Bertha's representation

[kev67]

Just reached the end of volume 2, and there are some, probably not very original, things that I am wondering about.

Is Bertha Rochester's madness realistic? Hers seems more like a case of demon possession than insanity. The crazy laugh, the vicious assaults, the low cunning, the purple face. It must be exhausting. At other times she seems to know what she's doing, like when she finds her way out of the third floor and into Jane's room where she finds her bridal veil.

Considering what a handful Bertha Rochester is, is it really plausible that Grace Poole can look after her, more or less on her own? To me it seems like the job would need a six person crew: three shifts of two people each. Even at five times the normal rate of pay, it seems an intolerable job for one person.

Is Jane being a bit unfair to Mr Mason? Can he be blamed for wanting to look out for his sister? Isn't he right in preventing a bigamous marriage from taking place?

Bertha Rochester and her brother, Mr Mason, have a Creole mother. Bertha is a violently insane, purple-faced monster, while her brother is a sneak and a coward. Is Charlotte Bronte being a little racist? If so, should allowances be made for her not having had the benefit of a modern, enlightened upbringing?

[kiki1982]

First nip the racism thing in the bud :D. No, seriously, the point is that the Creole label is a bit racist from our point of view, but not from theirs. Creoles in the 19th century being anything from a first generation mixed race person (one black and one white parent) to any person who once had some black blood in him, had inferior blood in them and so were more prone to madness, whatever that may mean.
In case you were wondering about the brother, who was an 'idiot'. This means that he was mentally deficient, possibly Down's Syndrome, but not always.
Madness was hereditary.
All this was well-known and 'proven' with scientific studies (really! Shows you how biased science can be sometimes).

You are right about Bertha's portrayal of madness. Madness/Lunacy was a broad thing: everything from melancholia = depression to schizophernia, genuine psyichiatrc conditions and epilepsy that. Believe it or not, it could also 'subside' or be cured (that means that the symptoms went away) and of course mad people could relapse too.
I am not sure though, let's say if you left someone who hears voices and is going schizophrenic, to his own devices and waited, as that was the only thing to do apart from purgery, blood-letting and blisters (this was used to calm them down :rolleyes:), whether a patient would go the way Bertha went: lucid moments and periods of minless violence.

I share your observations that she is rather representd in a kind of 'demonic' way and not realistic at all. She's a handy plot device and moves the plot forward to the several stages until she exoses Rochester's dark side.

[kev67]

The next chapter addressed some of my questions. Rochester says that Bertha Mason's family wanted him to marry their daughter because he "was of good race". :shocked: Presumably Bertha is Creole on her mother's side from whom she also inherits her insanity. I don't think the term 'Creole' is pejorative itself (but I may be wrong).

Rochester says he pays Grace Poole £200 a year, and that she'd do a lot for money. She also has the occasional help from her son and Dr Carter. Rochester says: "Grace has, on the whole been a good keeper, but owing partly to a fault of her own, of which it appears nothing can cure her, and which is incident to her harassing profession, her vigilance has been more than once lulled and baffled." I wonder if this is a reference to the pints of porter that Jane sees her take upstairs. Personally, I think it's unrealistic to expect one person to provide sole supervision of a dangerous lunatic twenty-four hours a day.

Bertha has recently broken out twice, after being kept under control for ten years by Mrs Poole. Either Grace Poole is losing her grip or, more likely, the thing that is driving Bertha mad is Mr Rochester's presence at Thornfield Hall. Mr Rochester says Bertha has lucid intervals lasting up to weeks. So, is she really insane? Is it more some mental illness that comes and goes. In some ways she seems like Hannibal Lecter: violently insane, but rational. Maybe she has a thing against men in general. She does not seem to have attacked Mrs Poole and did not harm Jane, but she did attack Mr Rochester and her brother. If she were still rational, what would her motive be for attacking her brother?

I was glad to read Mr Rochester say he cannot bring himself to hate Mr Mason: "because he has some grains of affection in his feeble mind, shown in the continued interest he takes in his wretched sister...".

[kiki1982]

'Of good race'. I know it sounds bad but it's not what you think ;). With all due respect, that made me smile. :)
It's the same as 'good breeding' in Austen. It sounds pretty disgusting, but it just means you are of good stock/family. Important for marrying children off. Everyone tried to get up the ladder and the way for the middle classes or the new rich (as Mr Mason, a sugar trader(?), or for example Jane's own uncle in Madeira) to get up the ladder was to move when there was someone of good stock who was in need of a good match (i.e. rich match, as this Bertha is). Rochester was such good stock, as he is obviously of a long-standing rich family (the family seat is old), although he is not noble. Noble blood was still out of reach for the Masons, unless a member of the (low) nobility was extremely desparate for money, but this would change for Bertha's children as they would be Rochester's children too. They could aspire to low nobility next and then onto the Dukes and Marquesses...
Of course things went wrong but that's the gist.

As I recall, old Mason and Rochester's father knew each other (was Mason Mr Rochester sr's steward, i.e. manager or something?), so at the point where Mason knows young Edward Rochester is coming out of uni, he knows his father will want to get rid of young Edward (i.e. marry him off) because he is the youngest and obviously he is not going to inherit (only the oldest son inherited as Rochester explains not quite properly). Nor is he going to get a profession, because that is not worthy of him, preferably. So, old Mason sees his chance and thinks, 'Let's get my daughter into the picture. I'll attach £30,000 to her, which will make young Edward Rochester middle class if he marries her, i.e. respectable, and his father will be happy, because he is out of the way.' Having grudging and covetous younger sons about, is not really ideal.

What the term 'Creole' means in this context has been hotly debated. To some academics, it just means that Bertha is part black and no more, to the racist corner it means that there are certain Victorian pre-conceptions in there about black people and madness. I am not really in the racist camp, because I find it irrelevant if you're talking 19th century, but I find it peculiar that you would let a character mention something like, 'She is a Creole' if that didn"t matter. To me, Rochester is implying that he was cheated into marrying a woman of inferior stock. Old Mason dangled the £30,000 in front of old Rochester, offered to rid him of his son, thus also getting rid of a daughter he knew he could not keep protraying as sane to the rest of society. Obviously old Rochester would not have wanted to 'soil' his family with this, but Mason did conveniently not tell him in his letters about his daughter's mental state. If people knew about it, Edward Rochester, if he had had chldren and his wife would have gone mad later, would have had trouble gtting rid of his children as madness is heriditary (who would want to get that into their 'stock', as it were?). Therefore, his father would not have wanted Bertha as a wife for his son Edward, even with her £30 000 presy attached, had he known that she was insane. Unfortunately, Edward Rochester didn't really care at all about what she was like, it was enough that she looked nice...
But as I said, no-one really agrees on what Brontë meant with the Creole tag and she never said anything about it, so they only have 19th century context to go on.

As to Bertha and Grace Poole:

Rochester is probably referring to drunkenness, yes. It used to be a big problem amongst lunatic asylum staff and of course facilitated abuse big time in those institutions. Asylum managers tried to tackle the stress that led to these abuses by hiring more staff and training them better, with great results. Not that it really helped cure the patients but they only noticed after some 20-40 years and lost hope, leading back to locking lunatics up and forgetting about them. The beginning of the 19th century, however was an age of hope and softly softly.
You may be interested to know that the University of Harvard/Stanford (can't remember which :blush:) takes the view on their Jane Eyre fact sheet that the Grimsby Retreat where Grace Poole's son works is in fact an avatar for the York Retreat, a pioneering Quaker lunatic asylum in the soft approach for lunatics. It still exists and has a website. There is lots to read about it.
harvard/Stanford is the only reference I have found, though, and it remains the question whether Brontë knew it (although she once lived near York), although there is as far as I know only one lunatic asylum called the Retreat.
Saying that, I believe Brontë essentially condemned how Rochester treated his wife.

As to her madness:
Apparently her mental illness is not really definable. She has symptoms of psychosis and schizophrenia, but it's not consistent. it has also been claimed she could have been in the very advanced stages of syphilis (this leads to madness), due to her imputed promiscuity, but I think that is unlikely as Rochester does not seem to have any symptoms of it, neither does he 10 years later.
I would say, her fuzzy conditions is probably due to a mix of misunderstanding on Brontë's part (she was not a psychologist) and Victorian misconception. As I said in my former post, you could be cured, you could relapse and be a lost cause, although Brontë lived at a time where asylum managers did not really believe in lost causes, despite what everyone thinks.
But you are right, it would be demanding to look after a person like this 24 hours a day on your own. But I guess you are looking at tying her up for some quietness... The York Retreat did not approve.

I was also thinking that Bertha felt disturbed at Rochester's presence actually. On a mere narrative level, it is peculiar that she doesn't do anything from when Jane arrives to the time she nearly burns Rochester in his bed. That is at least 6 months of peace and quiet.
Have you also noticed how this always happens at full moon? Beside the fact that lunatics were deemed to be worse when it was full moon (hence the word lunatic from luna = moon) and that she is a woman (also deemed to be affected by the moon, in a kind of warewoolf way I guess :rolleyes:), you could see her as a plot device where Rochester struggles with his lies and erupts in an emotional way every time at full moon. Rochester and Jane's relationship also moves along to a new phase with every full moon.
But you are right, Bertha must have lucid moments or periods where she knows very well what she is doing and moments of mindless violence.

I once toyed with the idea that she might have attacked Mason because she thought he was Rochester, but that seems physically unlikely because he is much smaller than Rochester. Even in the dark, Bertha must have seen the difference. Although, maybe being totally off her rocker, she might have thought that any man was a threat, you never know.
The point is, to me, that Brontë thought that Rochester could treat Bertha better. That, if he wanted to get rid of her, which is his right - you can't expect that he plays the nice husband, being cheated like that -, that he could have paid for a nice place for her where she was cared for properly and where he didn't even have to see her. But on the contrary, he pays Grace a fortune (if £35 per annum is the equivalent of £1,500 per month, then £200 is vast) to look after her so he can (try to) forget her presence and court other women.

Wow, that is a big post! I'll better stop then. :)

[mona amon]

Bertha Rochester and her brother, Mr Mason, have a Creole mother. Bertha is a violently insane, purple-faced monster, while her brother is a sneak and a coward. Is Charlotte Bronte being a little racist? If so, should allowances be made for her not having had the benefit of a modern, enlightened upbringing?

Charlotte Bronte does come across as bigoted in various ways. 'The Creole' is a madwoman and a drunkard, Adele has a lot of 'French defects' which are later corrected by a thoroughly English upbringing. Jane claims that the 'paysannes and Bauerinnen' she's seen are ignorant, coarse and besotted compared to the British peasantry, and she feels tempted to join St John Rivers in bringing knowledge and religion to India's ignorant, heathen hordes.

A belief in the inferiority of dark skinned races was probably widespread at the time, but I wonder about the attitude to other foreigners. Villette has a lot more foreigner bashing, and she displays a deep prejudice against the Roman Catholic religion.


Is Bertha Rochester's madness realistic? Hers seems more like a case of demon possession than insanity. The crazy laugh, the vicious assaults, the low cunning, the purple face. It must be exhausting. At other times she seems to know what she's doing, like when she finds her way out of the third floor and into Jane's room where she finds her bridal veil.


I think Bronte was aiming for shock and horror here, rather than a more naturalistic portrayal. The madwoman was after all at the heart of the spooky Gothic mystery that forms an important part of the book. This quote shows that Charlotte Bronte herself seems to feel it was realistic enough -


'Miss Kavanagh's view of the maniac coincides with Leigh Hunt's. I agree with them that the character is shocking, but I know that it is but too natural. There is a phase of insanity which may be called moral madness, in which all that is good or even human seems to disappear from the mind, and a fiend-nature replaces it. The sole aim and desire of the being thus possessed is to exasperate, to molest, to destroy, and preternatural ingenuity and energy are often exercised to that dreadful end. The aspect, in such cases, assimilates with the disposition--all seem demonized. It is true that profound pity ought to be the only sentiment elicited by the view of such degradation, and equally true is it that I have not sufficiently dwelt on that feeling: I have erred in making _horror_ too predominant. Mrs. Rochester, indeed, lived a sinful life before she was insane, but sin is itself a species of insanity--the truly good behold and compassionate it as such.

- Charlotte Bronte in a letter to W.S. Williams

[kiki1982]

A belief in the inferiority of dark skinned races was probably widespread at the time, but I wonder about the attitude to other foreigners. Villette has a lot more foreigner bashing, and she displays a deep prejudice against the Roman Catholic religion./QUOTE]

I once read that she and her sister Anne (?) were treated kind of badly by the Belgians at their time in Mr Héger's girls' school in Brussels. Their simple and pious protestant ways were apparentlytoo alien for the Brussels Catholics (something I can see happening even now, frankly). The hatred towards Catholics and foreigners in Brontë's writings has often been impûted to this.

[QUOTE=mona amon;1158983]I think Bronte was aiming for shock and horror here, rather than a more naturalistic portrayal. The madwoman was after all at the heart of the spooky Gothic mystery that forms an important part of the book. This quote shows that Charlotte Bronte herself seems to feel it was realistic enough

I think that's true, she was definitely aiming for the Gothic horror element, although to us, this mad figure is not really realistic. It coincides with the view they had of mad people then. Although they firmly believed that they could do things about it (which I think Ms Kavanagh also wrote about in medical journal The Lancet, which still exists today), they did 'know' that mad people could be really dangerous and violent (like Bertha). Obviously 'doing something about it' just meant calming people down (even by dehydration, you'd get very quiet for less ;)). They had no insight in what 'mad' people felt, heard or saw as we do now, so to Brontë this was probably quite natural, yes.
I see her more as a plot device rather than a character.

[kev67]

May I congratulate you on some quality posts.

[kiki1982]

As you see, I rather get lost in the historic context where Mona knows more about motives, style and such. She (?) knows more about Brontë herself too, I believe. :)

[Lost&Found]

Can I suggest you may find it interesting/useful to read 'Wide Sargasso Sea' by Jean Rhys. Rhys was herself labelled a 'Creole' and suffered for it in her lifetime. She read 'Jane Eyre' and felt a sympathy (or more accurately an empathy) with Bertha. So she went away and wrote Bertha's story. Its basically an unofficial prequel to Jane Eyre but it gives another point of view on the story and more importantly, it gives Bertha a voice- something she never achieves in 'Jane Eyre'.