Mr Rochester and Charlotte Bronte

[ramico]

Hello there- 1st post!

Has Charlotte Bronte reflected anything in her life in the character of Mr Rochester?

I've got how he reflects Msr Heger, and how the fuel of emotions for him and her stay at the school leads to the considered risque descriptions of him in Jane Eyre.
I've also got how Mr Rochester locking Bertha in the attic would be the best compassionate thing he could do, and that Jane Eyre could represent Charlotte Bronte in that she could love a man no matter what he did.

Many Thanks,
Ramico.

[kiki1982]

I know it's maybe a bit late...

But locking Bertha up in his own attick was not the best he coud do for her. Rochester is portayed in a very bad way. Charlotte used a technique called irony for this. She made him tell a few lies, especially, that everyone was able to identify at the time. Apparently now they seem to be rather subtle, as everyone seems to believe that Rochester is a positive figure.
We only need to do a little bit of serious critical reading and we can see that.
I put a thread on here that prooves that: Mr Rochester....
We in these modern days seem to have a stigma concerning madhouses and care for the mad in those days. It was not at all bad, certainly not for the rich. He could have sought good treatment but did not.

I hope for her that she didn't encounter that sort of person... Although ther is always hope for change as she demonstrates...

Indeed, Mr Héger (that's what I think you meant rather than his wife;) ), the Byron-cult, maybe? After all there were portaits of him, maybe he was in love with him?

[ksotikoula]

Hi! First of all I totally disagree with kiki on Rochester maltreating Bertha. He is seriously doing his best and if you can not understand that fact, consider being ill and left in a general hospital (and not like the ones we have today) in hands of a stuff overworked, with a lot of patients instead of having an all day private nurse. In case it adds validity I am a psychologist and know for sure that without medication treatment of cases like Bertha's would be much the same: confining.
Secondly, Charlotte Bronte wasn't writing a manual of psychiatry. She needed Bertha in the house to create the Gothic element which brings those two together to face common danger and also to lead to dramatic discovery. She was the gravest impediment in their happiness, without wanting it of course, but they are all trapped because of a stupid law. He could divorce her for being an adulteress but since they found her mad it was supposed that she had no responsibility for her conduct. I am so annoyed that people consider Bertha a saint only for being mad and treated (I repeat) with the usual and even better way and Rochester is considered for that her torturer. Their marriage is a mistake and would be dissolved even if he had found Jane or no one at all.

About the original question apart from Rochester's similarity with Heger in terms of abrupt and despotic conduct and his cigar smoking, I really feel that in someways he expresses feelings that were in reality Charlotte's. In his line "it can not be wrong to love me" I can feel the writer's belief that in spite of morality and laws and religion, love herself is not a crime. Charlotte loved a married man, but she never did anything inappropriate. And no matter how she struggled to drawn that love she never came to see it as bad. She even thought she was punished for a crime she never committed. What she felt it was her own business, they could not judge her conduct. It was what was "natural and inevitably (for her to) love". When St John says to Jane that her love is unlawful and sinful she doesn't answer back but neither is molested. She has her own opinion about it.

I don't feel like Charlotte would love a man no matter what he did. She could love him with his faults but was not blind to his conduct. Even through her novels she criticizes him in showing him how much better men her heroes were and how capable they could be of returning and accepting love. Paul Emanuel loves Lucy and writes to her often because he loves her and likes to do so. Something Heger was not up to. Smith was also rejected because of his inability to defy conventions and take a serious line of conduct towards her.

[kiki1982]

It seems to be a fact so much fixed in people's brains that it is hard to eradicate. Confining and confining is two: there is good confinement, as Mary Lamb was subected to and there was bad confinement out of ease for the care-takers. Would you, still, as a psychologist lock up your patient in the semi-dark for 24 hours a day, 15 years in the same room? The lamp that was on the ceiling was not the light of a 40Watt lamp like we know it now. It gives permanent dusk. The confinement is not an issue (because, as you say, Bertha's condition can only be treated with medication, although that of course preconcludes the idea of delusion and hallucination, which is not definite but likely (I can understand that that could be right), it is the conditions of that confinement. There were much better places for cheaper.

Bedlam was not the standard! Take a look on here. It will help to put Bedlam in the right place and the improvements in psychiatric care in its place as well.
http://www.mdx.ac.uk/WWW/STUDY/MHHTim.htm

[Bitterfly]

I've also got how Mr Rochester locking Bertha in the attic would be the best compassionate thing he could do, and that Jane Eyre could represent Charlotte Bronte in that she could love a man no matter what he did.


I'm with Kiki here: Rochester is not in the least portrayed as a compassionate man - he even links the belief in "sympathy", something Jane goes by, to some sort of superstition. Hiding Bertha in an attic and pretending she does not exist is not compassionate whatever way you choose to look at it. It reminds me of the way madmen and freaks were often dissimulated in good families - their existence represented a stain on their good name, and if they were not acknowledged, it was not out of compassion but out of shame. Of course she's also a Gothic motif, but we musn't forget she's also a human being - Jane even takes pity on her and identifies with her at one moment.

I don't think, either, that Jane could love a man whatever he does. After all, she abandons Rochester, doesn't she? And she chooses not to accept St John. She has principles, and acts rather faithfully to them.

[Peripatetics]

Τι κάνεις,

“She needed Bertha in the house to create the Gothic element which brings those two together to face common danger and also to lead to dramatic discovery.” is an acute observation as to Charlotte's intent of Jane Eyre the novel. It is within the bounds of the novel as an artistic expression. “Secondly, Charlotte Bronte wasn't writing a manual of psychiatry.”, ditto.
In the case of kiki's argument of Bertha's treatment, one has to distinguish intent from rhetoric. Hers is not the proof that Rochester was cruel in Bertha's confinement, it is because Rochester is Satanic that he confines Bertha. Hers is an ideological argument, not a discussion of relative merits of treatment of mentally ill patients in the Victorian era.
A documentation of this is in the note by Smq123 (a medical student doing my psychiatry rotation), thread :Mad Woman in the Attic. post#92

“Bertha Rochester is (based on the description in the book) certainly very, very psychotic. She may have something like severe schizophrenia or a psychotic manic disorder. Putting her in the attic didn't make the mental illness worse. You could have given Bertha all the love in the world, and it wouldn't help her. She's psychotic and the only thing that might have helped her is medication, which they didn't have back then.
I find it interesting that some people feel that Rochester treated Bertha poorly. The treatment that Bertha gets is pretty good, even by today's standards. She was kept in a locked room, but most psychiatric units nowadays are locked units - the chances that someone will run away and hurt themselves/other people is very high. Bertha had one-on-one "nursing care" (which is rare even in the best nursing/assisted living homes), and she was only restrained when she was clearly violent and "combative." No, we don't use physical restraints as much nowadays, but that's because we have access to Haldol and Ativan (i.e. "chemical restraints").”.This discussion predates kiki's essay Mr. Rochester and seems that not even a medical opinion had any sway on kiki's predisposition to view Rochester as demonic. She begins her essay: “As we had this discussion before and as I was forced to surrender to people who deliberately wanted to believe that 19th century asylums in Great-Britain were horrible places like Bedlam Hospital, and wanted to see Rochester in a positive light,”

What is unsaid is that kiki had a predisposition to see Rochester as Satanic.

[JBI]

I have read enough scholarship on the death of Bertha being an example of, to use Frye's term, Tyrannical Teleology, killing off the ex-centrics (to use Linda Hutcheon's term) so that the white, English, hero and heroine can get married in proper fashion. It is no mistake that she happens to be of West Indian, Creole origins, and happens to have a stream of insanity running through her. This is the 1840s mind you.

So yeah, locking her in the attic is a way for forgetting her, and concealing the fact that he married an ex-centric from the "proper society" within the novel. Rochester may be romantic in the 1840s sense, but today he is nothing more than an encapsulation of the racism of his time.

Rochester is not a "good person" by todays standards. Locking a woman up in your attic is hardly a kind thing to do. I would think burning down the house should be seen as a heroic act more so than an insane act. I'm sure Helene Cixous would agree :p.

[kiki1982]

The judgement of smq123 was based on psychosis/schizophrenia.
Wikipedia provides the prime symptoms of it (referenced!):
hallucinations, delusions, thought disorder, or lack of insight (each described below). The symptoms are similar in nature to mental confusion and delirium.

Lack of insight for Bertha is clear, thought disorder as well. Although we never hear her speak, we can assume that she is so far gone that that is not possible anymore.

But I have an issue with hallucinations and delusions.

Hallucination is defined (referenced!) as ‘sensory perception in the absence of external stimuli. They are different from illusions, or perceptual distortions, which are the misperception of external stimuli.’

Delusion is defined (referenced!) as ‘A false belief based on incorrect inference about external reality that is firmly sustained despite what almost everybody else believes and despite what constitutes incontrovertible and obvious proof or evidence to the contrary. The belief is not one ordinarily accepted by other members of the person's culture or subculture.

Primary delusions and Secondary delusions: ‘Primary delusions are defined as arising suddenly and not being comprehensible in terms of normal mental processes, whereas secondary delusions may be understood as being influenced by the person's background or current situation (e.g., ethnic or sexual orientation, religious beliefs, superstitious belief).’ So in essence, primary delusions are for outsiders totally incomprehensible, where secondary delusions are in the sense that the base of it can be found.

There is no proof that Bertha did have hallucinations. There was nowhere a scene where she saw something Rochester, or Jane could not see.
The fact that Bertha can have had delusions is possible, but that implies that there was a reality that was judged badly by her, yet that is not sure. The most obvious is that she attacks Rochester. Is it only in her mind that he was cruel to her or is it not only in her mind? (the reaction from the critics that attacked Brontë for not pitying Bertha says a lot in that respect) What did she want to do when she set Jane’s room on fire? Did she just want to have a fire or did she want to take revenge? Did she want to commit suicide or did she jump from the roof to escape Rochester? It is hard to judge Bertha, because she has not a lot of pages dedicated to her.

The only thing there is is the laugh, but that does not denote hallucination nor delusion definitely. We do not know what she was laughing at because we are not allowed to peep into the room where she is hidden.

[ksotikoula]

Would you, still, as a psychologist lock up your patient in the semi-dark for 24 hours a day, 15 years in the same room?

No. Why should I? The word "still" says it all. Nowadays things are different. There are medications. Doesn't it occur to you that Bertha is in a room with no windows in order to avoid her jumping out and to allow Grace Pool to monitor her better? When was Rochester an expert on the subject of psychiatry that would allow him to dictate how she should be treated? Probably he took Carter's advise to confine her at home. About her dark room: I was participating in the effort of de-institutionalize people from Greek mental clinics to come back to the community. We were told and we saw too that the important factor was not to move a patient from a cell to a nicely decorated room. That helps our guilty conscience but not the patient. So it is not the decor that was wrong there but Bertha's inability to understand that. She was years and years sick and without medication and psychotherapy and help from experts. She would really be reduced to that animal state. You say we don't know if she was hallucinating. Who cares? We are not to diagnose her. But even so. She tries to burn him in his bed, she attacks her brother, Jane later, she has lost the ability to speak, she is scratching the walls, she laughs without reason, she is suicidal and there is no way that all this was created to her by Rochester. I know I can't drive a person crazy, if he is not predisposed, and I don't think that Rochester really wanted her to get crazy anyway. It is not to his interest. She is clearly sick.
She is presented as an animal, but not because Charlotte was an insensitive woman, but because the more of a shadow Bertha is and the less of a personality, identity, consciousness she has, the more Rochester is justified in his claim that he is not married to a real person (in her senses) and Jane doesn't get to be criticized for longing for a married man. It is the economy of the plot. She is a fictional character. Charlotte didn't do her any harm. And also everybody tend to forget that Bertha was no angel that was maltreated. She was a sinner, an alcoholic and a nymphomaniac and her marriage to him would end in no time, if she wasn't diagnosed as crazy and irresponsible for her actions. And you can't say that we learn all this by Rochester only, because the whole town knew his wife's adventures and her brother would act differently towards Rochester if he thought he was maltreating her.

Yes Rochester (God knows only how much) he tries to forget her and doesn't sympathize with her much because in the first place their personalities were different. It is difficult enough to be near and care and provide for people that belong in your family and you really love (Thackeray as you said close his wife in an asylum as it would be very difficult for him and his daughters). Imagine doing that for a person you have never felt love for. And yet Rochester acted like a husband to Bertha. Even Mason had confidence on him and refrained from taking his share of responsibility as a brother and a person who knew all along. So I find it pretty hard to criticize on situations like this and I wish no one would ever come to face that, plus the stigma or the judgment of the world (like in our case).

I don't find Rochester satanic. He is no Heathcliff. He would never end up with Jane if he was. Charlotte really liked him. And being his creator she knew better what he was:
"Mr. Rochester has a thoughtful nature and a very feeling heart; he is neither selfish nor self-indulgent; he is ill-educated, misguided; errs, when he does err, through rashness and inexperience: he lives for a time as too many other men live, but being radically better than most men, he does not like that degraded life, and is never happy in it. He is taught the severe lessons of experience and has sense to learn wisdom from them. Years improve him; the effervescence of youth foamed away, what is really good in him still remains. His nature is like wine of a good vintage, time cannot sour, but only mellows him." from a letter to Mr Williams.

To peripathetic: Μιλάς ελληνικά; I am impressed!

About the Creole thing: In my opinion Charlotte didn't had anything against Creoles, she didn't even met one. She just needed a story to happen in a far away country so as to be credibly hidden in England. She lived in an imperialistic country that had colonies in both West Indias and India and she used that in a novel. In that sense all her nation was racist. Who said that Phys wasn't also. For me she was really prejudiced in her read of Jane Eyre because of her nationality and some reviewers have said she was as unfair to black women, as Charlotte was to Creoles. So Charlotte and her heroes are not to be judged as racists for echoing the general attitude of their era.

[Bitterfly]

Hmm, if you read the novel carefully, though, you do come to realize that there is something about foreign women that Jane (and probably Bronte) didn't like much. Consider also the fact that all the disparaged women have dark skins (from Mrs Reed to Blanche), whereas Jane is as pale as the proverbial lily! Have you noticed the way "frenchness" is treated, too? Not awfully broadmindedly! :p Rochester also comes very close to vindicating the aristotelian justification of slavery (inferior in nature), so I suppose this bothers some people...

I didn't much like the criticism that was based on Bertha's vicimisation as woman and foreigner before either, but the more I study the book, the more I can only acknowledge its validity. And the argument that Bronte only reproduced the prejudice of her period, whilst being quite valid, is a little disappointing: others didn't. And as her views were rather "modern" in certain aspects, I think lots of people feel let down that it's not the case in all.

About Creoles, I wonder whether the most important isn't the uncertainty underlying that word... Even in the 19th century, it wasn't clear, when you spoke of a Creole, if the person was white or black, and that could only be bothersome for a society which rested on a rather clearcut system of differences between races/classes/genders etc. The figure of the governess is actually problematic for much the same reason: not part of the underclass because of her culture, and slightly higher earnings than other servants, but not part a bourgeois and even less a noblewoman - an in-between creature, like the Creole.

[Peripatetics]

Hmm, if you read the novel carefully, though, you do come to realize that there is something about foreign women that Jane (and probably Bronte) didn't like much. Consider also the fact that all the disparaged women have dark skins (from Mrs Reed to Blanche), whereas Jane is as pale as the proverbial lily! Have you noticed the way "frenchness" is treated, too? Not awfully broadmindedly!

I am surprised that when “ you read the novel carefully” we come to such different impressions. I think that you misread the comment about 'frenchness'.
The English historically have had an inferiority complex about the French. From Henry the Eight to Churchill and even some Americans reflect it. How else do you explain that girls were thought French as a sign of accomplishment, that the aristocrats drank and valued Bordeaux and Burgoyne above all other wines, that French literature was held at the apex of culture and at the same time sneered at as depravity? That Rochester proposed to take Jane on her honeymoon to France?
Yes, Charlotte reveled in her Englishness but at the same time her cultural horizon was French.
I think that you misread. Our understanding is often influenced more by emotions than by reason.

[Peripatetics]

Let us deviate for a moment from the clouds of psychiatry, fear not I'll return in a moment, and descent to linguistics. When kiki says Rochester is demonic or Rochester is Satanic, she implies the present tense by 'is' as opposed to the historic 'was'. Had she used the word 'was', the problem would be searching the text for such usage and the problem would be solved, in that Rochester's characteristics would have been described by Charlotte; artistic license.
“is” is a problem in that it denotes the present, ie implies that the reader should make the judgment of Rochester's character, here and now, as if Rochester was your neighbor, on the evidence presented by kiki in Mr Rochester. And the evidence is not there. Charlotte' statement should suffice for reasonable minds.
What she does is use allusions from Byron, Milton, intermixing with Biblical passages, to substantiate a connection to Rochester that is subjective in extreme. Are her interpretation of allusions delusional?


Delusion is defined (referenced!) as ‘A false belief based on incorrect inference about external reality that is firmly sustained despite what almost everybody else believes and despite what constitutes incontrovertible and obvious proof or evidence to the contrary. The belief is not one ordinarily accepted by other members of the person's culture or subculture.

Has kiki met Satan? Does she know of anybody who has? Has she proof of 'external reality' of Satan's characteristics that she could compare them to Rochester's? Religious belief does not constitute external proof. Therefore the question is not of Bertha's delusions, whether primary or secondary but whether the supposition of Rochester being demonic or Satanic is delusional.

[kiki1982]

I was only talking about the mere 'locking up in semi-dark' circumstances 24 hours a day. Whether there is medication nowadays or not, it is not relevant to the absolute darkness, always.

It is well possible that she could not be helped, but it is a fact, that there is an increase in winter in scandinavia of suicides that has been put down to the lack of daylight. And that is only a few months of lack of daylight, in some cases, not 15 years...

'no window to jump from'. Ever thought about bars?

There was a general optimism in the 1830-1850s that every lunatic could be cured. We all know this is not true, but Bertha needs to be seen in that context. If not the pity Charlotte found in order, and for the lack of which she was criticised, cannot be found.

Hallucinations, we don't care. If we do not care, what are then the grounds for making Rochester the victim in all this?
Has it ever occured to anyone that it might be different? (that Bertha was a little potty, maybe got worse, and that he locked her up out of shame and that she wants to kill him out of revenge?). All perfectly possible, without diagnosis on Bertha's part, as we do not care and are not able to do that, so the focus is not on her yet her moment is important.

About the 'frenchness':
Charlotte also had a problem with the Belgians apparently. Or maybe rather with their 'superficial' Catholic morals, fed to her by the discussion on it in England (emancipation of the Catholics outside the Church of England). In The Professor I have heard, she is not at all positive about them. Apart from one, of course :D.
It is interesting what you say about the dark women, Bitterfly. There could be some truth in there (Platonic :p). Maybe it is interesting to look at what connotations the words French/France had in the 19th century, like Rome had 'inevitable downfall' attached to it.

Peripatetics:

MAY ASK YOU ONCE MORE to stop ridiculing yourself by making such ignorant remarks as that. I do not see in this case where delusion is involved. I think it might find itself hidden on the other side of the ocean. Indeed, 'lack of insight' is an inherent problem to those people.
If you cannot put forward a better argument than that, you spoil the discussion to everyone.

I say it once more (If you had read my text properly I didn't have to do so): Rochester is only demonic in the sense that he is narcissistic, which is carefully deducted from allusions as Manfred whose narcissism Freud already acknowledged, although he was puzzled by the extent of it. If Charlotte had wanted to portray Rochester in a favourable way, why then did she link him with King Lear? With Manfred? Why did she make him a Byronic Hero, which is a self-destructive character in its core? Why did she give him qualities in a dangerous combination: conscientiousness, firmness, acquisitiveness, hope (seeing the positive in everything, liable to live in another reality) and that in combination with a lack of empathy?

[ksotikoula]

Dear kiki,
I think you are determined to dislike Mr Rochester and that would be fine by me, as everyone is entitled to his/her opinion. I wouldn't mind at all, if you said you found him too despotic or blabbering or boring or anything else. But his presentation as a man who maltreated his wife is a serious one and has an bad effect on a book I truly love. Because, if he is what you take him to be, no healthy woman would like, approve or even forgive him (something that is quite the opposite), not to mention that both Charlotte and Jane would appear blind, stupid and masochistic (because Charlotte explicitly says he is good). Do you think that this is the message of the book (that women like scoundrels) or do you believe that Rochester was so much redeemed in the end that he left his tendency to abuse women behind?
That is the real question and not if Bertha was sane or not. In another novel she could be an annoying woman locked up by a domineering, lying husband, but not in this one, according to it's writer, who is for me the highest authority in this.
I grant you that if I met a man like Rochester I would consider him very dangerous indeed and I don't know if I would trust him, because I wouldn't know the extend of his character, as I know it from the book and because there would be no Charlotte Bronte behind my back to guide him with her pen and save me in the right moment. In true life these are risks you have to take when you love someone and you must show some confidence in order to be in a relationship. You then see how the other person uses that confidence and so on. What I mean to say is that there are really scoundrels out there but this is no reason for any of us to project to Rochester whatever bitter experiences we may have. In the end he is a marvelous, exciting but true and good kind of man in this novel, capable of loving and esteeming a woman for what she is and we can thankfully enjoy him the way Charlotte meant him to be. And I don't see the reason why not accepting him the way the writer portrayed him.

As for Bertha, I have stated before that her character is there for the gothic element and the economy of the plot. Charlotte was not indifferent to madness. Her friend's Ellen Nussey's brother had mental problems and Charlotte was very supporting to the family, more perhaps than she was to Branwell, probably because she thought drinking is something that you may indulge in, while you can not help being mad. She said about Bertha that her condition is pitiful and that she herself (Charlotte) perhaps made a mistake in letting the horror prevail in the novel. What more did you wish her to say? It was a social problem, but not a theme of her book to handle. Charlotte had warned her publishers that she would not write a book about its morals. An artist can not apologize for everything. There will be in his/her work characters that he/she may not approve but are there for aesthetic reasons or to help the plot.

To bitterfly: I have read something similar about dark colored characters but then again Mrs Reed's hair are flaxen (blond), Ginevra Fanshaw (an irritating person from Villette) is blond and blue eyed, Madame Beck (brown hair blue eyes) is a nasty character, while Rochester (a good character) is dark skinned and dark haired and so is Paul Emanuel and Mrs Bretton (Villette) and Robert and Luis Moore (Shirley). So go figure... I, on the contrary, believe that Charlotte Bronte was attracted to dark colored heroes and heroines exactly because she was of the opposite colors (in my country, where dark colors prevail, blond is considered more attractive and rare).

About Charlotte's racism: I understand your argument that if she were a woman so far beyond her era, she should be also beyond racism itself. But I believe that most people tend to reflect mainly on issues that concern them and they know inside-out. Charlotte was sensitive to sex issues because as a woman she could not fulfill her dreams and ambitions and fought to find her way out. She believed in her talent and struggled to assert the right to express it. She was sensitive partly to cross-cultural differences too, especially when she went to Brussels with Emily and they were singled out as too weird and old and Protestants. And so she retaliated in a hostile environment by reinforcing what was "good" in her culture and emphasizing what was "bad' in the other (although you must admit that she did credit to the educational system of Brussels). We must not also forget that her experience in that strange country was not a pleasant one and that she was for this prejudiced. Charlotte also was concerned about themes like slavery (which she often connected with the position of the woman) and told her publishers she really admired Harriet Beecher Stowe (author of Uncle Tom's cabin) for her great handling of a such sensitive matter as this, but she could never do something like that, because she doesn't know the situation well enough and living isolated in Haworth she did not have the luxury of research like Thackeray or Dickens had when writing about social problems in industrial cities. She also reminded them that she tried once to handle a matter thus and it was a failure (she meant Shirley). So, she knew that personal experience was were she was realy strong at. She may not be always right or even prejudiced, but she was great in expressing the deeper parts of a woman's soul and her use of psychology is faultless. Everyone has his/her era of expertise after all. :)

[Bitterfly]

I agree with your third paragraph, and think it's true that it is easier for a woman in the 19th century to defend the cause of women than the cause of blacks. On that subject, by the way, while i do not refute your examples from Bronte's other novels, I would quibble on Mrs Reed's darkness: John Reed is said to have "reviled her for her dark skin, similar to his own" (ch. 2). Blanche has the complexion of an "Israelite princess". If Rochester too is said to be dark, I think it is because he is not a pure character either - or at least, the part he plays at the beginning of the novel is that of a dark character (he even dresses up to be darker than he is in the charade scene).

And that is where we disagree, once again. I am of the opinion that Rochester is first a cruel character, in whom is lacking compassion (Jane remarks on this). He stages a real mascarade for Jane's benefit (see all the references to Shakespeare and the idea of the theatrum mundi, in particular), he is a liar, and a would-be bigamist. He is also a hubristic character, in that he thinks that he can disrespect laws (which he knows he is breaking, since when jane says yes, he asks for God's pardon). But the end of the novel brings about his redemption, and he says this himself: "I would have sullied my innocent flower - breathed guilt on its purity: the Omnipotent snatched it from me. I, in my stiff-necked rebellion, almost cursed the dispensation: instead of bending to the decree, I defied it. Divine justice pursued its course [...] I was forced to pass through the valley of the shadow of death [...] I began to experience remorse, repentance; the wish for reconcilement with my Maker". Here you have an experience of conversion, which also resembles a pilgrim's progress (the reference to the valley of the shadow of death): Jane's spiritual progress is not the only one in the novel, it is parallelled by Rochester's. References to Revelation, on the next page, show that his eyes have been opened, paradoxically at the same time that he has been blinded (but the blind seer is a common place in myth).

You say that Charlotte and Jane would be fools for accepting such a man, but that is just the point: Jane does NOT accept the first version of Rochester. She takes him on when it is clear that he accepts human laws, and God's laws, and he has to be mortified in the flesh to do so (casting away the sinful eye and hand, by the way).

What is interesting is that I still wonder, thanks to your questions, whether he is more condemned more for his ill-treatment of Bertha or for his attempt at bigamy... The latter identifies him with the Oriental harem-masters Jane so rejects, and therefore with a form of arbitrary masculine domination. For the first, you can argue that he makes Bertha into a monster, and that Jane participates, subconsciously, in this endeavour. There's also the fact that his very marriage with Bertha seems to constitute a sin, because he married her for the wrong reasons: lust and money.

I've been long enough, so will stop here, but please, please, Rochester is not monodimensional - he's an evolutive character, and that is what makes him interesting. If he's marvellous and exciting, and there I concur with you again, it's because, also, he's a type of the Byronic hero - mysterious, romantic, but also dangerous, and closer to a satanic figure than to an angelic one (and there I'm with kiki again). What's funny in the novel is that the satanic character is finally domesticated - but that's also what happens to the Gothic elements of the novel.

[kiki1982]

No, he is not monodimensional.

I am not at all determined to dislike him. Believe it or not, I love him! But it is not because he is a great character and a passionate man, that he needs to be a good character. It is totally against all allusions, all circumstantial evidence, feminist theories about the 'restained' other of Jane and sexual repression, and the salve metaphor. Ever heard of Irony? I never had the advantage to read Jane Eyre before I knew the end, but it seems to me that the scene with Bertha is a kind of revelation about his real character. It is totally unnecessary from a logical point of view: at that moment it is clear he is a bigamist and liar. Why still bring the people there, but to see what he deemed good circumstances to lock her up in? Ah, yes, the fact that she was mad, but that was known before. There was no reason for him to show them how she looked, because it is irrelevant, totally irrelevant to the situation. She is mad, full stop. He has already a wife, full stop. He is not allowed to marry, full stop. His lament is an idle lament, there is no justification. It only adds horror, which Charlotte admitted to putting in, but why and where? How would one feel if walking into a cell, half-dark or barely lit, probably with bad air as there are no windows to air. Maybe add some smoke from the fire (if applicable). See the lunatic running back and forth in the shadow, or rather say 'dark', at the 'farther end of the room'. And then think that she has been there for 15 years (or at least ten)! Without having seen the world once in that time, without having seen the sky once, without having seen any daylight for those 10 years. And that because the husband wants to forget. He could have put her somewhere else, and forgot about her, for a quarter of the amount he paid Grace, and still had her treated well with good food, hygiene, and light (things that were deemed wholesome in those days). The image Charlotte gives does not justify. Certainly not in a time where there was optimism about the nature of insanity.
If a sane person were locked up like that, I don't think that after ten years he would still be sane, at least if he hadn't committed suicide, or tried it at least.
It seems that everyone wants to forget that the Victorians were determined to help that kind of things out of the world. It didn't last, not even to the end of the century because they did not know enough to be able to solve everything, and the optimism faded quickly, but this book was written during that brief time of optimism and as such, even if her condition was not curable, they would have thought it was. Thus the scene displaid cannot be positive.

[ksotikoula]

I am of the opinion that Rochester is first a cruel character, in whom is lacking compassion. He stages a real mascarade for Jane's benefit, he is a liar, and a would-be bigamist. He is also a hubristic character, in that he thinks that he can disrespect laws. But the end of the novel brings about his redemption. Here you have an experience of conversion, which also resembles a pilgrim's progress. Jane's spiritual progress is not the only one in the novel, it is parallelled by Rochester's.

I agree with you. I never said he was a flawless man. The first time I read their first three dialogues, I remember specifically closing the book exclaiming "What a jerk! Can't that girl find somebody in this novel who is nice?". It is not exactly his lack of compassion that makes him cruel. He has grown rough through disappointment. He even flatters himself that he is as tough as an Indian rubber ball. He has also turned into a misogynist. He says to Jane he doesn't mean to flatter her, if she is different than the "others" is not her achievement, but nature did it and then she may be full of faults he doesn't yet know. He is afraid of being hurt again. His relationships with women were devastating for him too. It is not nice to know someone is sleeping with you for your money and this is all the love he can get. And this shows, in how he misreads Jane after the proposal and wants to make her presents and comfort and protect her, misjudging her real needs, because he thinks women are generally happy this way. He doesn't know any better. The fact that he is not cruel shows from the love and respect his servants and tenants show for him. He may be abrupt and even unfair, when in temper, but he is good-hearted. And also you can not deny he made many efforts to come nearer to Jane and learn more about her. Part of his masquerade is really flattering in the sense that he tried hard to understand a kind of woman he had never encountered before. And he could value her. Blanche doesn't stand a chance now in front of Jane. He does mature and evolve through the novel. Jane certainly has a lot to teach him. He is reformed in the end. My problem with kiki's view is that I can forgive and partly justify all the harshness and lies and manipulation, but I could never as a reader forgive intended maltreatment of Bertha. That is why I said that Charlotte and Jane would be fools for accepting such a man. An abusive kind of man. Because this can not be rectified.

"There's also the fact that his very marriage with Bertha seems to constitute a sin, because he married her for the wrong reasons: lust and money."
Exactly! His argument is that this was not a real marriage in the sense of how people should feel in one. There is no respect, no liking each other: an utter sense of uncongeniality, an empty mockery. As I have said before it would be dissolved in no time, had Bertha continued to be sane.

[kiki1982]

I never said, or never wanted to say, that he intendedly mistreated her (tortured her, so to say), although he could have been more critical of her treatment. Had he been more compassionate, he had considered what was going on in that room and improved the circumstances.

The example I gave about the 'taking revenge' was only intended as an example of another idea. I dn't think it is true.

He needed to lock her up because otherwise she couldn't be forgotten. If she had been in an asylum, her brother could have visited her, the asylum would have known where the money came from. Yet to contemporary standards it stays cruel.

[ksotikoula]

Well kiki you certainly have a weird way of loving him :). (I believe this is a kind of irony) :). [I don't mean to be disrespectful and I am sorry if at any point I seemed hostile].

I had started discussing intended maltreatment with you, when I saw your next post about it. The thing is (and we agree in that) that he was never very sympathetic to Bertha (and partly understandably so), as she too was never towards him, because they were incompatible. He admits to Jane that if she (Jane) had gotten mad, he would behave differently towards her, he would be more involved in her care and treatment, because he would love still what she once was. He never saw anything in Bertha to like, to sympathize with, to mourn when her mind was totally gone. He just did his duty and followed the current "best" practice and you couldn't expect Charlotte to make a full research about the condition of asylums for a novel. "The woman in white seems" to imply the same about asylums by the way. It is really ironic that what Charlotte chose to present as best to the notions of the common people (not scientists with optimistic views) would condemn her hero in the eyes of the future public. In Rochester's sense (although he blames himself and family also for this) Bertha ruined him once, when alluring him to the wedding and making a hell out of their married life with her excesses and vices and now does it again when he has found the love of his life. So, he is not sympathetic to her, but he is neither physically cruel even when she is raging. He also tries to rescue her life. He does not consider her life conditions because it is not something that he is an expert on. He has hired Grace Poole and it is in her line of her business to take care of that together perhaps with Carter who doesn't seem to find it wrong too. Believe me he could forget her a lot more easily in an asylum than having her roaming in his house. People do that often now. Commit a person in the care of others and never ever visit. Her brother is too far away remember?

About the exhibition of Bertha: He bids them to come to the house as you said for dramatic reasons. We, as readers, deserve to see "the ghost" of Thornfield that has puzzled us for so long. It also accounts for his not being persecuted by the law. Jane and her family won't make charges against him and the others know him for a long time and respect him and pity him. It is also an act of despair. A way of saying this is the condition and is irreversible.

[Peripatetics]

Well kiki you certainly have a weird way of loving him. (I believe this is a kind of irony)....

Perhaps not, and perhaps not irony. Perhaps something more fundamental -

“Rationally St John is a better man to marry: he has had no mistresses (so you are less at risk as wife, to be usurped by one), he has no illegitimate child, he's got a steady job (the financial point is the only disadvantage for St John), he is beautiful to look at (certainly at the end of the book), he will never cheat on you because he is a man of God, he will never do anything wrong because he is a man of God. “(Mr. Rochester, post #4)

“Rochester is, up till now, the only character I really love. I don't know, I also swoon over him. I'd probably fall head over heels in love with him if he really existed... It's very strange, but he still seems very dangerous to know...” ( Mr. Rochester #6)

As a psychologist you might find the contrast interesting.

[kiki1982]

For a psychologist it might also be interesting to look at 'projection of an idea'. People seem to excuse everything the man did, 'because he is so passionate'. Dangerous attitude in the real world...

You see, I can also be childish if I want to, Peripatetics. But that does not have its merits in an adult discussion.

I love him as a character, Ksotikoula. In his first entry he was 'mad, bad and dangerous to know'.
But I suppose to every reader happens the same like to a mother who has given birth: all woe has been totally forgotten. All his foes have been totally forgotten, but it does not change the pain before as an absolute fact.

[ksotikoula]

Well I will be no one's psycholigist here especially without payment Lol!

I would never have though St John a good choice for marriage. In fact I agree heartingly with a woman who said she would rather run away back to the moors than marry him :) . He gives me the creeps. Although I understand what kiki means in a way: that he would be an eligible match for a victorian girl. In a Jane Eyre parody, Jane could be appearing closing each day her door against a line of unlegitimate children claiming to be Rochester's :lol:. But we make the man worse than he really is.

About Rochester I have come to terms with his being dangerous, mostly when I was able to find what was it exactly that made him frightening to me. After all he is just a man. I found out that it was not his sexuality or morality or anything in his character. It was the passionate, uncontrollable feelings he created in Jane. I came to the conclusion that no matter how much I loved the book, I would be afraid to experience a love so great as to nearly make me lose the limits of my personality and control. So it is the question of how far are you disposed to let anyone get so deep into your heart/mind/soul? Trust is very important in a relationship, but idolizing somebody the way Jane did, was like creating false gods and give them power over you. That is why Jane is punished in this tragedy called Jane Eyre. This was her Hubris. She forgot god and adored one of His creations. Charlotte didn't approve of extreme passion either. It is a search of a balance between passion vs reason, passion vs morality and passion vs independence (because loneliness is a high price to pay for independence and on the other hand love can be humiliating to your pride and sense of self). :)

[kiki1982]

Good point.

St John, I wouldn't be seen dead with him :sick:, but indeed if you want an eligible match and someone that will be faithful, to you, oh well. If you want that in stead of a husband who loves you, then no problem... It all depends on your priorities in life. (There are Charlottes and Elizabeths (Pride and Prejudice))

[Peripatetics]

Well I will be no one's psycholigist here especially without payment Lol!

So Rochester's paraphrase: 'Most will do anything for money', stand? Lol! Sex has precedence over reason.
Are things so bad in Greece? Sorry no job offer. What I suggested was purely an intellectual exercise. A change of perspective: that the source of the apparent contradictions should be looked for not in the text but in the reader.

Addendum - you might be interested.
From NYT, 17 Feb '09, article: In Pain and Joy of Envy, the Brain May Play a Role

One vice, however, dispenses with any hedonic trappings and instead feels so painful you would think it was a virtue, except that there’s no gain in lean muscle mass at the end: envy. Skulking at sixth place on traditional lists of the seven deadly sins, right between wrath and pride, envy is the deep, often hostile resentment you feel toward somebody who has something you want, like wealth, beauty, a promotion or the admiration of peers. It is a vice few can avoid yet nobody craves, for to experience envy is to feel small and inferior, a loser shrink-wrapped in spite.

[kiki1982]

Yet the source is consistent as it is a product of a reader.

[ksotikoula]

Thank you for the article peripatetics! It was indeed interesting.

Yes, unfortunately business opportunities for our profession are pretty slim in Greece I'm afraid :(. Though I would not do anything disagreeable for money, let alone to do it without it.

In fact, I almost regret that during the conversation I revealed my profession in order to support the validity of my knowledge. And this for two reasons: 1) my opinions tend to get judged more severely and on a personal-professional level (like kiki said "would you as a psychologist lock up somebody in a dark room...") and 2) there are many people who want the "experts" to support their view and getting in the way is not pretty wise. I perceive you have a long disagreement with each other and I don't want to rush into it criticizing opinions and even less characters. I don't profess to know either of you well, so I will abstain from judging both of you. So I from now on I would like to express my personal and not professional opinions and I intent on sticking strictly to Jane Eyre topics :).

[Peripatetics]

Yes, unfortunately business opportunities for our profession are pretty slim in Greece I'm afraid :(. Though I would not do anything disagreeable for money, let alone to do it without it.)
Well at least stay out of the riots.
Formidable avatar!LOL

δεν πιστεύω ότι μία κοπέλα
που αναζητά το φως του ήλιου
θα είναι ποτέ
έχουν σοφία
όπως αυτό

sorry for the bad translation but I do not have access to a Greek word processor.

You are right to stay out of our disagreements. Unfortunately the discussion which was originally on Jane Eyre has degenerated.

[Bitterfly]

I agree with you. I never said he was a flawless man. The first time I read their first three dialogues, I remember specifically closing the book exclaiming "What a jerk! Can't that girl find somebody in this novel who is nice?".

Ha ha, I actually liked their first dialogues, they're witty and constitute a marvellous flirtation. But I get your point. ;) I agree with most of what you say next, but I like arguing, so here goes. :)

[QUOTE] He is afraid of being hurt again. His relationships with women were devastating for him too. It is not nice to know someone is sleeping with you for your money and this is all the love he can get. And this shows, in how he misreads Jane after the proposal and wants to make her presents and comfort and protect her, misjudging her real needs, because he thinks women are generally happy this way.

Why not.. Your interpretation is interesting and I hadn't thought of the problem in such a way. I saw his showering of Jane with presents and especially dresses as a (subconscious?) way to make up for her social inferiority, which she refuses because she has to make her way up the social ladder by herself. And also as a sort of extended manipulation of her: first he manipulates her by deceiving her, then he manipulates her literally, by treating her like a doll.

And the sartorial motif is also related to the idea of deceiving appearances: he wants to transform her into something she is not - a beauty, a harem girl, a lady (a "peeress", says Jane). That's something he tries to do a lot (she's an angel - something Jane herself denies vehemently - a fairy...).

As for his previous relationships, well... he married Bertha for her thirty thousand pounds, and if he was cheated in turn, that doesn't make me very sorry. And OK, Cécile cheated him as well, but he treated his next mistresses like disposable merchandise ("hiring mistresses", he says, and that does show it all, no?).


My problem with kiki's view is that I can forgive and partly justify all the harshness and lies and manipulation, but I could never as a reader forgive intended maltreatment of Bertha. That is why I said that Charlotte and Jane would be fools for accepting such a man. An abusive kind of man. Because this can not be rectified.


I see what you mean more clearly now, and it's true that it is difficult to really make Rochester into an abusive man. He doesn't seem violent towards her, after all (except in the bondage scene, and she starts the fight). But you must admit that one can argue that shutting her up in the dark does not constitute humane treatment of his wife, no? And I think one could also argue that he plays a part in her transformation from Beauty to beast, because it seems incredible that the belle of Spanish Town should be metamorphosed so rather swiftly into a monster.

What REALLY bothers me, actually, is that we never get to hear Bertha's side of things: Jane has obviously integrated the patriarchal system of values in which madmen/Creoles etc are made to be marginalised and got rid of, and I'm not sure we can trust Rochester's version of the story, since he lies so much before... I understand Jean Rhys wanting to give her a voice, because without it there's a sort of gap in the novel (maybe for contemporary readers).

[ksotikoula]

To peripatetics:
δεν πιστεύω ότι μία κοπέλα
που αναζητά το φως του ήλιου
θα είναι ποτέ
έχουν σοφία
όπως αυτό
The last 3 lines don't make sense unfortunately. You can type them in English if you like. Do you speak any Greek at all or what you write is through a translator?

About the avatar it goes with the name. Ksotikoula means little female elf. In Greek: Ξωτικούλα, from Ξωτικό=elf.

To Bitterfly:
About Rochester:
I truly believe his behavior with presents towards her, stems mostly from a need to overindulge and spoil her to her heart's content. And he is a large-with-money kind of man. When she leaves for Gateshead he tries to give her 50 pounds which is nearly the double of her annual income. He is amazed to find out how she survived Lowood for so long and he is kind of amused with the idea of with how little money she can live on. Obviously he has never been in need of them and he is proud of his power in all respects. Now that she is under his protection he is about to make amends for all her previous misfortunes "Have I not found her friendless, and cold, and comfortless? Will I not guard, and cherish, and solace her?".
What made me come to this conclusion was the question "How he -who is obviously a clever man and also a man capable of "handling" both Bertha and Jane at a time-could be such a sucker in the case of Celine?". Apart from the obvious conclusion that he was a younger man then and also that his correction could be due to his being capable of learning from his mistakes, seeing him in his effort to express in deed his love towards Jane, made me see why. He has a preconceived idea of how he should treat a woman (it is that of a big spender) and he is so impulsive and so gallant in his behavior that it is like shouting out "I have money to throw away". (Now if you were Celine wouldn't interpret that like "I want to be exploited"?) You will say why follow this tactic with Jane, if it failed with Celine? Hasn't he learned anything? No, he is just assured that Jane doesn't want him for his money ("Did you expect a present, Miss Eyre? Are you fond of presents?" but when she denies him he says "you don't love me, then? It was only my station, and the rank of my wife, that you valued?". He has a constant fear that he is wanted for his money only.) But during the period before the wedding he is safe with her and he is a very generous and also proud man to be able to do things for her. Jane says to him "I love you better now, when I can really be useful to you, than I did in your state of proud independence, when you disdained every part but that of the giver and protector". That is how she sees it too, no matter if her natural pride was hurt from his "role of giver" and that she was pained to feel obliged to him financially.

He does not want to make her something she is not. He tries to show her that he would show this kind of attention to the woman that he loved no matter if she was a beauty or not, a peeress or a plebeian. The weird part is where he tells her that he wants to make the whole world acknowledge her beauty. Jane doesn't want the attention and also has a complex with her appearance. I am not sure why he does that. He is not being ironic certainly. I think he ventures to be poetical using heavy "romantic lines" as he thinks that "any other woman would have been melted to marrow at hearing such stanzas crooned in her praise." (stereotype again). She is a beauty in his eyes and an angel. The fact is he has not great social skills. He has bad manners when she meets him, he can not make a decent offer of marriage (even Jane teases him on that "he [St John] asked me more than once, and was as stiff about urging his point as ever you could be), he is abrupt and he curses. But it is true that he partly idealizes her with the "angel". He has great hopes on her reforming him and that feels a heavy burden on her shoulders.


As for his previous relationships, well... he married Bertha for her thirty thousand pounds, and if he was cheated in turn, that doesn't make me very sorry.
I disagree a little about the money issue. He married Bertha because mainly he was raised up with the option to marry whom his father arranged that he should. Jane says observing him and his guests: "the longer I considered the position, education, &c., of the parties, the less I felt justified in judging and blaming either him or Miss Ingram for acting in conformity to ideas and principles instilled into them, doubtless, from their childhood. All their class held these principles.". Yes she admits later that she is being lenient to him because she was in love with him, but it is similar to what he says:
"When I left college, I was sent out to Jamaica, to espouse a bride already courted for me. My father said nothing about her money; but he told me Miss Mason was the boast of Spanish Town for her beauty...There is no folly so besotted that the idiotic rivalries of society, the prurience, the rashness, the blindness of youth, will not hurry a man to its commission."
You may not think him a reliable narrator, but I believe he was really a spoiled (as he admitted) young man who was bid to meet a woman that his father wanted him to marry. Edward didn't hear of her dowry: perhaps the father didn't like to show so overtly his selling him to the Mason family, but could it be also that his father considered Edward too much of an idealist to be interested in the deal or even capable of opposition? Edward at any case didn't think of her money when it came to the marriage, because he was in no way deprived of them at that time. But he must have felt he was to do what his father told him in order to maintain his favor and also until then the father hadn't done anything to make Edward disobey him and not trust him. Luckily (how ironic that luckily is) the woman his father had chosen was cute and more than that. She was a sensual beauty and she was provoking him, while her family approved and rivals were jealous (or so he thought). So, he would marry one day or other someone that either would appeal to him or someone who his father would approve or both. And Bertha was both. This is my version of what I think happened. You are entitled to have yours. What I want to say with this is that Edward was never mercenary. He was thoughtless and unable to control firmly his urges. But then he had the sanctions of everybody, so it didn't seem wrong. And so Bertha isn't justified for cheating on him, because with the same reasoning, since she was cheating on him, he had every right to believe she had broken her agreement of faithfulness in her marriage and to retaliate with his mistresses.


And OK, Cécile cheated him as well, but he treated his next mistresses like disposable merchandise ("hiring mistresses", he says, and that does show it all, no?).
I agree and understand why you don't like his view of them. However, after being sold by his father to Bertha's family and after being cheated by Celine (whose fake love he thought real) you can not help thinking what was his opinions about sexual relationships. Love became an illusion to him and his life was ruined anyway. So (using Caroline Helstone's words from Shirley) "how was he to fill the gap between him and the grave?". He says "Disappointment made me reckless. I tried dissipation -never debauchery". He has already admitted "I am a trite commonplace sinner, hackneyed in all the poor petty dissipations with which the rich and worthless try to put on life... since happiness is irrevocably denied me, I have a right to get pleasure out of life". His relationships with women were transactions: money for company (everyone got what they wanted or sort of: he could not buy love and his mistress would prefer just his money). He could not continue the illusion of love after Celine. He was once bought (by the Masons) and buys the rest of the world. He was used and uses others. A bitter way of living, but thus has been life to him so far. However he was dissatisfied in it. He was not a man that liked debauchery from character. It was not a worthy way of living and he was not proud of it, as he says "I should have been superior to circumstances". It is obvious I have a far better opinion of him than you. He is not an unreliable narrator for me because he always told the good with the bad. He, from the beginning told, Jane he is not a good man or as good as he should be. He even cautions her to think of guilt when she is tempted to err. He refers always to his past, beating about the bush, trying to figure out if Jane would be open-minded enough to accept him. And what a great irony this is! He searched the whole world to find somebody to love and that somebody is too ethical to want to be with him.



He doesn't seem violent towards her, after all (except in the bondage scene, and she starts the fight). But you must admit that one can argue that shutting her up in the dark does not constitute humane treatment of his wife, no?

We go again to judge him about his treatment to Bertha. I disagree. His treatment was the usual of the era and in some aspects better. He was no expert on the subject, he followed what was the common practice and had no personal interest to experiment on the subject of madness and its treatment in general. He was as inhumane, as all of his era.


And I think one could also argue that he plays a part in her transformation from Beauty to beast, because it seems incredible that the belle of Spanish Town should be metamorphosed so rather swiftly into a monster.
It took 15 years of illness and no medical treatment, let alone her alcoholism, to get Bertha become from a belle into a monster. There is nothing strange in that. It would be much the same if Rochester never came along. Bertha was genetically predisposed to develop her illness in some time of her life. Her heredity bear ill to her. The onset of her illness may be equally be put down in her alcoholism, as well as to the fact that her role, as a wife had new requirements for her, i.e. to be able to run a household. You can not prove it was him who was responsible. There is no way you can make a normal person go mad (and we don't want to go back to discussions about deliberate torture and abuse) and since her madness did not suit Rochester at all (it is the reason why he can't divorce her) he did not contributed to it. He tried to make this marriage work. He didn't like her character and habits, but didn't remonstrated, he even tolerated her cheating on him, he was as lenient as she could get. "I restrained myself: I eschewed upbraiding, I curtailed remonstrance; I tried to devour my repentance and disgust in secret; I repressed the deep antipathy I felt."


What REALLY bothers me, actually, is that we never get to hear Bertha's side of things: Jane has obviously integrated the patriarchal system of values in which madmen/Creoles etc are made to be marginalised and got rid of, and I'm not sure we can trust Rochester's version of the story, since he lies so much before... I understand Jean Rhys wanting to give her a voice, because without it there's a sort of gap in the novel (maybe for contemporary readers).

There is no gap in the novel in my opinion. I was never interested in hearing Bertha's side of things, which would be delirious anyway, since I take her to be what she is presented in the novel, a mentally ill woman. This is not a court. It is a novel told by a young woman named Jane Eyre about her life (not Bertha's) and not "the exorcism of Emily Rose". If Rhys wanted to treat Bertha's story she could write a book with her own characters (as she did because her Rochester is not the man Bronte created) but she would better name them otherwise. This would enable her to show whatever she wanted to show without distorting a character from another book. But then she wouldn't sell as much, would she? She would be better judged (and perhaps more lenient) for her worth as a writer and not her opinion about a famous book. It is absurd to judge a book by another book by different author. But then what would happen to the "prequel" of Jane Eyre?

P.S: I too like the first dialogues Jane and Rochester have. They are indeed intellectual, highly interesting and also funny, exactly because he behaves so much like a jerk.

[kiki1982]

I repeat it, and I will keep repeating it: Bertha’s treatment was maybe possible, but not approved of and certainly not better than if she had been placed in an asylum.

Iwana from Brown University states:

‘Ultimately, investigation into the condition of mental institutions at the time of the publication of Jane Eyre reveals that although poor and abusive conditions and overcrowding were prevalent in Victorian era mental asylums, there also existed a surprising level of awareness of the plight of the mentally ill and a widespread desire to improve the conditions of asylums and the treatments they offered to those who were incapable of functioning in regular society due to mental illness.’

There were definitely better alternatives. Harriet Martineau, in an article on Hanwell Lunatic Asylum she visited in 1834 wrote:

‘Where are the chains, and the straw, and the darkness ? Where are the howls, and the yells, without which the place cannot be supposed a mad -house ? There is not a chain in the house, nor any intention that there ever shall be ; and those who might, in a moment, be provoked to howl and yell, are lying quietly in bed, talking to themselves, as there is no one else present to talk to.’

‘A few, who are not to be trusted with the use of their hands, but who are better in society than alone, are walking about their ward, with their arms gently confined ; but, out of five hundred and sixty-six patients, only ten are under even so much restraint as this.’

‘It is nearly twenty years since Doctor and Mrs Ellis began to treat lunatics as much as possible as if they were sane; and in all that time no accident has happened.’

‘The chance of the rich lunatic for recovery, or for happiness, if he be not recoverable, is undoubtedly much better than that of the pauper, if it be duly improved.’

‘The inferiority of condition of the rich lunatic will not be questioned. It is only in circumstances of subordinate importance that he is more favoured than the most wretched patient in the worst cell of a bad workhouse; and, in all that is essential, his situation is not to be compared with any one of the paupers under Dr Ellis's care.’ (with ‘subordinate importance’ she means the quality of food, his clothes and furnishings)

‘Yet it is the ignorant, gin-drinking pauper whom we now see entertained with constant employment, and governed by a look or a sign, while the educated gentleman and accomplished lady are left helpless, to be preyed upon by diseased thoughts, and consigned to strait- waistcoats and bonds! This is barbarity, this is iniquity, whatever may be done for them besides. Let their secret be ever so carefully kept, let their physicians have their forty or fifty guineas a week, every week of the year, let heaven be wearied with prayers and tears on their behalf, they are each still as oppressed and injured beings as any wretch for whose sake the responsible shall be brought into judgment.’

‘Why must such institutions be public, and under the superintendence of official guardians, some will ask: and then they will tell us of private asylums, where gardening and study go on, and which are fitted up with turning lathes, and musical instruments. But the question is not whether any private asylums are so conducted, but whether all are.’

‘It should be remembered that the irritable are exasperated by opposition, and not by freedom.’

It is clear to me that Hanwell was not only asylum like this and that there were private ones that offered the same regime.

A report in the Albion (New York) reported In 1841 on Hanwell:
‘The Report abounds with a variety of instructions as to the detail of management; many of which appear essential to its success: such as the perfect unanimity of the officers and attendants as respects the plan itself:- a point but recently achieved at Hanwell.

The attendants moreover must be powerful in body and kind in disposition, and of great forbearance of temper; they must, therefore.be a more highly paid class than are ordinarily found in lunatic asylums, and they must also be more numerous, viz. one to every eighteen patients.

The beautiful grounds for recreations and gardening, and the industrial occupations for those who are sufficiently recovered to pursue them, form important elements of the system. In fact, no resource is neglected of which the effect is to calm the feelings, to remove excitement, to appease passion, to divert the mind from the topics of its disease, and as the ground-work of all moral remedies, to improve and establish bodily health and strength.
The attention to cleanliness is extreme ; nor can a stronger evidence of this be given than the fact that thirty thousand gallons of water, are required for the daily use of the establishment. Scrupulous cleanliness in every possible respect is among the most rigidly enforced rules; and a variety of means compatible with the perfect freedom of the patient, both at night and by day, are adopted, the simplicity and general success of which leave little to be desired.’

On violence the same magazine wrote:

‘The resource which is adopted at Hanwell in cases of extreme violence is that of seclusion.

" But to secure the advantages of seclusion, it must be remembered, that the term is applied to the temporary confinement of a lunatic in his own bedroom ; sometimes with the light partially excluded, sometimes almost entirely ; that it must not be hastily resorted to ; not carried into effect with anger, but steadily accomplished, when persuasion fails, by a sufficient number of attendants ; that it must not be accompanied with irritating expressions ; nor applied as a punishment; nor unreasonably prolonged. The state of the patient in seclusion should be ascertained from time to time through the inspection-plate ; and any appearance of contrition should be met with kindness."

It seldom fails, it appears,

" to tranquillize the patient in a short time, and is generally productive of immediate composure."

It is also obviously a far less exciting course to the others than that of the spectacle of an infuriated patient running about the ward degraded and irritated by the muff or sleeves. The imposition of such restraints, moreover, was often accomplished only after a severe struggle, always severest when restraint was most required, and a revengeful feeling was usually left in the patient's mind, which does not ensue from seclusion. ‘
It seems to me the rope which is at hand and is used by Rochester is severely outdated. If it is at hand it means that it is used (frequently). I cannot imagine that Grace would have been so ‘kind’ with Bertha, certainly not as she frequently drinks as well. The fact that at Hanwell, seclusion was only used to calm the patient down is a striking contrast with Bertha’s permanent seclusion.

On ‘the old method’, they write:

‘As respects the old mode of treatment, it is difficult to rise from the perusal of the Report, without a strong conviction that coercive appliances are inefficient as a means of preventing accidents ; whilst their irritating effects on the violent, the alarm they occasion to timid, and their tendency to debase those to whom they are applied, creating incurable habits of uncleanliness, are evil from which the use of restraints have been found inseparable.’

They certainly link violent behavior with restraint and they also abhor uncleanliness.

Middlesex University states:

‘Therapeutic Optimism: The optimistic period in the history of asylums runs from about 1830 to around 1860. It was at its height in the 1840s. Asylums built under the 1808 and 1828 County Asylums Act tended to be left to the management of doctors. As the theories and techniques of managing lunatics in asylums developed, so did the belief that this asylum treatment itself was the correct, scientific way to cure lunacy.
Signs of the therapeutic change can be seen in the changing legislation. The 1828 Madhouses Act, unlike the 1774 Act, was concerned about conditions in asylums. These included the moral conditions. Official visitors were required to inquire about the performance of divine service and its effects. In 1832, this inquiry was extended to include "what description of employment, amusement or recreation (if any) is provided"'.

It is clear from these accounts that Victorians in the 1830s to 1860s had an optimism as to the curability of mentally ill people. It is furthermore obvious to me that mechanical restraint and confining to the room was only used in extreme cases and that violence was considered as an effect of restraint. The rope that is at hand as if ‘natural’, in that sense, is a prominent feature that tells which method was used to manage Bertha. If it were never used it would not be so directly at hand that Grace just took it and Rochester directly knew what to do with it. Furthermore, Bertha is considered as ‘cunning’ and unpredictable. If indeed violence were the effect of restraint, then it is clear why Bertha is violent towards Rochester and never changes in that…

In July 1844, Blackwood’s Magazine, which the Brontës read, wrote on the lunatic asylum in Palermo, Sicily:

‘Cleanliness, good fare, a garden and the suppression of all violence - these have become immutable canons for the conduct of such institutions, and fortunately demand little more than ordinary good feeling and intelligence in the superintendent’

It needs to be noted that ‘suppression’ means ‘denial’ as in Freud and ‘immutable’ means ‘binding’.

If even in Italy this was practiced, it is not only isolated to England. Furthermore, Blackwood’s talks of ‘immutable canons’. In other words, it was a standard practice by the 1840s to not restrain people on their arms, legs, or neck, nor was it standard to flog them or confine them in the dark for 10 years on end. The emphasis was on useful occupation, cleanliness, and good food. In short: ‘make them happy and they won’t be violent’.

Whether this is psychologically true or not, from a contemporary point of view is unimportant, as Victorians believed it and the first readers of Jane Eyre must have read that book in that context. Obviously, and justly, Brontë was criticized. If it was indeed ‘canon’ that people were no longer confined to their rooms alone in the dark for ten years then readers were justly horrified.

Whether Rochester willingly ‘tortured’ Bertha is not provable or disprovable. The only thing it really evokes with certainty is that he could not care less. If he had cared seriously, then he could have sought a much better place. Already in the 1830s or even earlier. So even backdated Rochester’s management of Bertha is not according to the most humane circumstances.

The issue was even debated in the press:

‘In the early 1840s asylum doctors divided into hostile camps of those who practised "mild restraint" and those who followed Lincoln and Hanwell in establishing non-restraint. The debate involved the JPs who governed the asylums, the religious ministers required in Asylums under the 1828 County Asylums Act, the medical profession outside asylums, the medical press, the non-medical press, parliament - and eventually everyone with a taste for reading salacious and vitriolic accusations and counter-accusations as the contenders published selections from one another's case notes in an effort to prove their point.’

If it was indeed debated in the non-medical press, Brontë with all her access to newspaper and magazines must have read things about it and definitely have had an opinion (as the rope and the desire for horror suggest).

[kiki1982]

I think it was here that the French thing came up...

Maybe this is interesting towards it:


Among the Female Inmates of asylums, there are many whose disorder principally consists in a moral perversion connected with hysterical or sexual excitement. (Prichard 1844)

The report was about 'moral insanity', the type of insanity that Brontë identified for Bertha as well.

If the French were in danger, then certainly Adèle being half French would have been at risk... Esquirol argued that moral insanity was down to 'the breakdown of religion, family bonds and "fixed habits".' (Middlesex)

Then indeed, 'a good English education' was the only thing that could help the poor French thing... :p

[ksotikoula]

‘Ultimately, investigation into the condition of mental institutions at the time of the publication of Jane Eyre reveals that although poor and abusive conditions and overcrowding were prevalent in Victorian era mental asylums, there also existed a surprising level of awareness of the plight of the mentally ill and a widespread desire to improve the conditions of asylums and the treatments they offered to those who were incapable of functioning in regular society due to mental illness.’

Kiki read, what you post, carefully please. This excerpt says simply that the conditions were abusive and overcrowding (something that Bertha avoids in private care) that there was only a desire and a theoretical context not a practice that was followed. In my country up until 1981 the situation in public mental institution was a nightmare and this was a fact for other countries too (like Italy you mention). And you can not suppose that we all had made such a progress and went backwards again :). There will always be theories, but can not be applicable to all patients and it takes high time to be put in action and be tested.

The rest of your articles are journalism (probably brochures of advertising too) and Martineau was a fiction writer [as Gaskell was who wrote so many inaccurate things about Bronte to present her personality in a way to appeal to the Victorians]. Do you know that many times the visitors (like Martineau) were allowed to see only certain parts of a mental institution, those with the mildest patients and with the scrupulously clean only-ten-minutes before floor? The patients were dressed with new clothes and were led every time in a clean room (and of course not all of them) to be seen and inspected. My professor in the lesson about psychiatry and asylums used to joke that they even occasionally found time to spread a red carpet. How do you think that they managed in those perfect asylums that you have in mind "to calm the patient down" with out medication? Don't you see this is a refined way to say that they used the same (old-fashioned?) rope or even worse straight-jacket? So far a psychiatrist, a medical student and a psychologist have told you that this was the state of things. Now 3 different persons from different countries, who have studied the issue have the same opinion: that private care was better than the asylums those days - and believe us we would be glad to be able to show that the treatment there was good because sometimes we are stigmatized and have to apologize for the state of our science those days.
But instead you choose (1) to read optimistic journalistic articles (most of which are biased) or (2) some scientific ones that you choose to interpret in a strange way and (3) you tend to generalize some (mostly theoretical) progress in all the asylums and patients and (4) you link that with Jane Eyre and the supposed knowledge Charlotte should have and (5) ultimately with the cruelty in the character of Rochester. All these speak clearly of preconception and selection of far stretched opinions that will suit your case despite their validity and credibility.
The fact that there was none harsh review about Bertha's treatment in the era, while some reviewers were more than ready to attack this subversive Currer Bell figure, says a lot. They even tried to say Jane Eyre is godless. So they would miss no opportunity to blame her for this if they had an opposite opinion.
Grace used to work in an asylum before. Do you think Rochester picked on purpose the worst employee to keep his wife? Or she was the only one not angelic in her profession?
The only thing that you can blame Charlotte for, is the promotion of the stereotype of a mad person out of control and dangerous (which however was true in the case of Bertha Mason) with some stereotypical characteristics of extra-cunning and corporal strength, which would not fit the description of all mental illnesses and certainly creates fear. Big deal! Most people imagined mad people like Bronte portrayed them. But we must always keep in mind that this is not a scientific paper, but a novel, a fiction, a fake story.

Whether Rochester willingly ‘tortured’ Bertha is not provable or disprovable

I am not going even to commend on this. If you are able to "love" as you say a character that may willingly torture a helpless woman, suit yourself. He is not the hero of my favorite book or else it would say much about me too.

[Bitterfly]

I am not going even to commend on this. If you are able to "love" as you say a character that may willingly torture a helpless woman, suit yourself. He is not the hero of my favorite book or else it would say much about me too.

Read the rest of your post, which is pretty conclusive (even if I still think Rochester is made out to be a baddy until his redemption :p ), but I would quibble with the above: the morals of a character have nothing to do with his/her lovability - I'm also studying Richard III at the moment, and the villainous and murderous Richard is far more attractive than the nice-but-boring Richmond. Look at St John - he's the perfect husband when you think about it, but presented in such a manner that he becomes totally loathsome. It's necessary not to forget that these characters are presented through the prism of Jane, so that the rather immoral Rochester turns out to be far more sexy than St John (presented as a murderer even though he's never done anything bad!).

[kiki1982]

With that article of Brown University, we have to note that the report of the Lunacy Commission of 1845, which they consulted, was a report on visits the commission made. During those visits, sometimes measures were taken to improve the situation. So even if there was overcrowding something would have been done about it.

It is not merely theory like you think. It was serious.

Their primary concern was the paupers and big county asylums. The houses that needed a license were slowly being added to the list and also visited.

There is no diagnosis so it cannot be concluded that medication was needed for Bertha as that judgement is based on nothing. The condition 'moral insanity' does not exist anymore. Furthermore, the original first-time readers of Jane Eyre did not have the notion of medication. They did have notion of moral treatment. The novel should be read in that context.
If I am biased by the same kind of articles Charlotte could have read in newspapers, then it is reasonable to argue that Charlotte was as well. Unless she read medical magazines. It is thought that she read Prichard's Treatise on insanity. It can not be ruled out that she knew about 'the latest'.

There was a definite debate going on about non-restraint versus restraint. Everywhere. Hence Martineau's article. It is not because it is journalism that it is theory. The point is that people, and probably Charlotte as well, came in contact with that kind of articles and they must have had an opinion about it. Whether that is a realistic one is the question. Point is that the opinion was there. I cannot imagine that psychiatrists at the time were able to not account for violence. People were so convinced of non-restraint that in 1860 Edgar Sheppard was blackballed at the Royal College of Physicians: 'His method of locking dirty and destructive patients in side rooms "in a nude state" for weeks at a time where they "slept on the floor without either bed or pillow, being supplied only with strong quilted rugs", packing violent patients in wet sheets, or retraining them by belts, wrist straps and locked gloves, was condemned "in the strongest manner" by the commissioners in lunacy and led one of their members to blackball Shepherd at the Royal College of Physicians" [of which he is not listed as a member]'.

Martineau's article was not published as a fictional work, but as a serious one in The Lancet and it is taken seriously as reliable information by Roberts.

The fact that Blackwood's Magazine talks about non-restraint and the new method in terms of normality should say enough as to the public opinion at the time.

Charlotte even had 2 non-restraint county asylums in her region! Lincoln (I wonder whether that would be the alledged Grismby Retreat?) and Lancaster. York was a private one. York Asylum had been taken over by the quakers who ran the York Retreat in 1813. In 1814 the whole staff was dismissed and superintendent resigned. From 1814 ladies visited the ladies' wards to consider the 'apparel and cleanliness of the female patients as well as to their humane treatment and the decorous demeanour of the nurses and keepers'. This 30 years prior to Jane Eyre. Wakefield asylum, that was taken over from 1818 to 1831 by Dr Ellis prior to the Hanwell Asylum, was equally close to Haworth.

One can keep insisting on Rochester's benevolent nature, but it does not make sense in the wider picture of historical context, and even literary criticism. How can Rochester be protrayed positive and 'doing the best he can', if Bertha is 'restrained in a marriage'? How can he be linked with Byron and do the best he can for his wife, provided that Byron's wife got rid of him in a time when it was only possible to get rid of a husband in case of extreme violence and repeated adultery?

I do not say that he willingly 'tortured' her, which wouldn't be possible anyway, because he has got a problem with empathy on the whole and so is not able to enjoy or regret the pain someone faces. But, other than that, he has probably grown indifferent to it. If he had cared, even without empathy, he could have sought a better place or could have been critical towards Grace Poole. But hate motivated him not to care, and so Bertha was left to the vices of Grace. His treatment of his wife has grown out of lack of empathy and hate towards her. That is why he could care well for Jane, or that is what he makes out to want if she turned mad. Not out of empathy for Jane because he can't have that, but out of a desire to treat her well (in an absolute or objective manner which he can consider).

I have the same opinion on loving Rochester as Bitterfly: it has nothing to do with morality or good or bad whatsoever. I love my husband, but I do not approve of everything he does. What kind of wife should I be if I let my husband walk into the greatest misfortunes with open eyes, because I cannot disagree because I love him?

[kiki1982]

As to the progress we made and then went backwards again, it seems hard to believe, but it did occur:


'The nineteenth century opened dramatically with a pistol shot, and the gun fingers of Hadfield and McNaughton were to trigger the opening of many asylums. The state entered the field in a big way. By the end of the century there were 74,000 patients in public asylums. The early period of state asylums was custodial, out of it developed a period of therapeutic optimism that reached its height in the 1840s, and declined into therapeutic pessimism in the second half of the nineteenth century.'


'The pessimistic period in asylum history developed during the second half of the nineteenth century. Medical theory was strongly influenced by social darwinist beliefs that insanity is the end product of an incurable degenerative disease carried in the victim's inherited biology, and the experience of asylums, and reanalysis of their statistics, undermined the earlier beliefs in their therapeutic value. In the late 19th and 20th centuries, the pessimistic period in asylum history ran gently into a backwater period. Most progress in mental health policy took place outside the asylums, in specialist hospitals like the Maudsley, or in outpatient departments, and the asylums became the quiet back wards where chronic patients live.'


'Application of "survival of the fittest" theories to human society. Intellectually this predates Darwin's application of this theory to biological evolution. Darwin's theory was stimulated by the theories of Malthus, who argued that human populations are controlled more by war, famine and disease than they are by social planning, and that interfering with this process through poor relief undermines society. Social Darwinism (as distinct from Darwin's biological theories) was developed by Herbert Spencer.'

Only with social Darwinism sterilisation, euthanasia, the concept 'incurable' made their entries.

[Peripatetics]

To peripatetics:
The last 3 lines don't make sense unfortunately. You can type them in English if you like. Do you speak any Greek at all or what you write is through a translator?

About the avatar it goes with the name. Ksotikoula means little female elf. In Greek: Ξωτικούλα, from Ξωτικό=elf.

Would be hesitant about meeting a Ξωτικούλα on a moonlit night on the shore of Lesbos.

No offense intended by the bad translation. My knowledge of Greek is rudimentary; just from hanging out with some Greeks.
I was curious whether you would identify the fragment. The original, is in archaic Greek, in If Not Winter, Fragments of Sappho, pg56. by Anne Carson. ISBN 0-375-41067.
If you have a chance, I would be interested in your translation.

[ksotikoula]

To bitterfly and kiki:
I accept that a character can make disagreeable things and still be lovable, if those things are not so wholly bad, that can make me draw conclusions that his nature is as bad. Charlotte always talked about distinguishing between the sin and the sinner. In that sense Rochester is a pretty good example. He makes many wrong choices in his life, but he gets to pay for them, he accepts responsibility and is able to see the virtue in others. He emerges as a good character after all and I just wanted to say that intended abusive behavior is one that I wouldn't tolerate or forgive in a hero I love (and we are supposed to love him since Jane does, except if you think that she made a terrible mistake in returning to him and should have stayed with St John, whom I think a hypocrite and sadistic and not because Jane portrays him so-after all she has better opinion about him than I do).
Heathcliff is a perfect example of a hero that is abusive and nonredeemable (I liked Wuthering Heights, but I disliked its heroes). After a lot of effort and justifying, I managed to warm a little towards him, due to the fact that he was first abused from the others (I never managed to do so with Catherine), but still his revenge is so out of range and involves people that never really hurt him (Catherine's decisions did), that I can not say I like him as a character or would approved of him, as I do with Rochester. They are both great flawed heroes though.

About Bertha: I don't see the meaning in continuing this discussion. I don't care what Charlotte knew about the condition of the asylums those days (It wasn't her field or obligation to write about it). I don't care if you believed that asylums were heaven on earth. I care for the implications your opinions have on the character of Mr Rochester. Charlotte simply needed a living reason in the house to account for all the gothic-supernatural element and an insuperable obstacle to the happiness of her couple. But how to do this if Rochester was simply married to a woman and could take divorce at anytime? She thought of madness: a situation where no one was to blame and that constituted a tragic dead end. It was a brilliant solution and something that really could happen (look at Thackeray). And suddenly after a century and a half she is accused of insensibility and her hero for neglect, while he was doing what many families did in the exact same way. So, for me we have reached the end of discussion and I am not interested on reading any other articles. I have my own bibliography and I am not here to discuss psychiatry. This is a conversation about literature and a thousand apologies to ramico who started this thread, because we have talked about all kind of nonsense except his question.

To peripatetic:
I haven' read any Sappho :(. So I wouldn't recognize it anyway.

If you have a chance, I would be interested in your translation.
You have a passage in ancient greek that you would like me to translate? I am a little rusty on the subject but I can try. You can sent with e-mail and I will give it a try ;).

[kiki1982]

Heathcliff is indeed a good example and Rochester as well...

They have both been put in the context of Byron. The only difference is that Heathcliff does not become 'domesticated' (Bloom).

It is not only after 150 years she was accused of insensitivity. Already at the time there were allegations.

This was on topic as far as I am concerned, but apparently some piece of history has been forgotten.
I never said asylums were heaven on earth, yet they were not at all abusive by standard. Apparently it is hard to understand because the bad sticks and the positive is forgotten. There are academic papers on the net about it. Even the Royal College of Psychiatrists writes about it. I do not consider that source total crap. But as if this goes too far, then we should stop with it, although Bertha's role is much more important than a mere gothic element.

[Lynne Fees]

But was she really "mad," do we really know? A hot temper could get you put away back then if you were a woman and your husband said you were crazy.

[sciencefan]

But was she really "mad," do we really know? A hot temper could get you put away back then if you were a woman and your husband said you were crazy.

Yes, if you read the details about her... she was actually mad. It ran in the family. Her mother was mad also.