Introduction

52
Vanessa Mangione
could try to catch a husband who would care for them, as Georgina Reed and
Blanch Ingram choose to do. In contrast to those two choices, Jane finds a way to
express herself and to eventually balance her desires, which become almost overbearing
with the appearance of Rochester, so that she is no longer able to ignore
them and act within expected norms.
When Jane Eyre appeared in 1847 critics were eager to find out if Currer Bell,
Brontë’s pseudonym, was a man or a woman. Showalter comments that the character
of Rochester in particular provoked a whole range of negative criticism ranging
“from bafflement to horror” (115). 32 Even though he was a convincing character,
it was argued that no decent girl could ever love this brutish hero. Still, in
the novel exactly such a girl loves him. Where men saw Rochester as tyrannical,
female novelists recognised the value of such a hero, since the “brute flattered the
heroine’s spirit by treating her as an equal rather than as sensitive, fragile fool, who
must be sheltered and protected” (Showalter 117). Even though Brontë confessed
to her friend James Taylor that she had had difficulties in constructing a male
character, her creation is still considered to be one of the most popular male protagonists
in English literature:
In delineating male character, I labour under disadvantages; intuition and
theory will not adequately supply the place of observation and experience.
When I write about women, I am sure of my ground – in the other case I
am not so sure. (qtd. in Showalter 109)
Rochester’s character, however, was not as new and innovative as Showalter depicts
it to be. He is actually a remnant of the previous Romantic period, since he is
a direct descendent of Lord Byron’s protagonists. Byron’s influence on the Brontë
sisters is indisputable; various forms of the Byronic hero pervade their works.
Their idea of love in particular, as vital to give meaning to life and as fatal and as
burdened with guilt, is a Byronic concept. Moglen even argues that the articulated
ambitions of the original Byronic hero could be considered to be “the repressed
needs and feared passions of Charlotte’s “other” self” (26). She continues by
pointing out that when Charlotte first heard of Lord Byron he had already died
and his name had been linked interchangeably with everything that was prohibited
and audacious. Nevertheless, as Gérin argues, Brontë provides her heroes with
32 Brontë however defends Mr Rochester against his critics: “Mr Rochester has a thoughtful nature
and a very feeling heart; he is neither selfish nor self-indulgent; he is ill-educated, misguided;
errs, when he does err, through rashness and inexperience; he lives for a time as too many other
men live, but being radically better than most men, he does not like that degraded life, and is
never happy in it. He is taught the severe lessons of experience and has senses to learn wisdom
from them. Years improve him; the effervescence of youth foamed away, what is really good in
him still remains. His nature is like wine of good vintage; time cannot sour, but only mellows
him.” (Charlotte’s Letter to W.S. Williams 14 August 1848 in: Wise, Thomas James and John
Alexander Symington (Eds), The Brontës. Their Lives, Friendships and Correspondenc. Oxford: Basil
Blackwell, 1989.)