Newest Victim: Edward Rochester

Jane Eyre is a compelling novel, when read carefully, because there are endless possibilities of places for your interests to settle upon. Today, I pick Rochester. Patriarch, masculine man, dark and shadowy, right? Eh. Maybe not so much. In taking a closer look at Jane Eyre, it is possible to find Rochester at a crux of vulnerability, never truly sharing his story or existing for himself, he is not more than a character in Jane's world whose sole purpose is to be the physical realization of Jane's emotional weight, a bucket into which she can pour her every emotion and fill her desires. Rochester: the projection screen. Blank, white, a canvas ready to become whatever the other wills it to be. He is what Jane projects onto him, the darkness, the ambiguity, secrets and manly stature. Every tale is of her accord, every word is as it is by means of her memory, the secrets are secrets for no other reason than that she doesn't know them - but he does. Could it be? Really? Is Rochester the victim? Is he the objectified being? I'm afraid so, at least in this context. We've discussed in class that in most cases, when rights are given to one, they are taken from another. So then, what the Gothic novel has done here, by elevating the woman and policing the heroine, has created the objectification of another, in this case - Rochester. He is the other half of Jane's embodied relationship with her emotions, struggling to complement instead of overwhelm. What does this mean for the men of Jane Eyre, whose stories get told for them?