ABSTRACT
If Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre rejects the self-annihilation required of an Indian widow, she also shies away from the uncomplaining Christian martyrdom required of a dutiful missionary’s wife in India, realising that a loveless marriage to English clergyman John StRivers wouldmake her ‘burn inwardly’. She states that she will only accompany him to India on the condition that she may ‘go free’, participating in the missionary project not as his wife but as his ‘adopted sister’. Rivers, however, rejects her offer: he wants a missionary wife, a ‘helpmeet’ committed to himself as well as to God.1
