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How Did Rochester Change In Jane Eyre

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Writers commonly create characters who are not content with their lives or circumstances within. These characters yearn for changes to these unfavorable aspects. However, once they become aware they are unable to make any alterations themselves, these characters often lose hope and resign themselves to a horrible fate. Authors commonly use such characters to create meaning in their works. One of these authors, Charlotte Brontë often conjured characters in this style to populate the worlds of her novels. In Jane Eyre, Charlotte Brontë writes of a wealthy man, Edward Rochester, chained to a mentally unstable woman through marriage; this adds to the meaning of the total novel. On the surface, Edward Rochester seems to live a perfect life full of traveling, money, …show more content…

However, the consequences of a mistake from his youth continue to haunt him throughout his life. At the age of twenty-one, Edward journeyed to Jamaica to marry a woman he had never met. His father had sent him in order to amass a small fortune from the girl’s family upon the union. Edward married the girl, Bertha Mason, believing he loved her, but he later claims it to be caused by “the idiotic rivalries of society, the prurience, the rashness, the blindness of youth” (Brontë 354). Rochester came to regret his marriage when he discovered the Mason family secret of a long line of insanity. He tries to accept his wife, but eventually comes to hate her. Edward reveals that he was unable to change the circumstances of his marriage when he states, “Bertha Mason, the true daughter of an infamous mother, dragged me through all the hideous and degrading agonies which must attend a man bound to a wife at once intemperate and unchaste. And I could not rid myself of it by any

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