#readings that seek to turn Rochester into a complete forever villain

[princesssarisa]

#jane eyre#i think this is at the root of all the insidious and useless darcy vs rochester comparisons#because ultimately the wrong Austen heroes do is forgivable#the effects of their sins are more or less easily reversable#such as Darcy's pride and rudeness or Wentworth's pettiness#there is mercy being served with atonement#but it isn't a radical mercy#which I think is the point in Jane Eyre#Rochester's attempted bigamy is beyond justification#it can only be understood as sourced in stupidity and immaturity rather than in true wickedness#it can also be understood as part of the way he was raised up and the sins of his own father#but cannot be justified#Rochester can only be either hated and shunned or loved and forgiven#there's no possibility of indifference#the characters that create the most unhappiness to themselves and others in this novel are those who live without mercy#and those who act with mercy the opposite#Rochester's redemption is possible because he has shown mercy to others#at least sometimes like Adele and his first years with Bertha#st John can have everything in his favor and yet his mercilessness makes him a figure of fear for Jane#Jane's deliberate choice to show mercy again and again IS essential to the story#Jane Eyre is a bildungsroman AND a romance because of it#readings that seek to turn Rochester into a complete forever villain#i.e. he is a liar and he actually tortured Bertha into madness#are ultimately readings that want a reason to reject any sort of mercy for him#by making him incapable of good and repentance

Reblogging with the tags because they're important.

The more the time passes, the more convinced I am that a reading of Jane Eyre that omits the theme of mercy as key to the story is incomplete at best and bad at worst.