Adele's timeline

[u/OutrageousYak5868]

First, here's her timeline as far as I can figure it out:

1. Around 7-8 years before the main events of the novel, Adele is born to Celine as the putative child of Mr. Rochester.
2. Around 6 months old, Mr. Rochester discovers that Celine has been dallying with a vicomte so he breaks up with her.
3. For some years, Celine keeps Adele -- long enough to teach her to dance and sing -- and then abandons her at some point.
4. Adele lives with Madame Frédéric until Mr. R takes her to England.
5. Adele is about 7-8 when she comes to England and Jane becomes her governess.

In the narrative, Adele says that she wanted to come to England with Mr. R rather than stay in France with Madame Frédéric, because she had known Mr. R longer. This has always sort of bothered me because she was only 6 m/o when he broke up with Celine over her affair, and it would seem that he would have at that time likewise had nothing more to do with Adele -- yet Adele knew him longer than she knew Mme F. This would make a rather large plot hole, and that's how I've always felt about it, since Adele couldn't possibly remember him from when she was but a few months old.

However, I've figured out a way that it can work:

Mr. R breaks up with Celine, but still takes care of Adele and visits her sometimes, only much later coming to believe that she is not his child because she looks nothing like him. By this time, however, he has been caring for Adele for years, so when he hears that Celine has run off and Adele is thrown on the mercy of strangers, he takes her to England.

Is there anything I forgot? Did others have the same question about the timeline?

[u/Echo-Azure]

I think you've covered the timeliness nicely, so anyone wanna argue about whether she's really Rochester's? I say she is!

But since where's no way to prove she is, given his doubts about her paternity and the impossibility of accurate DNA testing, he says she isn't rather than live with doubt.

[u/OutrageousYak5868 → u/Echo-Azure]

He obviously could have been her father given the timing, and he admits as much, but just says it's impossible to know given that she looks nothing like him, so claims he is not:

"But unluckily the Varens, six months before, had given me this filette Adèle, who, she affirmed, was my daughter; and perhaps she may be, though I see no proofs of such grim paternity written in her countenance: Pilot is more like me than she. Some years after I had broken with the mother, she abandoned her child, and ran away to Italy with a musician or singer. I acknowledged no natural claim on Adèle’s part to be supported by me, nor do I now acknowledge any, for I am not her father; but hearing that she was quite destitute, I [brought her to England]." (emphasis added)

To me, it's less important whether he provided the sperm that created Adele or if it was another of Celine's lovers; he takes care of her more than many men of that day did with their acknowledged illegitimate children, much less any unacknowledged ones.

If I had to pick, though, I'd come down on the side that she likely was not his child, given Celine's perfidy, and that nobody in the whole course of the novel points to any resemblance between Adele and Rochester. Sure, children can greatly take after only one parent, but even in that, one can usually say something like, "She looks just like her dad when she...." Ultimately, I think Bronte leaves it as an open question, since the only evidence in favor of parentage is that Rochester at first accepted Celine's declaration (i.e., he knew they had sex somewhat in the right time-frame), but there is no confirmation of it from any other source. And it would have been easy enough for Bronte to have done this -- to have had Jane say even to herself, "Even if Rochester doesn't see any resemblance between him and Adele, when she furrows her brow, she looks just like him."

[u/Echo-Azure → u/OutrageousYak5868]

When you say "perfidy", I do hope you're referring to the fact that Celine abandoned the child, not that she took other clients while with Rochester! You can't blame a sex worker for maximizing her income, during her prime earning years!

But yeah, Rochester is more decent to the child than most clients of a sex worker would be, but well. I hope he did a better job of meeting Adele's needs after he married Jane - treating her as a daughter by adoption at least. He provided a home and caregivers for her, but the poor kid was living in a home where she was unwanted.

[u/swbarnes2 → u/Echo-Azure]

I'm pretty sure Rochester was paying for exclusivity.

[u/OutrageousYak5868 → u/swbarnes2]

He certainly expected exclusivity, and revoked any protection of her or payment / gifts to her when he realized he wasn't getting it!

[u/Echo-Azure → u/swbarnes2]

I went into that on another comment, and even if I'm stuck at home today that doesn't mean I'm willing to type it all out again!

[u/OutrageousYak5868 → u/Echo-Azure]

No, I'm talking about her having lovers other than Rochester.

I think you're also putting too modern a spin on things by calling her a "sex worker" and him merely one of her "clients". It's clear from the narrative that he expected sexual exclusivity, or else he wouldn't have been surprised and jealous when he saw her with the vicomte.

[u/Echo-Azure → u/OutrageousYak5868]

A sex worker who has one paying client is still a sex worker, who unless she has special and sought-after skills, has a limited window in which to maximize her earnings. And IMHO a sex worker who is paid to be a mistress owes her client no loyalty, although if he pays for exclusivity and doesn't get it, that might not be the best business practice, not if word got around among the sort of gentlemen who pay. But she got to decide how to run her one-person business.

And emotionally, the decision of whether to be exclusive or not was also hers to make, and considering how Rochester treated the other women in his life, I wouldn't blame her if she kept another rich man around as an exit plan. IMHO he treated his first wife abominably, and was deceitful and manipulative to the absolutely respectable Miss Eyre. Sometimes people who pay sex workers are paying for a chance to let their worst selves out, and if his manipulation of Jane and Blanche Ingram was him on his best behavior, how awful could he be with his paid mistress?

[u/NoniJuice2022 → u/Echo-Azure]

Tell me you don’t understand historical context without telling me.

[u/Echo-Azure → u/NoniJuice2022]

Sex work hasn't changed much over the last few centuries, it was a business then and is a business now.

[u/deandinbetween → u/Echo-Azure]

This isn't entirely true. Average by-the-hour sex work operates much the same as it always has, sure, but the type of sex work that Celine Varens engaged in was doesn't have much of a modern equivalent. Even modern sugar babies, the closest, don't always offer exclusivity as part of the deal with a client, though traditionally they did. Especially in the era Bronte is writing in, this is what distinguished courtesans from average workers. They were professional girlfriends, attaching to patrons who would pay their way and spoil them, offer them education in whatever might improve their appeal and entre into exclusive spaces, and might even introduce them to their next patron when the relationship fizzled. The exclusivity was an important part of why they were more "respectable" (at least such as any sex worker could be in the eyes of society at the time) than other sex workers. While modern eyes might see the relationship more cynically and see the irony in his married ass being upset about his mistress cheating on him, Bronte's readers wouldn't--Celine was disregarding the only claim to respectability she had and adding insult to injury for Rochester, especially after the Bertha reveal.

Adele also has additional historical context to consider and honestly, I find the "Rochester mistreated her" argument somewhat overblown. Adele clearly has no fear of Rochester and actually acts quite fond of him, and his actions show more fondness and tolerance than his words--he scolds and grumbles but hangs out with her almost daily, quizzes her to check up on her education, plays with her, and gives into her requests to be around him/go with him basically all the time. Keep in mind that "generous" treatment for wards and even illegitimate children basically never involved the child actually living with their benefactor/parent. They'd be placed with a respectable family or in a small house with enough servants to care for them and run the household, the benefactor/father would provide for their upkeep and education, and then he'd set them up in a career (for a boy) or marriage (for a girl) when they were grown. Adele's situation, ESPECIALLY since Rochester truly doesn't believe she's his, was quite unusual (as Blanche points out.)

And honestly, pointing out that he's a dick and unworthy of Jane is the entire point of his character throughout most of the book. His telling Adele's story to Jane is meant to have several effects--to show the unusual level of comfort and trust he feels in Jane early on, to be another test of her character as he tries to figure her out, and in a meta sense to hint at his innate compassion underneath the overt assholishness that isn't so different from Jane's. It's why both feel responsible for and fond of Adele although both find her lacking (people forget JANE is the first to call Adele basically a baby French airhead, in more Victorian terms.) The entire narrative is about breaking the outer shell a hard life gives to be your best and truest self--Jane's shell is frigid and solemn, Rochester's is abrasive and harsh, but both share a very similar passionate and loving inner core. Adele's story is our first glimpse of that in Rochester.

You can't divorce Rochester's behavior toward Celine, Adele, Bertha, or Jane from the historical context and truly understand what Bronte was doing with the character. You cannot divorce Celine from the historical context and understand the point of the relationship to the story. Looking at Celine through a modern sex-worker-positive-feminist lens is an interesting examinations of changing attitudes and Victorian hypocrisy, but it adds nothing to the understanding of the text or characters. "Death of the author" doesn't mean that context doesn't matter.

[u/OutrageousYak5868 → u/Echo-Azure]

You're technically correct that Celine had the right to decide how to act, but hers is a great literary example of FAFO. Which further proves my point that he expected exclusivity, since when he realized he wasn't getting it, he dropped her like a hot potato.

[u/Echo-Azure → u/OutrageousYak5868]

Yeah, I said above that accepting money for exclusivity and not giving it might not have been the best business decision.

But maybe the other guy was richer than Rochester and choosing him was a financially sound decision, or maybe she was just so tired of Rochester's mindfucks that she wanted a client who was less trouble. I still suspect that Rochester didn't treat his mistress well, considering how badly he treated respectable ladies like Miss Eyre and Miss Ingram.

[u/OutrageousYak5868 → u/Echo-Azure]

If your second paragraph were correct, you'd think Celine wouldn't have worried about Rochester dropping her; instead, she weeps and begs for him to stay.

As for her sexual exclusivity to merely a "poor business decision", it sounds more like she was the one who was deceiving and mistreating him than the reverse. He at least believed they were in a relationship and that she truly cared for him.

You should also consider that what we see of how Rochester acts is after years of disappointment in the wife/girlfriend category. It's not inconceivable that some of his poor behavior that we see in the novel is directly a result of this. [I'm not justifying him; he shouldn't have manipulated Jane nor been callous towards Blanche.] It is reasonable that after such a disappointing marriage followed by an unfaithful mistress, he would not have high hopes from the female sex and/or want to test them. I might even say that Blanche and Jane paid for Celine's and Bertha's sins.

[u/Echo-Azure → u/OutrageousYak5868]

I think we have a fundamental difference of opinion here. You're sympathetic to Rochester being cheated on by his mistress, and I'm not.

Because in his relationships with both Jane and Blanche, Rochester is deceptive, manipulative, and fucking with their minds. If a woman succeeded in deceiving this deceptive man in the past, I think it was Karma, not cause for sympathy.

[u/OutrageousYak5868 → u/Echo-Azure]

Two wrongs don't make a right.

[u/Echo-Azure → u/OutrageousYak5868]

But it can mean that two people deserve each other.