Classist, sexist, and adultering; prone to cruelty and dissipation; Jane's worst tempter, and all in all, not a bad guy. Helen Burns said that we are all "burdened with faults in this world," and for no character in Jane Eyre is that more true than for Edward Rochester. Unlike other characters, though, Rochester sees what he is doing. He was raised to possess most of his faults and commit most of his transgressions, and then spent much of his adulthood trying to deal with them and take back his life.
Edward Rochester grew up in a time full of sexism with a social caste system firmly in place. He was the son of a wealthy landowner with a respected name. This upbringing trained him well in all the vices of upper class Victorian society. His father and brother were both naturally avaricious men, focusing their lives around money and property, which is why Edward was sent to the West Indies for a prearranged marriage. His father and his brother did not care enough about Edward or about his future bride to look very far into the matter. They saw a chance to provide Edward with the money they deemed necessary and sent him on his way. After this kind of upbringing, it is no wonder that Edward Rochester has issues with money and women. He was taught from birth that money was the center of the universe and that women were merely a tool to get what you wanted or a trophy to be dolled up and put on display. These were lessons that almost took. Almost. The reader can see by the way he fights against circumstance that he has a soul built for better things, as this paper will prove. First, though, we are going to talk a bit about Rochester's foibles.
Rochester is incredibly possessive of Jane. One proof of that is that he continually calls her his "lamb" or his "bird." A typical example is when Jane runs out to meet him the night before their thwarted wedding he says, "now I seem to have gathered up a stray lamb in my arms: you wandered out of the fold to seek your shepherd, did you, Jane?" This and many other sheep and shepherd motifs show that Rochester wants to be Jane's protector and caretaker. The bird references are often about birds as pets. He once calls her a "wild, frantic bird that is rending its own plumage in its desperation." The comment makes the plumage, or the show, the important part of the bird, not the freedom. This is in line with one time that Jane calls herself "a jay in borrowed plumes," in reference to the silk clothing that Rochester insists on buying her. She doesn't want to be a pet bird. Jane sums up Rochester's two pet names for her nicely when she says, "lamb-like submission and turtle-dove sensibility, while fostering his despotism more, would have pleased his judgment, satisfied his common-sense, and even suited his taste, less." Rochester has been born and bred to view women in terms of pets - something to be taken care of and dressed up. Jane realizes, though, that that is not Rochester's true nature, else he never would have fallen in love with her.
Rochester thinks of his money as a way to acquire and keep Jane. As soon as she agrees to marry him he tries to buy her jewelry and dresses and keep her like one of his mistresses. This is the only way he has been taught to please women, and he does believe that he is just giving Jane equal treatment. He says himself, "every privilege, every attention shall be yours, that I would accord a peer's daughter, if about to marry her." Jane, though, sees the reality behind it. She comments that "his smile was such as a sultan might, in a blissful and fond moment, bestow on a slave his gold and gems had enriched." She does not wish to be bought and petted, but to be loved and respected. Rochester argues that it is merely Jane's pride keeping her from accepting the gifts. Since Jane is telling the tale it is easy to assume that she has a warped perspective here and is not seeing that plain generosity is what he is offering her. I would be persuaded thus, in fact, except for the scene right before she left for the Reed home. He not only asks her how much money she possesses, but smiles when he sees its scantiness. This is a reminder to him of his superiority and his position as master. He then offers her more than thrice what she should be paid in salary. It is his first generous gift to her and the first time he has to deal with her rejecting his gifts. He had assumed that she would be grateful. Gifts would be a form of power to produce gratefulness and would give her an obligation to return to him. She immediately rejects this form of mastery. He then doesn't give her her whole salary and tells her that he is her banker for forty pounds. This allows him to still claim he has given her fifty as well as keep some that actually belongs to her, giving her a different reason to return to him. She then tells him that she needs to find a new situation, which takes away his sense of power that he can keep her. He tries to take back her entire salary, which would rend her completely unable to leave him. Jane continues to thwart him at every turn. Rochester is at a loss as to what he can now do as he has never been taught how to freely give and take affection.
Rochester does know, though, that the rules he was brought up by are not the best ones. He has therefore tried to make up his own moral code. Though his system may be heretical, we see throughout the book that he does have a system of personal laws and tries to stick to them. We are introduced to this in his second interview with Jane: "...at this moment I pass a law, unalterable...unheard-of combinations of circumstances demand unheard-of rules." I believe that already he has picked Jane out as a possible companion and is referring to his desire to marry again. Jane tells him that he can't just say "Let it be right." Rochester picks this idea up and repeats the phrase, giving it emphasis, in case the first time the reader did not get the connection to "Let there be light." "Let there be light," is God's first command from the Bible; this shows us how Rochester is playing God by making up his own rules. He knows that he is miserable; he tells Jane that happiness is denied to him. He insists that because of this he can live outside of God's and society's dictates in order to create a form of happiness for himself instead of accepting the lot given to him. His problem, though, is not that he doesn't accept society's dictates, it is that he is trying to have total control over right and wrong. As the book develops we see this need for control displayed over and over, from the games he plays with Jane trying to gain her affection until he tries to force her to stay with him as his mistress. He is a passionate man trying to burn his own way by fire.
This type of godless behavior is wrong, but we are not to assume that this is the only extreme that Brontė is decrying. If Rochester blazes a trail with his fire, he finds a natural comparison in St. John who's flood surrounds and then freezes, leaving a path of glacial destruction. While Rochester tries to make his own rules, St. John rigidly allows no deviations from the path. St. John's sense of power and his need to control Jane does not come from desperately clinging to happiness but a sincere belief that his is the way of God - that he possess the way and the life. This is not humility or compassion. St. John and Rochester also differ in their desires in life. St. John Rivers is clearly a reference to St. John the Baptist, and like his namesake, St. John lives a life of mission while Rochester lives a life of passion. This reminds me of Luke 7:33-34, "For John the Baptist came neither eating bread nor drinking wine, and you say "He has a demon." The Son of Man came eating and drinking, and you say, "Here is a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and 'sinners.'" The difference between St. John the Baptist's "hair-shirt and desert" way of life and Christ's "wine and parties" way of life strikes a similar contrast to Rivers and Rochester. Not that Rochester was perfect - he was, in fact, far from it - but Christ came to shake up the church and its rules and hierarchy, to live and die full of passion for his people, not to trod the narrow road set by the Pharisees.
The most notable difference between Rochester and St. John is that they are constantly described by fire and ice. Fire comes up all around Rochester with "flaming and flashing eyes," a brain afire with impatience," a "hot and strong grasp," and an "eye that was both spark and flint." St. John is ice with an "avalanche" in his anger and "frozen sea" in his displeasure. He admits that he is "cold: no fervour infects" him, and around him Jane "fell under a freezing spell." This comparison tells a lot about the men. Ice freezes and destroys; water puts out fires. This life is stagnant and passionless. Ice also crushes things in its path and catches boats unawares with the larger part of the iceberg unseen. St. John is a hidden malice for Jane and would kill her with a passionless existence. He would quell her inward fire and make her a mere shell of a person. Rochester, on the other hand, gains more fire the longer he is with Jane. Fire brings warmth, energy, movement, and passion, but taken to an extreme it burns, frenzies, goes wild, and turns into lust. This shows the powerful nature of Rochester. He does not crush or freeze like St. John, but would envelop and swallow up Jane none the less.
Throughout we have seen Rochester in all his questionable morality. Now it will be seen how Rochester proves himself at the end. Jane's choice of whether or not to stay with Rochester could have taken the novel in two directions. If she had agreed to go with Rochester, then they would have been in France when the house burned down. Rochester never would have lost his hand or his sight. Bertha still would have died, so they could have returned in two months and gotten married. Jane would have inherited the twenty thousand pounds, and, never having discovered her cousins, they would have kept it all. Had Jane gone with Rochester he would have back everything he lost and he never would have gone through the pain of separation. Even so, when Jane returns he takes her back with open arms and open heart. Not only that, but he is thankful to God for giving him understanding and showing him the right path. He finally has found the rules he sought for in life, and God rewards him for his free love.
In the end this book comes around full circle and so shall this paper. I began with a quote from Helen Burns who, like her last name, is another character with inward fire. Her passion burns for God and for her fellow man. She is the truest example of Christianity in the book, showing compassion for others and acceptance of herself and her situation. At the end of the book we see that Rochester has come to be more like Helen. He has accepted his life and learned to pray. If he had gone back and made the choice for Jane, he would have chosen to do it all over again the same way. He has found a peace where, as Helen said, "revenge never worries my heart, degradation never too deeply disgusts me, injustice never crushes me too low: I live in calm, looking to the end."