Jane Eyre Part 2: The Love and Deception of Mr. Rochester

I have always been interested in the character of Mr. Rochester...  Why he is the way he is, and what shaped him into the man that he is in the novel...  I know that he explains his background to Jane (after the whole wedding fiasco), but seriously I would really like to read a book written from his perspective (a-la the Jane Austen Diary Series by Amanda Grange)...  [as I am writing this I figured I would search for a book of that nature, and I have indeed found one Rochester: A Novel Inspired by Charlotte Bronte's "Jane Eyre" by J.L. Niemann, so of course I have not read it yet... It appears to have mixed reviews, so we shall see...]


Mr. Rochester is a man who from his youth is shaped by deception...  In the hours after the botched wedding, Mr Rochester relates to Jane the story of his youth, and why he deceived Jane in the way that he did...  Not being the eldest son, and his father's desire to keep the property together, his father gave the entirety of the estate to his brother Rowland...  In an attempt to give his son some money by marriage, Edward was sent to Jamaica after he left college and was told that Bertha was very beautiful, being both tantalized by her flattery and her beauty, and being young he thought he was in love with her...  Although her family and his hid from him the madness, and he was duped to marry her, and was married before he realized what had happened...  Edward was stuck with a wife he could not love...  Her tastes were wholly different from his, and her mind was incapable of learning anything other than what she already had attained...  She was violent, crude, unreasonable, and unchaste...  Now here we learn about a part of Mr. Rochester's character that is both a redeeming feature and a curse to himself...  No matter how Bertha acted towards him, he could NOT be cruel to her...  As much as Mr. Rochester comes across as wicked and deceptive, he really does have redeeming qualities that outweigh the bad...

A terrible twist of fate happened, both his father and brother died within the 4 years after his marriage to Bertha...  He ended up inheriting the estate intact, what a blow to Mr. Rochester...  All the pain and suffering his family put him through, the deception because they wanted him to have money as well, and now it is all his anyway...  What things as this would make any human being act in a similar way that Edward does...   At this point he could not divorce Bertha, the doctors had found out that she was mad (I'm not even sure the legal grounds in today's society on this particular issue)... Thankfully his marriage had been kept a secret back in England, so he decided to return home and hide her (and his shame) away, locked up in Thornfield Hall...  Once safely hidden away at Thornfield with a proper keeper to take charge of her, Mr. Rochester then set himself about to roam the world in search of a woman whom he could love...  Being thus placed in such a situation as he was, he was bound and determined that he could and would marry for love...  If he found such a woman he would present his case history truthfully and make his proposal openly with no deceptions...  For 10 years he roamed the world in search of such a lady, he was not seeking perfection of mind or person, but mainly that which suited him best...  He was a man seeking love, what more does any person in this world seek?  To love and be loved truly is something that most individuals would die for, even in today's society...  I would have to say that love, by far is one of the strongest emotions in the world...  To an extent every one of us craves and desires to love and be loved...

Being such a man and not able to live alone, he tried mistresses in vain...  Finally after 10 years of of wandering the world, heart hardened and soul weary, he returns home to Thornfield Hall, a place he despises, hates, and finds to be the seedling of all his suffering...  On his way to Thornfield Hall, on a desolate lane his horse becomes frightened by a figure and drops him to the ground...  This is where he has his first encounter with Jane Eyre...  Despite his surliness, she insists upon helping him...  At his first touch of her shoulder, something inside himself snapped...  (Possibly one of those things where when the right person touches you, it doesn't have to be any type of particular touch, just say lightly on your arm...  Your entire body feels full of fire and warmth, something has changed...  You can sense something new, possibly love...)  He thus begins his faithful study of her character...  He wants to find out more about her, he starts off by being his stern self and would go between being cordial to completely ignoring her...  He only ignored her to see if she would seek him, which of course she did not...  In order to see if she thought of him, he resumed his notice of her and saw her come to life...

I do not agree with his use of Blanche Ingram as a pawn, or much of what he did to draw Jane in... But the fact of the matter is that he really and truly loved her deeply... So much that he was willing to risk the damnation of God and the world to have her love in return...  I can see, and almost agree with his reasoning...  Why can't a man, who is tricked into marrying a mad woman and can not divorce this woman, be allowed to find true love?  These of course are extenuating circumstances...  I don't think there is a real answer...  But these themes are present in today's society just as they were back in Charlotte Bronte's time, and I think that is why this novel has endured...