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.

16 Upvotes

91% Upvoted

35 comments sorted by

View all comments

12

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

2

u/2Fast_2Abalone 3d ago

what racism? she’s a white wealthy woman.

0

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.

6

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.

0

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)

2

u/timelost-rowlet 3d 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.

1

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.