Chapter 34 — Christmas at Moor House; St. John's plan for Jane

Christmas at Moor House. Jane, with her share of the fortune, has had the old farmhouse renovated — new bookshelves, new curtains, Hannah promoted to housekeeper. Diana and Mary return from their governess positions in time for Christmas, and the four cousins spend the next month together. Jane, who has at twenty-one suddenly acquired both a small fortune and a family, is happier than she has been since Helen Burns.

St. John, however, has been calculating. He has spent the autumn preparing for his calling — a missionary post in India, leaving in the spring. Toward the end of January he asks Jane to walk with him on the moors. They walk for some way in silence; he stops; he tells her, in his calm flat voice, what he has decided. He intends to leave for India at the end of June. The work would be best done by a married missionary. He does not love Jane in the romantic sense; he respects her abilities; he believes she would be useful to him. He proposes that she marry him and accompany him as his missionary wife.

Jane is staggered. She has begun to love St. John as a brother; but she has no romantic feeling for him, and the proposal is, in essence, a proposal of usefulness rather than of love. She offers, instead, to go to India as his fellow worker — to live in the same household as a sister, do the same work — but not as his wife. He refuses the compromise. The work, he says, requires marriage. He asks her to learn Hindustani in preparation, and to consider the proposal seriously. Jane agrees to consider it. The chapter ends with the lessons proceeding and St. John's pressure beginning to build. He is far harder to refuse than Rochester ever was.