If anyone thinks the treatment of Bertha was brutal and thinks that things have improved across the board, take a look at this...http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/...n2448074.shtml
At least she was fed and clothed as well as was possible.
If anyone thinks the treatment of Bertha was brutal and thinks that things have improved across the board, take a look at this...
At least she was fed and clothed as well as was possible.
On 07-15-2007 kiki1982 posts “lunatic assylums were good places where they tried to cure people the best they could (we don't have to look at it in a contemporary kind of way) and, if even they couldn't cure them, looked after them so that they would be happy (host balls, feasts etc).” And on 07-22-2007 post the justification is given as “The hosting of balls as I mentioned it, I saw in a BBC documentary called "How we built Britain" with David Dimbleby.” I would think that an educated woman, a teacher could distinguish a TV dramatization from a historic data and not state that lunatic asylums were good places where they cured people by hosting balls.
With the 07-15-2007 kiki1982 posts “...Characters in books are not real people and consequently don't have a life as such. Their lives stop when they stop appearing in the book. .... She was as important as the weather was in the story. Nothing more. Discussing Bertha is good, as far as it concerns the book Jane Eyre, but as soon as the discussion is about anything else than something in connection with the book, it is not to the point. “
I supposed that we were on firmer grounds to hold a reasonable discussion on Jane Eyre, the novel. However on 07-22-2007 she writes “Rochester was supposed to be a person who lost the way: he was arrogant, he had mistresses, a bastard daughter he does not recognise, so he also locks up his wife despite all his money and despite public opinion about restraining and locking up mentally ill patients.”
The historic data about the Victorian asylums seems not to have made any impression and she repeats the unsubstantiated opinion that “ despite public opinion about restraining and locking up mentally ill patients”.
Making a moral argument on a fictitious character. Before making such an argument she should have been have been cognizant that such a prominent social critic as Thackery had 'locked up' his mentally ill wife rather that give her free reign in his home or sent her to an asylum. Perhaps she should have studied Charlotte's juvenilia writings to understand the genesis of the Rochester in the figure of Zamorna of the Angrian stories. (A synopsis can be read in “Slave of a Fixed and Dominant Idea : Charlottes Brote's Early Writings – Preliminaries or Precursors. Paragraph 3 @
http://books.google.com/books?id=0Tw...N05bSiljHluzJg)
Rochester is conceived as a counterpoint to Jane. Drawn from Zamorna, his character is Byronic and has been suggested as Satanic. Mark Kinhead-Weekes essay, The Place of Love in Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights, states that “the house itself is a metaphor of Rochester's heart, a physical embodiment of the tropical hell he has tried to escape, enclosed within the half-life which is all he has found. The hell of mindless and uncontrolled passion is barred into the attic, hidden away in the form of his lunatic wife.” Note that no moral judgment is made, only commentary on the novel. Note the difference in analysis from On 07-11-2007, kiki posts “... 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.”
??? What is the textual association to the fictitious character???
Certain well-off ladies that had supported Charlotte broke of relationships because they deemed Jane Eyre as anti religious due to the characterizations of Blockenhurst and St. James but the interpretation that Bertha was a Christ like figure is surely too bizarre for a literature based comment.
On 07-12-2007 kiki posts “Maybe Rochester was too brutal on the wedding night with Bertha . One would go mad for less...”
What are we to make of these contradictions? Apparently for kiki 'maybe' qualifies as a studied opinion. Given the above postings, kiki's opinions seem to be schizoid.
The recent criticism of the characters Rochester and Bertha, are an underlaying gender and morality based attempt at a subjective reading of Jane Eyre. It seems that the reader does not or is uncomfortable with the poetic structure of the novel and wishes to reinterpret Charlotte Bronte in a 'objective' way. The 'objective' being a singular and ideological interpretation.
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.”
Charlotte does a balancing act in Jane Eyre and at least in part it is the appreciation of this balance that makes the novel a work of art. To reduce, to read it as one or the other, is to bleach, to emasculate the novel.
I would think that an educated woman, a teacher could distinguish a TV dramatization from a historic data and not state that lunatic asylums were good places where they cured people by hosting balls.
I am an educated woman and for your information BBC documentaries do not tend to spread untrue information. If the British Broadcast Corporation makes documentaries they make them interesting and above all crammed with information. They do not dramatise nor tell stories that are out of time, like the article on suicide in the 1860s, rather than in the 1840s. Already for 100 years there was a revolution in care for the poor, the mad and the criminals going on by the time Charlotte wrote her book. William Tuke openend his hospital in York in 1796. Mad people were not seen anymore as punished by the devil (17th - 18th century), but rather as sick in the mind. This was the consequence of the Enlightment that partly caused the French Revolution to take place. Tuke's hospital attracted a lot of attention, so I cannot believe that Brontë would not have known about it as it was even in the same county. Charlotte was born in the middle of the industrial revolution and in the middle of all these changes. She cannot have totally escapecd the discussion, certainly not because her father stood at the centre of society as a priest. He must have had connections with asylums, workhouses etc.
By the 1860s the whole philosophy of actually untying patients had passed, because it cost too much money a now the state had the task to care for the poor, mad and small criminals. Also giving them good food was too expensive, so they increased the amount of patients in the asylums and started to tie them up again.
The historic data about the Victorian asylums seems not to have made any impression and she repeats the unsubstantiated opinion that “ despite public opinion about restraining and locking up mentally ill patients”.
Making a moral argument on a fictitious character. Before making such an argument she should have been have been cognizant that such a prominent social critic as Thackery had 'locked up' his mentally ill wife rather than give her free reign in his home or sent her to an asylum.
For your information I actually posted historical data and/or also data that came from historians and specialists. As the interview with Mr David Wright. He also made a statement about Thackery. That he locked up his wife was revealed just after Jane Eyre was released. And the public was shocked. The article does not want to be displayed so I can't quote. In the meant time I can quote again:
"People today need to balance the descriptions of the early asylums with a greater understanding of the medical and social attitudes and conditions of the times, says Wright. "These facilities may appear horrific by our standards today. But that would also be true of our view of the typical living conditions for the ordinary labourer of the day," he says."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_t...atric_hospital
I think we are seeing it from our point of view now and not from the point of view in 1847. This is an article of Mc Master University in Canada. Mr Wright spent 10 years in England researching in this field.
I don't think we can call this very modern:
"whether beast or human being, one could not, at first sight, tell: it grovelled, seemingly, on all fours; it snatched and growled like some strange wild animal: but it was covered with clothing, and a quantity of dark, grizzled hair, wild as a mane, hid its head and face." (Brontë
As it says in the wikipedia article:
"In 1700 it is recorded that the "lunatics" were called "patients" for the first time, and within twenty years separate wards for the "curable" and "incurable" patients had been established. Mental illness was now no longer an affliction, but a disease, to be diagnosed and potentially cured."
And this is about Bethlam hospital, notorious for its bad treatment of patients. Even there they called the 'lunatics' 'patients' 150 years before Brontë wrote her book... Rochester doesn't even speak to his wife. She doesn't speak back. She only yells...
It says about moral treatment on wikipedia:
An English Quaker named William Tuke (1732-1819) independently brought similar reforms to northern England, following the death of a fellow Quaker in a local asylum in 1790. In 1796 he founded the York Retreat, where about 30 patients lived as part of a small community in quiet country houses and engaged in a combination of rest, talk, manual work. The efforts of the York Retreat centered around minimizing restraints and cultivating rationality and moral strength.
The entire Tuke family became known as some of the founders of moral treatment. They created a family-style ethos and patients performed chores to give them a sense of contribution. There was a daily routine of both work and leisure time. If patients behaved well, they were rewarded; if they behaved poorly, they were punished. The patients were told that treatment depended on their conduct. In this sense, the patient's moral autonomy was recognized.
This Tuke died in 1819, as you can see. So 28 years before Jane Eyre. I don't see much talk, rest or manuel work in Bertha's treatment... I do not say that this type of treatment was available everywhere but surely in general doctors had another perception of mental illness than before...
A typical day at the Pennsylvanian Hospital, opened in 1841:
http://www.phillyhistory.org/PhotoAr...#37;20Services
This was certainly better than what Bertha got...
Certain well-off ladies that had supported Charlotte broke of relationships because they deemed Jane Eyre as anti religious due to the characterizations of Blockenhurst and St. James but the interpretation that Bertha was a Christ like figure is surely too bizarre for a literature based comment.
Jane Eyre anti religious????
Here is my answer: the book is packed with allusions to the Bible and the Common Book of Prayer as it states in this article:
http://www.victorianweb.org/authors/...nte/bolt3.html
That people clamed it to be anti religious... Well, people also clamed it was a bad book. And the painter Van Gogh was told he couldn't paint...
This link comes from an essay written by Peter Bolt (department of English, North East Worcestershire College): Rochester vs. St. John Rivers: or why Jane Eyre preferred a cynical sinner to a religious zealot. On victorian web it says 'last modified in 1999'. The essay was divided in 6 parts. I don't think there was any numerology involved.
What are we to make of these contradictions? Apparently for kiki 'maybe' qualifies as a studied opinion. Given the above postings, kiki's opinions seem to be schizoid.
With 'maybe' I want to say that we are not sure, as even studies are not sure that what they say is right and according to the author's opnion. This is a discussion forum so I am not writing a paper so I do not state articles to actually back up my statements. I make a statement and whoever wants to discuss it is welcome and then we can maybe result in stating other studies that approve of that opinion.
And anyway: books have layers and can be interpreted in several ways as with this one. You can interpret it in a feminist way, religion can be analysed, the story as such is interesting, we can look what it says about society as a whole, even the Enlightment can be discussed in it. Am I supposed to only have one statement about this book or am I also allowed to express different ones about different layers in the book?
If you want I can write you a paper (even a book) about it and post it here, if that ensures you about the scientificness of my opinions.
We were discussing lunatic assylums in the victorian era... Sadly the first half of the victorian era was quite different to the last half... But that seems to be forgotten.
If I have to talk about the articles you stated:
The first one was acceptable but was meant for children so it can hardly be called 'scientific'. It was very short and didn't say much about the conditions and principles...
The second one was about suicides from the 1860s on. As I stated before, the second half of the victorian era was quite different from the first half. They started of with determination to better the conditions of people in general. But as this turned out to be quite expensive, they stopped with it. Furthermore the article is about suicides which will of course focus on bad places and conditions to cause suicide. It will not say that patients committed suicide in spite of good conditions, will it? So it is not a good article to state in this case, because the timing is not right, as it is with statistics of 20 years too late, and the subject is not really the one of Bertha.
The third one was a feminist site that stated that mad people were thought to be possessed by the devil. This was the case about 100 years before 1845. Even at the end of the 18th century it was believed that mad people had a mental disease, or disease of the brain. It was a feminist site so it was very stereotypical.
Last edited by kiki1982; 07-24-2007 at 08:35 AM.
One has to laugh before being happy, because otherwise one risks to die before having laughed.
"Je crains [...] que l'âme ne se vide à ces passe-temps vains, et que le fin du fin ne soit la fin des fins." (Edmond Rostand, Cyrano de Bergerac, Acte III, Scène VII)
I agree with Hook's insight.Originally Posted by Newcomer
I had thought those things myself, but had not really put the ideas so consisely as he did.
Thank you for sharing that quote.
In the posting of 07-23-2007, kiki1982, cites the following article by Peter Bolt:”The Prayer Book lists every day of the year, starting in January, as does Jane's journeying. Each day has four Lessons to be read, two at the Morning Service and two at the Evensong. Two readings are taken from the Old Testament, two from the New Testament, one each per service. In addition, particular Psalms are listed each day of the month, to be used in rotation. Also laid down are various "saints days", set against the days of the year put aside for their special commemoration. It is this calendar, with the list of Lessons and Saints, that has been used in a extraordinary way throughout the novel Jane Eyre.” .... And “ Thus January 15th gives the following: Morning Service first Lesson, Genesis Ch.XXI v33 to Ch.XXII v20; Evensong first Lesson, Genesis Ch.XXII. The former Lesson ends, "And Abraham sojourned in the Philistine's land for many days". The later describes the testing of Abraham's faith in God to the very limit. Both Lessons portray an accurate description and forewarning of Jane's predicament in her early days at Lowood.”
However the date cited in the novel is as follows: “It was the fifteenth of January, about nine o'clock in the morning: Bessie was gone down to breakfast; my cousins had not yet been summoned to their mama; Eliza was putting on her bonnet and warm garden-coat to go and feed the poultry, an occupation of which she was fond; and not less so of selling the eggs to the housekeeper and hoarding the money she thus obtained.”
Only a description of the winter and avarice of Eliza. Nothing of January 15 in the Prayer Book or Morning Service or the Evensong. This should be sufficient as proof that Peter Bolt's reading of Jane Eyre is very peculiar. A reading of a religious zealot, of a numerologist and in my opinion of no literary significance. The remaining dates used by Peter Bolt are similar unique misinterpretations in Jane Eyre.
Quote - “Am I supposed to only have one statement about this book or am I also allowed to express different ones about different layers in the book?”
No question that you can express yourself but when it comes down to substantiating your claims, then a critical reading is required and a reference in the Victorian Web by itself is not sufficient proof of the validity of a religious interpretation of Jane Eyre. What is required is a logical argument that is referenced to the text. In this Peter Bolt fails.
Please do not interpret this as a personal attack. I value your opinion more than the usual 'fact' expressed and followed by silence when challenged. But on this issue we have an irreconcilable disagreement.
If we want to see how Bertha is treated and to know what she was used for we need to first see what the use of the character of Rochester was for the book. An examination into what Rochester and other characters have to say about the treatment of Bertha:
‘Bridewell’ is the word Rochester’s party acts out and Dent’s party has to guess in the charade-scene. What does it mean?
http://www.answers.com/topic/bridewell
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bridewell
It is a house of correction… Later a prison… Obviously this word was chosen by the writer and not by Rochester as he is not a living person. The word was put there for a purpose. What’s more: Jane doesn’t state the word Rochester’s party had to guess because she was more interested in what Mr Rochester and Miss Ingram were doing, in other words it is not important to the story. Miss Ingram even states that ‘of the three characters, she liked him in the last best.’ The last one was the acting out of the word ‘bridewell’ because Dent’s party couldn’t guess it. The scene resembled a dungeon.
The least we can say is that Bridewell was a correction house of the old times, set up in 1555. Later it became a prison. The prison was closed in 1855 and demolished in 1863. The name itself started to lead a life as a general denomination for detention centers throughout England, Canada and Ireland. Why would
This is the first allusion to a prison of some kind, involving Rochester himself and not Lynn, who was also available?
After Mason got bitten and stabbed and he's brought to the carriage by Rochester himself, Mason says:
‘Let her be taken care of; let her be treated as tenderly as may be: let her—‘ he stopped and burst into tears. (Brontë)
Then Rochester replies:
‘I do my best; and have done it, and will do it’, was the answer: he shut up the chaise door, and the vehicle drove away.
Mason, and then also Charlotte, obviously knows about the concept of tender care as he suggests it himself.
And after that Rochester says:
‘Come where there is some freshness, for a few moments,’ he said; ‘that house is a mere dungeon: don’t you feel it so?’
‘It seems to me a splendid mansion, sir.’
‘The glamour of inexperience is over your eyes,’ he answered; ‘and you see it through a charmed medium: you cannot discern that the gilding is slime and the silk draperies cobwebs; that the marble is sordid slate, and the polished woods mere refuse chips and scaly bark.’
On all words dictionary it says about the word ‘dungeon’:
A prison cell, especially underground
So says Collin’s English Dictionary
Now why would Charlotte have put this word into Rochester’s mouth if it were not applicable? He even insists on it being a dungeon. The only one who is locked up in the house, is Bertha as we will later learn, but if she was locked up humanely, the house does not merit the name of ‘dungeon’, does it. Taking into account that Mason asks to take care of her ‘tenderly’, the word ‘dungeon’ can only mean one thing and that can not be ‘humane’. I don’t think we can call tying someone’s hand behind her back and tying her to a bed, tenderness. Not in 1847 and not now.
Before the marriage Jane thinks this about her future life as Mrs Rochester:
‘For a little while you will perhaps be as you are now,—a very little while; and then you will turn cool; and then you will be capricious; and then you will be stern, and I shall have much ado to please you: but when you get well used to me, you will perhaps like me again,—like me, I say, not love me. I suppose your love will effervesce in six months, or less. I have observed in books written by men, that period assigned as the farthest to which a husband’s ardour extends. Yet, after all, as a friend and companion, I hope never to become quite distasteful to my dear master.’
He assures her this is not the case because he loves her. Later however, after the put-off wedding, when Rochester is telling his story to her in a last attempt to make her stay she tells him about how he should not talk hateful about his wife:
‘Sir,’ I interrupted him, ‘you are inexorable for that unfortunate lady: you speak of her with hate—with vindictive antipathy. It is cruel—she cannot help being mad.’
Then he says:
‘Jane, my little darling (so I will call you, for so you are), you don’t know what you are talking about; you misjudge me again: it is not because she is mad I hate her. If you were mad, do you think I should hate you?’
‘I do indeed, sir.’
So Jane thinks he would also treat her like Bertha if she were mad. He tells her not, and goes on that he would care for her with ‘untiring tenderness’.
What are we supposed to think after that? First you see a woman who is not really well kept (weather because of her condition or not, we do not judge), then we learn that he hates her and then he says that he doesn’t hate her because she’s mad but just because, and that he would take care of Jane differently than Bertha. So what makes that of Rochester and, in relation to that, of Bertha’s treatment? Is it normal that he cares for her in this way? There is a difference between Jane and Bertha then? Yes, he loves Jane and not Bertha. In addition to that we can also assume he knows about the concept of tender care as he suggests it to Jane, if she were mad.
He assures her now that he will ‘keep to [her] as long as [he] shall live’, but can she believe that after what she has seen? After what he did with his three mistresses? He even told Jane at some point that he thought he loved Bertha.
Through all the situations Rochester’s character develops. Can’t we see the presentation of Bertha as the last ‘chapter’ in this development? What use would this scene have, apart from the unveiling of the gothic element and sensation, if it is not used as that last image of Rochester? At other times Charlotte seems to quickly pass over things that are not really important, like the second charade, the month of courtship, the fortnight between her return and the proposal, the three first months at Thornfield, yet the scene with Bertha must be told. After all, the impediment has already been unveiled so why should we see the figure through Jane’s eyes? The only one who substantially speaks in the scene is Rochester, Mason who says one sentence ‘We had better leave her,’ and of course Grace who needs to warn Rochester. Charlotte chose the other scenes so well, so why put in a piece if it would be of no importance? Charlotte could have added another sentence, talking about the violent attacks and it would have been clear for whoever hadn’t understood yet. Why would Charlotte make Rochester act this scene if it is not necessary for the development of his character?
What did journalists think of the Character of Rochester in the times the book was written? Here are a few examples, although they were not easy to find: http://faculty.plattsburgh.edu/peter...ult.asp?go=240
It includes reviews from both Engand and the US
Elizabeth Rigby of the Quarterly Review, however conservative, states in her review of Jane Eyre in 1848 about the character of Rochester:
'For Mr. Rochester's wife is a creature, half fiend, half maniac, whom he had married in a distant part of the world, and whom now, in his self-constituted code of morality, he had thought it his right, and even his duty, to supersede by a more agreeable companion.'
and further:
'Mr. Rochester is a man who deliberately and secretly seeks to violate the laws of both God and man, and yet we will be bound half our lady readers are enchanted with him for a model of generosity and honor.'
So she found him a very bad figure to say the least and she didn’t see where the generosity and honor lies. She also didn’t approve of his conduct towards young ladies.
Graham’s Magazine (Philadelphia) in 1848 about the character of Rochester:
‘The ruffian, with his fierce appetites and Satanic pride’
‘Every person who interprets her description by a knowledge of what profligacy is, cannot fail to see that she is absurdly connecting certain virtues, of which she knows a great deal, with certain vices, of which she knows nothing.’
.
This is what Edwin Percy Whipple in the North American Review in 1848 had to say about Rochester:
‘but when the admirable Mr. Rochester appears, and the profanity, brutality, and slang of the misanthropic profligate give their torpedo shocks to the nervous system’
The Spectator in 1847 wrote:
‘The reader cannot see anything loveable in Mr. Rochester, nor why he should be so deeply in love with Jane Eyre; so that we have intense emotion without cause.’
They didn’t at all see him as a noble character with faults like we see him now… Not only because his conduct was bad, arrogant and improper towards Jane (see various articles on the site), but also because he was ‘immoral, misanthropic’.
Of the 14 articles on the site, there were 7 that made a statement about the character Rochester and 6 of them classed him as negative. Only one talks about him in a positive way (The Westminster Review in 1848 states: ‘the eccentric Mr. Rochester, whom with all his faults and eccentricities one can't help getting to like’.) They all agree on the fact that his character ‘is from the life’, and some also say that they cannot help to like him, but they all see him as a bad figure.
This article is a letter from Amariah Brigham to the American Journal of Insanity:
http://www.disabilitymuseum.org/lib/docs/1303.htm
It does not talk at all about beating, restraining to a chair or anything of that kind. So we can conclude that this was not common practice or at least not approved practice. However it speaks about the use of opium, oils and warm/cold baths as a soothing tactic. Seen as the reform of mental asylums in the US only started in 1841 by Miss Dix, we can conclude that this treatment was also available in England as the revolution in treatment for the mentally ill started with the York Retreat end of the 18th century.
http://www.cbmh.ca/archive/00000304/...n2edginton.pdf
This is an article that focuses on the design of asylums in the 19th century. Although it states that ‘the placement of windows in the post-1845 period is different from their placement in the earlier period which resembles prisons’, there are still windows involved, which we can’t agreed upon in Bertha’s case. Besides why would Charlotte have stated especially that Bertha was locked in ‘a room without a window’ if this was not significant? Descriptions are only there when they are important.
‘Treatment throughout the 19th century made relatively little progress, although much was done to improve the general lot of the patients. Attention was given to diet, hygiene, accommodation, pastimes and amusements.’ (Ashworth, Stanley Royd Hospital, p. 33)
Hence the balls I was talking about. Apparently there was even possibility for tennis, bowls and other such things in other asylums. Also tranquil grounds seemed to be very important and in the most modern asylums they didn’t even have walls, only ditches so the patients couldn’t escape. They were allowed to walk freely in the grounds as a way of soothing. Hence the importance of windows for the views. So, as Rochester was a rich man, he could have put Bertha in such an asylum, but he did not.
Add this: when Jane has wondered for 2 days on the moorland and is about to collapse at the door of the Rivers’ house, she sees the two sisters, Diana and Mary, quoting two sentences from a poem. It seems to be a play from Friedrich Schiller from 1782, called ‘Die Räuber’ (The Robbers), from the Sturm und Drang period (early romantic period in Germany). The sentences are taken out of the first and one before last scene of the fifth and last act. The play is about two brothers, Karl and Franz, who fight against the wrongs society rules have as a consequence. Franz’s older brother Karl will inherit everything. Franz doesn’t agree with that and he is jealous. Because of a list his brother Karl ends up as the chief of a gang of thieves. Franz dies in the end, by killing himself because there is no way back: either he will die by the hand of his brother or he will burn in hell, as he intends to kill both his brother and father. Karl also ends up bad, killing his love because he cannot live with her (because of his oath to his gang) and she cannot live without him, but saves himself by doing a noble deed: handing himself in to a common worker who will then be able to claim the money on Karl’s head and feed his 11 children with it. Thus showing that fundamentally he is a good creature.
Sturm und Drang characters are ‘driven to action not by pursuit of noble means nor by true motives, but by revenge and greed. Further, this action to which the primary character is drawn is often one of violence.’ (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sturm_und_Drang).
You can see more on the characters and backround of the play on http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Die_R%C3%A4uber
Charlotte states two sentences of a dream about the Last Judgment of Franz, just before he kills himself. Taking into account what characters of Sturm und Drang usually are like, this seems to be parallel with the character of Rochester: he commits wrongs because he was tricked into marriage by his father and brother, and even with an insane wife. He hates her and he will even ‘try violence‘ against Jane ‘if she doesn’t listen’ to his story. After Jane has left he indeed becomes violent: ‘he never was a wild man, but he got dangerous after he lost her.’
True, he is a Byronic Hero in a sense, but not really: in chapter 18, when Rochester and Blanche Ingram are talking about the charade they have just performed, Rochester asks her, ‘You would like a hero of the road then?’ To this Blanche replies, ‘An English hero of the road would be the next best thing to an Italian bandit; and that could only be surpasses by a Levantine pirate’ By ‘English hero of the road’ Blanche clearly means a Byronic hero, as it was the most notable hero in English literary history (Thorslev 189), and here Blanche states that she views Rochester as such a character. The response that Brontë puts in Rochester’s mouth, however, provides evidence that he is not so convincingly defined. He responds, ‘Well, whatever I am, remember you are my wife; we were married an hour since, in the presence of all these witnesses’ When Rochester says, ‘Well, whatever I am . . .,’ he discretely rejects what she has implied. Rochester is a Byronic Hero in the sense that he is a rebel, a wanderer, he’s not impressed by rank/privilege, he’s proud, he has a hidden curse, he is passionate, but when it comes to self-destructiveness, he doesn’t really live up to that. He is more than self-destructive: when Jane has left him, he sends all the servants away and ‘turns violent’. He even trashes Jane (‘My rest might have been blissful enough, only a sad heart broke it. It plained of its gaping wounds, its inward bleeding, its riven chords. It trembled for Mr. Rochester and his doom; it bemoaned him with bitter pity; it demanded him with ceaseless longing; and, impotent as a bird with both wings broken, it still quivered its shattered pinions in vain attempts to seek him.’) and also, to a certain extent Blanche Ingram by playing with her feelings (courting her while he doesn’t intend marriage). At the end of his story, he ends up alone on the stage, as in a Shakespearean tragedy with the servants gone, Jane ‘dead’ (so he believes after having sought her), isolated from the gentry and living ‘as a hermit’ in the shut up Hall. This is more like the Sturm und Drang behavior: not only destructive for the life of the character itself, but also to the world round him, as the fate of Franz in ‘Die Räuber’ demonstrates.
http://www.umd.umich.edu/casl/hum/en...b/ROCH_835.htm
Charlotte Brontë herself didn’t even want to create a true Byronic hero: she specifically says he is ‘ill-educated,’ ‘has a good nature’ and a ‘feeling heart,’ and is ‘not selfish’ or ‘self-indulgent’ -- all of these characteristics seem to be at odds with that of a Byronic hero. Yet she also describes him as ‘radically better than most men,’ and through this description, that Rochester learns from his experience, she implies that he possesses self-awareness -- a characteristic that is consistent with those of a Byronic hero.
Rochester seems to believe that he is doing the right thing, first concerning his mistresses, but also his bigamous marriage. He even gets the Bible involved: ‘and remember with what judgment ye judge ye shall be judged’. Clearly he’s in such a state of illusion, that he doesn’t see that he is committing adultery and that he is breaking the law both of God and Man. This state of illusion always occurs in characters with Sturm und Drang behavior, usually they wake up at the end of the story, as happens during the fire that destroys Thornfield.
When Jane forgives him but not in words (chapter XXVII) , she maybe forgives him his conduct: his lying, his deceit, but she cannot live with him because he cannot love like he should. He suggests to go to France with him, as his mistress, like Franz does in the play with Amalia (Karl’s love). She rejects him also. If both Rochester and Franz would truly and deeply love, they would not suggest this.
Later Jane tells Rochester: ‘I pity you—I do earnestly pity you’ (chapter XXVII), but is this pity because he is in that situation, or pity because he’s glad that he has all the money and the house and that, with those, he can do now with Bertha what he wants, because he speaks like that about her? Pity because he has fallen so low as to show contempt for another human being and also for God, showing contempt at his first marriage?
If we look at what happened two months after Jane left Rochester, we see that the house burns down and that, while the house is burning, Rochester saves everyone in the house. Yet, seeing that his wife is not among them, he goes back into the house, to the third storey, to take her out of her cell. The others shout to him that she is on the roof and so he decides to go there and get her. When he shouts ‘Bertha!’, she jumps from the battlements and falls to her death. Rochester descends but crashes down, together with the staircase, loosing one hand and one eye. Thus paying for adultery as it says in Matthew 5, 27-30. But why does he need to loose everything else if he pays for adultery/bigamy by loosing his hand and eye? There must have been something else that he had to pay for.
If we look at the Schiller quotation in chapter XXVIII, it is not the time for the end yet. Jane doesn’t speak German yet and the noble deed at the end is still to come. If we then look at the Sturm und Drang behavior Rochester has showed, then it is not at all necessary for him to have done a noble deed yet. If he would have done, the story would have been allowed to end already, yet this is not the case. So where does the treatment of Bertha stand in this story. Surely it can’t be the noble deed of Rochester, because the end hasn’t come yet. The noble deed, by which he proves to be worthy to get another chance, is the one of risking his life for Bertha’s well-being. After that he is rescued from the fire and acknowledges God in his sufferings. So therefore we can’t see Bertha’s treatment as a humane solution. It doesn’t fit the story, nor the circumstancial evidence. So we need to see Rochester not in a noble light before the end at all, but rather as negative, like most journalists agreed.
If we see the character of Rochester in the light of Schiller’s Sturm und Drang play, for which there is an indication in the book itself, then we can see the treatment of Bertha as very bad. We can add to that the ‘room without a window’, the letter if Amariah Brigham, the ‘tender care’ remarks of Mason and Rochester himself and the choice of the words ‘bridewell’ and ‘dungeon’ to back it up. If Rochester is a Sturm und Drang character, he can be totally bad without being unnatural, but he will also be a character to be pitied and so to be liked. And that fits with what readers feel. At the end he can even turn noble and be forgiven. The treatment of Bertha then is bad and inhumane, as the articles show, to show the character’s bad nature. Rochester ultimately shows his fundamentally good nature by trying to rescue her from the fire. We don’t have to blame Charlotte for Bertha’s bad treatment, as she probably used Bertha to serve the character of Rochester. She didn’t mean to be racist or (anti-)feminist. She merely followed a classical, though foreign and dated, path of writing.
I strongly believe that Charlotte meant Bertha's treatment to be inhumane, rather than humane. There is more proof on the internet about the treatment of the mentally ill in that age in Enlgand and it almost all puts Bertha's treatment in a bad light. This is the last I will say about my view of Bertha/Rochester as it seems futile to convince anyone that in those days they were more modern than we think.
One has to laugh before being happy, because otherwise one risks to die before having laughed.
"Je crains [...] que l'âme ne se vide à ces passe-temps vains, et que le fin du fin ne soit la fin des fins." (Edmond Rostand, Cyrano de Bergerac, Acte III, Scène VII)
Rigby and Kiki have a phonetic similarity, but there is more than just phonetics at play, there is the same myopic vision based on a tyrannical moral certitude. In her reply kiki1982 chooses Elizabeth Rigby as an example of a early critic that has lambasted Jane Eyre. In her enthusiasm to find support for her views, she misses the irony that Elizabeth Rigby's critique in the London Quarterly Review of December 1848 is included in Bronte's anthologies as an example of a biased reading of Jane Eyre. Rigby denounces the novel on moral and aesthetic grounds. Rigby is indifferent to the literary quality of the novel, morality is the issue. Similarly kiki1982 uses Jane Eyre to drive a particular religious view point.
She seems to be a reincarnation of Blockenhurst in her moral certitude. Incapable of understanding the need for love, or poetry in the novel, she is a preacher of retribution and damnation. She reads the Bertha incidents as :”Then those three appearances make up the three of Christ before being taken to heaven. The fire being the forth and ascension to heaven.” ... “Jane also is believed to be a Christ figure who is resurected in the end, like I said in a Pentcost like scene.” Continuous with “Here is my answer: the book is packed with allusions to the Bible and the Common Book of Prayer as it states in this article:” - by Peter Bolt, where particular dates used in the novel, are misinterpreted as references to Morning and Evening Prayers in the Common Book of Prayers. When the textual references prove to be vacuitous, she blithely states, “ Rochester .... Thus paying for adultery as it says in Matthew 5, 27-30. But why does he need to loose everything else if he pays for adultery/bigamy by loosing his hand and eye? There must have been something else that he had to pay for.”
And that something is expanded into an analogy from a play by Schiller - “Charlotte states two sentences of a dream about the Last Judgment of Franz, just before he kills himself. Taking into account what characters of Sturm und Drang usually are like, this seems to be parallel with the character of Rochester:” continuing with “ If Rochester is a Sturm und Drang character, he can be totally bad without being unnatural, but he will also be a character to be pitied and so to be liked. And that fits with what readers feel. At the end he can even turn noble and be forgiven. The treatment of Bertha then is bad and inhumane, as the articles show, to show the character’s bad nature. Rochester ultimately shows his fundamentally good nature by trying to rescue her from the fire.”
But the actual passage in the text is - “”Listen Dianna”said one of the absorbed students: “Franz and old Daniel are together in the night-time, and Franz is telling a dream from which he has awakened in terror – listen!”.... crucially Jane says- “though when I first heard it, it was only like a stroke on sounding brass to me – conveying no meaning:-” The German has 'no meaning' for Jane. And the question is how much meaning can it have for two young women trying to “ We don't speak German, and we cannot read it without a dictionary to help us.” Therefore it is a safe assumption that poetic and philosophical allusions in the quoted text are beyond the comprehension of Diana and Mary, certainly beyond that of Jane. But not beyond the inflamed imagination of kiki. She draws a tortured interpretation of Rochester as a 'Sturm und Drang' character. I would venture that the obsession is to make Rochester into a Beelzebub, so as to justify Bertha as a Christ-like symbol.
Where does the text justify such an interpretation? Nowhere!
It has been observed that Charlotte was not deeply read, in the sense of a formal education, unlike her father who was a Cambridge graduate. She had an avaricious intellect and an acute skill of observation, however nowhere is there a suggestion that she knew world philosophy and especially Germanic literature.
I'm curious why you are spending so much energy on Jane Eyre when you do not like the novel? Is it that like St. John you are driven by missionary zeal to convert the heathen? Apparently the lessons of the Europe's religious wars has not been absorbed by you.
If you'll substitute “reading of Jane Eyre” for “idea of love” in Jane's speech, it will be a fitting end to our dialog. “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.”
Perhaps you should redirect your interpretations to the Religion Forum, as you might find like minded readers. In interpreting of literature, you offer no meaningful insights.
I am not a bible basher, in contradiction to what you think, and I don't like to be called one and I do not care to be compared to an Elizabeth Rigby! But if you refuse to see that Charlotte, as a clergyman's daughter, incorporated a lot of the blible in her book, then you are blind, not even myopic anymore.
I do not use my faith (if it can be called that, because I never go to church) to interprete this novel. So I do not care to be compared to a Brocklehurst. So take it back!
So in your words: Charlotte took a random book out of a random library and it happened to be a German book. And even a play about 2 brothers and one who would like all the power!! Is that not a coincidence??? Talk about myopic.
Jane says: 'when I first heard it, it was only like a stroke on sounding brass to me'. So she didn't understand at first, but later she does... Indeed, later she learns German. Charlotte would have been able to make her learn another language, but no, she chose German. Curious, isn't it? 'We don't speak German, and we cannot read it without a dictionary to help us.' So they need something else to be able to understand... Like Jane needs St John to understand that she must go back to Rochester?
I do not have an obsession to make Rochester the devil, it is merely an observation and I have never understood why you seem to be irritated by that. Are you Rochester himself? Or are you a reincarnation of Charlotte Brontë? Why is it that when something occurs that you don't agree with, you cruisade against it?
You can maybe deny Rigby's review, but you can't get around the rest. Certainly the choices of the words 'Bridewell' and 'dungeon' must mean something.
I studied a lot of German Sturm und Drang plays, poems and novels and I can tell you that it comes back in this book with an English echo. If I have to make a reply, I will start a new topic if you like.
Charlotte might not have been deeply read, but that is no reason to assume, that she never read this play.
The Bertha-Christ idea, I stand corrected, was not right, but it is no reason to attack someone personnally. But why is Rochester in your eyes not allowed to be wrong?
This doesn't seem to be a discussion about the charater itself, but it seems a way for you to attack me if I don't agree with you. I do not like this kind of discussion, because it passes the original one.
One has to laugh before being happy, because otherwise one risks to die before having laughed.
"Je crains [...] que l'âme ne se vide à ces passe-temps vains, et que le fin du fin ne soit la fin des fins." (Edmond Rostand, Cyrano de Bergerac, Acte III, Scène VII)
To the general reader,
My disagreement with kiki1982 on Jane Eyre has caused personal anguish for which I am deeply sorry. My objections to textual interpretation was intellectual not personal but kiki1982 has taken such as a personal attack. It was not meant as such and I have apologized in a private note to kiki1982 and here do so publicly.
Hopefully this will close the issue.
Newcomer, thank you for your note. Apology accepted.
I hope that in future we can discuss on more topics without offence.
To the general public who reads this: it will be a fruitful experience to read it.
The discussion is now closed.
Last edited by kiki1982; 07-31-2007 at 04:45 PM.
One has to laugh before being happy, because otherwise one risks to die before having laughed.
"Je crains [...] que l'âme ne se vide à ces passe-temps vains, et que le fin du fin ne soit la fin des fins." (Edmond Rostand, Cyrano de Bergerac, Acte III, Scène VII)
Wow. As a medical student doing my psychiatry rotation, it's really interesting to read different people's preconceived ideas about mental illness. Some of the ideas that people have about mental illness are very outdated and quite inaccurate. For example....
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.
This is a very gray area. Some mental disorders are characterized by promiscuity and hypersexuality. What happens is that, in some mental illnesses, the areas of your brain that prevent you from risky behaviors (like spending too much money, driving too fast, sleeping with random strangers) don't work anymore. Your brain can't control your body's urges - psychiatrists often look for signs that a person has lost their inhibitions. This can be a sign of mental disease.
When psychiatrists evaluate people who might be mentally ill, it can take several hours. It takes a long, long time for psychiatrists to gather enough observational evidence before they can decide on a diagnosis. Part of the problem is that, especially in the early stages of mental disease, many of the symptoms don't seem that bad. Some of the symptoms temporarily disappear (and then later re-appear, worse than ever).
Rochester says in the book that he had little contact with Bertha before they were married - he only talked to her when other people were around, and they were rarely alone. It's very possible that he never saw any signs that she was a little abnormal.
Thank you so much for your educated opinion concerning this topic!
Very enlightening!
I appreciate you taking the time to post.
Thank you for the post.
Bertha Rochester is (based on the description in the book) certainly very, very psychotic. She [I
It's a relief to read a rational discourse on Bertha's character. My only caution is that a psychiatric view of 2007 is drastically different from the views of 1847. Whatever the qualms, it's a relief from reading the personal ideological views expressed on some of the Forum notes or the fantasies of Bedlam trowing balls to cure the patients.
My view is that mental illness is caused by a chemical imbalance in the brain, not in the mind, and the cure lies in the understanding of the neuro-anatomy and processes. And it is good to remember that our understanding is quite recent and incomplete, re the psychiatric theories of the early 20th. century. With all the advances, we still do not understand or can cure schizophrenia.
It wasn't really meant to be a discussion about Bertha's character - I didn't even read the long discussion between you and Kiki1982 until just now. I was just responding to things that people had said earlier in this thread.
Actually, that's not quite true. Rochester (for all intents and purposes) is also locked up in the house. He can't really leave it or sell it entirely - where would he put Bertha? What would he do with her? Thorndale is kind of a dungeon for Rochester as well.
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").
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.
Reading over some of the links that you've provided, I think the biggest thing that reformers attempted to do was to differentiate between different levels of mental illness. In very early insane asylums, everyone with a mental illness was treated the same, whether or not they were violent - they were kept in large windowless buildings without clean food, any kind of activities, or any kind of freedom. And you're right - people with depression, mild paranoia, or hysteria/anxiety would have benefited from those reforms and newer practices (like tennis and afternoon strolls). However, someone like Bertha, who was extremely psychotic, violent, and (worst of all) very strong and tall, would not be kept in the newer types of asylums that you mentioned. Someone with Bertha's level of mental illness, whether in 2007 or in 1847, would HAVE to be kept in an isolated room, possibly in physical or chemical restraints. She would not be allowed to be alone, especially in the bathroom (risk of impulsive suicidal/self-injurious behavior is too high), and would not interact with other patients. For some combative patients, tenderness is kind of out of the question.
Last edited by smq123; 08-11-2007 at 03:46 PM.
Very interesting, as Schults would say.
As a background question, if it is not personal: you seem to differentiate between the brain and the mind, while many on the Forum fall into the fallacy, egz. loose your mind, sick in the mind etc. Is your view of the mind, similar to the concept of emergence; from the Chaos theory of complexity. This relates to the concepts of consciousness and personality.
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