One Rochester One Jane

Preface

Given the history of discussions on this forum I have to conclude that my reading of Bronte's Jane Eyre is profoundly incompatible with kiki1982's analysis in the essay Mr. Rochester. My interpretation is secular, while in my view kiki1982's has it's basis in moral judgment of good vs. evil, and uses terminology that is predominantly religious.
Kiki1982 made a very interesting comment , that in reading Jane Eyre one has to have a deep understanding in literature otherwise one will miss the important distinctions that Charlotte attempts to convey in Jane Eyre. I agree that a careful reading is required, but not the one that kiki1982 has made..
Bronte herself points out the importance of semantics. An example is her use of the word 'true' and 'Truth', as in the following – “Before the publication of Jane Eyre, she had said of Lowood section “it is true and Truth has a severe charm of its own. Had I told all the truth, I might indeed have made it far more exquisitely painful.”1 Where 'true' means, 'taken from actual life' and 'Truth' has an artistic, even a mythical connotation.
“The word 'passion' presents similar difficulties. Bronte used the word to describe an undesirable emotional outburst, such as a fit of passion. She has Blanche Ingram discuss the “raging passions” of the Ingram governesses in Jane Eyre, but she uses the word in a different sense a few pages later when Jane notices an “obvious absence of passion” (that is desire) in Rochester's “sentiments” toward Blanche.”1
It may prove useful if we make a distinction in the words 'fiction' and 'Fiction' in a similar way that Charlotte made in 'true' and 'Truth'; 'fiction' would refer to the creative process that is true to nature and 'Fiction' to a subjective construct driven by passion. The distinction will be useful when we tackle the nebulous subject of interpreting the subtext of Jane Eyre.
Such a fine sensitivity of language should be sufficient indication that Charlotte Bronte's interest in the composition of Jane Eyre was of aesthetics and not of a morality play for young women. Her use of religious references is purely an indication of the social milieu in which she was living, not of an underlaying religious message.

Index – temporary

Regrettably a road map is necessary since I can not publish the whole essay at once. I shall divide the posting into 3 parts and post as soon as I can complete the editing of each section. Thank you for your patience.

1.Preface
2.Rebuttal to Mr. Rochester
3.Structure of the novel: parallels in Jane / Rochester
4.Mythological reading based on Jane's watercolors
5.Appendix

There's no reason why an aesthetic understanding a novel should preclude a religious one. For me, both dimensions are present, and both your interpretations just as worthwhile.

Thanks for pointing out the shifting meanings of various words used by Jane. Bronte is reminding me more and more of Lawrence, you know (you can follow the trace of his words throughout the novel - their meanings change, and their energies sort of intensify then wane again and again).

Rebuttal to Mr. Rochester

The egg analogy.

If we suppose that the structure of Jane Eyre is analogous to an egg. The shell is the skeleton of the story, the incidents that move the tale along; the albumen can be viewed as the structure enveloping the skeletal, the emotional content of the story; the yolk, the food that allows the story to develop, the authors intent. I have left out the small white spot on the yolk, the germinal disc. The germinal disc is where the female's genetic material is found, it is the motivation of the writer, the most mysterious, hardest to grasp part of the tale.
When a reader is fortunate to grasp this DNA, then he can transform the original into another work of art, whether visually as in a film or verbally as in a play or attempt a critical analysis.
When a high school student is asked to analyze the story, she concentrates on the skeleton and if the parts fit together into a plausible patter she is satisfied. The university student senses the emotional part and tries to interpret how it relates to the skeletal structure. This is where things get interesting: the membrane covering the skeletal is stretchable and the view that we get depends very much on the interpreter's bias. The post graduate literature major has many more tools than the previous students, she concentrates on the dynamics of the structure and guesses at the authors intent. The analysis results in historical, psychological or aesthetic interpretations. Interpretations multiply into Freudian, Marxist, Feminist, Ideological or just plain vanilla, literary models. It's in this fourth category where most of the egregious interpretations are made. The human mind is most comfortable when it shoehorns the amorphous into a familiar pattern, it feels it has understood.

Rochester's characterization as demonic

Kiki's assessment of Rochester is magisterial. The greatest complement that I can give is that it makes you think. Initially I was dazzled by the breath and depth of the associations that she draws from the text. Yet I was bothered by a contradiction: if as kiki1982, states “I have a very demonic view of Rochester”2, ie Rochester is demonic, how can Jane love him?
It is ironic when kiki1982 use the word 'demonic'. It is of Greek origin, meaning possessed of spirits and since the Geeks believed that women were so possessed, they were irrational, and thus denied the right to vote. So shouldn't Jane, not Rochester, be labeled 'possessed', after all she hears 'voices'?
My dilemma is: to Rochester's question: “and felt that she loved me, and trusted that she would not leave me.", Jane's reply is, "Which I never will, sir, from this day."3 Charlotte's focus is on Jane and on love in its most profound context . When kiki1982 begins her essay with - The treatment of Bertha Mason and Mr Edward Fairfax Rochester in Jane Eyre – she is shifting the focus on to Bertha/Rochester from Jane, who was central to Charlotte Bronte, and to kiki1982herself, on a Christian interpretation of Jane Eyre. In itself such a shift of focus would be perfectly acceptable as Jane Eyre was written in the Victorian societal religious morality and of a family environment, where the father was deeply religious. Jane Eyre was interpreted by Feminist, by Marxist, by social critics of Colonialism and of critics of a narrow aesthetic interpretation of style. So why not of a present day Christian view point?
The answer rests on - do we as readers gain a deeper appreciation of Jane Eyre? Is kiki1982 consistent in what we know of Charlotte's intentions in Jane Eyre? Is her interpretation of Rochester consistent of Charlotte's emotional intent? And can Bertha whose characterization in the novel is minor, necessary only to advance the plot line, be made a focus of moral judgment of Rochester's character?

Bertha's Confinement

Kiki's core argument in labeling Rochester as demonic rest on her assumption that Rochester's character is bad from the beginning and she uses Bertha's confinement as proof of her assumption. “The treatment of Bertha and the goodness or badness of Rochester are inextricably linked with each other: if the one is positive, the other one is and vice versa.”2 and “It is very obvious, both circumstancial and in literary respect, that the treatment Bertha receives is supposed to be cruel.” 4 Note the date of the post 06-22-2008.
When presented with counter arguments of her assumption, she chose to ignore them and five months latter writes :”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, I decided to investigate my claim that the treatment of Bertha in Jane Eyre was not at all a noble one, and that, as a consequence, the character of Edward Rochester didn’t have to be seen in a noble light, but more on the contrary, in a very bad one,“2
When kiki1982 claims that:”I decided to investigate my claim that the treatment of Bertha in Jane Eyre was not at all a noble one” and proposes that an alternative to Bertha's confinement in the attic was possible:”There was in Yorkshire a very well-known lunatic asylum called The York Retreat. It was an asylum, founded in 1796 by William Tuke (a quaker), the first in its kind to offer non-restraint outside France, where the first doctor to adopt this method was Mr Pinel. It offered moral treatment, treatment based on the principle of teaching the mad person to try to control his emotions and self-esteem “2.
In the same vein Kiki1982 offers this observation: “The treatment of Bertha can at least be called oldfashioned, if not cruel. The thing that puzzles everyone is the fact that Grace Pool's son is the keeper of the Grimsby Retreat. There have been people who have argued that that stood for the York Retreat, an institution that was and still is leading in humane treatment of lunatics (beautiful surroundings, occupational therapy, moral management... far from 'a room without a window')6”. This observation expands on what kiki1982 considers cruel treatment but does not substantiate it. An analysis is available in Benevolent theory: moral treatment at the York Retreat by Louis C. Charland, History of Psychiatry, Mar 2007; vol. 18: pp. 61 – 80. The critical objection as applicable to Bertha's symptoms is that moral treatment at the Retreat was primarily a matter of affective conditioning guided by `benevolent theory' and not applicable to violent psychotic patient.
A counter argument is offered by a medical intern doing psychiatric studies; smq123 writes:”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").5
“If they were more "modern" than we think, then they were more modern than we are. Bertha's living conditions don't seem that much different (and, in some ways, are better) than what we would use for similar patients nowadays.”6 Note the date of the post 08-11-2007, seven months before she wrote Mr. Rochester. Kiki was involved in an extended discussions with Newcomer, Sciencefan, and SMQ123 among others who challenged her opinion on Bertha's treatment, however even presented with the expertise of 'medical student doing my psychiatry rotation', she was not swayed from her contention that Bertha's treatment proved that Rochester was demonic.
“I think that it could be said that Rochester was more humane for keeping Bertha in his home. He also didn't tie her up and put her in a straitjacket, although there's no reason why he couldn't have. Instead, because Bertha wasn't restrained, he has to hire Grace Poole, and risk discovery (and injury). If he had put Bertha in an asylum, she almost certainly would have been restrained around the clock. Plus, in an asylum, there's no telling how she would have been treated - I doubt that the attendants and nurses in those asylums were kind and loving people.”7
Kiki1982 ignores a medical opinion on Bertha: “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.“5, and she persists in labeling Bertha's treatment as cruel.
When kiki1982 writes: “Maybe Rochester was too brutal on the wedding night with Bertha . One would go mad for less...”, she is clearly indicating her bias on the question of Bertha's confinement. These notes bring into question how objective is kiki1982's research on Victorian mental hospitals and establishes a strong case that Bertha is not the reason she has labeled Rochester demonic. We have to look deeper into kiki1982's posts for the reason.
The Mad Woman in the Attic discussion extracts are very lengthy and I include them in a separate Appendix.

Religious References.

Kiki1982's analysis of Jane Eyre is replete with religious and Biblical references as interpretations for a particular point that she wishes to stress in her analysis of Jane Eyre. They are so numerous as to suggest that her reading is ideological. She makes moral judgments not bases on contemporary Victorian religiosity but rather on her own religious and moral values. In sum they skew her analysis of Jane Eyre into a Christian frame, disregarding where Charlotte's emphasis was deliberately ambiguous. I will list only the most prominent examples where kiki1982 deviates from Charlotte's text.
“I think, as Charlotte put a lot of the bible in her book, maybe she meant the locked up wife in the attic as a kind of Christ figure who is being blocked out of Rochester's life. He is 'incredulous', up to three times (as the folowers of Christ in the bible): the first when she sets his bed alight, the second time when she stabs and bites Mason (her brother, maybe this was meant for Rochester though) and a third time on the wedding day, when he still argues that she may be his wife on paper, but not in spirit. It is only when he 'believes' (tries to rescue her from the fire she caused herself a month after Jane has left) that she disapears (read: is taken up to heaven) and that there is place for Jane who is to be resurected in a kind of Pentcost-ish scene (shimmering hearth, 3 candles, thinking she is a ghost etc)...”8
Note in the above extract kiki1982 identifies Bertha a Christ figure and interprets the jump from the roof as “taken into heaven”. Kiki1982 portrays Bertha as a martyr to the diabolical Rochester.
“Then those three appearances make up the three of Christ before being taken to heaven. The fire being the forth and ascension to heaven.
There are many literature critics who believe this to be true and as Charlotte was a clergyman's daughter, it is possible. There are many other writers who have done this, and still many who do. Jane also is believed to be a Christ figure who is resurected in the end, like I said in a Pentcost like scene.”9
Where in the previous post kiki1982 called Bertha a Christ figure, here she refers to Jane as such. Not only is she inconsistent but theologically weird:are we to interpret Jane, a Savior, dying for our sins?
“In the Bible it says that when Christ died the curtain of the temple tore in 2 pieces. Guess what Bertha did with Jane's vail when she appeared in the room... She tore it in 2...”9
“If you look carefully, the two most important conversations between Jane and Rochester take place in the orchard (the conversation after Mason got bitten and the first proposal). The second proposal will take place also under the trees, but at Ferndean, a fearn being in many cultures a symbol of eternal happiness. There are numerous allusions to Genesis in the book as well. “10
When kiki1982 writes:“I believe that the parallels with Paradise Lost are a means from Charlotte to indicate to the reader that Rochester is not to be trusted and should read as Satan of Paradise Lost”11 Here kiki1982 clearly indicates the vector of her assumptions: to label Rochester, not as demonic as in the essay Mr. Rochester but religiously as Satan. These examples are not incidental allusions, so to speak within the religious context of Victorian society or the subconscious allusions of Charlotte Bronte. They are an illustration of kiki1982's mindse, what she defines as the essence of the book : “If you look carefully, the two most important conversations between Jane and Rochester take place in the orchard (the conversation after Mason got bitten and the first proposal). The second proposal will take place also under the trees, but at Ferndean, a fearn being in many cultures a symbol of eternal happiness. There are numerous allusions to Genesis in the book as well.
The colour purple, light/darkness and wind also appear numerously in the book. Not without a reason I guess.
The book even ends with these words: 'Amen; even so come, Lord Jesus!’. And according to critics not only because they come from a clergyman (St John), but also because they are the essence of the book.”9
Contrary to kiki1982's “it is a reproach or even an insult to be charged to interpret something in a religious context as there is no proof.”, these examples are sufficient proof. By the phrase “they are the essence of the book”, kiki1982 unequivocally states her religious bias in the interpretation of Jane Eyre. In my opinion this is sufficient proof that her analysis is fundamentally religious.

Literary Allusion

The two, allusion and illusion differ by one letter but in interpretation the I is a crucial difference between enhancement and distortion of the text. It is similar to the use of color for a black/white photograph. Color – allusion, brings out a life like characteristic but when the color is garish, like in a Warhol's Marilyn Monroe paintings, the I does not comment, it propagandizes.
When kiki1982 writes: “I think the allusion towards the fairy-tales serve not merely a purpose towards the story (poor girl marries prince = Cinderella), but rather serve as an allusion to the moral of the fairy)tale which was always at the bottom of Perrault’s Tales of Mother Goose.... The two sets of cousins, then, refer to the one side of the step-sisters without grace; expecting gratefulness and obedience for their charity, and the other side of Cinderella with heavenly names (St John, Mary and Diana) as the priceless gift of graciousness.“16 Kiki1982 uses the fiction of fantasy and religious imagery in her reading of the text, as in: “The fact that Rochester is blinded is then very significant to the moral of Cinderella…”16 , and tends to disregard that in the use of allusion, fidelity to the text is paramount.
In chapter XIX, when Bertha bites her brother Richard Mason, Rochester says: ‘It’s a mere rehearsal of Much Ado about Nothing’, kiki1982's rhetorical, “What did he mean by this? “ Very simply illustrates Rochester's classical education – Rochester is not a narcissistic shallow brat, out to seduce another maiden. Perhaps kiki1982's reading has been influenced by Andrew Davies's video adaptations.
When Rochester in chapter 22 says: “You must see the carriage, Jane, and tell me if you don't think it will suit Mrs. Rochester exactly; and whether she will not look like Queen Boadicea,” he is not making a comparison to Boadicea who led the Iceni of east Anglia in revolt against the Romans in 63 AD, merely a complement to Jane.
When Rochester in Jane Eyre - Chapter 19 says:”Off ye lendings!”, he is quoting from Shakespeare, but he is not comparing himself to King Lear, contrary to kiki1982's interpretation: “In this paper I will take under scrutiny the one obvious to Shakespeare’s play King Lear in Jane Eyre , namely ‘Off ye lendings’ that is said by Mr Rochester in chapter XIX of Jane Eyre and by King Lear in act III of King Lear. - Off ye lendings! “17. Such an interpretation is too fanciful, it is Fiction, it is an unacceptable distortion of Charlotte's text.
The analogies to fairy-tales and Shakespeare are not the most egregious misinterpretations of Jane Eyre, the fundamental analogies for kiki1982 are in Milton and Byron, where she attempts to justify her linkage of Rochester to Satan.
Kiki1982 draws an analogy of Paradise to Thornfield: “In Milton’s text Paradise is only figuratively lost, whereas in Jane Eyre it can be considered as really, literally lost when Jane returns to Thornfield and finds it burnt and the grounds trodden and overgrown (chapter XXXVI)”.1 Just the connotation in the names should have given pause, yet kiki1982 goes where mere mortals would fear to thread. If one does a search of the text, there is no reference to either Milton or Paradise Lost. The only mention of Satan is in the following passage of Jane Eyre in chapter 12:

“According as the shifting obscurity and flickering gleam hovered
here or glanced there, it was now the bearded physician, Luke, that
bent his brow; now St. John's long hair that waved; and anon the
devilish face of Judas, that grew out of the panel, and seemed
gathering life and threatening a revelation of the arch-traitor--of
Satan himself--in his subordinate's form.”

The passage is an illustration of the very clearly the overwrought imagination of an emotionally stressed Jane as she observes the bleeding Mason. The Satan analogy in Milton is a fabrication of kiki1982's imagination. However the primary fallacy that kiki1982 commits is not in reading Charlotte Bronte but in reading Milton. “Milton gives it its greatest aesthetic splendor, in the fallen angel through whom the divine beauty still shone.” Milton's Satan is not the Biblical Satan but that of angel through whom the divine beauty still shines. For a Christian, Milton's description of Satan is close to being sacrilegious and kiki1982's use of it, is to emphasize the depravity of Rochester.
Kiki1982's :”In the preface Bryon stated that probably some of Milton’s Paradise Lost (1667) inspired some of his Cain ‘because he read it so many times’. We see a hero-Satan, who tries to make others believe he does the right thing. He calls God a tyrant, locking him up in Hell, although the gates of Hell fly open once he wants to pass them”2, is more than bizarre, it is Fiction. She continues:”If we look at two works of Byron: Cain. A mystery (1821) and Manfred. A dramatic poem (1817), we see two tormented characters. The first one comes straight out of the Bible, as the play tells the story of Cain and his brother Abel (Genesis 4: 1-16) from Cain’s perspective. Cain’s killing of Abel would be provoked by Abel’s hypocrisy and sanctimony (33). After Cain has killed his brother he is cursed by God to wander the world, marked so no one will kill him. Rochester also wanders both after the locking up of Bertha and after the loss of Jane.”2 She uses the religious reference in the Evangelical's Biblical assumption, that it has to be accepted without questioning, juxtaposing her analogy of Cain to Rochester.
Kiki1982's reading is Fiction on a grand scale, not only is there no reference in Charlotte's text of Byron's Cain and none of Genesis 4:1-16 but what she is doing is creating a subjective analogy, overlaying it on Charlotte's text and claiming coherence between the two. She is confusing personal belief with literary analysis.
The same problem occurs when one searches the text for Byron, Manfred or Astarte. Kiki's claim that Charlotte read Milton or Byron and that subconsciously she transferred the attributes to Rochester is to put it mildly far fetched. Possible is not equivalent to likely.
A more probable connection is that she read Emily's Wuthering Heights in manuscript. Heathcliff is not only amoral, he is nonhuman in his tendencies to torture and sexually obsessed beyond the norm. As portrayed by Emily he has been called by many critics as diabolical. The connection to Byron's Manfred is sexual: “Byron's first drama, Manfred, details the author's characterization of the Romantic hero, a figure of superior abilities and intense passions who rejects human contact as well as the aid and comfort offered by various religious representatives. Consumed by his own sense of guilt for an unspecified transgression involving Astarte, the only human he ever loved, Manfred finally seeks peace through his own death”, “The nature of Manfred's guilt is widely thought to be associated with an incestuous relationship with his sister Astarte, for whose death Manfred feels responsible. “10
When kiki1982 writes:“ there are sources that claim that Astarte in Bryon's play was in fact the projection Manfred made of his love for himself.”11 Kik1982 again makes a faulty reading. It would seem that for kiki1982 , Narcism is less of a threat than Sexuality.
However if the connection is to Emily's Heathcliff, then the connection of incest to bigamy in Rochester is more direct as both would be viewed as mortal sins and Charlotte's was much more circumscribed in Victorian convention of sex than Emily.

On Sexuality in Jane Eyre

The most prominent facet of the Victorian society was its view on sexuality, which had social and religious morality intertwined. Sexuality was not to be discussed in polite society, sanctified only in marriage and then behind closed doors, curtains drawn, in the dark. It is aptly illustrated in a recent Wuthering Heights adaptation where the husband asks the wife not to look at him during intercourse. In a more humorous instance of the distorted view of sexuality is the insistence that piano legs have stockings, since bare legs would arouse sinful thoughts in young girls.
Richard Chase in The Brontes: A Centennial Observance, drew the conclusion that “in their intellectual parsonage, the sisters came to admire and fear most: sexual and intellectual energy.” In the writings of both sisters, open sexuality is suppressed but it is like a volcano ready to explode. Charlotte handles it differently than Emily. In Jane Eyre sexual awareness emerges gradually as Jane matures intellectually and emotionally. It requires the example of St. John's distorted psyche, the inability to love Rosaleen for the love of God, to cause Jane to exclaim: “ It was MY time to assume ascendency. MY powers were in play and in force.” 12, and resolve to seek Rochester even when in her mind he still had a wife. This can be construed as a sexual awakening, where individual needs triumphs over societal norms.
An interesting argument is presented in analyzing Bronte's use of the word passion:“The situation becomes even more complicated when one thinks passion may be good and natural quality, because then a passion-filled character must decide whether to give into his passion or to obey the conflicting demands of society. Jane Eyre is placed in such a quandary when Rochester offers her love and companionship outside the socially sanctioned state of matrimony.”13 Note that Wheat's analysis is from a social perspective. If we use Jane's extraordinary soliloquy in chapter XX:

“Meantime, let me ask myself one question--Which is better?--To have
surrendered to temptation; listened to passion; made no painful
effort--no struggle;--but to have sunk down in the silken snare;
fallen asleep on the flowers covering it; wakened in a southern
clime, amongst the luxuries of a pleasure villa: to have been now
living in France, Mr. Rochester's mistress; delirious with his love
half my time--for he would--oh, yes, he would have loved me well for
a while. He DID love me--no one will ever love me so again. I
shall never more know the sweet homage given to beauty, youth, and
grace--for never to any one else shall I seem to possess these
charms. He was fond and proud of me--it is what no man besides will
ever be.--But where am I wandering, and what am I saying, and above
all, feeling? Whether is it better, I ask, to be a slave in a
fool's paradise at Marseilles--fevered with delusive bliss one hour-
-suffocating with the bitterest tears of remorse and shame the next-
-or to be a village-schoolmistress, free and honest, in a breezy
mountain nook in the healthy heart of England?”

It is replete with irony to kiki1982 emphasis of the following lines: “God directed me to a correct choice: I thank His providence for the guidance!” The former is sublime, the latter prosaic piety. Virginia Woolf captures the dilemma of reading Bronte: “The meaning of a book, which lies so often apart from what happens and what is said and consists rather in some connection whit things in themselves different have had for the writer, is necessarily hard to grasp. Especially this is so when, like Brontes, the writer is poetic, and his meaning insuperable from his language, and itself rather a mood than a particular observation.”18
Emily in Wuthering Heights does not even raise the religious moral question, she is contemptuous of it. She explores the dark part of the human psyche. Harold Bloom writes:”The furious energy that is loosed in Wuthering Heights is precisely Gnostic; its aim is to get back to the original Abyss, before the creation-fall. Like Blake, Emily Bronte identifies her imagination with the Abyss, and her pneuma or breath-soul with the Alien God, who is antithetical to the God of the creeds,”6
The differences in treatment of sexuality in Charlotte's and Emily's wittings, reflect to a degree their religious views. Charlotte posses the question of religious truth by juxtaposition young Jane's questioning against the Calvinistic certainties of the dying Helen: "But where are you going to, Helen? Can you see? Do you know?"
"I believe; I have faith: I am going to God." , Helen
"Where is God? What is God?" , Jane
“Again I questioned, but this time only in thought. "Where is that region? Does it exist?"”7

This ambiguity is intentional, it is woven through the development of Jane's character: in moments of emotional crisis, she prays to God and also to Nature. In her comments kiki1982 merges the meaning of the two words as in “God/Nature is indeed a driving force in Jane Eyre,” Mr. Rochester, post # 12, but Charlotte is very precise in her meanings and as in the passage: “Down superstition!" I commented, as that spectre rose up black by the black yew at the gate. "This is not thy deception, nor thy witchcraft: it is the work of nature. She was roused, and did—no miracle--but her best."12, therefore kiki1982 usage 'nature/God' as in: “Indeed, nature/God had done her/His best to bring Jane and Rochester’s souls together when Jane was about to consent to a marriage with St John, and thus condemn herself to become the wife of another because she is still ignorant of the fact that Rochester (the man who should be her husband because he ‘suits her to the finest fibre of [her] nature’) is now free to marry.”14, has to be viewed as a deliberate obfuscation. Nor is her explanation that the 'voices' are internal, that is a notation of a mental phenomena by Charlotte, consistent with : “Presentiments are strange things! and so are sympathies; and so are signs; and the three combined make one mystery to which humanity has not yet found the key. I never laughed at presentiments in my life, because I have had strange ones of my own. Sympathies, I believe, exist (for instance, between far-distant, long-absent, wholly estranged relatives asserting, notwithstanding their alienation, the unity of the source to which each traces his origin) whose workings baffle mortal comprehension. And signs, for aught we know, may be but the sympathies of Nature with man.”15 Note that Charlotte uses capitals 'Nature', thereby giving it an anthropomorphic status and not just a name for an organic process.
Emily is uncompromising, her religiosity is summarized by Chitham2, p. 156 as:“ She sees Christians as 'wretches', 'howling' empty praise in a 'Brotherhood of misery' and their 'madness daily maddening' her. Brontë claims she stood in the glow of heaven and the 'glare' of hell and forged her own path between 'scraph's song and demon's groan'. Only 'thy soul alone' can know the truth, and her appeal to 'My thoughtful Comforter' is not an appeal to God, but to her enigmatic male muse which governs her spiritual belief. He is epitomised by the life-giving 'soft air' and 'thawwind melting quietly' and lovingly around her. She is grateful that her 'visitants' allow her 'savage heart' to grow 'meek' and allow her to conform to the role she is forced to play within an ordered Christian and patriarchal system. Her poetry focuses on the betrayals of mind and body, as she seeks to find answers to questions that her society does not permit her to ask. Brontë's religious symbolism and unique spirituality show a form of pantheistic atheism, although she continued to attend a church 'whilst sitting as motionless as a statue' and it seems that this careful passivity is juxtaposed with uncontained anger and frustrated passions.”1
Emily's vision and prose is so uncompromising that Wuthering Heights established a place in English literature that none could follow.
Over sexuality is absent in Austen's and Bronte's prose but for very different reasons. In Austen's case it is a conscious stylistic omission while in Charlotte's case it seems to be a repression. She circles around the subject without openly confronting it. The readers sense it but how they react is another enigma of personality.
Kiki1982 notes this suppressed sexuality as:“Rochester called the nightly stabbing of Bertha ‘a mere rehearsal of Much Ado about Nothing’. Indeed, it was only a rehearsal, because his ‘not being a virgin’ was not going to bedisclosed just yet.”1 And follows her rhetorical question - “Maybe Rochester was too brutal on the wedding night with Bertha . One would go mad for less...” - justifying with: “James Russell Price, a physician, can attest to the fact that forced sex occurred with frequency. Having studied one hundred cases of wives seeking separations from their husbands, he found that sixty eight percent cited sexual abuse “on the first night of married life.” He related one account of an eighteen-year old bride. Filled with fear on her wedding night, she pleaded with her husband not to kill her. He proceeded to lock the door and “took her against her will.” The young bride assured Dr. Price that she was incapable of forgiving or forgetting her husband’s brutality (Battan 169).”19


Charlotte's own characterization of Rochester

In her note (74), kiki1982 quotes Charlotte's letter to W.S. Williams on the 14th of August 1848, ‘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. Such at least was the character I meant to pourtray.’
If Charlotte had defined Rochester character as - His nature is like wine of a good vintage: time cannot sour, but only mellows him. - that is his nature evolves, then kikis1982 view - I have a very demonic view of Rochester – is inconsistent with Charlotte's intent and we only gain an understanding of kiki1982's motivation, not of Jane Eyre.
kiki1982 misinterprets the prose of Jane Eyre, in Jane's watercolor she interprets the cormorant, as Milton's Satan and analogous to Rochester. She commits a fundamental error, a lapse of attention, she does not to read the text but interpret the subtext. She constructs analogies from literature and religious texts, that while fascinating in themselves, testifying to her breath of learning, stretches the membrane past the breaking point.
An example is when she inserts herself into the interpretation, on the side of the certitude of St. John Rivers, seeming to ignore that Charlotte places Jane into a questioning pose vs. the Calvinism of Helen at Lowood or the Evangelism of St. John when Jane rejects his notion that she is not fit for love but for service of God and writes: “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. “4 This is naiveté bordering on the incredulous – she seems to ignore the religious wars that raged over Europe, the persecutions of the Cathars, the Albigensian Crusade, under Innocent III (how ironic) or the the present day pedophile scandals.
Regretfully I have to conclude that kiki1982 is an ideological reader 20, specifically she distorts the meaning of the text to illustrate a moral concept. She ignores the text that is antithetical to her idea-fix of painting Rochester in the image of Satan. Rochester is not Heathcliff, nor is Charlotte's vision that of Emily's. If Jane Eyre was a poem such an interpretation might be possible but while the book is prose-poetics, as Virginia Woolf noted, the text belongs to Charlotte and it should not be reduced to a morality play of good vs. evil.
When kiki1982 uses classical mythology to impart characteristics to Bertha as in: “The image of Bertha as Aphrodite is certainly not so controversial because she was ‘the boast of Spanish Town’ and incredibly beautiful. Rochester was also envied by lots of other men because he gained Bertha, like Hephaestus was envied by the other gods who tried to woo Aphrodite. Like Hephaestus, Rochester is a happy man when he has married ‘Aphrodite’ and thinks he has won a ‘prize’, but as time passes he finds her unfaithful and ill-tempered. “ and “If Bertha is the evocation of Aphrodite, then the principles connected with her are every time forced back into oblivion, although they are more fixed in Rochester than he is inclined to think “5
In Charlotte's text, Rochester defines Bertha as: “ I never loved, I never esteemed, I did not even know her. I was not sure of the existence of one virtue in her nature: I had marked neither modesty, nor benevolence, nor candour, nor refinement in her mind or manners... I should have made them no subject of reproach to my wife, even when I found her nature wholly alien to mine, her tastes obnoxious to me, her cast of mind common, low, narrow, and singularly incapable of being led to anything higher, expanded to anything larger--when I found that I could not pass a single evening, nor even a single hour of the day with her in comfort; that kindly conversation could not be sustained between us, because whatever topic I started, immediately received from her a turn at once coarse and trite, perverse and imbecile--when I perceived that I should never have a quiet or settled household, because no servant would bear the continued outbreaks of her violent and unreasonable temper, or the vexations of her absurd, contradictory, exacting orders....I lived with that woman upstairs four years, and before that time she had tried me indeed: her character ripened and developed with frightful rapidity; her vices sprang up fast and rank: they were so strong, only cruelty could check them, and I would not use cruelty. What a pigmy intellect she had, and what giant propensities! How fearful were the curses those propensities entailed on me! Bertha Mason, the true daughter of an infamous mother, dragged me through all the hideous and degrading agonies which must attend a man bound to a wife at once intemperate and unchaste.”5
Such variance of interpretation can only be explained by kiki1982's wish to ignore that Bertha is a violent lunatic necessitating restrain but gives her the values of Aphrodite. Hence Rochester's treatment of the woman as inhumane, and confirms Rochester as Satanic: “I said before that we didn’t have to jump to conclusions on the so-called demonic nature of Rochester in Jane Eyre, but I cannot help to think in that direction, certainly not after the link with deluded Satan in Paradise Lost and Manfred in Byron’s play. If we now have a neutral look at what the so-called ‘symptoms’ are:
• Hearing voices, certainly when there is no sign of madness.
• Clinging to a particular idea/principle, and not wanting to listen to reason, certainly when there is no sign of madness.
• A split personality, as if there are two personalities in one physical person.
• Hating God”6
By painting Rochester as demonic, kik1982 creates a cul de sac to explain why Jane loves him after the betrayal of a potentially bigamous marriage. The deus ex machina explanation of demonic Rochester I and Christian Rochester II is simply unsatisfactory as it requires an Evangelical reformation. Yes it is in the text, but the happy ending of Jane Eyre appears as appeasement to the Victorian public and is at odds with the 37 chapters preceding the reformation. It is at odds with “Reader, I married him.”, the use of an active verb. Not what a Victorian woman would have said: 'I was married' or 'He married me', acknowledging that for a Victorian, a man does the marrying and a woman is married.
The implied questioning of social mores scandalized Rigby as much as that of the pagan allusions in the text. For the conservative Victorian Jane Eyre was subversive. For kiki1982 Rochester is : Hearing voices, not wanting to listen to reason, a split personality, Hating God. And the last -Hating God - is crucial, yet it is nowhere stated as such in Charlotte's text. For kiki1982 Rochester 's morality has to be put into a Christian perspective. That he is amoral, is insufficient. He has to be demonic. A curious insight is offered in the thread:Mr. Rochester #6, kiki1982 writes:
"About Rochester and women:
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...”
When kiki1982 says that Rochester is demonic, should we assume that she loves the Satanic Rochester? The question is not ostensible, since she uses Milton's Paradise Lost for the Satanic analogy. In the essay On Wuthering Heights by Dorothy Van Gent speaking of Heathcliff - “ The demonic archetype of which we are speaking here is deeply serious in quality because of his ambivalence: he is fertilizing energy and profoundly attractive, and at the same time horribly destructive to civilized institutionalism. It is because of his ambivalence that, though he is the “enemy” ethically speaking, he so easily takes on the stature and beauty of a hero, as he does in Satan of Paradise Lost.”, could as well apply to kiki1982's Rochester. But kiki1982's Rochester is not the Rochester that Charlotte created.

References

1.The Adytum of the Heart, by Patricia H. Wheat: The Knowledge of Passion, pg 41.
2.Forum thread:Mr. Rochester, post #1
3.Jane Eyre - chapter 37
4.Forum thread: Mr. Rochester, post #2
5.Forum thread: Mad Wife in the Attic, post # 92
6.Forum thread: Mad Wife in the Attic, post # 95
7.Forum thread: Mad Wife in the Attic, post # 98
8.Forum thread: Mad Wife in the Attic, post # 57
9.Forum thread: Mad Wife in the Attic, post # 59
10.http://www.enotes.com/nineteenth-cen...oel-lord-byron
11. Forum thread: Chapter 26 - Meeting Bertha Mason post #2
12. Jane Eyre – chapter 35
13. The Adytum of the Heart,by Patricia H. Wheat,The Knowledge of Passion pg.43.
14. Forum thread: Mr. Rochester, post # 9
15. Jane Eyre, chapter 21
16. Forum thread: Jane's cousins, post # 6
17. Forum thread: King Lear and Mr Fairfax Rochester, post # 1
18.Critics on Charlotte and Emily Bronte, edited by Judith O'Neill, essay by Virginia Wool, Wuthering Heights,
19. Forum thread: Mad Wife in the Attic, post # 63
20. In Religion Forum, thread The Christian Hell, post #425
Kiki1982 defines herself: “I am a Catholic actually. Surprising, isn't it? And I am not against contraception, not against abortion, not against condoms, not in favour of virginity before marriage etc. etc. Strange isn't it...”
Therefore when I write that “kiki1982 is an ideological reader”, I am not implying that her analysis of Jane Eyre is Fundamentalist, only that it is from a religious perspective. This is of relative intellectual freedom of thought where a Fundamentalist would define one end of the dialog and a Humanist, the other.

Structure of the novel: parallels in Jane / Rochester.

Jane Eyre can be diagrammed chronologically solely from the view of the main character, Jane, by location: as Gateshead House - youth, Lowood section – early education, Thornfield Hall section – romance, Moor House – moral dilemma, Ferndean– romantic resolution. A sophomoric effort and problematic since it does not account for chapter 38 – CONCLUSION, as it is referred to in the index of chapters. In tone and style it does not fit with the preceding chapters. It is as if Charlotte Bronte felt that she had created a problem for the Victorian audience and composed chapter 38 as a pablum, integrating the rebel into the Victorian mainstream.

That such a pablum for the religious conservative was necessary is confirmed kiki1982's comment: “The book even ends with these words: 'Amen; even so come, Lord Jesus!’. And according to critics not only because they come from a clergyman (St John), but also because they are the essence of the book.”12
I will advance a contrary interpretation, one that does not divide the work into sections and proposes that there is a continuous development of Jane's and Rochester's characters. That there is an evolution in character as opposed to discontinuity of kiki1982's Rochester I vs Rochester II. The same applies to Jane, where bigamy is a moral crisis in chapter 26, while in chapter 36, when Jane hears the summons and responds: “I am coming. Wait for me”, Rochester's marriage is no longer an insurmountable obstacle. Jane evolves past the strictures of the Victorian moral code, to an ambiguous, personal morality. I think that this is the essence of the book, why it has maintained it's status as literature and not just a Harlequin romance.
I propose to look at Jane Eyre thematically, not that such a view is better but only that it gives a richer interpretation. The two parallel themes are the evolution of Jane's and Rochester's characters as sketched by Charlotte. Charlotte's motivation is not the question, only the textual results. The important point in the sketch is continuity, that is the evolutionary characters of Jane and Rochester. Though the early, pre-Thornfield evolution seems separate, there is a symbiosis in that each is incomplete without the other. This incompleteness hides a cause – fate. In the sense that Helen means: "Yet it would be your duty to bear it, if you could not avoid it: it is weak and silly to say you CANNOT BEAR what it is your fate to be required to bear."I shall return to the idea of fate as the structure for interpreting Jane Eyre in the section: The mythological reading of Jane's watercolors.

Weltanschauung of Jane

Young Jane is acutely self conscious: “humbled by the consciousness of my physical inferiority to Eliza, John, and Georgiana Reed.” Nor will she acknowledge her dependent status in the Reed's household: “"Master! How is he my master? Am I a servant?" This acute self awareness, has two components, the self in the social structure and the cognitive self, of values and beliefs. I shall use the German word- Weltanschauung - since it combines the two concepts into one word, symbolically merging the psyche of the character Jane.
Jane's character is complex. When Jane the young girl is asked whether she would like to leave Gateshead where she is mistreated and go to “some poor, low relations called Eyre” who might threat her kindly, Jane thinks:

“Poverty looks grim to grown people; still more so to
children: they have not much idea of industrious, working,
respectable poverty; they think of the word only as connected with
ragged clothes, scanty food, fireless grates, rude manners, and
debasing vices: poverty for me was synonymous with degradation.
"No; I should not like to belong to poor people," was my reply.
"Not even if they were kind to you?"
Jane's reply is: “no, I was not heroic enough to purchase liberty at the price of caste.”

This is an extraordinary reply for a child: not only that she is aware of the abstract opposition in the concepts, of liberty and caste, but more importantly that she has integrated them in her personal Weltanschauung. From this view point, Jane Eyre the novel, is the resolution of her Weltanschauung .
As a child she is only happy in her solitary absorptions: “I returned to my book--Bewick's History of British Birds: - haunts of sea-fowl; of "the solitary rocks and promontories" by them only inhabited; of the coast of Norway, studded with isles from its southern extremity, the Lindeness, or Naze, to the North Cape”. Populating her imagination, the young Jane is laying the foundations of her intellectual self, latter expressed as “I had a theoretical reverence and homage for beauty, elegance, gallantry, fascination;”(chapter 12) or in chapter 9, the questioning "where is god? what is god”.

That the book is not incidental to Jane's memory is attested when Jane visits the dying Mrs Reed: “Glancing at the bookcases, I thought I could distinguish the two volumes of Bewick's British Birds occupying their old place on the third shelf, and Gulliver's Travels and the Arabian Nights ranged just above. The inanimate objects were not changed; but the living things had altered past recognition.” The Arctic images in the book imprinted on the young girls mind: “Of these death-white realms I formed an idea of my own: shadowy, like all the half-comprehended notions that float dim through children's brains, but strangely impressive. The words in these introductory pages connected themselves with the succeeding vignettes, and gave significance to the rock standing up alone in a sea of billow and spray; to the broken boat stranded on a desolate coast; to the cold and ghastly moon glancing through bars of cloud at a wreck just sinking.” They are the basis of the watercolors that the adult Jane shows Rochester. These memories are the manifestation of the workings of fate.
Andre D. Hook in Charlotte Bronte, the Imagination and Villette, writes, “The pivotal conflict in Jane Eyre is newer clearly defined as that between the appeal of imagination and the world of moral choices and decisions. Rather, more conventionally, it is portrayed as a clash between Reason and Passion. Passion comes to include all the possibilities of excitement, change, experience, even love, which the romantic imagination so intensely celebrates. As the conflict develops within Jane herself it is often given a strict moral, or even religious, significance. It is as thought, in allowing the world of imaginative indulgence and hope its human vitality and warmth, Charlotte felt compelled to circumscribe the debate within the categories of orthodox morality. So successful is she that on occasion the true meaning of the novel is in danger of being obscured or betrayed. In the matter of the key issue of Rochester's previous marriage, for example, we may choose to see Jane's dilemma as no more than that of the conventional Victorian heroine choosing between passionate but illicit love on the one hand, and duty and moral integrity on the other. While it is true that the text sometimes invites us to see the matter in this light, it is nonetheless not the true light. The real danger that threatens Jane is not that of becoming a fallen woman, but of allowing herself to be swept out of the world of moral responsibilities altogether into that other seductive world of high passion and romance that Charlotte herself had for so long imaginatively indulged.”

When Jane, a young woman leaves Lowood, a closed world of moral choices as well as of social strata, she literally enters a Thornfield. The linear evolution of the child to a young woman becomes exponential. The problem so concisely put “I was not heroic enough to purchase liberty at the price of caste.”, takes on a bewildering complexity and urgency as liberty expands faster than the concept of caste.
When Rochester quits Thornfield for a fortnight Jane experiences - “I was beginning to feel a strange chill and failing at the heart. I was actually permitting myself to experience a sickening sense of disappointmen”, the balance between liberty and caste is shifting. Jane the young woman rationalizes - “He is not of your order: keep to your caste, and be too self-respecting to lavish the love of the whole heart, soul, and strength, where such a gift is not wanted and would be despised." She misreads Rochester's intentions toward Blanche and also toward herself.

Bitterfly has an interesting view: “I relate this to the reading problems Jane has - she doesn't understand all the signs at Thornfield, she reads Rochester wrong and that is why she is so disappointed etc. And that's because she expects to be able to read people like books (with phrenology, physiognomy...), whereas people wear masks.“ However Jane not only misreads Rochester, she fails to understand herself, the sexual awakening in a young woman.

An acute exchange between Rochester, as Gipsy's fortune teller, and Jane: “Why don't you tremble?"..."Why don't you turn pale?"... "Why don't you consult my art?" and Jane replies: "I'm not cold."..."I am not sick."...I'm not silly." but the Gypsy replies: You are cold, because you are alone: no contact strikes the fire from you that is in you. You are sick; because the best of feelings, the highest and the sweetest given to man, keeps far away from you. You are silly, because, suffer as you may, you will not beckon it to approach, nor will you stir one step to meet it where it waits you."

When Rochester has trouble taking off the red cloak of the Gypsy, Jane says: “"Break it, sir." and he replies - 'Off, ye lendings!'. It is not a self-reference to Lear but rather a symbolical shedding of convention, of master and employee, of Rochester's readiness to declare his love for Jane.
In a moonlit garden Rochester proposes - "But, Jane, I summon you as my wife: it is you only I intend to marry." But Jane is skeptical, caste not liberty predominates - “I was silent: I thought he mocked me.”
"Mr. Rochester, let me look at your face: turn to the moonlight." The setting of moonlight is not accidental and I shall return to it in the following subsection.
We begin to see a shift in the balance of the equation of liberty vs. caste of young Jane. When Jane comes face to face with a bigamous marriage, she resolves to flee Thornfield, “but that I must leave him decidedly, instantly, entirely, is intolerable. I cannot do it." Passion, in this case despair, overwhelms her, she asks for help:

“I watched her come--
watched with the strangest anticipation; as though some word of doom
were to be written on her disk. She broke forth as never moon yet
burst from cloud: a hand first penetrated the sable folds and waved
them away; then, not a moon, but a white human form shone in the
azure, inclining a glorious brow earthward. It gazed and gazed on
me. It spoke to my spirit: immeasurably distant was the tone, yet
so near, it whispered in my heart -
"My daughter, flee temptation."
"Mother, I will."

In the climatic struggle between St. John's vision for Jane: “you are formed for labour, not for love. “, Jane replies: “"I scorn your idea of love," I could not help saying, as I rose up and stood before him, leaning my back against the rock. "I scorn the counterfeit sentiment you offer: yes, St. John, and I scorn you when you offer it."
Jane chooses liberty over caste, that is convention, in the lines - “I broke from St. John, who had followed, and would have detained me. It was MY time to assume ascendency. MY powers were in play and in force.” Breaking with the narrow morality of convention she embraces th ascendancy of passion and returns to Thornfield to search for Rochester.The two parallel lines of fate meet at Ferndean.

Weltanschauung of Rochester

Rochester the man on horseback is a symbol of his character. Confident, domineering, at the pinnacle of the local social order. Thus when he is unhorsed so is his status, behind the facade he is fragile because the one thing that he has sought obsessively has escaped his grasp. To remount he has to lean on a fragile girl, actually and symbolically: "Excuse me," he continued: "necessity compels me to make you useful." He laid a heavy hand on my shoulder, and leaning on me with some stress, limped to his horse.” Prosaically that is how Jane sees the incident.
Compare how Rochester remembers it: “I did not know it, even when, on the occasion of Mesrour's accident, it came up and gravely offered me help. Childish and slender creature! It seemed as if a linnet had hopped to my foot and proposed to bear me on its tiny wing. I was surly; but the thing would not go: it stood by me with strange perseverance, and looked and spoke with a sort of authority. I must be aided, and by that hand: and aided I was.
When once I had pressed the frail shoulder, something new--a fresh sap and sense--stole into my frame. It was well I had learnt that this elf must return to me--that it belonged to my house down below--or I could not have felt it pass away from under my hand, and seen it vanish behind the dim hedge, without singular regret.”

Note that Rochester refers to 'it', suggesting that Jane was a fundamental force, apart and more than just a young woman, giving us an insight into the core that surrounds the outer hubris. The 'it' is light in the sense of purity as opposed to darkness that Bertha symbolized.
The passage where Rochester describes his marriage to Bertha has a moon image, “a moon was setting in the waves, broad and red, like a hot cannon-ball--she threw her last bloody glance over a world quivering with the ferment of tempest.” Contrast that with the image where Jane meets Rochester in Hay lane, “On the hill-top above me sat the rising moon; pale yet as a cloud, but brightening momentarily”, here the moon is benign.
Rochester is a counterpoint to Jane. He towers over Jane, physically, mentally, worldly, socially and above all in Victorian rank as a male. In hubris he announce that, “I sought the Continent, and went devious through all its lands. My fixed desire was to seek and find a good and intelligent woman, whom I could love”
To Jane's - "But you could not marry, sir."
Rochester replies - "I had determined and was convinced that I could and ought.... and it appeared to me so absolutely rational that I should be considered free to love and be loved, “....” I sought my ideal of a woman amongst English ladies, French countesses, Italian signoras, and German grafinnen. I could not find her.”
"Yet I could not live alone; so I tried the companionship of mistresses. The first I chose was Celine Varens....an Italian, Giacinta, and a German, Clara”. Celine, Giacinta, Clara, names associated with light and Charlotte is too conscious of words, of their connotations, that she would have chosen them accidentally.

Rochester's blindness after the fire that destroys Thornfield is symbolic. The loss of sight is the loss of light. The loss of 'it' that he found in Hay lane.
The innkeeper of The Rochester Arms describes Rochester after the fire: “The governess had run away two months before; and for all Mr. Rochester sought her as if she had been the most precious thing he had in the world, he never could hear a word of her; and he grew savage--quite savage on his disappointment: he never was a wild man, but he got dangerous after he lost her.” 21
The change in Rochester before the fire and after, is not how kiki1982 read Rochester1 = demonic and Rochester2 = found God, it is of Rochester in hubris and Rochester broken by fate. The contrast between the man who says: “it appeared to me so absolutely rational that I should be considered free to love” and who says, even when he holds her in his arms: “Gentle, soft dream, nestling in my arms now, you will fly, too, as your sisters have all fled before you”22. This is not about the apotheosis of Rochester, rather of tragedy.
The distance between the two parallel lines of weltanschauung in Jane Eyre diminishes as Jane accepts her passion and Rochester accepts the loss of his. Jane triumphs over fate, is heroic and Rochester is crushed by fate and is tragic.

References
21. Jane Eyre – chapter 36
22. Jane Eyre – chapter 37

Mythological reading based on Jane's watercolors.


My reading of Jane and Rochester is that they are humanly flawed, and that as they interact there is a continuity of character. As they develop in Charlotte's text, they evolve, there is no need for catharsis brought on by Evangelical Redemption. I agree that the text has mythic allusions but while I find them in Charlotte's text, kiki1982 searches for them outside the text. The myth is in Jane's unconscious, in the watercolors7 that she drew and that Rochester examined.
I shall use the myth to construct an explanation for Jane's and Rochester's actions that is centered in the classical concept of fate, to which Charlotte refers as in: “You glowed in the cool moonlight last night, when you mutinied against fate, and claimed your rank as my equal.”22 Apart from the metaphysics, the language is pure poetics. Example of Virginia Woolf's observation: “like Brontes, the writer is poetic, and his meaning insuperable from his language”
The allusions in the three watercolors are classical. This analysis has the view that while both Jane and Rochester are viewed as playthings of the Gods, unaware of their fate, Jane transcends her fate, gives her love unconditionally while Rochester starts in hubris announcing:”I have a right to get pleasure out of life: and I will get it cost what it may.” and ends blind, maimed and broken in spirit, grateful to accept Jane's love. In mythic terms Jane is heroic and Rochester tragic but the important point is that of a continuous change in character, not of a religious reformation.
If the myth lies in the watercolors, lets contrast kiki1982's and mine interpretations.

"These pictures were in water-colours. The first represented clouds
low and livid, rolling over a swollen sea: all the distance was in
eclipse; so, too, was the foreground; or rather, the nearest
billows, for there was no land. One gleam of light lifted into
relief a half-submerged mast, on which sat a cormorant, dark and
large, with wings flecked with foam; its beak held a gold bracelet
set with gems, that I had touched with as brilliant tints as my
palette could yield, and as glittering distinctness as my pencil
could impart. Sinking below the bird and mast, a drowned corpse
glanced through the green water; a fair arm was the only limb
clearly visible, whence the bracelet had been washed or torn." 7

When Charlotte through the voice of Jane says: “that I had touched with as brilliant tints as my palette could yield, and as glittering distinctness as my pencil could impart. “, she is emphasizing that the symbolism of the bracelet is important. Kiki1982 does not mention the bracelet but seizes on the image of the bird - “An image of Paradise Lost’s Satan can also be found in the first watercolour Rochester chooses from Jane’s pile of paintings. The watercolour features a cormorant, which was Satan’s disguise in Paradise when he went to have a look how he could tempt Eve into eating the fruit of the Tree. “. A non sequitur that not only inverts the sexes since it is Rochester that temps Jane but then compounds the error in stretching the analogy past a breaking point by identifying Rochester with Satan.
The cormorant is but a cormorant, not “Satan's disguise in Paradise”. And she passes over the meaning of the “golden bracelet set with gems”.Yet all three watercolors have a mythical energy that neither Jane nor Rochester quite understand. Jane painted them, but when asked if she is satisfied with the results, replies "Far from it. I was tormented by the contrast between my idea and my handiwork: in each case I had imagined something which I was quite powerless to realise.", just as Rochester can identify Latmos without realizing its significance. It is as if Jane is the left hemisphere of the brain, the visual and Rochester the right, the verbal, split asunder, to be united only when Jane accepts her destiny ”it was my time to assume ascendency. my powers were in play and in force.”, that is when she returns to Rochester and the two become one. In this context the golden bracelet set with gems is the image of love and the hand extended, of the drowning man, that of Rochester. The interpretation has to be read as symbolism in poetics, not in religious analogies.

“The second picture contained for foreground only the dim peak of a
hill, with grass and some leaves slanting as if by a breeze. Beyond
and above spread an expanse of sky, dark blue as at twilight:
rising into the sky was a woman's shape to the bust, portrayed in
tints as dusk and soft as I could combine. The dim forehead was
crowned with a star; the lineaments below were seen as through the
suffusion of vapour; the eyes shone dark and wild; the hair streamed
shadowy, like a beamless cloud torn by storm or by electric travail.
On the neck lay a pale reflection like moonlight; the same faint
lustre touched the train of thin clouds from which rose and bowed
this vision of the Evening Star.” 7

The Evening Star in classical mythology is often identified with the moon-goddess. kiki1982's reference to the moon image is puzzling . She writes “ It is the moon eventually that tells Jane to ‘flee temptation’. She identifies Selene but goes of course, loses the thread: Apollo – St. John and his sisters – Artemis/Diana? Do you mean Artemis/Diana, the twin sister of Apollo or are you associating Artemis to Diana, the sister of St. John? Her allusion to classical mythological figures does not make sense.
If kiki1982 is referring to Artemis/Diana, the Roman goddess of the hunt, child birth/virginity/fertility, then we have a problem - “Her later association with the moon is a popular idea which has little foundation. She later became identified with Selene, a Titaness who was a Greek moon goddess, and she was sometimes depicted with a crescent moon above her head. (Wikipedia)” , as the Selene/Jane association is based on the Latmos identification by Rochester in the third watercolor.

“The third showed the pinnacle of an iceberg piercing a polar winter
sky: a muster of northern lights reared their dim lances, close
serried, along the horizon. Throwing these into distance, rose, in
the foreground, a head,--a colossal head, inclined towards the
iceberg, and resting against it. Two thin hands, joined under the
forehead, and supporting it, drew up before the lower features a
sable veil, a brow quite bloodless, white as bone, and an eye
hollow and fixed, blank of meaning but for the glassiness of
despair, alone were visible. Above the temples, amidst wreathed
turban folds of black drapery, vague in its character and
consistency as cloud, gleamed a ring of white flame, gemmed with
sparkles of a more lurid tinge. This pale crescent was "the
likeness of a kingly crown;" what it diademed was "the shape which
shape had none." 7

Rochester identifies the image of the third painting as Latmos but his sharp question to Jane elicits no answer: “Where did you see Latmos? For that is Latmos. “
The reference to Latmos – the myth of Selene and Endymion, is central to the mythical imagery in Jane Eyre. In the traditional pre-Olympian divine genealogy, Helios, the sun, is Selene's brother: after Helios finishes his journey across the sky, Selene, freshly washed in the waters of Earth-circling Ocean, begins her own journey as night falls upon the earth, which becomes lit from the radiance of her immortal head and golden crown.
But neither Rochester nor Jane understand the significance of the myth. The glimpse into the Book of Fate is too subtle for mere mortals if not for Charlotte. Had kiki1982 noted that Selene loved Endymion sufficiently to make him immortal and realized that Selene is the avatar for Jane, perhaps she would have drawn the connection of Endymion to Rochester, for Endymion was mortal. However the need to make a demonic Rochester blinded her understanding.
Once we identify Selene as the moon-goddess the multiplicity of the images of the moon in the text takes on a new significance. Jane is seen as 'atypical', foreshadowing the turning points in the novel. The reading becomes richer. For example the introductory segment of first meeting of Rochester:
“On the hill-top above me sat the rising moon; pale yet as a cloud, but brightening momentarily; she looked over Hay, which, half lost in trees, sent up a blue smoke from its few chimneys;”, Charlotte paints with words and unobtrusively introduces the thematic element that will reappear at every emotional high point of the novel. And if the first mention of the moon is prosaic that of chapter 37 is anything but:

“the roof resolved to clouds, high and dim; the gleam was such as the
moon imparts to vapours she is about to sever. I watched her come--
watched with the strangest anticipation; as though some word of doom
were to be written on her disk. She broke forth as never moon yet
burst from cloud: a hand first penetrated the sable folds and waved
them away; then, not a moon, but a white human form shone in the
azure, inclining a glorious brow earthward. It gazed and gazed on
me. It spoke to my spirit: immeasurably distant was the tone, yet
so near, it whispered in my heart -
"My daughter, flee temptation."
"Mother, I will."

In a moment of emotional crisis not only does Jane makes the moon anthropomorphic but refers to the image as Mother, the mother that she lost as a child, and deeply personalizes it.
Moon and moonlight are prominent in almost every chapter of Jane Eyre: a cursory search results in 37 instances, almost every chapter contains a reference to moon or moonlight. Previous to identification of Selene in chapter 13, the reference would be only descriptive, at most poetic. Afterwards when we read:

“Of these death-white realms I formed an idea of my own: shadowy,
like all the half-comprehended notions that float dim through children's brains,
but strangely impressive. The words in these introductory pages connected
themselves with the succeeding vignettes, and gave significance to the rock
standing up alone in a sea of billow and spray; to the broken boat stranded
on a desolate coast; to the cold and ghastly moon glancing through bars of cloud
at a wreck just sinking.” - chapter 1.

We can recognize the foreshadowing of the mythic watercolor and image of the golden bracelet thorn from the drowning hand. The moon has taken on an anthropomorphic significance.
In chapter 12, Jane the young woman meets Rochester. The goddess of the moon illuminates the meeting of Jane and Rochester and foreshadows in Jane's speech how her character will evolve. More graphically, in Rochester's fall, his fate.

“Something of daylight still lingered, and the moon was waxing bright:
I could see him plainly. His figure was enveloped in a riding cloak,
fur collared and steel clasped; its details were not apparent, but I traced
the general points of middle height and considerable breadth of chest...
I felt no fear of him, and but little shyness. Had he been a handsome,
heroic-looking young gentleman, I should not have dared to stand thus
questioning him against his will, and offering my services unasked.”

In overcoming her fate Jane triumphs, not over Rochester, as Rochester is part of Jane, just as Jane of Rochester: “ it is as if I had a string somewhere under my left ribs, tightly and inextricably knotted to a similar string situated in the corresponding quarter of your little frame.” 24, but over the Gods who crush Rochester. Jane is heroic, Rochester tragic, in the sense of the Greek myth.


References

7. Jane Eyre – chapter 13
22. Jane Eyre – chapter 24
23. Jane Eyre – chapter 37
24. Jane Eyre - chapter 27

If Periaetics had checked her sources properly and read the whole entry on Wikipedia she would have read further on the page of Artemis which is the Greek equivalent:

Quote:

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Only in post-classical art do we find representations of Artemis-Diana with the crown of the crescent moon, as Luna. In the ancient world, although she was occasionally associated with the moon, she was never portrayed as the moon itself. Ancient statues of Artemis have been found with crescent moons, but these moons were always Renaissance-era additions.

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In essense the 'popular idea which has little foundation' was about her being the moon and not being the goddess who was responsible for the moon, which is a definite fact.
Furthermore it carries no reference.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Peripatetics

[B]

In overcoming her fate Jane triumphs, not over Rochester, as Rochester is part of Jane, just as Jane of Rochester: “ it is as if I had a string somewhere under my left ribs, tightly and inextricably knotted to a similar string situated in the corresponding quarter of your little frame.” 24, but over the Gods who crush Rochester. Jane is heroic, Rochester tragic, in the sense of the Greek myth.

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Yea Jane is a hero.. but Rochester aint a tragic.. why dont u just say he is a desperate lover who ended up tragically ..