Mad Wife in the Attic?

[dirac1984]

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.

[sciencefan]

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?
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.

[Newcomer]

Are you a law student?
I take his words as absolute truth.

Very good Sciencefan!
But I took you as a Vestal in the shrine of Jane Austen. Don't you risk heterodoxy in defending Charlotte Bronte?

[dirac1984]

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.

[sciencefan]

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,
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.

[dirac1984]

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 .

[Newcomer]

Well, let me be direct,
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?

So Janus like, Athena/Aphrodite, visage. You'll confuse me as to which I'm addressing!

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

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.

Dear 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.

[Lote-Tree]

I agree.

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

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...

[sciencefan]

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 placed in bold a couple of your statements I would like to address.

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.

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.

You say that Rochester is making up his story.
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.

So Janus like, Athena/Aphrodite, visage. You'll confuse me as to which I'm addressing!

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

Ah well.
I used to be rude and arrogant before I learned to be diplomatic.
I am capable of it still.
But I have learned "You can catch more flies with honey than you can with vinegar."

[dirac1984]

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.

[cardplay]

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.

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.

[sciencefan]

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 did read a little bit about it.
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.)

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.

What is this narrator bias everyone speaks of?

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.

[drunkenKOALA]

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.

[sciencefan]

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 she 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!

[optimisticnad]

Gilbert and Gubar's 'The Madwoman in the Attic' is a fantastic read!