St John Rivers in Jane Eyre St John is protective of his family, religious, cold-hearted and always striving to do the right thing, whether it is personally right for him or not.

Jane, “small and plain,” with features in which (according to St. John Rivers) “the grace and harmony of beauty are quite wanting” emerges as a passionate, radiant spirit.

As a number of critics have shown, Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre (1847) has as a central theme the analysis of certain essential contradictions in a constellation of ideas concerning kinship and race.

Despite arguments that young children have enjoyed Jane Eyre for 150 years, the Victorians were much more concerned about the novel’s influence than universities are today.

In her despair, Jane flees the house and – taking the audience in full circle to the opening – she runs across the desolate moors until collapsing and being rescued by St. John Rivers. The production ...