Mr Rochester is terrifying: why do we think he’s a romantic hero?

Would Jane Eyre have really been happy after the novel ended?

Across every culture, the deepest fear humans have is what lurks in the shadows of what we cannot see. From the time we huddled around fires in the grasslands, we have suppressed that intense, ever present fear of the unpredictable. You can call that unseen pain, violence, betrayal, terror and grief by any name, and explain it in any language and under any religion, but we all fear what we cannot ever see arriving.

Think back to any jump-scare or twist you remember being particularly frightened by; the real fear is not in the badly animated water ghost, or the revelation that the 6 year old is the killer, but in the fact you could not have predicted it. The unpredictable has lurched out of the dark and clawed away at the little comforting lies we tell ourselves regarding probability, security, and trust. We tell ourselves that our civilisations are safe, our economies resilient, our minds stable, our jobs secure, and our loved ones on our side. We don’t know that. No one knows any of that. But life is unbearable if you stare into the total reality that you cannot predict, prepare or prevent the unseen terror, pain and loss that awaits you.

Which brings me to Jane Eyre.

I’d argue, as someone who has reread the book since I sat huddled over my schoolbooks moping over a boy, that the monster was never the mad wife in the attic. Bertha, despite having ample opportunity, never attempts to kill Jane. Despite being presented as some shadowy dark poltergeist roaming the corridors at night, forever separating Jane from her lover with her marriage certificate to him, I’d say the real monster is, very definitively, Mr Edward Rochester himself.

Let’s look at the facts we know about our dashing, wronged hero:

• Married Bertha Mason for her money
• Promptly locked her up in an attic and hid her from the world as an embarrassment
• Began an affair with a French woman (Damaging her ability to marry and find happiness while knowing he couldn’t marry her himself as it would be bigamy)
• Then blamed said French woman for being unfaithful to him when she found happiness elsewhere while still hiding that he was married -and cheating- himself
• Pursued 18 year old Jane knowing her extensive trauma and the fact he was married, and endangered her life with his wife still living in the same house
• Then decided to show his new bride to his wife and loudly express how mad she is and why he did it.

This is not, obviously, a man I would ever marry. This is not a man any woman should marry given his extensive adulterous and abusive conduct to vulnerable women. Look at the partners he chooses;

• Bertha Mason, an immigrant facing racial discrimination in his home country and with a history of mental illness
• An unnamed French actress who was not from his class or income bracket and thus vulnerable to economic exploitation and social ostracism as his unmarried mistress who then falls pregnant
• Jane Eyre, an 18 year old penniless orphan – serial abuse victim- and his employee.

This man is a predator who targets women without the support networks necessary to finance themselves or gain support. His attachment style is complete and total control; he manipulates and plays on Jane’s emotions throughout the novel and hides and manipulates his reality to groom her (and I have no doubt, his other former lovers).

I refuse to believe that a man that completely sociopathic in his actions could suddenly realise he was a bad guy who shouldn’t cheat on women or lie to them. He justifies every action he makes in the novel by centering himself as the victim: he suffered when he had to lock his mad wife in his attic, he suffered when his French mistress he was cheating with left him, and he suffered when Jane decided she didn’t want to stay with a manipulative compulsive liar. He even suffered when he was forced to save his wife from burning to death after imprisoning her for decades.

The idea that Jane would have been happily married to him is not just improbable: it’s scary that society has accepted it so readily. I love complex characters and nothing is more boring than a cardboard cut out hero, but I think Charlotte Brontë is kidding herself when she finishes what a can only describe as the 1800s version of YOU with Jane finding happiness with a serial abuser- her abuser.

So can we have a TV adaptation or film that actually addresses his character as he really is? We romanticise predators so much in literature and film that a man who locked his wife in an attic while having affairs with vulnerable women is now a byword for true love overcoming the odds.

Jane wouldn’t have been happy. She would have ended up being a terrible dowdy woman who was tying him down and boring him in his eyes (eye?). He would have ended up hating her and cheating, if not having her bumped off or imprisoned. Maybe the correct sequel title is The Mad Woman In The Cellar.

We fear the unknown: I’d argue we fear failing to see the patterns and warning signs along the way just as much, particularly after experiencing a traumatic deception, betrayal or event. While I hesitate to victim blame, I have to say, Jane should have kept running like hell away from the scariest man in romantic literature.