Jessica Leek

ENG420

Professor C. Frank

April 3, 2016

Mr. Rochester: A Burdened Caretaker or Selfish Aristocrat?

Life during nineteenth century Britain was not always the easiest, especially with its strict gender roles and separation of social classes. Adding mental illness, regardless of social class, did not make life any easier. Inside these mental asylums was confinement, filth, and lack of comfort while from the outside, the public had created a stigma around the issue of mental health (Metropolitan Commissioners of Lunacy 186). Life for mental patients seemed to be awful, regardless of your social status. However in the 1840’s, there began a change among the asylums and the public, shaping the future of these places of destitute (Metropolitan Commissioners of Lunacy 186).

One of the biggest criticisms with Mr. Rochester is Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre, was his treatment of his mentally ill wife, Bertha Mason Rochester. Some argue that Mr. Rochester’s care was better than what she would have received if she had been sent to a mental asylum during the Victorian Era while others argue that treating Bertha as a prisoner and a burden could only exacerbate her mental state. To create a stance from textual evidence, it is important that one should look at the lives of the mentally-ill during the 1800s to compare their treatment with Mr. Rochester’s treatment. Their living conditions, caretakers, and involvement with the public all played important factors in the quality of their lives.

When Jane is confronted with the truth of Mr. Rochester’s first wife on her wedding day, the reader gets to see how he’s kept Bertha hidden in the house for over ten years. “In a room without a window, there burnt a fire, guarded by a high and strong fender, and a lamp suspended from the ceiling by a chain. Grace Poole bent over the fire, apparently cooking something in a saucepan. In the deep shade, at the further end of the room, a figure ran backwards and forwards” (Brontë 380). Besides the few times that Bertha escapes in the novel to “burn people in their beds, to stab them, to bite their flesh from their bones, and so on — “, she is confined to this single bleak room with only the care of Grace Poole, a woman rumored to be a drunk (Brontë 391). But is this room a larger comfort of home than she would have received at a mental asylum?

In the 1840s, the Metropolitan Commissioners in Lunacy set out across England and Wales to investigate the conditions in mental asylums under the orders of Queen Victoria herself. In 1844 the Metropolitan Commissioners in Lunacy released a report archiving their investigations of every British asylum, private and pauper. The report sheds light on the awful conditions their ancestors faced in their “civilized and Christian country” by noting that the “violent or dangerous lunatics” were confined to single cells that were “strongly built, oftentimes underground, in them the afflicted creatures were bound in chains, and often subjected to the application of the lash, which, in the hand of the believer in the presence of an evil spirit, we can imagine would not be used either sparingly or gently” (Metropolitan Commissioners of Lunacy 163). This type of confinement “prompted them to act wrongly” (Metropolitan Commissioners of Lunacy 163). Could this mean that the confinement Bertha experienced prompted her outbursts against Mr. Rochester and Mr. Mason?

One of suggestions made by the Metropolitan Commissioners of Lunacy was to replace the “cold, dark, and ill-ventilated” basement cells with rendering the “basement story cheerful and airy, by marking the windows open upon green grass slopes, instead of into areas” (Metropolitan Commissioners of Lunacy 164, 165). Bertha’s windowless room in Thornfield Hall would’ve gone against the Commissions standards, as they condemned a West Auckland asylum for its lack of space and “only one unglazed window” (Metropolitan Commissioners of Lunacy 187). Her physical restraint by Mr. Rochester in which he “pinioned [her hands] behind her: with more rope, which was at hand, he bound her to a chair” using a cord from Grace Poole also would’ve gone against the Metropolitan Commissioners standards as well (Brontë 381). After one visit to an asylum, the Metropolitan Commissioners noted their dissatisfaction when finding “refractory patients were confined in strong chairs, their arms being also fastened to the chair” (Metropolitan Commissioners of Lunacy 186). Jane saw Mr. Rochester’s response to Bertha’s attack as a gentler approach by saying “He could have settled her with a well-planted blow; but he would not strike: he would only wrestle” (Brontë 381). The new standards set for British asylums were being raised every year yet Bertha was forced to remain in solitary confinement for years. Unfortunately for Bertha’s health, when Mr. Rochester brought her back to Thornfield Hall, his intentions were not for the benefit of Bertha but for the safety of his reputation for “society (in the West-Indies) associated my name and person with hers” (Brontë 398). When Jane confronts him after the wedding, Mr. Rochester calls Bertha “a demon” and “hideous” (Brontë 390, 391). While Jane understands that “she cannot help being mad”, she shows no other sympathy towards the woman like many of the public had already started to during that time and instead begins to feel self-pity for now her “prospects were desolate” (Brontë 393, 383).

From their visits, the Metropolitan Commissioners also found an increase in mental illness, especially among paupers (Metropolitan Commissioners of Lunacy, 165). The proper construction for pauper asylums was almost nonexistent due to costs and lack of funding, but it was noted as becoming “a matter of national interest and importance” (Metropolitan Commissioners of Lunacy 165). Mr. Rochester paid Grace Poole two hundred a year to take care of Bertha, surely with that amount of money back then, he could have afforded to send her to a more modern private mental asylum (Brontë 391). In the beginning of their report, the Metropolitan Commissioners noted a shift in the public’s view of the mentally ill by writing, “An equally striking change is perceptible in the disposition of the public generally on this matter. The time has not long gone by when the mere mention of it was received with aversion and disgust; this has now, however, we are glad to say, given place to an interest and attention which is not merely confined to the enlightened and benevolent portion of the community, but is shared in, to a very great extent, by the public at large.” This new perspective of the mentally-ill led to the creation of the new method, moral management. Created by William Tuke, a business man and philanthropist, moral management was a “humane and effective non-pharmaceutical approach to treating serious mental illness in the early 1800s.”

The moral management method was built on the idea that the environment of the mentally-ill played a large effect on their health and chance of recovery. The new method also looked at the “social, individual, and occupational needs” of the mentally-ill patients at the asylums (History of Psychiatry: Moral Management Movement). This method was promoted by the visit from the Metropolitan Commissioners, most likely happening in the higher class mental asylums first because they could afford the reconstruction. As of January 1, 1844, the Metropolitan Commissioners recorded that “the relative proportion of incurable paupers in asylums is double that of the private patients” (Metropolitan Commissioners of Lunacy 173). They accredited this lower number of incurable patients in private asylums to their access to the “benefit of early treatment” (Metropolitan Commissioners of Lunacy 173). It is possible that from their numbers, Bertha’s early submission to a private asylum at the beginning of their marriage may have saved her some of her sanity.

In this illustration of Bertha Mason by Edmund Garrett in 1897, the viewer can see how Bronte’s description demonized the character. In Jane’s initial description of Bertha when she appears in her room one night describes the face of a monster. “It was a discoloured face — it was a savage face. I wish I could forget the roll of the red eyes and the fearful blackened inflation of the lineaments…[its skin] was purple: the lips were swelled and dark; the brow furrowed; the black eye-brows wildly raised over the blood-shot eyes” (Brontë 371). This poor description of a person suffering from a severe mental illness coupled with Mr. Rochester rarely referencing her by name but instead as “demon” reveals how lowly Bertha Mason was viewed by those around her (Brontë 391). If the Metropolitan Commissioners of Lunacy were appalled by the physical conditions of mental asylums, how would they have viewed the emotional conditions Bertha was subjected to during her life at Thornfield?

With the knowledge present during the time of Jane Eyre’s 1847 publication, I believe that there would have been suitable alternatives for Bertha Mason. When Mr. Rochester tells Jane the story of how Bertha Mason came to be his wife by saying “I approached the verge of despair: a remnant of self-respect was all that intervened between me and the gulf. In the eyes of the world I was doubtless covered with grimy dishonour: but I resolved to be clean in my own sight…Thus, at the age of twenty-six, I was hopeless” it reveals how focused he was on his own feelings and reputation (Brontë 397, 398). His neglect of Bertha’s mental statement and inability to view her as more than a demon, led him to believe that hiding her away on the third floor would be the best situation for both of them. However the public may have been more understanding of Mr. Rochester’s hardships if he hadn’t treated Bertha so poorly and been honest from the start. From this I conclude that Charlotte Brontë’s character Mr. Rochester reveals a selfish aristocrat who didn’t carefully consider the options available for his mentally-ill wife.

Works Cited

Atherton, Carol. “The Figure of Bertha Mason.” Discovering Literature: Romantics and Victorians. British Library. Web. 4 Apr 2016. http://www.bl.uk/romantics-and-victorians/articles/the-figure-of-bertha-mason

Brontë, Charlotte. Jane Eyre. Ed. Richard Nemesvari. Toronto: Broadview Editions, 1999. Print

“Report of the Metropolitan Commissioners in Lunacy to the Lord Chancellor, Presented to Both Houses of Parliament by Command of Her Majesty.” The Westminster Review [London] Vol. 43. March-June 1845: 162–192.

“Successful Non-pharmaceutical Treatment of Mental Health Disorders in the 1800s.” Mental Health History: Moral Management Movement — 1800s | Successful Non-pharmaceutical Treatment. Association for Natural Psychology. Web. 29 Mar. 2016. http://www.winmentalhealth.com/psychology_history_moral_management.php