Although I loved reading Jane Eyre, I must wonder...what was up with the wife up in the attic?
I mean, Mr. Rochester could've done something more humane for her, right? I'm unsure as to whether he took the correct course of action...
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Although I loved reading Jane Eyre, I must wonder...what was up with the wife up in the attic?
I mean, Mr. Rochester could've done something more humane for her, right? I'm unsure as to whether he took the correct course of action...
Well, given the condition of asylums during that period, locking her in the attic was probably a slightly /more/ humane option. Not that I'm saying it's acceptable, mind, or that Mr. Rochester doesn't have his own share of mental screwiness.
Also consider, the law at the time would have allowed him to dump her into an asylum and forget about her, but he didn't do that either. I think Rochester did the only thing he really could do while still keeping his wife with him.
MissDay
But that doesn't answer why he had Bertha kept under the care of a drunk woman, and why she had to survive a diet of porridge.
If Rochester had wealth of that kind, surely he might have been able to keep her in a quiet country residence with air and space at least. I mean, how do we know that her condition was not aggravated by the environment she lived in?
I wonder whether the atmosphere in the jaillike attic will add to the mental problem of the wife or not. And it will do no good to such an insane person except give her more love and more treatment.
I don't know that I would feel safe with some crazy lady running up and down the hall setting my bed on fire. So honesty for me that would have been the last straw and I'd have dumped her. Sorry if that offends anyone
I would have done it sooner!
I don't think that Rochester could ever have even thought that the environment Bertha was forced to live in added up to the mental issues she had. After all, he hated her and thought of her as something of a beast, not as a human being. But I do wonder why he did not just simply send her away to a place as far away from him as possible? I would have done something like that.
Oh yes, and I think that Rochester wasn't perfectly mentally stable himself.
One thing that it is important to remember, is that Bertha and, Jane for that matter, are living in a world dominated by men. Is Bertha actually mad? Is the question you have to ask yourself. Numerous feminist critics have argued that she isn't. Bear in mind that ANY passionate outburst was seen by the men in Victorian society as a sign of madness. In the recent BBC version of Jane Eyre, the director presented Bertha as having committed adultery. Rochester, in those times, had every right to lock her up in this way. BUT he could not divorce her without parliamentary consent. Personally I think his decision to lock her up has two levels. 1. she was not in an asylum (in my opinion, this slightly redeems his actions) 2. he could not risk her being found out, as it would damage his reputation, and so he imprisioned her in his home and tried to escape as much as possible. Bronte was making a point when she had a "mad woman in the attic" about the society which she lived in.
First, congratulations for posting your opinion. That is what the Forum should be: discussion, in my view, enriches all. Jensacurlyfries writes:'Bronte was making a point when she had a "mad woman in the attic" about the society which she lived in.' Permit me to dissent. To make sense, I think we have to limit ourselves to what Charlotte Bronte wrote in Jane Eyre. Charlotte's art, aim, is very different from Dickens or Thackeray, who through irony and sarcasm criticized Victorian society. Charlotte wrote about the personal, not the general. And if one reads the background material, one is left with the inescapable impression of how autobiographical the creation of Jane is. From the death of her sisters, to the growing up in a home that lacked parental warmth much less the expression of parental love, to the aspiration of emotional and intellectual stimulation of the adult woman.
As to the views of Feminist critics, while I understand the desire to create historical heroines and models for the young woman, please point out where in Jane Eyre such idealogical basis exist. I think I have read the novel carefully and I did not find any views corresponding to contemporary Feminism. Quite to the contrary and I will gladly quote passages to substantiate this interpretation.
Well like everyone said Rochester could have sent her to an Asylum but he did not.Maybe he still in a way cared(not completely though) for her enough to not let any harm come to her.If I remember right he did try to save her when the House catches fire didn't he? He did not have to do that.He could have just gone out and saved himself from his fate.Anyway it was life during those times.One could not possibily do anything else.I am not sure but I think Divorce was not possible then or it was not popular.(I am not familiar with that time period)
But that doesn't make me forget the fact that he did not tell Jane and would have married her if not for the sudden interuption.I dislike him for that fact.But other than that.He could not have done anything more for Bertha.And regarding Grace Poole..he did say that she could keep Bertha atleast under some control(that is more than what can be said about others.So what if she drunk a bit it didn't matter to him).
Like someone said above Rochester could have sent Bertha to a country side...but maybe he wanted her within reachable distance reagrding safety or some such reasons....Then again this is just my opinion it does not justify the fact that Bertha was imprisoned in the attic and could have gotten some care...But still...Anyway thats what I think.
I think Bronte stuck her in the attic as an inversion of the typical Gothic structure of sticking the 'evil unknown scary thing' in the cellar. The house in original Gothic fiction (and all cheesy 1980s horror movies eg Nightmare on Elm Street) is of course a symbol of the human psyche, and the cellar (or the boiler room) could be seen as the 'unconscious' where all the bad stuff lurks, just hiding out and waiting to be revealed, aka the monk and all that. Bronte turns this around, hiding the 'evil' at the very top of the house (ie the surface of the mind), linking into the madness idea - that madness is the truth living above what seems to be 'real' but is in fact just fakery - the upper class controlled nature of the lower house, the richness and apparant civility of it all. The lives that are lead in the lower house are not real - what is real is the madness that lives on top of it all, but we're hiding that cos we're scared of what it might do. There's also the whole feminism aspects, turning things upside down and round the other way from the masculine treatment of the subject. I'm sure I pinched these interpretations from some book or other, its just I can't remember which one.
Interesting comments.
I read this too many years ago to comment in any detail,
but I enjoyed reading the comments.
I may have to go read the book again so I may comment.
;-)
i think the mad wife in the attic is not easy character to understand. you must know that in the victorian period, madness can really mean many mental states which we now consider to be absolutely normal. for example, many men confined their wives just because the wives are a little active in sex life. this fact has been mentioned in Laine Scholwater's <a literature of their own>. i know that some feminist have interpretated Bertha as a psychological reflection of jane herself, which is very fascinating interpretation. but i prefer to interpretate this character in a colonialism perspective, for it is more related to the text itself. remember Bertha is from Jamaica. and when rochester married her, she is not mad. how came she is mad? rochester mentioned that she was too actvie, vehement. little jane is also very vehement in gateshead. so rochester, in my opinion is just after her family's large fortune. and when he is tired of bertha, he just makes up a excuse, then confines her. then he can enjoy his dissipated life. i recommend close reading in solving this seeming mystery.
I agree.Quote:
Originally Posted by dirac1984
Here are a couple of clues I have dug up from chapter 26:
""Bertha Mason is mad; and she came of a mad family; idiots and maniacs through three generations? Her mother, the Creole, was both a madwoman and a drunkard!--as I found out after I had wed the daughter: for they were silent on family secrets before. Bertha, like a dutiful child, copied her parent in both points.""
""You shall see what sort of a being I was cheated into espousing,""
From these quotations,
we can see that Bertha was mad before Rochester married her,
but it was hidden from him.
He was tricked into thinking she was one thing
when in fact she was another.
He was betrayed in a most hateful and awful way
what you quote is told by rochester. how could he provide evidence to exonerate himself. i do not think we can trust his own words. you know a man can make up anything before his lover. i would advise you to think about the following question: if bertha was mad before the marriage, how could he had no idea of it? what is madness in rochester's opinion? remember what rochester himself said about bertha.she is just too vehement and too demanding. and consider the fact that she is from jamaica, her nature is less restrained than her victorian counterparts in britain. rochester also said that bertha became more and more violent after the confinement. we all would become monsters if we are confined to an attic. recall jane eyre's experience in gateshead. she was also confined in a red room when she was vehement. she was also considered to be mad at that time. so really, we have to read the text in a comprehensive and historical way. merely depend upon what the defendant says is not serious investigation. also, i must caution that even the narrator can sometimes be a conspirator of rochester, when he suppressed bertha.
Are you a law student?Quote:
Originally Posted by dirac1984
I take his words as absolute truth.
The author is finally explaining to us what this woman is doing in the attic.
The answer to your question:
"if bertha was mad before the marriage, how could he had no idea of it?"
is in the quotations of my previous post.
""they were silent on family secrets before. Bertha, like a dutiful child, copied her parent in both points.""
""You shall see what sort of a being I was cheated into espousing,""
These quotes are from chapter 26.
The only point I make is that she was mad before he married her.
Very good Sciencefan!Quote:
Originally Posted by sciencefan
But I took you as a Vestal in the shrine of Jane Austen. Don't you risk heterodoxy in defending Charlotte Bronte?
again, i have to remind you that your quotation does not count.
do you think that before their marriage rochester never saw bertha? do you think he could not discern it if he saw her. remember he is a very sharp man. he is not a fool.
Well, let me be direct,Quote:
Originally Posted by dirac1984
since that is how you are being with me.
You are wrong.
How is it that you cannot tell the difference between lies and truth?
You will have to find me at least two expert literary critics
who agree with you for me to even begin to change my mind.
You will have to find me at least two expert literary critics
who agree with you for me to even begin to change my mind.----seriously, two expert? i can tell you for sure,i can find more than two hundred critics. i recommend to search for Wide Sargasso Sea, which is an excellent interpretation of jane eyre. in fact, most of the critics would agree with me. although i understand that many people will not accept this interpretation, it is normal. especially for people who live in conutries with no colonism experience .
So Janus like, Athena/Aphrodite, visage. You'll confuse me as to which I'm addressing!Quote:
Originally Posted by sciencefan
I would rather see her lovely step
and motion of light on her face
than chariots of Lydians or ranks
.............. of footsoldiers in arms
It should be in Attic Greek but since I do not know it, a translation. A quote from,
If Not, Winter – Fragments of Sappho by Anne Carson
Dear dirac1984,Quote:
Originally Posted by dirac1984
Your quote “literature is not easy but really fascinating.” implies thought, or at least passion under the control of thought. When sciencefan asked for 'two expert literary critics' and you replied that you could cite hundreds but gave Wide Sargasso Sea as an example. That is a misunderstanding of what a accepted literary critic is. Wide Sargasso Sea is a novel, not academic criticism. It is also a feminist viewpoint attempting to refute Bronte's characterization as Bertha being mad, hardly an impartial interpretation of Bronte's characterization of Bertha.
Perhaps Bertha represents plight of women in those time - when they were either mere possesions of men who took control of them or something to be despised because of their sex as sex leads to sin etc etc...Quote:
Originally Posted by sciencefan
I placed in bold a couple of your statements I would like to address.Quote:
Originally Posted by dirac1984
Firstly, I have come to the realization that we may have a semantics problem here.
I agree with you on one hand that she was not showing signs of madness when he met her.
The text tells us as much, but also says she hid her family secrets from him.
The fact remains that she came from a family in which insanity was genetic for at least 3 generations.
The family hid that fact from him.
Bertha Mason was predisposed to going insane and that fact was hidden from her future husband.
Furthermore it made itself known very quickly within the 4 following years after their marriage.
Secondly, the fact that descriptions of Bertha's behavior itself speaks to severe mental illness, you can not possibly be correct in Rochester having invented her madness. Confinement itself, no matter how "severe" does not cause mental illness.
As an example, I would bring to your attention Senator John McCain, a former POW who was treated severely in confinement for many years.
He is no more crazy than you or I.
You say that Rochester is making up his story.Quote:
Originally Posted by dirac1984
I say he is not.
The text itself uses the word "recklessly" to describe Rochester's abandon at explaining himself.
His audience is not simply a lover (who he is not even directly addressing) but rather his audience is a priest, a lawyer, and Bertha's brother who could very easily have shouted, "LIAR!" if he were not telling the truth.
While you may know a great many things about this book,
this is one small detail I feel you may have misunderstood.
Ah well.Quote:
Originally Posted by Newcomer
I used to be rude and arrogant before I learned to be diplomatic.
I am capable of it still. :blush:
But I have learned "You can catch more flies with honey than you can with vinegar."
Wide Sargasso Sea is a novel, not academic criticism. It is also a feminist viewpoint attempting to refute Bronte's characterization as Bertha being mad, hardly an impartial interpretation of Bronte's characterization of Bertha.----i know it is a novel, i just want him to search about this novel, and he will see that it receives many praises from the literary circle. because it is a good interpretation of both bertha and the novel.
I"ve always been deeply disturbed by Jane Eyre. We have a totally one-sided narration (by the female 'heroine' who is in love with the male 'hero') so of course she says the wife is mad and all that.
BUt in our modern age when everyone is skeptical and narrator-bias comes into question, what was really going on? Maybe his wife was going crazy thanks to her hats or her face whitener (back then they used chemicals linked to mental illness for hat velvet and face whitener). Did Rochester refuse to get his wife treated because he didn't like her anyway? etc. etc.
Quote:
Originally Posted by jensacurlyfries
I did read a little bit about it.Quote:
Originally Posted by dirac1984
I think you and I will never see eye to eye because I despise feminism and you appear to espouse the views of that ideology.
(By the way, I am female.)
What is this narrator bias everyone speaks of?Quote:
Originally Posted by cardplay
Wouldn't that only come into play if the author deliberately made their character lie to you?
Is that what authors do nowadays?
I don't read modern novels, and now I think I am glad I don't.
One expects the author to be giving clues about the truth,
not lying to them.
That item about chemicals being linked to mental illness is very interesting.
Naturally, they did not realize that then.
The famous composer, Beethoven, supposedly died of lead poisoning
and some of his erratic behavior is blamed on it,
though his type of deafness is not.
There is a wiki if you want more info.
Actually, I think we would be giving the author too much credit by assuming that she deliberately made Rochester a lying man. However, I don't think that was her intention. It came across to me that she simply did not see, or care to see, the unrealistic behaviors and impossible situations she subjects her characters to: How can Rochester marry a woman and not realize that she's mad? It must follow that either she wasn't all that mad, until she married him--and what would that say about his character? Or that she was mad, but Rochester didn't find out because he never got to know her very well, much less love her--so why did he marry her then? money, which he scorns his father and brother for making him marry for?
But I take the harsh and skeptical view that Charlotte Bronte wasn't even aware of these inconsistencies, and consequently that the readers aren't expected to ask these, though logical and reasonable, pointless and irrelevant questions, but simply to accept the story as it is without questions and feel sorry for Jane.
I do believe I agree with you!Quote:
Originally Posted by drunkenKOALA
Gilbert and Gubar's 'The Madwoman in the Attic' is a fantastic read!
I think the main reason why Rochester kept Bertha "on the third floor" was because he saw her has his property - and nothing more. He had no love for her, no sympathy, no compassion - just a mere possession. And it is because of this that he felt responsible for her and could not leave her to die in an asylum or in Ferndean as he would like...he saw her as his problem, as his lunatic and therefore felt responsible for her. Kinda like how a person would feel about a family pet that he/she is not particularly fond of...he/she will probably not let the dog die because that would just be cruel, but since he/she is not particularly fond of it, and because it is a family pet he/she will keep it alive, but won't exert any great effort either. I know that sounds harsh, but that is what I think of the matter...
It was MY impression that putting Bertha in an insane asylum would have been much more cruel than the private care Rochester provided for her. The public institutions of those days were not known for their compassion and comfort. Bertha was better off where she was.
In my own experience, it is my opinion that those who have private care have their needs much more closely looked after, and more quickly attended to, than those who are in a hospital.
But her "private care" was not so great either. Why didn't Rochester give her the whole of Thornfield instead? Why did he just keep her on the third floor?
The WHOLE mansion.Quote:
Originally Posted by malwethien
I have 3 children.
When they were very young but old enough to be a danger to themselves, they spent much of their playtime in a play pen with carefully selected age-appropriate toys to play with.
As they got older, and needed room to amble around in, but still not so much as the whole house, I kept them confined to one special play room that was childproofed and safe for them.
This is in the best interest of the child. You only give them as much as they can handle. You don't allow them into situations where they can injure themselves.
Bertha Mason was a danger to herself and to others.
You don't just let people like that roam around free without boundaries.
I do not find fault with what Rochester did because the author did not lead me to find fault with him.
She goes out of her way to describe him as wholly "good" in his care of Bertha. Therefore, regardless of how we today might treat a person in Bertha's condition, apparently, according to the author, what Rochester did was "good". I am not going to harshly judge a time and place over 150 years removed from my own.
Quote:
Originally Posted by sciencefan
The difference between sciecefan post and malwethience, is maturity. Experience and memory that allows discrimination, hence understanding and perspective.Quote:
Originally Posted by Originally Posted by malwethien
Jane Eyre is Charlotte Bronte's work of art, her experience and best read very carefully. To second guess, to judge from our own view point, is to brush aside Charlotte Bronte's insights, even worse is to assume that ours are equal or better. Literature is not philosophy nor morality, it is fiction for grownups.
I agree with you that the author meant Rochester to be a good man and did not intend to have her readers find fault with him. Whether I, as a reader, agree with the author's point of view, is another issue--and one on which I believe we hold very differing opinions of.Quote:
I do not find fault with what Rochester did because the author did not lead me to find fault with him.
She goes out of her way to describe him as wholly "good" in his care of Bertha.
I do not share the author's views that Rochester is a good man. Contrary, I think he is far from faultless.
I don't think I agree with you. When you read something - anything, you don't just sit back and accept everything the author tells you. It's not a matter of whether we think our ideas are better than the authors' or even equal - readers should question the material they are reading, and writers, know this - I'm sure most even welcome it.Quote:
Originally Posted by Newcomer
BTW, when I said she portrayed him as faultless, I only meant in his care of Betha,Quote:
Originally Posted by drunkenKOALA
for she does bring forward the faults in the way he interacts with people.
Was there a huge outcry when this was published that it was unrealistic?
I agree with this statement, generally speaking.Quote:
Originally Posted by malwethien
Certainly if I am reading the newspaper or a magazine, I will think critically for myself. I will not be led silently to the slaughter.
But when I am reading literature that is one or two hundred years old, a "fairy tale", and I come across thinking that is wholly foreign to anything I know today, I don't think, "Oh those horrible, wicked people!"
No. I think, "Isn't it strange how different it was back then?"
And then there is the very difference between fiction and non-fiction.
Certainly I would hope you always carefully discern right from wrong and truth from lies (even though I have heard there is no such thing any more- but that is another subject) when you are reading non-fiction.
But when we are reading fiction, we have entered the author's artificial world. The author gives us clues to lead us to conclusions. We discover what the author thinks. Once we do that we are certainly free to agree or disagree.
But to judge as right or wrong is impossible because it is an opinion. And nobody's opinion is wrong. It's an opinion.
Anyway, have a wonderful day.
Has anyone read Wide Sargasso Sea? There is a mad wife in the attic there too. I can understand her madness, but I still wonder about the symbolism. I think that in WSS the marriage is like a prison cell and the wife is in solitary.
Of course...I agree with what you said and when you read a work of fiction - it is as if you are argreeing to be led into the world of the writer...and though ideally we would like to say "isn't it strange how different it was back then?" instead of "Oh those horrible people..." the truth is, there will be people out there who will not think that way....and there will be people obsessed with the little thing in the novel of the hero locking up his mad wife on the third floor instead of being more interested in the whold novel as a work of art or whatever the writer inteded it to be....Quote:
Originally Posted by sciencefan
But anyway....I think I have lost the point I was trying to make ;) It's a good discussion though...;)
B-Mental...yes....the "mad wife in the attic" in WSS and the mad wife in the "attic" in Jane Eyre are one and the same....the infamous Bertha Antoinette Cosway Mason Rochester ;) the nameless English gentleman in WSS is none other than Mr. R. himself....Quote:
Originally Posted by B-Mental