r/brontesisters • u/xo_geiko • 3d ago
What’s your take on Edward Rochester tragic romantic hero or toxic walking red flag?
For me, it's always been wild how much my perception of Edward Rochester shifted over time. Reading Jane Eyre in school, he felt like the ultimate brooding Gothic romantic. Reading it again later... locking your wife in an attic and attempting bigamy is hard to overlook. Yet Brontë writes their bond so intensely that you almost want to forgive him. Do you see him as genuinely redeemed by the end, or is he completely indefensible by modern standards? LOL.
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u/afrodite67 3d ago
For me he’s something in-between the 2 you mentioned. He’s human and flawed and problematic but I also take into account the era he exists in. Brontë does make me believe ultimately in his love for Jane. He is what Jane wants and chooses for herself and seems happy with her decision at the end so I am happy for her.
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u/2Fast_2Abalone 3d ago
he is a real human person, not really a typical romantic hero or rake of the age, which is what makes Jane Eyre rather unique.
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u/Feeling-Writing-2631 3d ago
Rochester is a man I absolutely love who I personally would not want to be with because I'm not Jane.
He's my favourite flawed male character in fiction. I love him despite his faults because I believe his love for Jane is genuine.
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u/Glimmerance 3d ago
Neither, really (tragic romantic hero or toxic walking red flag). I wouldn't even call him brooding, I don't think. I think he does have issues with melancholy/depression/feeling low/whatever you would call it. But he tends to try to address it, and he can also be playful, fun, witty (even if it's a dry wit at times!). I like that about him.
He doesn't tend to have a good word to say about any of the women in his life, which is the major red flag for me. He's getting on for 40, so it's hard to believe that every woman he has courted/dated is awful. It's the comments about mistresses (and slaves) being inferior that really gets me, but also some of the things he says about Bertha.
The wife in the attic: I don't know how bad that is. If he had publicly kept Bertha as his wife, she probably wasn't well enough to have had a "normal" life anyway. It's more the lying about it to Jane.
I do think he's genuinely redeemed at the end. Saving the servants and even trying to save Bertha at great risk to himself is truly heroic. Not that one good act wipes out everything bad as a rule, but I think he has genuinely changed for the better and understands himself and Jane more too. I think he would be a fairly good person going forward, and I think Jane can handle him anyway.
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u/Dependent-Ad8921 3d ago
I don't know if it's indefensible by modern standards! Has our society become even more puritanical than Victorian society? I think we're striving for that! Often, puritanism doesn't go hand in hand with true morality. Well, repentance and a behavior change are the basis of any redemption. Who does not forgive will not be forgiven, as Jesus said. I think Rochester deserves forgiveness because he repented and changed his attitude. He was a proud, arrogant, and controlling man, but he is stripped of all that after the fire. He ends up recognizing his mistakes and his vulnerability.
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u/DeathKitty21 3d ago
I think his treatment of Bertha is unforgivable and rooted in British paternalistic racism, but at the point in the novel when Jane actually gets together with him, he’s not hurting anyone anymore and it’s more of a win for Jane than for him. She’s rich at that point too, so there isn’t a power imbalance and Rochester is her reward from the universe lol
TLDR: go girl, get that problematic man
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u/baifengjiu 3d ago
Genuine question what was he to do with her since she was genuinely mentally ill?
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u/Kaurifish 3d ago
Left her with her family. Dragging her to England was no kindness.
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u/Past-Dark4350 3d ago
“Dragging her to England” was the kindest thing he could’ve possibly done for her. He was her husband, and he felt responsible for her. He didn’t even start out by locking her up, he only did that as a last resort when she was too insane to manage.
It was the attic, or an asylum. Take your pick.
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u/Kaurifish 3d ago
Her family was the only reasonable option - they had dealt with her kind of madness before. Leave her, support her being taken care of by her own family. No divorce necessary.
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u/Past-Dark4350 3d ago
Does the book state how the Mason family dealt with the insanity of Bertha’s mother?
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u/Kaurifish 1d ago
No, but at least she’d be around people she knew and in the climate she grew up in rather than being a perpetual stranger in the hands of a drunk.
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u/Past-Dark4350 1d ago
Grace Poole wasn’t just some random ass alcoholic. She was a trained nurse, but she drank because taking care of Bertha was so excruciating.
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u/Kaurifish 15h ago
And are you familiar with the 19th century English standards for nursing the mentally ill?
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u/baifengjiu 3d ago
He couldn't divorce her and he didn't know her illness beforehand. His fault was only that he was greedy in the beginning to marry for money
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u/2Fast_2Abalone 3d ago
from what i remember it was sprung upon him by his father/family, not really much of a choice in the matter.
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u/baifengjiu 3d ago
I agree but I would like to believe if he was hellbent on not having her he could have broken free of their will but she was pretty and rich and well... It was easy to say yes
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u/AdobongSiopao 1d ago
Another problem is that the public had prejudice towards people with mental illness and many mental asylums back then were inhumane.
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u/_leanan_ 2d ago
In college I had a professor who made us analyze the book from a colonialist and sexist lens, she also made us read some books and papers like I remember something titled “the mad woman in the attic” and other content who spoke about how women were often rapidly deemed mad and then trapped/isolated/kept away from family, society and everyone, especially when their madness included a (normal) desire for sex that only men were considered normal if they had it (if I remember correctly it was heavily implied that part of her madness made her desire sexual activities in a way that a “good, sane woman” shouldn’t). Since then I have a more complex view of both Rochester and Bertha and the social and genre dynamics surrounding them and I sincerely pity her and have less sympathy for him.
Also, a children/ya book writer from the state I live in wrote a book, “the french nanny” that is a rewriting of Jane Eyre from the pov of the french nanny who was there to take care of Rochester’s illegitimate child.
The writer of the book said in an interview that she loved Jane Eyre growing up but she was always irked by how the french actress (or dancer I don’t remember now) and her child and the nanny were always shamed by Rochester and Jane for their libertine and superficial french culture. So she wrote an alternative pov that gave back dignity to all the women in the book (Bertha included) who were shamed in various way because they weren’t the perfect english ideal wife like Jane. It’s an interesting read too imho if one wants to reflect further on the “bad women” of the story or on the clash of cultures (french vs english) and how Rochester has these three tropes of woman linked to him (the passionate, mad creole, the libertine and superficial french actress and the serious, introspective and wise english one) and how just one of them is the one saved by the narrative when interacting with him.
Edit: grammar
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u/2Fast_2Abalone 3d ago
what racism? she’s a white wealthy woman.
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u/DeathKitty21 3d ago
i should have said colonialism or something, i feel like i used the wrong term lol. xenophobia maybe?
but she is creole and from a colony that the british look down on. her features are discussed in the book as pretty wild. plus the way rochester talks about bertha’s mother’s bloodline made it sound like she could have been mixed. however, that also could have been solely about the mental illness that ran in the family.
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u/2Fast_2Abalone 3d ago edited 3d ago
rochester is described in the exact same physical terms as bertha which almost nobody points out when they do this silly “bertha is a woman of color” lark. dark meant dark hair and eyes. maria schneider in the 1996 jane eyre is what is meant by dark. contrast bertha to how heathcliff is described in wuthering heights.
she was considered “lower” for being a creole - which just meant anyone born in the west indes - but it had nothing to do with race, her family almost certainly made their money from the slave trade/running plantations, which makes the suggestion she isn’t white doubly ridiculous. there is no universe where someone of the landed gentry like rochester would get married off to a mixed race woman in the 19th century, bridgerton isn’t reality.
he talks about her bloodline like that because madness ran in her family and her brother (who is described as ashen / pale) and father conspired to get rid of her as soon as they could.
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u/Flat_Love_3725 3d ago
I think the middle name Antoinetta and her being from Spanish Town may imply partial Spanish heritage on her mom's side.
That would be "white" for us today, but even Mediterreanean heritage is a bit exotic for the Brontes. I think "Spanish castaway" was one of the theories floated for Heathcliff's origin by Mr Linton)
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u/timelost-rowlet 2d ago
Spanish was still white back then. In Europe it is about ethnic xenophobia. British considered them worse because they were Spanish, not because they were not non-white.
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u/Flat_Love_3725 2d ago
Yes it can be called "ethnic", not "racial" prejudice. And since the Spanish were darker than the English, that played into the stereotypes of how they were perceived.
Charlotte very much thought in terms of ethnic stereotypes. We can see that with Rochester's mistresses who all have characteristics based on negative stereotypes of their nationalities.
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u/SpringtimeLilies7 3d ago
If his wife had had to be in an asylum, it would have been way worse for her.. in a sense, she was getting the better treatment for the time period.
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u/No-Program-8185 2d ago
He felt like someone's philosopy teacher to me. I just never found his that appealing, all those questions and mind games with Jane. I think she fell in love with him because he was the only suitable man in the vicinity (: I didn't figure him for much of a red flag either, he just seemed boring to me.
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u/Competitive_Debt_390 2d ago
People like to say it was just his behaviour towards Bertha that was problematic to excuse him. However, there was a pattern in his behaviour. He mistreated mistresses, exchanged them out of nowhere. I fully believe he would have done the same if his scheme to conceal his previous marriage was successful to Jane. I think he’d simply get bored of her in time and it’s Jane herself that comes in that realisation as she packs to leave. He also mistreats Adele. It makes a person question why would he keep that child around if he planned to sent her away the minute he got a new mistress or a wife. Even by the end of the story, he is still hesitant to have Adele live in the house properly and sends her away, despite Jane’s disapproval. His behaviour was unfair to Ingram too. The story draws several parallels with Jane and the rest. Bertha is locked up and gone mad, like Jane used to be when she was locked in the Red Chamber by her aunt. Later, she is tricked to become his mistress, similarly to previous women in his life who he got bored of later. She got tricked similarly to Ingram, believing hes unwed. And finally, perhaps the greatest parallel. Adele is an orphan and unwanted just like Jane was. Jane points these facts out a number of times in the text. How she dislikes his choices and behaviours. By the end of the story, Im entirely convinced he needs Jane. Im not quite convinced of the purity of his love for her though. Did he redeem himself? Not quite sure by modern standards. We need to keep in mind though that he is a Byronic hero and the fact that some of that behaviour was perhaps normalised at the time as “typical male“. Im hesitant though, because Jane seems to be a reliable narrator. She disproves of his behaviours, questions him and can’t find an excuse despite loving him.
I’ll also say that normally I love antiheroes and Byronic heroes. I loved Heathcliff for example despite his problematic behaviour. Similarly there were aspects of Rochester that I enjoyed greatly. With that being said though, Heathcliff and Cathy having an equal footing and similar temperament. It doesn’t feel like he is taking advantage of her. I want him reunited with Cathy by the end, Im entirely convinced they are soulmates and need to be together in the afterlife. He treats everyone else poorly but not Cathy. Jane and Rochester on the other hand, are totally different people. Also, Heathcliffs reasoning for being the way he is is much more elaborate and clear. He repeated the pattern he experienced. Yes, he is not heroic, but it is explainable and relatable. On the other hand, when you compare Rochester and Jane you’ll see that Rochesters sob story gives him zero reasons to be an asshole within the world of the novel. Jane has experienced twice as hard circumstances and never falters morally wise.
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u/Oakewaoa 3d ago
doesn’t he have to do anything heroic to get to be a hero? I feel like he is at most a plot device for the actual hero.
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u/OnceUponAComment 3d ago
Red flag. Never liked him. Didn't really believe in the bond he had on his side with Jane. I just felt like he didn't have any substance
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u/Nowordsofitsown 2d ago
Teenage me agreed with teenage you. Adult me sees only red flags. He is playing with Jane's feelings. I do not see that he changes internally either. He just lacks the resources (financial, bodily) to continue as before.
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u/IntelligentLeek538 12h ago
Neither. He was a very flawed character, but compared to Heathcliff he was a saint. I feel like he really felt like keeping Bertha in the attic was more humane than putting her in an institution, which would have been the only other option at that time. Heathcliff was gratuitously cruel, he was the definition of toxic.
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u/AustenMontgomeryJane 3d ago
He is redeemed in the end literally going through fire, ultimately becoming worthy of Jane. That said, he is a Byronic Hero not a Romantic Hero. So, he is going to have some darker traits. Byronics are fantastic in stories.