Edward Rochester – a man with a grim, dark face & stern features, a man with a past unclear only to be revealed as unclean, and a man with perhaps questionable behavior.Yet, even with all his flaws, externally and internally, this is the man of “every woman’s dream” (see video below). & yes, every woman’s notion of Edward Rochester is different because he is such an emotionally complex man, but undeniably, he is attractive.
even after all his mistakes and faults,
that makes us unable to do anything but to forgive and continue to love him?
Rochester is a wild and passionate man. His excitingly mysterious personality is refreshing compared to the stale, static life we often lead. He is unafraid to express his emotions. He is free with his words and passions – a bit too excessively even. He dared to dream.
Just as Jane Eyre (& yours truly) finds Rochester’s personality refreshing, Jane’s personality to him is also a breath of fresh air. It is her spirit that he is attracted to and is captivated by. He understands and greatly values her for who she is underneath it all.
We love Rochester first because he is a passionate man that speaks the language of our hearts and sings the melody that the world has stopped our spirits to sing. He wants to release us from the cage that society has placed us in.
We love Rochester second because he loves us for our minds. “Your mind is my treasure” (Jane Eyre, Chapter 27). Such words from a man who has gone through the painful mistakes and fruitless sins of shallow relationships for beauty, money, and social considerations; such words from a man who’s yearned for so long for a kindred soul to which he finally finds in Jane, we cannot help but to take these words to heart with genuineness.
We know for certain that it is our spirits that speak to each other and that appearances are of no consequence; after all, he is no beauty himself.
As much as we want romanticize and idealize Rochester (as he does with Jane), we cannot ignore his humanness and ugly crimes – the most fatal one of hiding and lying about his marriage and believing that he can get away with it as well as trying to make a wife in his eyes and develop her into his fantasies.
He forces us into his fairy tales that he uses to evade reality, and they are so far from reality. As much as we wish to indulge ourselves in them with him, we know who we truly are – his fantasies simply are not what we are. We have to force ourselves away from this unhealthy relationship.As painful and horrible as it is to turn away from him, we must, because indulging in such unrestrained passion will only lead to destruction as reality unfolds.
Many people will ask how can you love this man so much? He locked a wife in the tower, led a bachelor’s life, hid the truth from you, and hid the truth from you?
To them, we say, have man no sin? Have you no sympathy for a man who has suffered and isolated himself from the world because of guilt? He may be imperfect, but neither am I perfect. He has his past, and I have mine.
And mind you, we are not so foolish to just blindly accept and condone and excuse his wrongs. Oh outside spectator, you do not understand how much strength was actually required to leave him because of how morally wrong the situation was. Forgiveness may have been given easily, especially with our unconditional love for him, but wrongs cannot be vanished into thin air.
Rochester does indeed suffer and is punished severely for his sins, and he is left blinded and crippled for them.
We love Rochester third because, in the end, he can finally see us and accept us for who we are, as we are, in reality. As damaged as he may be, the spirit that lived inside of him that first responded to the calling within us is still there. He is still just as eager to receive us as the first time when he came across our spirits.
His once excessive choleric temperament is controlled. He does not place us on his own idealistic pedestal anymore. We are now truly his equally, and we can live side by side as equals.
He is ready to truly love.
He says, “I will choose –
her I love best.”
No comments:
Post a Comment