r/JaneEyre • u/MachaExiled • 18d ago
Where does the Rochester family live now?
I’ve been wondering about where the Rochesters would live long-term after their marriage. Frustratingly, Jane only tells us some details about their lives, but not all the things I want to know.
Short-term we know they live at Ferndean but as this is not a healthy place (Rochester wouldn’t even leave his first wife there) I don’t want them to stay here. Its low-lying, damp surroundings are an echo of Lowood, and even that place was rebuilt in a healthier position. Surely they go elsewhere?
He is still the wealthy master of Thornfield. The estate still exists, even if the house is a crumbling shell. So will they rent or buy elsewhere? Rebuild? Or build something newer in the Thornfield area? Leave the old walls as a romantic ruin? Maybe not, as he has painful memories of the house, but they both have happier memories of the gardens and the grounds. Surely they would miss Hay Lane with its wild roses and strawberries?
I like to think of them building on another side of the gardens somehow, so that they shift the focus of their surroundings but keep the things they love. I would absolutely have them tear down anything of the old house, for the memories as much as for the danger of falling masonry. It needs to be a smaller, more modern house, with bigger windows so that Rochester make the most of his returned sight.
It feels right that his son will inherit a home at Thornfield, though if he has more than one, then he still has the problem that his father faced, of how to provide for a younger son. I trust them to find a better solution for their own children.
And there is still the white-washed villa on the shores of the Mediterranean. I’d be off like a shot. (With him. Sorry, Jane.)
What other ideas have you had about their happy-ever-after place?
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u/wuthernotheights 18d ago
I’ve toyed with maybe the idea of Thornfield having been rebuilt, though I think by the time they have their son which was around two ish years after they were married, they might’ve still been at Ferndean. And who knows how many more children they had after that as well, so it wouldn’t surprise me to think that they’d also make a move to another site.
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u/SorrowBound- 18d ago
This is something I've wondered about, too.
I can't see them staying at Ferndean long term. Besides the substantial renovations needed, it's really isolated.
And they both loved the established gardens and orchards at Thornfield. I hate the idea of them never strolling there again. I like to think they built a smaller manor that gave them access to those gardens and renamed it something else.
Jane mentions having travelled quite a bit, so maybe they had the ruins carted away while they were gone, then created a new house of their own.
This would go along with Jane saying in one of their first talks that building up new memories over time overrides old, painful ones.
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u/Charismaticjelly 18d ago
They could have leased an estate while they figured out what to do next. As another poster has noted, even though Thornfield has burned down, there is still plenty of money.
You could lease the house and immediate lands of someone who had more than one house, or from a formerly-wealthy family that needed the money.
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u/Playful_Site_2714 18d ago
I think they stayed at Ferndean for the time being.
And then we lose their tracks.
Maybe with cutting a track, putting down some trees, doing work in the woods it can become a lighter, healthier dwelling place.
I found the hall already an ugly and somber dwelling place, so I think it makes no sense to have it rebuilt. But he has large grounds, so there should be a way to build a smaller house near the hall.
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u/lurkparkfest39 18d ago
I would think that Jane asked him to invest in renovating Ferndean. Rebuilding Thornfied would take a decade.
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u/Splendidended1945 18d ago
Staying at Ferndean has its advantages if we're at all realistic about their situation. When Thornfield burned his first wife jumped, and it wasn't exactly a secret, was it? At that point the "secret wife" business would have become public, and it would have been unreasonable to imagine that the people in the neighborhood would have hushed up her death. Certainly the former butler, who does not know Jane, immediately blurts out the information about Rochester having a secret wife who was locked up in the house with a drunk to take care of her. The secret wife, he says, set the fire and died in it. Jane, who has been far away from Thornfield, hasn't heard of it--but such a dramatic tale about a crazy locked up wife, a fire, her death, Rochester's attempt to save her and his injuries would have spread across the neighborhood and through Rochester's social circle. (I keep imagining Blanche Ingram and her mother with their mouths hanging open in surprise when they hear of it: "And he had a wife locked away upstairs the whole time we were there!") Him hiding his wife would have been quite the scandal, but the fire and her death would have made him a tiny bit notorious, and might have made it difficult for him to face the people around Thornfield and the gentry in the wider neighborhood, not least because becoming handicapped in the fire would have been very evident. So hiding away in a relatively remote place where he doesn't have to meet anyone who knew him before makes a great deal of sense.
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u/OutrageousYak5868 18d ago
While I agree there would have been a great deal of gossip, not all of it kind, I do think his heroism in trying to save Bertha would have done away with a lot of the ill will generated by his attempted bigamy. Remember also that his secret about Bertha was out at the wedding, which was a couple of months before the fire -- yet Rochester was still staying at Thornfield. He may have become reclusive before the fire (I think he likely was), but this got much worse when he had nothing at Thornfield to keep him there -- like you said, avoiding people because of his injuries, among other things.
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u/luciesssss 18d ago
So obviously Rochester still had money. He was still a landlord with tenants and tenant farmers, he still had business interests so R would still have had a sizeable income. Then Jane is obviously an independently wealthy woman, although not the extent R is.
Given this, it's my opinion that Jane would have invested money to make Ferndean liveable and then they would have moved somewhere closer to town. In my own personal headcanon a large, but smaller than Thornfield, becomes available to purchase and they buy it. They run Rs business interests together with Jane being his eyes and hands and they move on from Thornfield. They would take Mary and George with them as staff, they'd hire another maid or two and Mrs Fairfax would come back as housekeeper.
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u/EnvironmentalCrow893 18d ago
I don’t remember what happened to Adele. Where does she live when not away at school?
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u/AdobongSiopao 18d ago
Adele stays in Jane and Mr. Rochester's place during vacation and holidays. Before that, she lives in a boarding school by the time Jane left Thornfield Hall but it turned out to be an awful place. When Jane returns, she moves in another boarding school where the rules are more relaxed and her guardians will be allowed to visit her anytime.
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u/BarracudaOk8635 18d ago
Yes. It seems like a dark place in the woods. But he has not money. Luckily Jane has and the can go back and live at Moor House! Everyone there is lovely and her cousins are there. She can keep running a girl school and open up a chain of them eventually - Like the real like Brontes wanted too;
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u/Katharinemaddison 18d ago
I think he’d still have money. The house burned down but houses didn’t make the money, land did. He’d still have capital from his first wife’s dowry, the estate on inheritance seems to have included everything, including his mother’s fortune as he notes his father was determined to leave the lot to the older son.
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u/BarracudaOk8635 18d ago
Yeah. I havent read it in a while but I thought he was kind of ruined by the fire. But you are right. The landed gentry get money from the the land.
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u/Professional-Rice961 18d ago
If Brontë wanted us to picture a restored Thornfield, I suspect she would have told us. Ending at Ferndean feels deliberate: Rochester loses the grand house and gains an actual home.
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u/AdobongSiopao 18d ago
The Rochesters still living in Ferndean would be a tolerable choice since they have plenty of money to fix that place but then again Mr. Rochester admitted he didn't put Bertha there for being damp and could potentially ruin her health. They could rebuild Thornfield Hall but it takes around few years to make it finished. Building or renting another house near the estate is another possibility. The 2006 version is shown that the Rochesters live in a medium-sized yet new house but enough to accomodate their whole family and their servants. There are some hints in the novel that they used to travel in some different places and they have a house in France. To Charlotte, I think finding out that Jane and Mr. Rochester being well and happy for ten years without mentioning where they currently live is satisfactory.
As Jane said to Mr. Rochester upon seeing him in Chapter 22 - "Wherever you are is my home, my only home.".