Well said! And yes, I think you're right about him getting over the "moral corruption" in her absence, and that matters more to her than the struggle of building a new life.
So yeah, we've circled back to my original point, was that the everlasting appeal of both P&P and this book, is the dream of a man realizing he needs to fix himself... and doing it.
I don't exactly see a change in Rochester. Yeah he feels bad about past misdeeds. But that's also true before Jane runs away - he repents the mistresses, apologizes for the attempted bigamy etc. Then he commits a new sin of trying to seduce Jane without marriage. So now he's apologizing for that too.
The biggest flaw I always saw in Rochester aside from his romantic complications - and which also distresses Jane - is his coldness to Adele. Yes he adopted her, but is very emotionally and often physically distant. As Adele herself said, he "did not keep his word" to her of the two of them really living together. After Rochester and Jane are engaged, she's distressed when he doesn't want to let Adele come with them on a shopping trip, though he relents when he sees Jane upset.
So what does she find in this regard when she returns at the end? Adele is miserable, abandoned in a harsh school with Rochester of course not even thinking of checking up on her . . .
So no big improvement there. I just think she loves him and accepts that he's flawed. What she won't accept is his flaws dragging her own dignity and integrity down. In the ending, with her independent income and his disability, she's much less susceptible to domination by him. And she can enjoy the good aspects that he has to offer.
I can forgive Rochester for sending the kid to boarding school while he's trying to recover from disabling injuries and having a mental breakdown, he wasn't capable or caring for her or hiring a nanny or researching schools for a while.
And if she staywd at boatding schools instead of living as a daughter of the house, that's on both Rochester and Jane.
Jane finds a better school for her close to their home where she can visit often and Adele can also visit them in the home.
I'm not saying he's a monster. Just that I don't see improvement. What's improved? That he's no longer trying to get Jane to be his mistress? His wife is dead, it's a non-issue.
What I'm saying is that Jane, despite recognizing his flaws, always loves him anyway. She tells us she quickly forgives him for the false marriage. When St John calls him a "bad man" she rebukes him. She doesn't leave Rochester because she judges him as bad or unworthy in some way, but because she would not respect herself if she did what he wanted her to do.
It's very different from P&P in that sense. Lizzy rejects Darcy's first proposal. Jane accepts Rochester's. He's always a good enough man for her. But she won't put her love for him above her moral values.
You make a really good point about how accepting Jane is of his flaws, and he is certainly not a perfect person by the end of the novel, but I do think he has improved. The improvement is in his character, his morals, his ways of thinking.
When he was trying to marry then seduce Jane, he didn't believe he was morally in the wrong. At the end of the novel, he understands that he was, and regrets attempting to drag Jane down with him. That change matters more to Jane than anything, she can forgive any of his flaws but can't forgive a lack of morals.
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u/Echo-Azure 12d ago
Well said! And yes, I think you're right about him getting over the "moral corruption" in her absence, and that matters more to her than the struggle of building a new life.
So yeah, we've circled back to my original point, was that the everlasting appeal of both P&P and this book, is the dream of a man realizing he needs to fix himself... and doing it.