God. And Jane, Jane, I only want to save your soul. You. You. You can't turn away from God. I don't want you to be one of the unelect and go to hell. I mean, that's a. That's. But it does have its effect on her. It does have its effect on her. So it's a real temptation. She says that he finds her vivacity distasteful. He gives her ice kisses and statue kisses. She also says that to please him would to be denied. To deny half her nature. That's also significant.

[Thomas Banks]

Yeah. And she says that it's. There's something unmixable in them. The one is. The one is nature and the other is grace. And he has no. I guess you could say he has no admixture of nature in his character. That it's been stripped away somehow and that they can't. Because of that they can't really even relate to one another in the way that a husband and wife need to.

[Angelina Stanford]

But he doesn't want that.

[Thomas Banks]

No, he doesn't want that. He wouldn't see that as an objection at all. But any ordinary person with a regular temperament of, of any sort would, I would think.

[Angelina Stanford]

So let's take a look at some of the things that he says to her. And so he gives her this, this terrible semi proposal, right? And, and she's like, no, this is a terrible idea. I don't want to do that. He's telling her, have humility, God can use you. And all of these things.

[Thomas Banks]

Also throw aside your interests, stop studying German, pick up Hindustani. Here's a Hindustani grammar.

[Angelina Stanford]

Yes, completely lose yourself to me and to my calling. It will be our calling.

[Thomas Banks]

Now we were talking about, we were talking about this over breakfast and it reminded me a little of. In one of G.K. chesterton's essays, he remarks that the Roman Stoic emperor Marcus Aurelius was an unselfish egoist. The sort of person who never does anything from a remotely selfish motive. But whose, whose thoughts, whose desires, intentions are all concentrated on goals which cause them to neglect anything except the state of their own soul. And maybe that's not entirely fair to Marcus Aurelius. I think Marcus Aurelius had some admirable qualities. I think it is a fair criticism of St. John that he's an unselfish egoist. I mean he wouldn't be the kind of bad husband who mistreats his wife or browbeats her or anything like that. But he would demand from her the same kind of self exhausting and self emptying sacrifices that he makes of himself.

[Angelina Stanford]

That's exactly right. And I think this is why he's such a genuine temptation to her.

[Thomas Banks]

Yeah, yeah.

[Angelina Stanford]

And because he's not saying you should marry me because this is what I want. No, he's saying this is the highest calling in the world. How could you turn your back on God? God is giving you this, this opportunity and he's controlling, but honestly, not in a selfish way. He just thinks he knows what's best and what's best is for his soul and her soul and let's go to India and die. Now she comes back and says so, so now we're getting to the crux of it, right? So he, and this goes back to this fire and passion stuff, right? So he really does make a very strong case that the vocation of her life should be to go to India. So she says, okay, but I'll go as your sister, I'll go as your sister, I won't go as your wife. So this is very important on a whole bunch of levels. First of all, we got some really interesting Parallels. Because Rochester is saying, come with me to another country and live as my quote unquote wife. Okay? And so it's like, you will have passion and love, but you'll have none of the legitimacy of the title of wife. St. John is literally offering the opposite of that. Come with me to another country, live as my quote unquote wife. You will have all the legitimacy, but you will have no love, no passion. Okay. And we're just gonna go labor in the fields.

[Thomas Banks]

No, that's true. Those operate as foils against each other.

[Angelina Stanford]

Exact. Right.

[Thomas Banks]

That's very good.

[Angelina Stanford]

Okay, well. Okay. I'm just getting started here. Of course I'm going to lose my train of thought because you praised me.

[Thomas Banks]

I won't praise you ever again, I promise.

[Angelina Stanford]

No, please, praise me. Praise me. I like fire and passion. Don't be a sing in rivers to me. When it comes to Rochester, he's. He's saying, you know, let's go to Europe and live together, not married. And she says, no. And he's basically like, but no one will know. And who cares anyway? But she says, I'll know, right? I need my own integrity. Now flip that around with Sinjin. Okay, I will go to Europe with you, but not as your wife. I will go with you as an unmarried woman with you. And he says, oh, no. What's everybody gonna think? And she says, I don't care what everybody's gonna think, because I know, right? So very, very interesting point and counterpoint in. In those whole scenes, right? So I will go with you, but I will go with you as your sister. And he says, no, know, right? So what's. What's going on here? Well, this taps into this Victorian ideal of what is the perfect woman. And honestly, you can understand why the Victorian audience would have read this and thought there's nothing to object to about what St. John is saying now. We're moderns. We're romantic. We read that, like, that's horrible. He's offering her a life without love. But the ideal Victorian woman was supposed to be passionless. So this is a very significant thing. Okay, this is a sick. This is. Not only is it kind of scandalous that Jane is thinking about this, but it's very scandalous that she says it. And it's even more scandalous that Charlotte Bronte wrote it. She says, I could go with him to India as his sister, and I could labor alongside him. I could even die alongside him. What I can't do is pretend to be his wife. And she says, and no doubt he would be scrupulous in keeping up all of the marital duties. Now what does that mean? It means that he will be her lover but not be her lover. And that is what she will not tolerate. She won't tolerate that. Now that goes right to the heart of the debate at the time about whether or not women had passionate feelings in that way or if they did not, your mistress could feel that way. Your wife could not. Now, I'm going to tie this up with something in just a few minutes, but I just want to talk about it right now because what Charlotte Bronte is doing, this isn't like some modern, like a feminist critique of Victorian patriarchy. It's not that. What she's doing is tapping this into an older tradition, one that comes from Edmund Spencer, which I'm going to bring back again when we get to the end. But it's a pre Enlightenment understanding of women. This is the Enlightenment. This is Rousseau totally screwing up the way we think the sexes work. But for Jane to say I won't be in a passionless marriage is a huge moment for her. Okay. And again, it's another reason why I say this is not the journey of Jane to become Helen Burns. She is refusing to compromise. If there I can be not married, I can have a life of celibacy. And that's. That's fine. I will live here with Diana and Mary. But what I can't do is have a marriage where there's no passion and no love. That I won't do. And Sinjin loses his mind over this, right? Just loses his mind. What's wrong with you? What? Well, how could you possibly be saying. Saying no. And she just keeps saying, I'll go as your sister. I'll go as your sister. And he's like, that is not. That's not a pro. You know, that's not going to happen. And because he says it's culturally inappropriate, I'm too old. If you come, people are going to assume that you're my unmarried mistress. And I don't want them to assume that. So again, all of the point counterpoint between what's going on with Rochester. So you can see that you know, Jane, really, she. She follows her own sense of integrity and not what are customs and. And cultural mores.

[Thomas Banks]

I found it fascinating that she was willing to go in any capacity. Yeah, that was. That was a surprise to me and something that I wasn't.

[Angelina Stanford]

I guess it wasn't a surprise to me any of the times I've read it because I can be spiritually Manipulated that way. I have been spiritually manipulated that way. I. And I. I do think there's a certain kind of passionate person who can be told, this is the way you need to deal with it. You need to put them to death and you need to come do this thing that you don't really want to do, almost feeling like if you wanted to do it, it must not be your call.

[Thomas Banks]

Assuming that in any dilemma that you meet, the harder thing to do must be the right one.

[Angelina Stanford]

Right, Right.

[Thomas Banks]

And I would say that much of the time that is true, actually. I mean, usually when we have our own inclinations, faced with, you know, on the opposite side, something that we really do not want to do. Yeah, probably. I'll certainly say much of the time, yes, the right thing to do is to deny your inclinations, whatever, you know, the dilemma happens to be. But to make a rule of that, to make. To make that kind of a. I don't know, a Stoics golden rule that, you know, whatever, whenever faced with two choices, choose the one that you don't want to do is a. Whatever else it is, it's a recipe for unhappiness.

[Angelina Stanford]

Well, that's certainly true, but I would offer, as a counterpoint to what you just said, one of the things I talk to my students about is the idea that the antidote of ambition is vocation. It's calling. It's the idea that you've been made for something. And so it's not, you know, I want to be famous. It's, you know, what am I called to do? And. And I say, how. A lot of times we think that a calling is a mystery, and how am I ever going to figure out what I'm called to do? But the easiest way to figure that out is to look at what are the gifts God has given me. What do I like to do? Oh, you like to play the piano. And you're really good at it. Maybe that's your vocation. Oh, you like to. I mean, when I was in the second grade, I came home from school every day and I sat at my siblings and my stuffed animals and I had a blackboard, and I taught them everything I learned that day at school. I mean, was my calling a teacher?

[Thomas Banks]

You think, didn't you tell your mother when you were 4 or something that you wanted to talk for a living? Here you are.

[Angelina Stanford]

And it was not my ambition, but it was my vocation.

[Thomas Banks]

I wanted to be Napoleon. See, when I was a small.

[Angelina Stanford]

Now I see why you, you would say, do the opposite of Your inclination. Right. So it's a matter of knowing, you know, just because you like it doesn't mean it can make it wrong. It could be that these are the gifts God has given you and he's equipped you for your calling. But it is true that we can have sinful desires like desiring to be Napoleon. It's probably not. I'm glad you got. I'm really glad you got over that. We're going to pause while we go to marriage counseling. We'll be back later. Later. No, but I'm glad you got. I'm glad you got over your.

[Thomas Banks]

Should I start walking around the hat with my hand in my shirt? You know, like,

[Angelina Stanford]

start calling me Josephine? Don't hold that. No, thank you, but yes. So if we just look at, like, what is everything in that scene of her life doing? Okay, well, obviously we have the fairy tale trope of she's no longer an exile from home. She has a home. She has a fortune. She's independent, which is very important. Important. Right. So she doesn't have to get married, she doesn't have to work. She's in the ideal position. Right. She's got beautiful friendships with Mary and Diana. There's nothing you can say negative about them. You know, they're. They're fantastic. And they're like, wait, he did what? Now he wants you to go where? This is crazy. So they're fantastic, but I think we need to look at the fact that their names are Mary and Diana. Okay? So, I mean, obviously you've got consecrated virgins. Well, that. Consecrated virgins is where I'm going. Not just the goddess Diana and, you know, the Theotokos Mary, the mother of our Lord, but they're consecrated virgins. Okay. And so it strikes me that everything about that home represents that this is the temptation for her to be a consecrated virgin, essentially, with St. John. Right. To live this passionless life with him.

[Thomas Banks]

What every little girl wants.

[Angelina Stanford]

Yeah, right. Right. Exactly. Exactly. And then the fact that Mary and Diana later get married. That. That's not relevant because what the. What the temptation of that is, is for her to put down her passions in that way and not have romantic love.

[Thomas Banks]

Of course, we'll talk about it more when the time comes. It really is interesting that St. John has the last word.

[Angelina Stanford]

I know. I. We do.

[Thomas Banks]

I thought that that was.

[Angelina Stanford]

Yeah, that's a question mark. In my mind.

[Thomas Banks]

That is a question mark.

[Angelina Stanford]

So we'll. Yeah, we'll talk about that.

[Thomas Banks]

Yeah.

[Angelina Stanford]

All right. So wait, I'm checking off the things I already Said. I already said that. I already said that back. All right, let's go back to the idea that this is a journey of the soul and see if we can understand why the journey of the soul is being portrayed in a series of marriages. And who should I be with romantically? Okay. Because that might be a struggle for us. This just goes back to the idea that marriage is a picture of Christ in the church. So the journey of the soul being united in marriage. I mean, this is Cupid and psyche, too. Psyche literally means soul. It's the journey of the soul. It ends in this marriage. That. That is, the marriage becomes the image then of the union of the person with God. Right. You've attained that. That status of holiness. And so it's. It's just a very favorite image of journey of the soul. It. It's the image that the Bible itself gives to us. And so you see this all over the place, even in something like the Odyssey, where Odysseus is trying to make it home to his true wife. You know, the temptations along the way are other women, right? Other. Other false women, other. Other ways that you could unite. But he keeps, you know, his eyes on home and going home and getting to his true bride. And so that's what's going on here. Right. This isn't just. Just a horizontal story about, you know, how to pick a spouse. Although, of course, you know, we could see there's all kinds of things we could talk about. But the real issue here is that this is symbols of the journey of her soul. And it is not good for her soul to marry Sinjin. To be united with him would be a death to self that she is. She has decided is. Is an extreme version and not. Not what her soul needs. And that's why she says to him, you are killing me. You will kill me. You are killing me. And he loses his launch over this. And he says, I'm killing you. I'm killing you. How am I killing you? So let's get to that, because you were pretty excited when I made this connection earlier. Okay. So again, this goes back to this idea that what's really going on with Sinjin and this ice imagery is this is just another kind of fire that's burning inside. It's another way to be burned up in a fire. Right? So when Jane is talking with Rochester earlier in the book and they're kind of going back and forth, she says, I'm not going to be burned up on a sati with you. Right? So that's the Indian Tradition that when a man dies, his wife throws herself on the funeral pile. Right? And we talked about how that was a symbol of, you know, this unrestrained passion. I'm not going to be burned up with you. But look at what Sinjin is literally offering her. Come to India, where I'm going to die and you get to die with me. Me. Okay. He's literally offering her the opportunity to have a sati with her in India. Yeah, right. Charlotte Bronte is hitting us over the head with this. And so Jane once again says, I'm not going to be. I'm not going to do a Sati. I'm not dying for you. Okay, now we fast forward a couple chapters. Bera Mason does. She does die in that fire. Right, but we'll get to that. We'll get to that. Okay, so then we get to chapter 36, and she hears the voice and she leaves. Right? She goes back and it's. It's her original exile from Thornfield in reverse.

[Thomas Banks]

See, I had to read this passage twice to realize that he wasn't actually, like, outside calling her. Yeah, it's interesting. This is one of those stories. No, no, no, no. This is. This is one of those stories. I. And. And again, this might be. Maybe this is confusing to a first time reader. Maybe, maybe not. If you're just less dense than I am. But a number of moments occur in this story where I'm not entirely certain if this is some kind of dream, some kind of vision or reality. But, yeah, this was one such moment to me.

[Angelina Stanford]

But, you know, I think that's fair. I think that's fair, because in a romance, the whole line between the dreaming world and the waking world, and this is an otherworld and you're a fairy. It's not a hard line.

[Thomas Banks]

Oh, yeah, it's very permeable, I suppose.

[Angelina Stanford]

Right, right. So, yeah, that's fine. Oh, wait, yeah, this was. This was a quote in chapter 35 I marked before we look at 36. So she says to him, You said I could not go. Okay? So he says, when I. When I go to India, Jane, will I leave you? What? Do you not go to India? So he does not take her. No, this is. This was nicely contrasted with Rachesa who just asks her, what do you want? Right? So he. He never asks her. He's like, I'm sorry, what? No, are you coming with me?

[Thomas Banks]

And she says, when a woman says, no, I don't want to die in your spiritual sati, she really means yes.

[Angelina Stanford]

You know, what's Lizzie been It what she's saying to Mr. Collins. Please do me the honor of believing me when I say no. We needed that scene in here. You said I could not unless I married you. And you will not marry me. You adhere to that resolution, reader. Do you know, as I do, what terror those cold people can put into the ice of their questions? How much of the fall of the avalanche is in their anger or of breaking up of the frozen sea in their displeasure? Right. So this isn't just like a calm stoicism. This is an ice storm. It's an avalanche. In other words, the ice and avalanche of sin. John threatens to destroy her just as much as the fiery passion of Rochester ever did. They. They are. They're both threats to her.

[Thomas Banks]

Yes. It's like as hard as an entire South Pole unto itself, only with no penguins. That would be too charming. And. And cutesy.

[Angelina Stanford]

Definitely not North Pole. No Santa.

[Thomas Banks]

No.

[Angelina Stanford]

No Santa. All right, so she goes back to Thornfield and the trip is in reverse. And when you see this. This happens in romance a lot. When you see a double parallel scene like that, notice if it's like an octave higher, okay? Because if it is, then we can see that our. Our hero or heroine, as in the case here, is in ascendancy. Right? She's coming out of the bottom of the U. She's had her death and rebirth, and now she's on the way up. Up. And of course, we see this here. So she's returning to Thornfield. In some ways, it's exactly the same at night. Fleeing from a man who wants to marry her alone. Okay? But the not the same is she's got moolah now.

[Thomas Banks]

She does.

[Angelina Stanford]

She's independently wealthy. She is not alone and cast out in the world. She's not a beggar. She is not friendless. Right? So it's one octave higher. That means she's returning to Rochester in a very, very different position.

[Thomas Banks]

And also it prevents us from any kind of suspicion that she's going to marry Rochester just because she needs to marry someone now, right?

[Angelina Stanford]

Oh, yes, yes. And that's really important to her because earlier she had said to him, you know, if I had my own money, if I could come to you as an equal, this would feel better, right? So that was important to her. But sometimes I hear people talking about this book, about. This was the journey of Jane to learn how to put to death her passion, passions. And I always say, what? She goes back and marries Rochester? What are you talking about? She doesn't put to death her passions. That's the whole point of this book. What are you talking about? And she's going to learn to order them, but she doesn't put them to death. But. But they always. They say something about. Well, you know, but she only goes back to him after Bertha's dead. And I was like, you need to reread those chapters. Because she does not know. Right? She knows that nothing has changed. She goes back to him fully expecting. He is still married. He is still.

[Thomas Banks]

Rochester, I had a question for you, which I probably should have asked at the beginning of this episode.

[Angelina Stanford]

Yes, I'll marry you.

[Thomas Banks]

Okay. Thank God. Do you. You know more about the. The actual process of how she wrote this book than I do?

[Angelina Stanford]

But I don't remember as well, you know?

[Thomas Banks]

Did she ever consider having Jane marry St. John?

[Angelina Stanford]

I don't think so.

[Thomas Banks]

You don't think so? Because, I mean, tell me. Tell me if I'm crazy, but it's not unthinkable in a Bronte novel that something like that might happen. Because Agnes Grey.

[Angelina Stanford]

Oh, this is Heights, right? Just marry the.

[Thomas Banks]

I mean, there's all kinds of marriages of convenience or whatever you want to call it in the Bronte canon. And that's not the. It's not the craziest idea in the world that it might have at least occurred to her. I don't have any confirmation of this, though, which is why I'm asking.

[Angelina Stanford]

Here's why I'll say no. Because I'm about to get going in this last two chapters through a checklist of how she hits every single fairy tale ending that she foreshadowed at the beginning. Beginning. Okay. And because of that, I think this is the only ending she ever could have anticipated. Because. Because she foreshadows it too much. Right. Okay, so let's go back to the idea of. Is this Bluebird or is this Beauty and the Beast? What story I'm in. Right? And so when the wife is revealed, that's her worst fear. He's Bluebeard. And she takes off running, right? But is he really Bluebeard? Maybe he's not. So that scene where she hears him dying and his voice over the moor, and she takes off. Off. That is straight out of Beauty and the Beast.

[Thomas Banks]

Oh, you're right.

[Angelina Stanford]

Okay. So she's. So she goes running to him. So he's not Bluebeard, he's Beauty and the Breeze. Right? Then when she sees him, I was losing my mind, okay? She says to him, you need to be re. Humanized. You have metamorphosed into A lion.

[Thomas Banks]

Oh, very good.

[Angelina Stanford]

This is beauty.

[Thomas Banks]

You're right. No, I, I right. I read over that line twice in this last month, and I don't think I picked up on it other time.

[Angelina Stanford]

I got so excited. So she's like, I'm here to change the curse, to change you from a man into a lion. Okay. Now and then she says, let me comb out. Let me comb out your long mane. Okay, this is Beauty and the Base gang. This is Beauty and the Beast. All right, so in 36, of course, she. She learns the lay of the land, and she finds out that there's been a fire at Thornfield hall and that Bertha died. Died. So, so Bertha sets the house on fire. So true to her symbol of being unrestrained passion, she's burned up in it, and Rochester tries to save her and he is injured.

[Thomas Banks]

Are we meant to understand that anyone other than Bertha died?

[Angelina Stanford]

No, only Bertha.

[Thomas Banks]

Okay.

[Angelina Stanford]

I was clear about that.

[Thomas Banks]

In that case, Grace Pool is going to have a hard time getting references, I think. How many times has she got. Yeah. By the way, Grace Pool. I was looking into this and I was thinking, you know, I know I've heard of a drunken nurse in fiction and Mrs. Gamp, which is in Charles Dickens, Martin Chuzzlewit. Mrs. Gamp is a famous character there who also is an alcoholic nurse who works in a private capacity. And evidently that was kind of a cultural cliche about nurses in the early Victorian era is that they were sort of disreputable women of the wrong kind of background, often who were kind of dissolute and that we're not used to thinking of nurses. I mean, that's one of those professions. We tend to think anyone who does this is a hero. And, you know, perhaps rightly so. But it was really a decade after this that the, the modern perception of nurses as these almost kind of saintly figures changes with, With Florence Nightingale.

[Angelina Stanford]

Nightingale.

[Thomas Banks]

And of course, Florence Nightingale. When she, she came from a very prosperous family and when she wanted to become a nurse, she met with all kinds of opposition from her family because that was not, not a, Not a profession that good, good girls properly brought up girls would wish to adopt anyway. All of that to show that Grace Poole. This is not just some indication that Charlotte Bronte had some special animus against nurses. This is how they're usually portrayed in books in this time time.

[Angelina Stanford]

Right, right. And she needs a plot device for

[Thomas Banks]

how, of course, out of the.

[Angelina Stanford]

Out of the house. All right, so let's talk about Rochester's injuries. So if you've been paying attention. She foreshadowed this at the very beginning. Jane, when she's in distress about what's happening with her in Rochester, and he's already married, and she's truly tempted to just. Let's just run off together. I. I want love more than anything else. Let's just run off together, she says. Of course, she quotes the Bible verse, better to pluck out your eye or cut off your hand. Right. If your eye causes you to sin, better to pluck it out. If your hand causes you to sin, better to cut it off. Right. So that she associates it in that moment with. These are the wages of sin. Right. But not just these are wages of sin. This is. This is what repentance looks like.

[Thomas Banks]

Right.

[Angelina Stanford]

Okay. Then in chapter 36, the old man repeats it and says to her, he lost his eye and lost his hand. But that's a fitting justice from the Lord.

[Thomas Banks]

It is. Yeah.

[Angelina Stanford]

Right. That he lost this because he was trying to, you know, sin with. With this little. With Jane. But he doesn't know it's Jane, so he does, in fact, literally lose his eye and literally lose his hand. And someone had said to me earlier, you know, I'm just not really happy with the ending of this book because Rochester does all these things and what, because he's blind now? Everything's okay? No, you have to read this. As this is the symbolic repentance of him. He plucked out his eye. He cut off his hand. He is repentant.

[Thomas Banks]

I would quite agree.

[Angelina Stanford]

Right. And he. He has a long. Oh, go ahead.

[Thomas Banks]

No, no, I was. I was just chiming in. Yes, absolutely.

[Angelina Stanford]

Okay, good. Yeah. And he has that long speech about God's judgment and just justice. And he has learned his lesson and he has repented. So we are not to believe. Jane gets some money, and now everything's okay, and she goes back to Rochester. No, Rochester is changed. He's repentant. He's repentant. Yes. There are other things. She comes to him independently wealthy and as an equal. And, you know, the power dynamic between the two of them are different. All of that is true, but that is not the point. The point is he is now repentant. That's why the obstacle to their marriage is now gone. Right. Bertha's dead. And if we weren't reading it like a fairy tale, we might say, well, that's convenient. Well, no, it's not convenient, because Bertha represents Jane's unrestrained passion. And once Jane's unrestrained passion is reined in, Bertha disappears, because that's that's how these stories work. Okay. Other things I'm going to come back to. I'm going to come back to his wounds in just a second. All right. I lost my mind because I. I was so excited.

[Thomas Banks]

Oh. Very often. Yes.

[Angelina Stanford]

Yes. Well, I got really excited about this because I think.

[Thomas Banks]

I think you were waving your pen about violently. Just don't.

[Angelina Stanford]

Don't lean closely off.

[Thomas Banks]

I was gonna say my eye out. Yeah.

[Angelina Stanford]

You have not cuckold in me. So we're fine. That I know of. You keep telling me there's no mad woman in the attic. We'll see. You know, I'm not climbing up there to find out. So you. He'd be pretty safe. There are early references to the Arabian Nights in here. Somehow I missed on an earlier read, but I caught it this time. So Jane's doing a few interesting things here. One, she's trying to make him jealous about St. John Rivers, right? Just like he tried to make her jealous about Blanche. He's trying to make her. She's trying to make him jealous now. And he says, I don't want you to leave because I think you're going to run away again. And so she says, I will leave my tale half told as a sort of security. That I will still be here in the morning.

[Thomas Banks]

Oh, that's Shaharazad. I didn't even notice that

[Angelina Stanford]

that was Shaharazad.

[Thomas Banks]

It's one of those breadcrumbs that only you have eyes for.

[Angelina Stanford]

Excited that Shaharazad. Okay, so Scheherazade is the framing device of the Arabian Nights. Okay, I have a whole talk on Sharazan. I'm not going to give it now, but. But I'll hit the highlights. So we, We. We know the story of Shaharazada. She tells stories to save her life. Okay, But. But what's going on is the king lost his mind, okay? And he loses his mind because he gets cuckolded by a woman. Okay? It's totally Bertha.

[Thomas Banks]

It's kind of set up like Esther also, isn't it?

[Angelina Stanford]

Yes. So a friend of his brings him to kind of peek in on his wife, and he sees that his wife is with another man, okay? And so he loses his mind. And after that, he can't trust women. It's so much Jane Eyre. Listen to this. Okay? So the first woman you know breaks his heart because she's unchaste. And so then he decides, well, I'm just going to go through a whole bunch of women and never get heartbroken again, which is of course, what Rochester does. Right? But the way he's going to handle this is he. Every day, he. Every night, he marries a woman, and then the next morning, he kills her. Right? Because now she can't cook. Hold me. Now, symbolically, that's the whole Bluebeard story. That's been exactly. Exactly right. That's been Jane's worry. You're going to. You're going to love me and leave me. You're going to toss me aside. This. This slew of mistresses that you have. I'm just going to be another one. Right, well, so Shaharazad to rescue the land. Volunteers. Volunteers to be the. To be his wife. And she's got a plan. So he marries her. And then that night, she says, I know you're going to kill me in the morning. My last request. Can my sister come to see me? And he says, yes. So she starts telling a story to the sister, but it's really telling it to the king. Right? Right. And she tells it and, like, kind of brings it up to the climax and then stops the story. And it's morning, okay? And she. She. She just kind of goes, it's a thousand and One nights, right? It's the Arabian night. It's telling those stories she's telling Sinbad the Sailor and Aladdin and Alibaba and the 40 thieves and all that. So each morning, the sun comes up and the king's like, well, I can't kill you now. I gotta find out how this story ends. Right? So this keeps going. This keeps going. Time. Eventually, she does it long enough that he comes back to his senses. He regains his wits, and he apologizes and says, I will never kill you, and you are my wife forever.

[Thomas Banks]

Speaking of kings who regain their witch, he also compares him to Nebuchadnezzar.

[Angelina Stanford]

That's right. Oh, well done. Yes, exactly so. Exactly so. And again, changed to an animal and changed back. So that's Beauty and the Beast, too. Well done. Yes, she does. Now, what people miss about the Scheherazade story is that there was a long understanding that you tell fairy tales to regain your sanity. Right? So she. She moves him from madness that was created because of being cuckolded by his wife back to sanity through the story she tells. That's Jane Eyre. This is so much Jane Eyre. Right. She has. She's helping to bring Rochester back to sanity after all this. Oh, you like?

[Thomas Banks]

Oh, no. You're on fire, Ms. Stanford. Sorry, that was a poor choice of words. I know. With the. You know. Whole Brooklyn Mason thing. But yes. You know what I mean.

[Angelina Stanford]

Okay. No. You're liking this. Good. I thought this might be a hard sell. Okay, so.

[Thomas Banks]

Oh, no, no, no. Keep going.

[Angelina Stanford]

Okay, so then another level of Jane, of Scheherazade is Jane is telling us this story. Right.

[Thomas Banks]

Correct.

[Angelina Stanford]

This. This whole novel is the story she is telling to save her life.

[Thomas Banks]

I like it.

[Angelina Stanford]

So, Jake.

[Thomas Banks]

No, I think. I think that that's very artful. Very artful.

[Angelina Stanford]

It could. Yeah.

[Thomas Banks]

Again, that's the kind of thing I just don't notice.

[Angelina Stanford]

Well, I got really excited. Okay. Shaharazad is the first story I ever fell in love with as three years old, as many of you listeners know. And Scheherazade is the character that I most relate to. The girl who tells stories to save her life.

[Thomas Banks]

Might you. You know, maybe during Spirit Week. Do we have any. I don't know if we have any Eastern garb that we could dress you up as.

[Angelina Stanford]

Gotta go with Shaharaza, I think.

[Thomas Banks]

I think you need to, too.

[Angelina Stanford]

The only reason I know how to say Shaharazad, too, is because I insisted. I made my dad tell me how to pronounce it, and I always got it right. Shaharazad. Shahrazad. I know how to say Shaharazad. Okay, so that was very exciting to me to see all of that. Okay, more. So what do we think about this blindedness? Okay, well, first. Okay, so Rochester also says. Sorry, I'm just going through my notes here. Rochester also says that if Saul had had a David like her, he would have driven out the madness. Driven out the deal.

[Thomas Banks]

Yes.

[Angelina Stanford]

Right. So that's the same thing. Like, I'm. I'm driving these demons out of Rochester. Right. Okay. Many of you guys saw this. Well done. Well done. And as much as I have enjoyed seeing the Patreon just kill it with this, it's a special sort of satisfaction to me when I peek over at our student discord board and see our high school students, many of whom just simply cannot get enough and listen to the podcast as. As well as keeping up with their studies in their other classes with us. So many of them are reading Jane Eyre, and of course, I was thrilled that they were just all over the fairy tale elements. So well done to all of you guys. And many, many, many of them picked up right away on the Rapunzel stuff. But I want to. I want to add to that. Okay, so very early on, there was a Rapunzel reference, and when I got to the end, of course, I was like, holy Cow. This is. This is Rapunzel again, right? So Rapunzel again, a man goes to get watercress because his wife insists on it, right? Gets caught by a witch and has to give the child, who's then imprisoned in a tower, a prince falls in love with her. That's the whole let down your hair thing, right? Eventually, the witch figures it out, cuts off Rapunzel's hair, turns it into a ladder. And then the next time the prince comes to climb up the ladder, instead of finding her, he finds a witch. She pushes him down, he falls into the thorns and is blinded. Okay, so let's just pause right there. Rochester has to climb up to the very top of the house symbolic tower moment where he meets a witch, Bertha. He then falls down. Okay. And I'm gonna give this next comment a shout out to our student, Elizabeth Hobson, who put this so brilliantly. Well done, kid. Did. She said, in Rapunzel, the prince falls into the thorns. In Jane Eyre, Thornfield hall literally falls on top of Rochester and blind.

[Thomas Banks]

Slow clap. That's a slow clap.

[Angelina Stanford]

That's a slow clap. Right. So well done. That's exactly right. So now we're acting out Rapunzel, right? And he's been blinded. So in the Rapunzel story, he wanders around for a long time, blind, but eventually he meets up with Rapunzel again. Him. And she looks into his face and she cries, and her tears go into his eyes and restore his eyesight, which is what happens in Jane Eyre. Right. He. She. Her love for him restores his eyesight also Rapunzel. Then they have a baby. Jane Eyre and Rochester have a baby here, too. So do I think she could have married St. John? Not if the foreshadowing is right. Right. We had to close the loop on Beauty and the Beast and Rapunzel.

[Thomas Banks]

Almost any other novelist. Almost any other. A lot of other novelists would have probably just sent her off with St. John and closed things in a kind of. Kind of a facile fashion. Do you think that's a fair?

[Angelina Stanford]

I think that is fair, yeah. And I think that that's what people were expecting and that's why they were mad.

[Thomas Banks]

But this would be a much lesser book if she had done this.

[Angelina Stanford]

Much lesser book. You know, you asked me this morning, did I think that they were going to live happily ever after, and you said you weren't buying it. It. And I said, of course they are, because it's every single fairy tale. It's Beauty and the Beast, it's Rapunzel It's Shaharazad. Of course. They live happily ever after. She's also writing it 10 years. 10 years later. So I think that we are to understand that her journey of the soul was not to put to death her passion, which is destructive, but to put to death passion that is destructive. If that makes sense. Right. To refine it. Right.

[Thomas Banks]

Yeah. To burn out the impure elements.

[Angelina Stanford]

You got it. That's it. To burn out the impure elements so that she will not be like John Reed, who is burned up by his passions, or Bertha Mason, who is burned up by her passions. Our Sinjin Rivers, who is burned up in a different way by his passions. But she is ordering them properly. Right. She is insisting on a passionate love match with her husband. I'll come back to that in just a second, but let's go back to Sinjin. Okay. You noted this when she leaves Morehouse. How does she describe it?

[Thomas Banks]

I've already forgotten.

[Angelina Stanford]

Oh, it was the prison reference.

[Thomas Banks]

Oh, my gosh. Yes. Sorry. I thought you were going in a different direction. Yeah. She compares it to the being miraculously set free from the prison. Like Saints Paul and Silas are in what, Acts 16. I think it is 16 or 17. Something around there. It's been a while since I've been to Sunday school. Sorry. And. And yeah. Even though. Even though her sojourn there was, in some ways, I think, good for her, she realizes that she doesn't have a future with these people. She doesn't have a future with St. John.

[Angelina Stanford]

She does not.

[Thomas Banks]

Yeah.

[Angelina Stanford]

And he's. He's a kind of death. He's a kind of imprisonment to her. And I'm gonna. I'm gonna jump on that in just a second. But let's. Let's talk about something that is curious to me. She doesn't end with the. And Rochester and Jane live happily after ever after. She leaves with St. John. She ends the book with St. John.

[Thomas Banks]

Yeah. The guy who was the suitorist, who

[Angelina Stanford]

was rejected, where he, in fact, does go and die. And Jane absolutely would have died. Okay.

[Thomas Banks]

And I think we're meant to understand that. Yeah. This is his last letter to her. And he's kind. Does he seem oddly exalted and happy?

[Angelina Stanford]

Yep.

[Thomas Banks]

This is about as excited as we've seen him.

[Angelina Stanford]

Him.

[Thomas Banks]

Read this last paragraph. Yeah. So here we go. Her describing the last letter that he sent to her. So end of chapter. End of volume three, chapter 12. 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 latest 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. The end.

[Angelina Stanford]

And she had just earlier referenced some characters in Pilgrim's Progress.

[Thomas Banks]

Yeah. She compares him to Great Heart at

[Angelina Stanford]

the end of Pilgrim's Course is a. A signal to us that we should be reading this as a journey of the soul story, like Pilgrim's Progress. But also, you know, she doesn't see. And. And I mean, here she's saying he belongs in the book of life. Right. She had earlier said that as well. I like what you said this morning when I asked you why does she end it with him? Do you remember what you said to me? That's okay. I never remember what I.

[Thomas Banks]

No, I never. I never remember what I say.

[Angelina Stanford]

Fortunately, we remember what you said. I think Charlotte Bronte doesn't want to end the book condemning St. John. Like.

[Thomas Banks]

Like, yeah, she doesn't want to.

[Angelina Stanford]

He's not the right choice for Jane. But he's not a bad man. No.

[Thomas Banks]

And it's unlike her to dance on his grave either. Or just. Or also just forget him. Like he was some insignificant presence in her life. Because he wasn't. Yeah.

[Angelina Stanford]

Yeah, but he's not the right man for her.

[Thomas Banks]

Yeah, but I think we're. We're also meant to understand. Like. Like, what if she had gone with him? And what if she were married to him and he were dying right here? She would be left with, what, like, to continue her husband's mission work in India without. Without anyone there to solace her. That would be. That would be an.

[Angelina Stanford]

Or that she was dying.

[Thomas Banks]

That would be an unpleasant fate. I. I think we.

[Angelina Stanford]

The way I read it was, as she predicted, he's going there to die. And if she had gone with him, she would have also died, probably.

[Thomas Banks]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Angelina Stanford]

Right. Yeah. I mean, in terms of the Victorian world. He. He was the ideal man.

[Thomas Banks]

Yeah. And one looks at him and you say like, how. Yeah. How idealistic and how self disciplined and noble and what a great escape Jane has made.

[Angelina Stanford]

Right.

[Thomas Banks]

Yeah.

[Angelina Stanford]

Right. This wasn't her call. Might be. Might have been some other woman's calling, but it wasn't her calling. Yeah. Yeah. All right, so let's go back then to something I said earlier then. So I do think that this is the story of Jane's journey of the soul, and I do think that it is framed for us in terms of finding love, as traditionally those stories are. And one of the easiest way, I think, to explain the older tradition she's tapping into, because, you know, you'll hear feminist critics say, well, this is a critique of Victorian views of women. That's fair. It is, it is, is. But I don't think that that's all that's going on. I don't think we can reduce it to that. I think that's sort of a side effect to the fact that she's, she's, she's calling back to a much older tradition here. And I, and I see so much Edmund Spencer's Fairy Queen in here, particularly book three. So book three of the Fairy Queen is about a female knight. Gasp. I know you've been told only feminist retellings have female nights. Nope. The Middle Ages had them as well.

[Thomas Banks]

Quite a few.

[Angelina Stanford]

Quite a few, yes. Eowyn is in the grand tradition of that, but Britomart is a knight on a quest, and she's on a quest to find her man. I called myself Britomart when I was trying to find you. Oh, okay. Yes, you succeeded. Congratulations. Britomart is on a quest to find her man. And she, along the way, is encountering a number of different, different temptations of love. All right, so you've got like a kind of Eros moment, which obviously that's lust. Right. So you have to kind of, you look past that, you know, lust. The lust, temptation. But then there's different kinds of love that are sort of unhealthy. And CS Lewis talks about this in Allegory of Love. He's got. I think it's the last chapter in the book on the courtly love tradition. And it looks at this particular thing in book three of the Fairy Queen. And I think what he says about that, that completely applies to Jane Eyre and will help us to understand what Charlotte Bronte is trying to show us. So in the Middle Ages, you have the courtly love tradition. You see this even in, like, The Franklin's Tale. Justice Franklin's tale, which is directly referenced in book three of the Fairy Queen. Both of which, by the way, are referencing Cupid and Psyche. So that also fits in with the Jane Eyre thing in the Franklin's Tale. It's. If I'm roughly paraphrasing, but as he says, that mastery is the enemy of love. And as soon as you get a conversation about who's the boss in the relationship, he says, love will clap its wings and fly away. That's Cupid and Psyche. That same line is repeated in book 3 of Britomark, by the way. I did not read that in a footnote. I made that observation myself when I was reading them. It was very, very exciting to see that thread there. But that's all Cupid and Psyche. Right. Love will clap its wings and fly away. Which let me make a note that I want to get back to Cupid and Psyche before we leave here. Okay. So C.S. lewis points out that in the Middle Ages, much like in the Victorian world, the idea was most marriages are not romantic matches. Right. Most of them are marriages of convenience.

[Thomas Banks]

Oh, I'd say for most human history.

[Angelina Stanford]

Precisely. Precisely. Right. So your estate and my estate need to be joined or, you know, we're gonna try to have peace between our countries or something. So it's a marriage of convenience. So you do not look in the marriage for passionate love. You look outside the marriage for passionate love. So the framework is, if you want passionate love, that's what you go do with a mistress. If you want a dutiful.

[Thomas Banks]

Sure.

[Angelina Stanford]

Arrangement.

[Thomas Banks]

Lancelot, Paolo and Francesca. All of those.

[Angelina Stanford]

Yes. Okay. If you want, like, a dutiful arrangement, that's marriage. Okay. I totally think those are the two poles in Jane Eyre. Okay. The passion that Rochester's offering, literally, as she's going to be her mist. His mistress. He. She's worried. That's it. And then you got St. John saying, let's have a contractual arrangement. No love. But, you know, we're. This is a marriage of convenience in its own way. Right. I need a partner. You need a vocation. Let's. Let's do this. But what Edmund Spencer does is he rejects both of those polls. And I think Charlotte Bronte is doing the exact same thing here. So Britomart blows off lust. Okay. I don't want lust. I don't want the mistress thing. Right. But she also ends up rejecting that sort of dutiful marriage of convenience. And one of the things that C.S. lewis points out about is that Edmund Spencer is very it's very interesting that he doesn't just set up the poll of there's true love and there's lust. He gives a third category, so actually a second category of disordered love. So you could say lust is disordered love. He gives a second category of disordered love through a series of images of going into a room, walking through the room. At the other end of the room is a smaller, slightly smaller door. You go through that slightly smaller door and you go in another, sort of my slightly smaller room. On and on and on. You just keep going through smaller rooms. Right. And that's a picture of an unhealthy love that makes you smaller and smaller and smaller and smaller. Tell me that's not Sinjin Rivers.

[Thomas Banks]

I think that that is actually a just assessment.

[Angelina Stanford]

Right, okay. So. So Rochester is all Eros. That the image of Eros in book three is like people frolicking around a fountain. Okay. So that's all passion and love and Eros. And then Sinjin is.

[Thomas Banks]

She says confinement on confinement. Yeah.

[Angelina Stanford]

That's why I got so excited when she says leaving him was like leaving Princess prison. That's exactly what it is. Right. She says, you being with you would make me deny half myself. You're killing me. Right. So he's making her smaller and smaller and smaller. Okay, so what Britomart ends up doing is rejecting all of that. And Lewis points out, this is what is so exciting about book three is that Spencer says, no, the choices are not. You're either in a dutiful, loveless marriage of convenience or you're in a passionate, illicit affair. Those are not the only options. Options. And what he gives Britomart is the same thing you get in the Franklin's Tale from Chaucer. You get the resolution of that, the harmony of those polls. What you can have is a passionate love marriage in a com. A passionate love relationship in a committed marriage. You can have both. That is what Britomart gets. That is what I think Jane Eyre gets, too.

[Thomas Banks]

I. I like this comparison. Yeah. I'd be. I would be interested to know if she had had any. Any direct Spencerian influences.

[Angelina Stanford]

Yeah, I. I don't know. I didn't look it up. What's interesting to me, you know, you. You once said this to me. Spencer is the. The. The poet's poet. And, yeah, in my own experience, Edmund Spencer is like the unsung hero behind every book I've ever loved.

[Thomas Banks]

Yeah, I know. It's. It's so strange. Of all the Elizabethan and. And Jacobian authors in English who still have, you know, readerships today. I think that Spenser survives in. I mean, he still studied in the academy. He's a canonical poet. But it's kind of sad that not many people, I think, read him for pleasure, which is really a tragedy.

[Angelina Stanford]

So I got super excited. Shout out to any Corman Strike fans out there. Book five of the Corman Strike series. She uses the fairy queen as the epigraphs in each chapter. And I got really excited because the chapter is about the female detective. She always starts with a quote about Britomar. So I knew that Robin was the female knight in that story. So. Yeah, so that's what I think is going on. I don't think that this is reason versus passion. I think we have various kinds of passion, all of which are destructive, and that we have, like, the good kind of passion, that passion in where these things are.

[Thomas Banks]

Marriage integrated problems.

[Angelina Stanford]

Yes, yes. And now she's the hearth, you know, she's bringing life and warmth to this family. He regains his eyesight.

[Thomas Banks]

She has a child.

[Angelina Stanford]

She has a child. Yeah. The. The blindness and the blind restoring. That's all symbolic death and rebirth. So he has repented and been transformed. He is no longer the beast. He is rehumanized, as Jane's word says in his own words, you are the David that has driven the demons out of my soul. He is repentant now, and. But they still passionately love each other. But it's properly ordered now. And that brings us back to Cupid and Psyche, which is. That's where Beauty and the Beast comes from. And Cupid and Psyche is literally the journey of Psyche, which is the Greek word for soul to God. And it ends with a marriage and

[Thomas Banks]

her being given after much suffering, after many trials.

[Angelina Stanford]

Yes, yes. With reeds and rivers, Psyche goes through much suffering. She is. She loses her love. Right? She. She wanders around. She wishes she's dead. She goes through all of that and at the end gets her union with God literally in marriage and is granted immortality. And I think that's Jane Eyre.

[Thomas Banks]

That's. Yeah. And a good note to end on. I think that was. That was very well done.

[Angelina Stanford]

Well, thank you.

[Thomas Banks]

No, I'm. I mean, you impress me regularly, but I was very impressed, even more than my usual usually degree today.

[Angelina Stanford]

Okay, good, good. So I hope you guys have enjoyed this series. I'm really proud of you all for reading this symbolically and following the images and following the fairy tales. Else. And I hope that I have made the subtle distinctions between a horizontal Reading and treating this as if it's just a political or a social commentary. I mean, there are implications of that, no question. Okay. Just because we're doing a. A iconographic reading doesn't mean that there are not also, like, you know, applications to this world. But I think there's something bigger going on here. And the simple reductionist thing of, well, this is an attack on patriarchy or this is reason versus emotion. I mean, honestly, I'm not sure we have seen anybody who was the embodiment of reason. It was all different kinds of passion. Right. And she just goes through all of it. And I. I just. I really enjoyed this so much more than I thought I was going to.

[Thomas Banks]

Much more so than I did the first time. And the first time it did, you know, I walked away thinking, yes, it's obvious why this book is a classic. Yet this time I took a great deal more pleasure in it, though.

[Angelina Stanford]

I really did.

[Thomas Banks]

It's a wonderful book.

[Angelina Stanford]

I was happy you told me to become a regular for you.

[Thomas Banks]

You know, I'll read it again, I'm sure, in the next, you know, handful of years somewhere. I feel I have to sit down and read Villette also, because though I have read the professor, which is kind of. It's kind of odd. She kind of wrote the. The same book twice in the professor and Villette. Valette is supposed to be the more mature work, though, and I think I need to give that one some attention.

[Angelina Stanford]

There was a group in the Patreon that read Valette maybe last year, two years ago, and they really enjoyed it. Yeah, it was interesting. You said most scholars agree that Charlotte Bronte is the most gifted of the three sisters.

[Thomas Banks]

I mean, most. Yeah, for a long time, because she was the first one who had her biography written. And she also was fortunate in that her biographer was also a woman of great gifts. Mrs. Gaskel. But. But yeah, most. Most Bronte scholarship for the first, I'd say half century, maybe even century after the death of the sisters, focused on Charlotte, who also had these two, you know, very, very talented sisters. Sure. But Clement Shorter, who was kind of the first major English scholar to dedicate a career to the Bronte canon, he wrote. It's telling that his. His familial biography is entitled Charlotte Bronte and Her Sisters. Yeah, but. But, yeah, I think that her sisters, by this point, I think each of them has been properly appreciated in her own right. Maybe. Maybe Anne could use some more attention. I don't know. But. But yeah.

[Angelina Stanford]

All right, well, thanks for joining us for this series. And no, I didn't forget that. I said at the end I'd have a special announcement, so just hang on for that. But this is. Is. I don't think I would have put this on the schedule if you guys hadn't pestered me to death to do it because it was so long. But I think we've all handled it well. It's been a really, really popular series that has surprised me. You guys have kept up the reading. It was very difficult for the two of us to keep up with the reading because it was like having an.

[Thomas Banks]

It was like, not just the book, which I read twice in the last month and a half, two months. You read it twice? Yeah, but also, like each of us read a number of. Of articles, essays. I read a biography of the family and other. So it was. Yeah, it kept us occupied.

[Angelina Stanford]

It definitely did. It definitely did. But no, but I'm really glad we did it and I'm really proud of you guys and how well you've been reading. So, yeah, hopefully those of you who've always loved Jane Eyre will understand more why you loved it, and maybe those of you who haven't loved it in the past will appreciate it more. I've really appreciated a handful of people on the Patreon who didn't like Jane Eyre in the past and thought. I thought, okay, we'll give it a chance with the podcast and are seeing it really, really different, differently now. So, yeah, I do think we are to. To take this as a happy ending. Jane has gotten what she wanted and what she actually needs, and Rochester is repentant and has gotten what. What he wants and needs as well. And. And yeah. All right, so thanks so much for making me do this and for joining us as we wait our way through this book. This has been a lot of fun for me. So what's next the next two weeks? Because you guys have also requested we do more poetry. We're gonna have more poetry coming your way next week. Mr. Banks is going to lead us through an introduction to neoclassical poetry and Alexander Pope in particular. So the neoclassical poetry, also called the Augustan Age. So this is like Pope and Dryden and Samuel Johnson and all of those guys and his mock heroic epic, the Rape of the Lock. Then we have a slight change in schedule. We're going to be dropping our May 5 episode on an Introduction to William Thackeray.

[Thomas Banks]

We'll.

[Angelina Stanford]

We'll come back to that one next year because an exciting opportunity came and we knew you guys were definitely going to want us to do This. A lot of people have asked for this and I'm very excited to announce on May 5th, 5th, we will air our interview with Malcolm Guy. And the crowd goes wild. I have in my hands a copy of his new book before anybody.

[Thomas Banks]

Very handsome copy, by the way. It's a gorgeous book. And I, yeah, I've said for years that no one knows how to make beautiful books anymore, but obviously I'm responsible because this is a beautiful book.

[Angelina Stanford]

Well done. It's gorgeous. It's heavy. The paper is beautiful. The woodcuts are beautiful. A lot of thought went into this and it's just beautiful. This is his book, Galahad and the Grail. So he's going to come on to talk about this book. King Arthur, the Legend of the Holy Grail, the Imagination. Cindy Rollins is also going to be back on this episode because how could we keep her away? And yeah, I think this is going to be a really fun conversation and I hope you guys enjoy it and you can go and pre order the book and, and, or wait until you hear him talk about it. I think this is going to be really exciting. So that will be on May. May 5th. All right, well, like I said, HouseOfHumaneLetters.com to sign up for the newsletter, sign up for some webinars cassiodoruspress.com for Dr. Baxter's books and to see what else we've got going on over there. And stick around to the end of this episode because Mr. Banks has a special poem picked out. Also, don't forget we're having a Q and A episode in July. So please submit your questions. You can do it in the Facebook group on Discord. You can email@lee contactumainletters.com and tell them what your burning question is and we will do our best to answer it. Things like, angelina, what do you see in Mr. Banks? Why did you marry him?

[Thomas Banks]

Yeah, that is a conundrum. I'm still trying to answer that one myself.

[Angelina Stanford]

I like to keep you on your toes. It's your own little sati. All right, well, thanks so much for joining us and we'll see you back here in next time with some Alexander Pope. Until next time, keep crafting your literary life because stories will save the world. Thank you for listening to the Literary Life podcast brought to you by our loyal Patreon sponsors. Visit House of your visit humaneletters.com to find Angelina and Thomas and to sign up for our newsletter with podcast schedules and more. And keep up with [e-mail] Join the conversation at our Member Only Patreon Forum or our Facebook discussion group. Visit patreon.com theliterarylife to find out how you can sponsor this podcast and get great bonus content. Don't forget to subscribe, rate and review and check out our sister podcasts, the New Mason Jar and the well Read Poem. And now for a poem read by poet Thomas Banks.

[Thomas Banks]

From the Whitsun Weddings by Philip Larkin Just long enough to settle hats and say I nearly died. A dozen marriages got underway. They watched the landscape sitting side by side. An odeon went past a cooling tower and some one running up to bowl, and none thought of the others they would never meet or how their lives would all contain this hour. I thought of London spread out in the sun, its postal districts packed like squares of wheat. There we were aimed, and as we raced across bright knots of rail, past standing Pullmans, walls of blackened moss came close and it was nearly done. This frail traveling coincidence and what it held stood ready to be loosed with all the power that being changed can give. We slowed again, and as the tightened brakes took hold there swelled a sense of falling like an arrow shower sent out of sight somewhere, becoming rain.