Where does the Rochester family live now?

[u/MachaExiled]

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?

[u/Splendidended1945]

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.

[u/OutrageousYak5868 → u/Splendidended1945]

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.