I think he did it to salve his own conscious!
Posted by Cassia on October 16, 1997 at 13:34:45:
In response to For pity's sake, written by Sherry on October 14, 1997 at 20:15:47
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] ] ] They both deserve to live happily ever after!!
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] He's still a jerk in my books. I can find no evidence tht he has really changed. Perhaps reader tend to love him because Jane, who we are so fond of loves him. I do not find this enough reason to change my opinion.
] He makes the supreme sacrifice (that of risk to his own life)
] to save a woman who has been the bane of his existence since first they met. I would say that you have maybe missed his essence. This is a man who longs to be good, to be innocent again, and sees in Jane his way back to some semblance of the youth he once was. Can't you feel a little pity for this man? He is gruff and hard because of his disillusionment with life not because it is his nature to be so in fact it is his nature to be exactly opposite that is what he connects to in Jane. You can not admire Janes soul without admiring Rochesters because they are reflected in each other.
That he is gruff and hard I agree with. In the course of the novel he made many bad choices after a single disagreeable event (his marriage) was thrust upon him. I think it was his reaction to what happened to him that makes me not like the man. He chose a life of dissipation, no one made him do that, he chose to deceive Jane at the risk of distroying her character which was the very thing that attracted him. No where does it mention if he sought legal remedy to rid himself of his wife which while costly (in addition to legal fees, most likely it would have cost him his wife's estate), was possible but no one could argue he didn't have grounds. It seems to me he went into a decades long sulk, only to emerge from it when he met Jane.
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