Mr. Rochester Villian or Victim?

Question

This question is targeted at people who read both Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte and Wide Sargasso Sea ( tells the story of the mad woman locked up at Thornfield) by Jean Rhys.

The two books have a different portrayal of Mr. Rochester. I only read the back of Wide Sargasso sea and it seemed to me that the Mr. Rochester was made to be a villian in this books.

So I have to ask someone who read both books, if he is a villian or a victim. Tell me in what aspects are we to sypathize with him and what ways is his charachter tragically flawed in both of the novels.

Futher do you think it is fiar to write a book about someone else's Character and change the readers originall perception of the Character. Do you see this as feeding off of someone else's work or is it a genius as it tells the two parts of the story.

Answer 1

I found it very interesting to read about the 'mad woman in the attic'. For anyone that has not read these books I would reccomend reading Jane Eyre first but it is not essential.
Rochester is a lttle bit of both villain and victim - makes him a very human and complex character. (Antoinette is not entirely sympathetic.)
The marriage starts out full of hope and passion and soon is destroyed by obsession, cultural differences and madness.
Mr Rochester is an outsider in Jamaica and finds it hard to understand his wife and her family. He does suppress his wife (acting the villain) but partly in an attempt to protect her (here he's a victim of circumstances).
I enjoyed this prequel to Jane Eyre and appreciated the fleshing out of Rochester and the 'back story' on Bertha. It is not so easy to dismiss her character now.

Answer 2

He's a little bit of both. I believe that he was forced into and forced to stay in a marriage that wasn't right for either party. However planning to marry Jane while still married is villainous. Read both. I think that you'll find, like most people, Rochester is an interesting mix of good and evil.

Answer 3

It is hard to say if Rochester is a victim, indeed we only get to see his point of view, and not Bertha's in "Jane Eyre" if we are to take him at his word, he was forced by his father into a marriage of convenience in a foreign country, with a woman he only saw occasionally, but donned with beauty and money. Physical attraction is a powerful motive for bad decisions, and of course he must have been inflamed to do so or he would have not married her and go find his fortunes somewhere else like many others have done before him.
Rochester then proceeds to tell Jane, how after the marriage, Bertha by her vices, and he hints that she has duped him, with others more than once, and her drinking, begins to deteriorate in mind being heir to a family predisposed to mental illness. She breaks, Edward tries to find her some help to no avail, and then he discovers that his own father and brother knew all along about her family's urge to get her married, before she snapped. What a blow!
His own family, deceives him. He contemplates about finishing his own life, (not a very sane thought), and then as by inspiration he decides to go back home. Fate slaps him one more time, now he is rich, by the death of the other members of his family. He keeps Bertha as well as he can, considering the way mental health was approached in those days, he actually prolongs her life and his suffering, even when she attempts to kill him, more than once, he does not get rid of her. However libertine Edward Rochester was in the Continent, going after beauty, and being again badly repaid:
He takes charge of Adelle, who is not his daughter. Enter Jane plain and simple, but someone Rochester learns to love for more than her beauty, which it is the way love is supposed to be. Rochester loses his sight, his hand, and home, trying to save Bertha, anybody else, being a villain would have done nothing, after all, she was an obstruction to his plans, to marry Jane.

Now from Bertha's point of view: She is forced to enter a loveless marriage by her family, with a foreigner with no money, but with a good name. Edward Rochester is not a good looking man, there are possibly communication barriers, customs, between them . If I had to switch places with Bertha Mason, I would not like to be locked up, but one must consider what they did, to the insane in those days, from leaving them naked in the hallways to putting them into little cages the size of a coffin, and so much more. So weighing the alternative, I would prefer being locked up in a padded room, with my own personal attendant.
I think although flawed, Rochester is not a villain, only human.
Now for the "Wide Sargasso Sea", I have not read it, but I can tell you how I feel about "prequels" or "sequels", I read "Scarlet" the sequel to" Gone With The Wind" and although it was a good read it was not written by the original author and therefore it was not the same, the character's even though they were the same, lacked their indomitable soul. I feel it is not the work of a genius to write a sequel, only the work of someone who can not come up with classical, endearing characters themselves, or perhaps somebody too obsessed with the characters in the original book to let it go at the words "The End" Personally if I was a writer a would not dream upon touching a classic novel, I would rather write something of my own creation, good or bad, but mine. Considering that Bronte wrote her book first, perhaps we ought to see her point of view through the eyes of Jane :Rochester was a human being, capable of giving and deserving love.
I hope this helps you and I promise you I will read "Wide Sargasso Sea"

Answer 4

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