Feminist writing about Mr Rochester

August 12, 2023 2:47 PM

Trying to find a feminist passage about Jane Eyre and Mr Rochester.

I would have read this a couple of decades ago, and it was not the main subject of the piece, but one of a series of examples of different power balances between men and women in fiction.

The writer suggests that Jane can only have Rochester once he becomes blinded in the fire toward the end of the book. It was quite a subtle point – more subtly than I've expressed it here.

I thought it was in The Female Eunuch but it's not. Where would I have read this?

posted by zadcat to Writing & Language (8 answers total)

Best answer: The Madwoman in the Attic?
posted by lesser whistling duck at 2:49 PM on August 12, 2023

Response by poster: I've never read The Madwoman in the Attic so it can't be that.
posted by zadcat at 3:30 PM on August 12, 2023

Best answer: Any chance you remember any of the other texts from the list of examples and if you are looking for a book or an article? My first guess would have been Madwoman in the Attic too, or maybe Kate Millett's Sexual Politics. I checked the latter and don't think that's the one you're looking for either. Still, it might be helpful to rule out possible sources.
posted by Ceridwen at 5:32 PM on August 12, 2023

I’ve definitely read/heard something like this, especially with it being about Rochester’s “diminished” state from his disability vs Eyre’s “elevated” state from her inheritance, but I can’t place it. Like you, I haven’t red The Madwoman in the Attic, so I’m curious what other answers you get.
posted by Francies at 6:17 PM on August 12, 2023 [1 favorite]

Best answer: I don't know the answer and haven't read anything that might be relevant. But I googled Madwoman in the Attic just because I was curious about it. It sounds like it was a seminal work in feminist literary scholarship. Since everyone seems to think it's the Madwoman in the Attic, I wonder if maybe the book was excerpted somewhere else where maybe the OP (and Francies) read it. If there's any possibility that's the case, it might be worth the OP's time to get a copy and flip through it just in case.
posted by If only I had a penguin... at 7:24 PM on August 12, 2023 [2 favorites]

Best answer: The theory that Jane and Rochester can only have an equal relationship once he's been injured and symbolically emasculated? I think I've read that in several places. There is a reference here, from an introduction to the novel by Joyce Carol Oates: "Rochester, following the novel’s design, must be altered too in some respect, but it is probably incorrect to read his blinding as a species of castration—as that perennial cliche of Brontë criticism would have it". If the text you are looking for only discusses Jane Eyre as an example, I think this may not be enough to go on to find it. Do you remember whether it was an academic text, lit crit, social history, gender politics or something else?
posted by paduasoy at 12:00 AM on August 13, 2023

Best answer: I recall reading this as well, in a literary-oriented blog like LitHub (I just searched LitHub's archives and can't find it, so it must have been another). The critic was making the point that the ending is actually sinister, that by inverting the gender politics of the era (they are not equals; Rochester is now wholly dependent on Jane), Bronte illuminates how just how bad things were for women in the mid-19th century. I think there was also a sense of foreboding, with the implication that Jane was going to "use" her power over R to get revenge for not only the way he treated her but also for poor mad Bertha.

It might have been something related to Wide Sargasso Sea? There were TV adaptations of both that and Jane Eyre in 2006 so this could have been a companion piece. (So, definitely not LitHub then, which only started in 2015.)
posted by basalganglia at 7:57 AM on August 13, 2023

Response by poster: Sounds like the notion I recall may have been expressed by multiple writers and critics.

Thanks all for the suggestions!
posted by zadcat at 10:57 AM on August 13, 2023 [1 favorite]