Edward Rochester and the margins of masculinity in Jane Eyre and Wide Sargasso Sea.

Papers on Language and Literature, Summer 1994 by Kendrick, Robert

With the exception of Edward's offer of marriage at Thornfield, Jane postpones/defers each of his requests for reflection within the dominant narrative. The marriage proposal is, of course, postponed indefinitely by Richard Mason's revealing of the truth about Bertha during the ceremony. The "outing" of Edward's secret, and Jane's subsequent departure, forces Rochester to recognize his insufficiency and his lack of

legitimate subjectivity. Without a sane English wife to recognize him as a legitimate patriarch in the home, the dominant fiction of identity is left incomplete. The position of libertine that Rochester has affected in the past, though not legitimized by moral codes, was certainly not without precedent in his class, and the role of sexual master represents a return to a position of patriarchal power. However, during the affair with Celine Varens this imagining has also demonstrated Rochester's own insufficiency, and he lives with the reminder of this (for him) embarrassing union. Likewise, his posturing as a brooding Byronic hero does not result in his successful conquest of Jane. What he is left with after her departure is the inescapable reflection of his own "error," as he puts it (220), and with the departure of the woman whom he thought he could make into a properly reflective wife, what he "has sought for twenty years" (220), he is left with only his failure to become a mature male subject within the framework of the dominant narratives.

The last the reader sees of Edward before the scenes at Ferndean, he tells Jane "Little Jane's love would have been my best reward, without it, my heart is broken. But Jane will give me her love: yes--nobly, generously" (321, emphasis mine). This remark shows that Bronte's Rochester, though perhaps more courteous than Rhys's, nevertheless feels compelled to belittle what he cannot have. Bronte does not present us with a narrative of Edward's forced confrontation with his own inadequacy following Jane's departure--this is, after all, Jane's story, and how could she narrate what she hasn't seen? However, the old butler's recounting of the events leading up to and including the fire provide the reader with a crucial moment in the development of Edward's character.

Rochester is said to have "broke off all acquaintance with the gentry, and shut himself up like a hermit, at the Hall" (430), and is said to become "dangerous" after Jane's departure. In short, he begins to resemble Bertha. Rhys's Edward "follows" Bronte's in that his inability to realize himself along the lines of the dominant narrative results in his violent withdrawal from the environment and people which make his successful reflection impossible. Though Rhys's Edward can "escape" to England, it is in England, presumably his last refuge, where Bronte's Edward finds himself trapped, with no retreat offered other than back into the walls in which both he and his wife are imprisoned. Ironically, the woman Rochester had previously wished to negate now becomes, along with Grace Poole, the sole "reflector" of his person, even if her role is only to show Edward what he is not, rather than what he is or might have been. As such, he cannot suffer her loss, even though he has wished to lose her for some time. The ex-butler recounts that he witnessed "Mr. Rochester ascend through the skylight on to the roof: we heard him call 'Bertha!' We saw him approach her; and then ma'am, she yelled, and gave a spring, and the next minute she lay smashed on the pavement" (431). Rochester risks his life attempting to save her, though he has regarded her as a "hag"(303) and an impediment to his happiness in the past. If one were to ignore Rhys's text, it would be possible to see this as a final acceptance of Bertha as his wife, and a recognition of his own responsibility to defer to an authority other than his own--neglecting to attempt to save her would be tantamount to delivering a death sentence, and thus an assumption of the power to judge and "let it be right." In light of Rhys's text, however, it is difficult to see this episode as the moment of Rochester's turning away from the violence of his past. He does not call out "Antoinette," but "Bertha," indicating that he does not wish to save his wife, but the wife that he has created. In either case, though more strongly in the latter, it is the final and complete demonstration of his own lack of patriarchal power. Mrs. Rochester does not acknowledge his hailing of her as "Bertha" and jumps to her death. This refusal to answer is, in a sense, the final negation of the "authoritative" Edward Rochester. She does not attack him as she has in the past, an act that partially affirms his position by virtue of its recognizing him as a representative, if not a holder, of patriarchal authority and thus a suitable target for her rage. Rather, she simply ignores the hailing, and her refusal to acknowledge him, even with mad laughter, leaves the exchange in suspension as she jumps. Even though she is dead, she is not "finished," because she does not die as "Bertha Rochester." She dies unrecognized, and unrecognizing, and her remains remain the disruptive supplement to the narrative of English normalcy in which Rochester participates.