Rochester Through Different Eyes: Jane Eyre vs. Wide Sargasso Sea

Introduction: Two Novels, One Enigmatic Man

An orphaned girl. A mad woman locked and hidden away. A small village school that is both a refuge and another form of adversity. These things and many more appear both in Charlotte Brontë's classic novel Jane Eyre and the companion piece written to it almost one hundred and twenty years later by Jean Rhys, Wide Sargasso Sea. The large similarities in plot — and in the two protagonists — are not accidental; Wide Sargasso Sea is in many ways an exciting and updated reimagining of Brontë's masterpiece. The overlap does not occur only through similarities, however, but through the direct connection of several characters.

Rhys takes Bertha Mason, Edward Rochester's mad and attic-imprisoned wife in Jane Eyre, and traces her life as a child in the Caribbean, through her marriage and subsequent imprisonment in England, and up to that fateful moment when she departs the attic with a lighted candle in hand. Instrumental in both the story of Antoinette — Bertha's real name, as we learn in Sargasso — and Jane's story is Edward Rochester, an enigmatic man who can be viewed in many ways across both books. His characterization seems to be left purposefully ambiguous by both novelists; he is neither wholly condemnable nor entirely redeemable. Rochester is selfish, well-meaning, cowardly, and independent — the quintessential Byronic hero.

Yet in many ways, though Jane Eyre spends much time documenting Rochester's Byronic flaws and charting the protagonist's reactions to them, it seems to focus more on the "hero" aspect of this label. By contrast, the view of him presented in Wide Sargasso Sea is far more direct in exposing the weakness and vulnerability of his character.

The Role of First-Person Narration

The differences in how Edward Rochester is characterized in Jane Eyre and Wide Sargasso Sea are ultimately a result of the way in which he is perceived and hence portrayed by the narrator. In both books, the first-person narration means that any characterization of anyone or anything introduced in the novel will be colored by the narrator's own beliefs and judgments. The identities of these narrators and their intimate connection to the action of the stories make them all the more susceptible to this effect.

Jane's Perspective and Her Sympathetic Rochester

Jane Eyre is narrated entirely by the heroine of the title, who falls in love with and ultimately marries Rochester. This state of affairs both colors and rather obviously indicates her appraisal of Rochester as generally positive, despite the gloom that surrounds their relationship and her explicit acknowledgement of his shortcomings. In recounting how he told her of one of his previous passions — which a reader might interpret as evidence of his capriciousness and fleeting affections — Jane is instead impressed and enamored by the seeming depth of his feeling, noting how "he ground his teeth, and was silent: he arrested his step, and struck his boot against the hard ground" (Brontë, Chapter 15).

Though Jane's upbringing has not been easy, she has been surrounded by examples of what adult relationships look like, and though she holds a somewhat naive notion of those relationships early on, she manages to forge one for herself through her understanding of Rochester. Jane Eyre as a novel thus filters Rochester almost entirely through the eyes of a woman who loves him, inevitably softening the reader's judgment of his darker qualities.

Conclusion: A Darker Portrait

Neither Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre nor Jean Rhys' Wide Sargasso Sea offers an explicit judgment of Edward Rochester. Rather, in keeping with the tradition of the Byronic hero, he is presented 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 Sargasso Sea necessarily paints a much darker picture of Rochester than Jane Eyre, based on the perspectives of its narrators. Jane, Antoinette, and Rochester himself all perceive Rochester in different lights according to his actions toward them — and toward himself — and it is this difference in narrator that ultimately shapes the characterization of Edward Rochester across both novels.