Jane Eyre

[osprey_archer]

Rochester is such an asshole. This was my main takeaway from my recent rewatch of the 2006 Jane Eyre miniseries: Rochester is such an asshole, and this is true even if you leave aside the whole mad wife in the attic thing. He’s an asshole to Adele (always running the child down to her face: “All she cares about is presents” and so forth) and to Jane. The way that he grinds his fake courtship of Blanche Ingram in her face is just cruel (and cruel to Blanche, as well!) and seems designed to grind down Jane’s sense of self-worth, not just to corner her into saying yes to marrying him, but also as a failsafe that will soften her up for the whole “let’s live together unmarried in the south of France!” fall-back plan should someone expose Bertha’s existence.

It’s not that I thought Rochester was such a wonderful person before; I had a lively sense of his limitations as a human being when I first watched and loved this miniseries a decade ago. But upon rewatching it, I found that my feelings about him have tipped over from “flawed but compelling romantic hero” to “oh God Jane run.”

Comments

[kore]

Rosamond can drop in for tea, at first to try to get news of St John out of them, and then she can learn to appreciate better things, like Greek and maybe fancy baking.

[osprey_archer]

Rosamond dodged the hell out of a bullet when she married someone else. GOOD LIFE CHOICES, ROSAMOND.

[kore]

I also like how Rosamond seems to be a kind of reflection of Blanche -- she clearly likes Jane and is basically a good person.