How Brontë presents St John Rivers, and how the character develops across the text: Jane's cousin, a cold and dutiful clergyman whose proposal tests her as Rochester's did.
The key quotations for this character and how to analyse them, with the context that shapes them.
How to use the lesson's key quotations in an essay, with a short worked paragraph.
Key quotations: 'like a Greek face, very pure in outline', 'I love Rosamond Oliver so wildly', 'I am cold: no fervour infects me', 'a cold, hard, ambitious man', 'Reason, and not feeling, is my guide', 'you are formed for labour, not for love', 'God and nature intended you for a missionary's wife', 'My iron shroud contracted round me', 'the disappointment of an austere and despotic nature, which has met resistance where it expected submission', 'If I were to marry you, you would kill me. You are killing me now', 'the ambition of the high master-spirit', 'he never will marry now'.
St John as a foil to Rochester, ice against fire, and why the novel gives his missionary life its last words.
OCR's question on this novel is one essay, from a choice of two, for 40 marks: an extract-based question on the printed extract and the novel elsewhere, or a discursive question on a view of the novel, using at least two moments. Response (AO1) and language, form and structure (AO2) carry the most weight and equal weight, context (AO3) counts when it is relevant to the question, and 4 marks are for vocabulary, sentence structures, spelling and punctuation (AO4). An extract-based answer that never leaves the extract, or a discursive answer built on one moment, cannot go above Level 3. Each worked paragraph and exam tip is labelled with the question it is for.
