I'm confused....

[happyeverafter]

Ok, i am reading through Jane Eyre for the first time for my history class, and something is confusing me: why can't Mr. Rochester just divorce Bertha Mason and marry Jane? Any input would be great : )

[sciencefan]

Ok, i am reading through Jane Eyre for the first time for my history class, and something is confusing me: why can't Mr. Rochester just divorce Bertha Mason and marry Jane? Any input would be great : )I'm afraid I can't remember anymore, but I feel badly that you haven't had a response yet.

This is what one person says:
" (Of course, divorce from an insane spouse was impossible under English law.)"
http://academic.brooklyn.cuny.edu/english/melani/cs6/jane302.html

There is another reference to English Law concerning divorce here:
"There are also reasons why marriage was not a state to be entered into lightly. Marriage was almost always for life -- English divorce law during the pre-1857 period was a truly bizarre medieval holdover (readers of Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre will remember that Mr. Rochester couldn't divorce his insane wife). Simplifying a bit ("saving myself the trouble of writing what I do not perfectly recollect", as Jane Austen wrote in her History of England), almost the only grounds for divorce was the sexual infidelity of the wife; a husband who wished to divorce his wife for this reason had to get the permission of Parliament to sue for divorce; and the divorce trial was between the husband and the wife's alleged lover, with the wife herself more or less a bystander. All these finaglings cost quite a bit of money, so that only the rich could afford divorces. There was also the possibility of legal separations on grounds of cruelty, etc. (where neither spouse had the right to remarry), but the husband generally had absolute custody rights over any children, and could prevent the wife from seeing them at his whim."
http://www.pemberley.com/janeinfo/pptopic2.html

Here's more:
"But according to my research, there seems to be enough evidence in the text to support the notion that Rochester could have had the marriage annulled on two grounds: that his wife was not mentally competent to give true consent and that he'd been the victim of a fraud."
http://margaretmoore.blogspot.com/2007/01/jane-eyre-divorce-and-needs-of-author.html



However, if Rochester had divorced, it would have made the whole book unnecessary.:D

[Newcomer]

.... However, if Rochester had divorced, it would have made the whole book unnecessary.:D

That is the very point.

[LadyWentworth]

However, if Rochester had divorced, it would have made the whole book unnecessary.:D

That is exactly what I was going to say!! :p

I used to have a terrible habit of questioning why something may or may not have happened in a book. Now, even if I am not too thrilled about some of the events that may, or may not, be taking place in a story, I just accept the fact that the story has been written that way for a purpose! Generally the parts that I questioned were key points to the story. So I stopped questioning everything that I read! :D

[Jest]

Don't forget, here in the states, no-fault divorce was not first available until after the 1960's. If my recollection is correct, it started in California in the late sixties and migrated to other states in the 1970's.

Thus, in the scheme of things, no-fault divorce is a new concept. Prior to its advent a spouse suing for divorce needed to prove fault on the part of the other spouse. Such things as intolerable cruelty, (plain old cruelty was not sufficient); habitual intemperance; abandonment, (absence for more than seven years); insanity or incarceration; (usually a min number of years was required).

The spouse who wanted a divorce needed to "sue" for divorce. Since they were a plaintiff suing for divorce they need to prove their case. They would need to prove their spouse was a habitual drunkard or insane or intolerably cruel, etc.

Today, fault based divorce is uncommon because most people simply want a divorce and it is much easier to use a no-fault ground like irreconcilable differences or irretrievable breakdown. The spouse can generally prove their case by simply getting on the stand and saying they cannot get along with their spouse.

Of course, that is why the rate of divorce is so much higher today than 50 years ago. I do no know if it means that the rate of unhappy marriages is so much less.

J.

[Favouritesue]

Is it perhaps something to do with Rochester feeling responsible for his wife now she is mad. It demonstrates the sensitive man under the brooding exterior and is the reason behind Jane falling for him. If he were just a boorish man could she love him? Also why would he risk his life to save Bertha? I think it is because he cared about her as he did Adele. Both were his through circumstance, yet he did not love them and he looked after them as a parent would. Jane he loved but could not be with because of circumstance.

[dissenter]

It wasn't just a legal issue. Jane would have none of it. THat was the whole point.

When I read the book I was so UN-attracted to Rochester. He was a heartless (remember how little illegitimate hurting Adele is starving for fatherly affection, and he's a jerk who brushes her off just because she is a bastard when he could have well fathered plenty himself?), hypocritical (you know how he picks on his wife for being of questionable character....and he had 3 lovers--whom he promptly abandoned...different rules for rich men, though...), and terribly selfish. And I thought he loved Jane BECAUSE she was pure, and good-hearted, with a steel spine (good moral character) and a sharp mind. He wasn't attracted to her because of "chemistry"!!@#$@# That was what his OTHER 3 girlfriends were---they should make a movie on THEM if they want "chemistry"!!! And Rochester's total odiousness comes out in the scene after the aborted wedding, when he talks so disparagingly and heartlessly about the mistresses he dumped (the nice one, not Adele's mother) and his horrible wife--and so self-pityingly of himself--giving himself every excuse. He's a total wretch. If Jane let him (as he has had for the past 10 years) have his way, she would have damned him.
For the first time, he loved someone (again in his self-devouring ravenous selfish love) that had a grain of real love in it--something bigger than chemistry--actually seeing the value in a human soul. (He isn't attracted to her body but to her soul!! There was no "chemistry"!!!!) If this had gone the way of his past 3 loves, he would have just sunk deeper into his byronic and totally bratty (devilish) misery. He'd have cut a fine figure in (CSLewis's THe Great Divorce) Hell, full of the remains of people who are eaten up with their own selfish narcissic misery--with not one last spark of real love left (and plenty of stuff they call "love" that is just torment and cruelty).

Anyway, Jane loves him more than she loves herself--and is the first girl willing to put Truth before her own passion or happiness or pity for him. (He even works off of woman's pity---and I think in the story, Charlotte Bronte made a point that all his "mean" and shallow mistresses and wife are only portrayed that way---through his eyes. With the exception of Adele's mother, the rest of them were probably much like Jane, and fell for him out of love and attraction and pity. He probably pulled the whole "I can't live without you" card before on the other woman as well--and doubtless meant it then.)

That is what makes that scene so dreadful. It is like he is burying himself in more and more lies, and begging Jane out of all her compassion and love to destroy herself with him. Its lies from hell that are coming out of his mouth. All blameshifting and denying the sacred personhood and humanity of the girls (2 other mistresses) he's ruined, as well as the wife he has wronged. She sinned like him, but was probably as tormented as him, and probably was once as he was.

Anyway, I think Jane pitied him very much, because she KNEW he wasn't as victimized as he made himself out to be. It is like watching a drowning man cling to a lead weight as he sinks down. I mean he was victimized--by his own sin and the Devil, but most of all, by himself.
Charlotte Bronte was following the Gothic tradition of the Byronic Hero, but here she turned it on its head a little by showing us how his "byronicness" is an odious thing, and his soul is chained to it and he is sinking.


Interlude: St. John Rivers. Its a very interesting twist here. First you think, "Oh, he's the opposite of Rochester". And of course no one can stand him, and modern audiences think "See! Priggish Moral Pastor v. Byronic debauched Hot guy! Cool movie!" That wasn't the point. In Charlotte's world, St. John Rivers would be considered very attractive, so she went to greater lengths to show his sin than she would have today in our culture.
As the story progresses, you realize the St. John RIvers and Rochester are very much alike. Neither of them has repented, and Rochester with his Byronic guilt-shifting and Rivers who thinks God must agree to his will.... They both have, at root, pride and unrepentence. Rivers wants someone who will think his ideas&wishes are God's (which he wholeheartedly believes himself. That is his greatest sin. Remember when he is turning down the cute girl who likes him and he is struggling? There is no mention of being obedient to Christ's will or loving CHrist. It is "MY noble goals and MY heroism and MY missionary feats....")

They are really the same. Rochester wants to kill God (by rejecting morality) for "love" which he destroys in his very ravenous devouring. St. John has recreated God as his means to glory, and mistakes his own voice for the ALmighty.

So St. John Rivers wants to use Jane as well, by having a docile wife-worker who thinks he's God. She refuses that too. (Remember how she says, "I'll obey GOD! and give him my heart...I'm not giving it to you" and he's like "Give me your personhood and I'll reshape it. My will is GOD'S will....")
St. John is also killing God.

And Jane refuses that too. She refused both the Godless "Love" and the Loveless "God". (Neither of which are Christ, and both of which were very present in that age.)

Now comes Part Two: Repentance
1. Rochester thinks he's killed Jane. Finally for once in his life he realizes how destructive his own wonderful love is, and how he has been destroying all those he "loves". It is no accident that he is running after the madwife and shouting her name. Through Janes refusal and (what he thinks) death, he has come to realize his blindness and selfish devouring. He has recognized his madwife's personhood, and is treating her as a human again. The sad part is that she is lost, her soul is eaten out by hatred to him (which was partly his fault as well as hers) and commits suicide. He almost dies trying to rescue her. But it is too late. This is one of the saddest parts of the book. It recognizes that though we may come to repentance, those WE have helped "push over the edge" may not. Rochester's repentance is too late to save Bertha. (If he had repented earlier and taken care of her out of christian love--his first few years didn't count, that was stoic "poor little me, she DISGUSTING in her sin, I'm so good and taking care of her...." What can be more insulting than that?!---anyway, if he had repented and acknowledge her value as a human being earlier, she may have come to a peaceful end...probably still crazy, but peacefully so.). So Rochester damned Bertha, in a way, though of course it was her choice in the end.

Anyway, Rochester has finally realized his own sin, and his evil. He actually has finally repented. Before that, all his "repentance" was the sham fake kind, the byronic self-deprecating guilt (I'm sure the Devil has that) that is not repentance (recognizing the precious sanctity and the image of God in other human beings).

So Jane comes back. He's no longer cool and byronic, but a doddering, blind, impoverished man. But he's changed. He's lost all that stupid glamor which was his cage. He is free now--free from the prison of his old self. He is repentant.

Jane marries him, though he had fallen more passionately in love with many other women, and has alot of problems and psycho stuff from all his years of selfishness. He is only beginning to be good. But he is sincere for the first time in his life, no longer trapped in himself and his own self-pity.

2. And finally, we get a hint of St. John's Rivers repentance. It must have been a hard blow to him that the "degenerate" but repentant Rochester was more worthy than him. Jane, by her actions and her words, made it clear to him that he was not GOd. It took him a long time to swallow, and we are not sure if he ever did. But in the end he has finally become weak--wasted away. And he still writes letters to Jane....making us begin to wonder if perhaps under all his bloated egoism, he actually did love her in his cold way though choked by pride. And in the end, he is weak, and dying, with no fan club. ANd he says, "come lord Jesus, come quickly". He's finally calling out to Christ while in utter weakness. Perhaps he didn't repent of his pride....but the earnestness of his last letter seems to suggest that he has. I felt in it, a submission. He has come a long way.

[shnoshu]

its all amatter of the time when jane eyre was writen ,during victorian age it was not allowed for aman to divorce his wife even if she was mad and becouse bertha was not mad before marring rochester after their marriage she became mad thats why rochestr must endure her presence and to live with her till death,so just death can separate them


for further information read about victorian period and right of women.:thumbs_up

[shnoshu]

its all amatter of the time when jane eyre was writen ,during victorian age it was not allowed for aman to divorce his wife even if she was mad and becouse bertha was not mad before marring rochester after their marriage she became mad thats why rochestr must endure her presence and to live with her till death,so just death can separate them


for further information read about victorian period and right of women.:thumbs_up

[shnoshu]

its all amatter of the time when jane eyre was writen ,during victorian age it was not allowed for aman to divorce his wife even if she was mad and becouse bertha was not mad before marring rochester after their marriage she became mad thats why rochestr must endure her presence and to live with her till death,so just death can separate them


for further information read about victorian period and right of women.:thumbs_

[black butterffl]

i think that he didn't divorce that insane woman because she needed someone to take care of, it wasn't her fault that she's insame, most of her family members were like that , so as far as i can remember, he felt sorry for her, and in sencond hand, i think that in the old days, getting divorce wasn't somethihng to be proud of . but i dpn't think rochester was thinking that way.

[bethps]

First, I'd like to introduce myself, as I'm new at this Forum, and ask if anyone has already read Wide Sargasso Sea. In this book, which maintains a dialogue with Jane Eyre, Bertha Manson has a voice: the story is told from her point of view.

[kiki1982]

i think that he didn't divorce that insane woman because she needed someone to take care of, it wasn't her fault that she's insame, most of her family members were like that , so as far as i can remember, he felt sorry for her, and in sencond hand, i think that in the old days, getting divorce wasn't somethihng to be proud of . but i dpn't think rochester was thinking that way.


There can be five reasons for him not divorcing Bertha:

Firstly, there would have been no book if he would have divorced. Rochester had to have this kind of problem according to the writer.

Secondly, he couldn't divorce her, because the law wouldn't have permitted it. She wasn't insane when he married her, so there was no reason to declare the marriage invalid, as would have been the case if she were insane at the time of marriage.

Thirdly, he could have divorced her on grounds of adultery, which was back then the only reason one could divorce, but she had been declared insane and so not to blame for the adultery, see point two.

Forthly, if he would have dicvorced her, he would have had to give back the dowry, which was his only source of income at the time. Of course after that he inherits everything from his brother, but only after Bertha has been declared mad, so too late for a divorce.

Fifthly, on top of everything else a divorce was very expensive, because it had to be done by Parliamental Act, as the chruch = state and vice versa. In practice it would mean that wife and husband would pleed their case in parliament and mostly, as it was about adultery, it would mean that the debate would be conducted between the husband and the man his wife slept with, in order to proove the adultery. It took a very long time and was very shameful. And as Rochester's wife was not able to pleed her case, see point 2, there could have been no debate. Plus the fact that such a divorce could cost a lot of money, which the dowry of Bertha wouldn't have been able to sustain.

I do not believe that Rochester felt sorry in the least about Bertha, if you want more explanation on that, consult the thread I put on here Mr Rochester..., about all the figures his story can be linked to. I can tell you it is very negative.

It was just impossible for him to divorce her for the above 5 reasons.