Wide Sargasso Sea is primarily narrated by Rochester's other wife, Antionette, who has not had the opportunity to develop the same ideas about marriage and love that Jane has. She does not mention Rochester -- indeed, is not aware of him, for the very simple reason that he has not entered her life -- until the third part of the novel, at which point she is already being held in the attic, seeing almost no one except for Grace Poole. Her sanity is also in some doubt for this section of the book, and Rochester is possibly at least partially to blame for the degradation of her mental state. All of this adds up to a confused and distant view of Rochester; Antoinette longs for him to rant her release, but he is not the focus of her anguish. The middle section of the novel is much more revelatory as it is actually narrated by the unnamed Rochester himself. Interestingly, this section does not soften the book's view of this multi-faceted man. Rochester says of his wedding, "It was all very brightly coloured, very strange, but it meant nothing to me. Nor did she, the girl I was to marry" (Rhys, 44). He freely admits to being opportunistic and almost emotionless; he is baffled that no one else notices how he is just going through the motions of this marriage. The fact that he has been paid 30,000 pounds to marry Antoinette ought to have been some clue that there was something to make this match less than desirable, but he...
This also reveals his ambition and foolish selfishness -- he is not even wise enough to be successfully selfish, ultimately damning himself to the years of tormented marriage that we see most directly in Jane Eyre, but which are also brewing downstairs during the third part of Wide Sargasso Sea. Though this later novel's characterization of Edward Rochester is in many ways as ambiguous as that of Jane Eyre's, the use of Rochester himself to narrate a section of the novel invites a more discerning view of the inner workings of this man, offering a much bleaker view both of the character and is future with Jane.
Neither Charlotte Bront's Jane Eyre nor Jean Rhys' Wide Sargasso Sea offers an explicit judgment of Edward Rochester. Rather, in keeping with the tradition o the Byronic hero, he is seen as a full human being -- specifically, a nineteenth-century man, with a dark nature and serious flaws and at the same time a strange magnetism and a well-meaning heart. But though neither novel makes a direct judgment, Wide Saragossa Sea necessarily paints a much darker picture of Rochester than Jane Eyre based on the points-of-view of the narrators. Jane, Antoinette, and Rochester himself all see Rochester in different lights based on his actions towards them (or himself), and it is this difference in narrator that affects the characterization of Edward Rochester.
