Mr Rochester and Charlotte Bronte

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

Maybe this is interesting towards it:

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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)

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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

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‘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.’

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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.

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

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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.

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Originally Posted by ksotikoula

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.

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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!).

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?

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

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'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.'

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'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.'

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'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.'

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

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Originally Posted by ksotikoula

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.

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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.

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.

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If you have a chance, I would be interested in your translation.

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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 ;).

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.

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.

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Originally Posted by 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.

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