How Does Rochester Change Throughout The Novel

We first encounter this relationship between Jane and Rochester during their first dramatic meeting. She encounters him when he falls off his horse and she is required to give him assistance. Jane’s first impression of his face is that ‘He had a dark face, with stern features and a heavy brow’. This may portray the dimness in his face awaiting to be enlightened by a woman which, in this case Jane. Further on in this chapter, unaware of who he is, on her return home, Jane is amazed to discover that the gentleman she assisted in the road was her employer, Mr. Edward Rochester. Jane’s future relationship with Rochester is most clearly set out in their first meeting. Although without any money, reserved and socially dependent, Jane is not

So, Rochester showed the brother (Richard), the priest, and Jane his wife. He explained how Bertha had lit his bed on fire, stabbed Richard, and destroyed Jane’s wedding veil's; she was more a monster than a wife. Heartbroken by learning of this marriage, Jane fled to her room where she stayed for hours upon hours. "Jane Eyre, who had been an ardent expectant woman - almost a bride - was a cold, solitary girl again: her life was pale; her prospects were desolate (341)." When she finally emerged, Rochester tried to convince her to stay with him. “I have for the first time found what I can truly love–I have found you. You are my sympathy–my better self–my good angel–I am bound to you with a strong attachment (363).” This was not something she could not do; as Rochester said, "...[It would] strip you of honour and rob you of self-respect (346)..." The next morning, Jane left Thornfield Hall with some money and few possessions. She did not say goodbye to

When Jane enters Thornfield she thinks she is going to work for a woman named Mrs. Fairfax, but she does not. She works for a mysterious man name Mr. Rochester. This man is going to be an import aspect of Jane’s life. Jane works as a governess to a young girl named Adele. Jane encounters Mr. Rochester when she goes for a walk and runs into Rochester, whose horse is injured. After the encounter Jane and Rochester start to gain interest into each other. Mr. Rochester is a man with a large amount of money and Jane is a woman with very little money, the fact that she works for Mr. Rochester defies their unprofessional relationship. “Like governesses, these marriages between older men and younger women were viewed with great ambivalence during the Victorian period”(Godfrey). Both characters develop strong feelings for one another and become close to getting married but a discovery of a secret puts the marriage to a halt. After

Through a close reading of the selected passage of Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre: An Autobiography, a reader can see that Jane attempts to separate herself from her decisions by personifying her emotions and giving them a specific voice, which strongly reflects the societal views of the time. At this point in the story, Jane has discovered, on her wedding day, that Mr. Rochester is still married to a woman named Bertha, and that woman still lives in his house. Distraught, Jane locks herself in her room and tries to decide what she should do. When she wakes up the next day, she is again confronted with what she needs to do in the wake of her discovery.

Throughout Charlotte Brontë’s novel, Jane Eyre is afflicted with the feud between her moral values, and the way society perceives these notions. Jane ultimately obtains her happy ending, and Brontë’s shrewd denouement of St. John’s fate juxtaposes Jane’s blissful future with St. John’s tragic course of action. When Jane ends up at the Moor House, she is able to discover a nexus of love and family, and by doing so, she no longer feels fettered to Rochester. Moreover, Rochester is no longer Jane’s only form of psychological escape, and thus Jane is in a position to return to him without an aura of discontent. At the end of the novel, Jane is finally able to be irrevocably “blest beyond what language can express” (Brontë 459) because she is “absolutely bone of his bone, and flesh of his flesh” (459).

Though Jane is well educated and possesses the etiquette and training of a person in upper class society, social prejudices limit her because she is simply a paid servant, in their eyes. While at Thornfield, Jane falls desperately in love with the owner of Thornfield Hall, Mr. Rochester. Jane is Mr. Rochester’s intellectual contemporary, but her social status prevents her from being his true equal. In the novel, Jane proclaims, “Do you think, because I am poor, obscure, plain, and little, I am soulless and heartless? You think wrong!—I have as much soul as you,—and full as much heart!” (Bronte 637). After Mr. Rochester finally proposes, Jane is hesitant to marry him because she feels as if he would be lowering himself to marry her. This feeling greatly increases after Jane discovers he is married to Bertha Mason, and that he keeps her locked away in Thornfield’s attic due to her insanity. Mr. Rochester proposes that Jane becomes his mistress, which, according to Victorian society, would be more fitting since Jane is a plain governess. Jane realizes that she can never compromise her morals that way and leaves Thornfield. While on her own, Jane still strives to gain independence, discovers new kin, and learns she has a wealthy uncle who has left her a large inheritance. After her loneliness and longing for Mr. Rochester becomes too great, she returns to Thornfield. Jane is

The major male character in Jane Eyre is Edward Rochester. His is a history of sin and redemption. Like Jane, he matures in his own way. He is presented as worldly-wise, unpredictable and even brash.

Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë depicts the rigid social structure and clear division between the upper and lower classes of Victorian society, in which wealth and status determined one’s beliefs, career, and treatment from those surrounding them. Those of the upper class did not typically converse or involve themselves with those viewed as beneath them; however, Jane Eyre fights the separation between the classes to which she has fallen victim at both Gateshead and Lowood school. Her refusal to conform to the hierarchy eventually leads to the meddling between the Victorian-era elite and peasant class, as seen through Jane Eyre’s romantic relationship with Edward Rochester, an upperclassman and

Although she knows Blanche and Rochester are not in love, she believes they will marry due to money and class. Ingram is equal to Rochester, and Jane is not. She knows she cannot unlove him, but "all his attentions appropriated to a great lady who scorned to touch [Jane] with the hem of her roses as she passed" (Bronte 211). In Jane 's mind, she is no match for Blanche, and she refuses to marry Rochester because they are not equal. After Jane and Rochester become engaged for the first time, he attempts to spoil her with gifts and special treatment. However, Jane will not accept. First, he takes Jane to Millcote to buy her accessories. When he looks at her with "passionate pleasure" she looks at him and threatens that he "need not look in that way...if [he does, she 'll] wear nothing but [her] old Lowood frocks to the end of the chapter. [She 'll] be married in this lilac gingham" (309-310). She refuses these gifts as she believes she should not be treated higher than her actual class. She also refuses to dine with Rochester at his request.When he asks her to join she tells him that she has "never dined with [him]; and [she] sees no reason why [she] should now" (311). Rochester then begins to question what she wishes to become of her salary and other days to which she responds that she "shall just go on with it as usual. [She] shall keep out of [his] way all day"

In the critical essay, “Almost my hope of heaven’: idolatry and messianic symbolism in Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre,” Joshua analyzes the theme of idolatry and messianic symbolism in Jane Eyre. Joshua believes that Jane Eyre is a novel that revolves wholly on religion. He argues that, “one of the novel's purpose...is to show that human relationships are successful only if the partners in the relationship avoid the dangers of idolizing each other” (Joshua). I strongly agree with his opinion. One main reason Jane denies Rochester’s proposal is because she does not want to be inferior to him. When Rochester and Jane argue over whether or not Jane is going to let him order her around she says “‘I like to serve you, sir, and to obey you in all that is right’” (Bronte 250). From the beginning, Jane sees Rochester as a sort of messiah. Due to this, she refuses to marry him for she believes they will never truly be equals. However, as the novel progresses, Jane goes through internal developments that enable her to realize that her and Rochester can be equals. She realizes her self-worth and finds a balance between her principles and feelings. In one of the final passages of the novel, Jane says that her and Rochester have been married for ten years and she is “[her] husband’s life as fully as he is [hers]” (Bronte PAGE NUMBER). Here, we can see the Jane and Rochester are equals. This supports Joshua’s claim, for their relationship is only successful because of their equality. Rochester is no longer Janes “master” and she still remains her own-self.

Furthermore, Jane says “I care for myself. The more solitary, the more friendless, the more unsustained I am, the more I will respect myself” (Chapter 27, Bronte.) This statement greatly represents the growth that Jane has undergone. She no longer dreads the solitude that once haunted her because she respects herself enough to realize that she did not deserve to experience such great dismay. Through independence and self-recognition, Jane has discovered the importance of loving oneself. Without the reliance on the thoughts of others, the once extremely troubled girl found bliss through a lack of outside control. In regards to her relationship with Mr. Rochester, Jane understands that she must leave him behind to maintain her own well-being. She does not allow the wealth or proclaimed love from Rochester to skew her decisions and she does not linger to dominate the life of her lover. Instead, she moves forward to continue her endless pursuit of happiness and independence.

Bronte’s feminist ideas radiated throughout her novel Jane Eyre. There were many strong and clear examples of these ideas in Bronte’s protagonist, Jane, her personality, actions, thoughts and beliefs. From the beginning of the book, Jane’s strong personality and her lack of following social expectations were quiet clear. “Women of the Victorian era were not part of a man’s world, as they were considered below them.”(VanTassel-Baska, 4) The class divisions between a man and a woman were very distinctive. Jane however ignored this. When Jane first met Rochester, the whole scene presented a feminist portrait of Jane. A women walking alone in that era should never address a man, but Jane went out of her way to help Rochester stating that “if you are hurt, I can help” (Bronte, 98), Jane even let him place a hand on her shoulder. Jane believed that “women were supposed to be very calm generally, but women felt just as men felt” (Bronte, 116), which showed her perseverance and persistence in being independent and proving that men should be equal to that of women. This was of

Also, even though Rochester and Jane were of different classes, Charlotte Bronte presents him as an intelligent person. Both Edward and Jane enjoy conversations with each other. However, Jane does not express her feelings as clearly as Rochester does. So he dresses up as a gypsy and tries to find out what she thinks of the marriage, which everyone assumes that he will with Blanche. Although, both Jane Eyre and Rochester have are fond of each other, Edward was deceitful to Jane. For example, when Jane found out about Mr Rochester’s first wife, he first says that they can run away as ‘brother and sister’. However Jane refuses. Rochester tries another tactic and asks her to be his mistress. But Jane was too virtuous to accept the offer and had no other alternative but to leave Thornfield.

Rochester. At first Jane sees him as rude and disrespectful due to his cold and gruesome remarks, but it is her fight and how Jane stands up for herself that leads to one of the most known relationships in literature. Eventually Rochester asks Jane for her hand in marriage but at the scene of the wedding, we come to learn, that Rochester is already married to an insane woman, living in his attic, named Bertha. With this Rochester asks Jane to run away with her to Europe, this is exactly where Jane is faced with a very hard decision between following her heart as everyone wants to do, or keeping her respect and dignity. We can see the respect Jane now has from Rochester when he says to her, “I was wrong to attempt to deceive you; but I feared a stubbornness that exists in your character” (Bronte 354). This shows that Jane has gained Rochester’s respect and the ‘stubbornness’ in Jane’s character is the best thing for her, for without this trait Jane could never gain respect from others, especially men, in his novel. Knowing that Jane has decided to leave her, Rochester begins to persuade Jane to stay with him. He says, “Oh, Jane, this is bitter! This – this is wicked. It would not be wicked to love me” (Bronte 355). Jane replies, “It would to obey you” (Bronte 355), showing that she will not give into his pleading, regardless of how much she loves him because to obey him would lead to the loss

Moreover, Jane is dominant, assertive and lives according to her values. Though Jane is nothing more than an impoverished governess, she can retort to her haughty employer Rochester: "Do you think, because I am poor, obscure, plain, and little, I am soulless and heartless? - You think wrong!" And there are no deceit between Jane and Mr. Rochester; rather they converse as almost equals even though they are of different classes and Mr. Rochester is over twenty years Jane's superior in age. In many ways, Mr. Rochester speaks to Jane rudely and sharply; he is commanding in nature and often very diminutive toward her although never in a nasty manner. She criticizes him though, that he is no superior for age or experience but rather because she is a paided governess in his charge. When asked if she feels he is handsome, she blurts without even thinking