I would always rather be happy than dignified.

The sentence comes in chapter 34 of Jane Eyre, at a tense moment. Jane’s cousin St John Rivers, a clergyman bound for India as a missionary, wants her to marry him and go with him; she has refused to become his wife. Walking home beside her across the moor, he keeps an “iron silence”, and that night he pointedly forgets to shake her hand. Jane is hurt to tears. His sister Diana urges her to go after him: he is waiting in the passage. Jane runs after him at once. But St John’s touch is “cold, loose”; he says he has nothing to forgive, not having been offended. “I would much rather he knocked me down,” Jane concludes.

Charlotte Brontë began writing Jane Eyre in 1846 and published it the following year. The line sums up Jane’s character: unbending when her conscience is at stake, she will not sacrifice affection to pride. St John’s dignity, by contrast, is a form of coldness.

Jane Eyre, Chapter 34, 1847

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