<p>I will put Cloud Atlas on my Kindle and try to catch-up. A departure for me. New author, new literary style.</p>
<p>Re: Adele, I just always assumed that Rochester honestly didn’t really know. He was sometimes rather cruel to her but the fact that he gave her a home, for me, humanized him as a character.</p>
<p>^^^ Ditto re Adele and Rochester does provide a home for Bertha rather than subject her to the type of institutionalized care common for the mentally ill at that time.</p>
<p>I still think that a better Rochester would have given Bertha a place to live where she could be outdoors, under strict supervision. (But that would have been a whole different story.) Ferndean would actually probably have been fine…much better than the attic…it was, after all, a good enough place to serve as a home for Jane and Rochester in the end!</p>
<p>“Madwoman in the Attic” makes this comment about Ferndean:</p>
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<p>I guess I find it hard to be any kind of Rochester apologist. He could have told Jane that Ad</p>
I know this discussion ended in 2012, but the classics are always worth returning to, right? I ran across this essay in the current issue of the Harvard Divinity Bulletin. It’s one woman’s interesting analysis of her relationship with Jane Eyre, and her epiphany about Bertha Mason: http://bulletin.hds.harvard.edu/articles/summerautumn2016/bertha-mason-sacred
What a beautiful essay, Mary. Very moving. Thanks for posting it.