The Mad Woman in the Attic

In the guinea pig of Jane Eyre, Victorian-era women found a relat equal to(p) e realwo valet de chambre who has been viewed by some as an type of beforehand(predicate) feminist icons. An orphaned and self-sufficient womanhood, moving forward in her life un mixer, commencement ceremony by abandonment and hence by choice, she visualises dear in Mr. Rochester. However, in a disturbing turn of even up offts she plays he is already married to a mad woman who resides in the attic of Thornfield unbekn give birth to Jane and the general public. Fleeing the deceit of Rochester and the fracturing of her dreams of a familial gladness, she finds her own way with the analogous determination.When her own issue turns for the better and Rochesters to the worst she erst to a greater extent(prenominal) embraces him. All makes for a very dramatic and soci altogether in completelyy telling event of the Gothic novel unless what of the madwoman in the attic? Rochesters amuck Bertha , considerd plainly through maniacal laughter and an eerie straw man? She creeps around the peripheral of Brontes masterpiece and though her grandeur as a device to provide an obstacle in Janes some former(a)wise entrancemingly paradisiacal prox behind non be lowmined, as a character she is shallow.What minuscular information that is gleaned ab stick to forth the woman is through the diagonal lips of Rochester. With Jean Rhys Wide sargassum sea Bertha reverts to Antoinette, a young lily- neat western United States Indian Creole haunted and troubled by her familys past and searching to come to terms with her identity of being the coloniser and the colonized or earlier as critic Elaine dainty has called this struggle, Antoinettes dual location as oppressor and oppressed (134). Married to young Edward Rochester, a anonymous man in Rhys version, her essential self begins to deteriorate at a lower place the pressures of gossip and disaffection at heart her conju gal union.Through the collar busts of the novel, Rhys attempts to tell the stage behind the story her tale weaving between the blanks in Brontes Jane Eyre to give voice to Antoinette. With Rhys tale, the reader gains insight into the complexities of human sexual intercourseships based on greed and the effects of the compound structure on non entirely the oppressed just to a fault the oppressor. Brontes tale of romance is contrasted and apt(p) more depth with Rhys examination of the debasement and enslavement of Antoinette by colonial hostel, a conquering husband, and the prison of her mind.Rochester is excessively recast, young and full of incertitude and anger in Rhys depiction we can watch in him the impertinent and sh bustlew middle-aged man of Jane Eyre. In the similar rumpgrounds of Jane and Antoinette, the reader can see an all all overlapping of these two characters into a single woman twain taking different pathways scarcely herstwhile(a)ing the hand of the same man. integrity thrown into hell and the other finding her salvation. With overlapping motifs and characters, Wide gulfweed Sea and Jane Eyre become complimentary pieces each l close meaning to the other.The chronology of the novels, twain individually and get rid ofn as complimentary texts, is eliciting in celebrate to the set outment of the characters within their individual societies. In Charlottes Brontes Jane Eyre, Janes narrative follows a generally linear path from when the reader head start meets her as a ward of the Reeds to her eventual reunion with Mr. Rochester. Janes life is enmeshed in the social protocol of her duration and dep stopent on the whim of others, she is thrown away and to find her strength and singularity in hardship.Her story is erectly peopled with Rochester and the other persons residing at Thornfield, while Wide Sargasso Sea provides a install around and through Janes tale using only germane(predicate) characters from the original text. The three bulge outs of Rhys book be positi bingled around and throughout Jane Eyres chronology of events. Middle-aged when he meets Jane, Rochester is only a young man in Wide Sargasso Sea whose still living associate and father have cast their net (Edward) to the islands of the wolfram Indies to see what wealthiness they can do.Antoinette and Edward Rochesters story, in respect to Jane Eyre, takes air largely before Jane was innate(p) except for the third part which commences in the energise at Thornfield. The three separate of Rhys book argon set forthd between Antoinettes early life and childhood, Rochesters story, and Antoinettes rambling from her attic prison. The inaugural allows for an understanding of the characters of Antoinette and Rochester as products and victims of imperialism.With the emancipation came an end to bondage scarce also brought a new era of profiteering and exploitation. At the center is Antoinette, her family having lost everything wi th the liberty including the little respect and social placement they had once held. Her engenders jointure to Mr. Mason provided little reprieve as the seeds of abhor had been warmly sown. However, Mr. Mason p envyed a new context for the hatred directed at Annette and Antoinette, a role that briefly would be overtaken by Richard Mason and in the long counting in Edward Rochester.As veronica Marie Gregg notes, Mr. Mason represents a new breed of side of meat merchants and imperialists who still seek to dominate the frugal life of the colonies and to coerce the labour force into working to ensure their wealth, even after plantation thrall has formally ended (91). The people know of his wealth and atomic number 18 not ignorant to profits he has made from the collapse of the strategy of slavery which left them third club citizens and deeply impoverished despite their freedom.With her wedding party to Rochester, which is told in the second part and picks up a short pris on term after her own setoff part ends, Antoinette discovers her own uncertain place not only in the limited bon ton of the West Indies that she go forth always belong to while never authentically belonging just also in the eyes of her opportunistic husband. In part two, Rhys lays the radix for Antoinettes subsequently complete deterioration by showing the hatred and distrust of Rochester. Almost the whole of Jane Eyre could fit in the gap in years that is seen between parts two and three.Jane is born, orphaned, cast aside, educated all within this space. Antoinettes jumbled narrative in part three illustrates the effects of Rochesters hatred and indifference, and the maddening effect of her imprisonment. There is no mention of Jane as Antoinettes cosmea does not exist outdoors the small room that is her prison. The house around her is an unreal concept and its inhabitants epitome little into her life as her struggle has now become totally internalized.As Elaine Savory exp lains in examining the drop of Antoinettes grip on the populace of her prison, An absence of attachment can be so severe that it makes the place seem unreal, as in the case of the house in England in which Antoinette is imprisoned (Savory 142). though we dont see or hear of Jane in Rhys text, in taking Jane Eyre as the complimentary text it is a given that Jane is in the background of this third part just as Bertha/Antoinette exists largely outside Janes own tale.The two texts can slowly be interwoven to provide insight where once in that respect was no(prenominal) barely the disbelief cadaver if this was Rhyss true end. In both stories, we see signifiers of the times. In Wide Sargasso Sea, the story takes place within the context of the West Indies in the 1830s and 1840s, following the Emancipation Act in 1833 (Gregg 83). In Jane Eyre, the signifiers atomic number 18 more subtle but still present. Towards the ending of Jane Eyre, Jane is given the newly published book Mar mion which was published in 1808 (83).By this relation of dates, the two texts cannot be connected chronologically because according to the dating of the stories, Antoinette, the front Mrs. Rochester, would have not even been born when Jane, the second Mrs. Rochester, is hearing her laughing same a loon from the attic. These subtle differences in dates call to question Rhys decision to relocate the overall tale decades into the future and the intention of these discrepancies. Her intention appears to be not to change the eventual story of Jane Eyre but preferably to provide a different context for the reading of Wide Sargasso Sea.Rhys was full certain of the problems in depicting her Antoinette within the context of Brontes mad Bertha, The West Indies was rich in those days for those days The young ladys West Indian Creole women who married facemen would soon once in kind England be Address Unknown. So gossip. So a legend. If Charlotte Bronte took her horrible Bertha from this legend I have the right to take lost Antoinette. And, how to reconcile the two and quicken dates I do not know yet. But, I will (qtd. In Gregg 83).Rhys redefines Antoinettes basic struggle through this relocation in time, human body the tale within a context, that as Veronica Marie Gregg notes, seeks to articulate the congenital and locational identity of the West Indian Creole of the post slavery spot(83). Antoinettes madness then becomes not a hereditary sign exacerbate by alcoholism and promiscuity but a moderate of historical and social distinctions defining her as an Other, Not quite slope and not quite native, Rhyss Creole woman straddles the embattled divide between human and savage, core and periphery, self and other (Ciolkowski 340).That history supports this characterization is no accident, Rhys utilise the legend loosely applied to Jane Eyre by Bronte and expand it to the exploration of a single woman. As Rhys noted in a letter to a friend, very wealthy pla nters did exist their daughters had very large dowries, there was no married womans property act. So, a young man who was not too scrupulous could do very well for himself and very easily. He would marry the girl, grab her money, bring her to England and in a year she would be mad (qtd.In Gregg 84). While Bronte chose to use contour and gender as a center for her story of Jane, Rhys uses the characters of Antoinette and Edward Rochester to illustrate the b passageer effects of colonialism. Antoinette is the primary character explored and expanded upon in Wide Sargasso Sea, it is her character that spurned Rhys to write the text. Rhys notes in a letter to Selma Vas Diaz in 1958, The Creole in Charlotte Brontes novel is a lay common fig repulsive which does not matter, and not once alive which does.Shes obligatory to the plot, but always she shrieks, howls, laughs horribly, attacks all and sundry off stage. For me she must be right on stage (qtd. In Gregg 82). In Brontes text, Antoinette is Bertha, and is as Rhys notes a shallow character revealed more for her usefulness in the large context of Janes life decisions than an independent character with distinct traits and history. The little information we learn virtually Bertha in Jane Eyre is through the parley of Edward Rochester and Janes visual and auditory perceptions.In Wide Sargasso Sea, the story of Antoinettes early life and circumstances are explored so that we can more fully understand the events which led to her eventual decline into insanity while also viewing the larger concept of cultural disintegration. The novel begins with the first part of Antoinettes story and the stage is immediately set to show the order and racial issues particular to their determine of post emancipation and the new effrontery of colonialism, They say when trouble comes close ranks, and so the gaberdine people did.But we were not in their ranks (Rhys 17). From the onrush, Rhys establishes Antoinette as an outs ider. Though she is white, she and her family are not considered part of white society due to her mothers French Creole heritage. In Rhys delving into the depths of Berthas logic in madness and destructiveness, we find the reasons behind the shrieks and moans and fire that burns through Thornfield in Brontes rendition. The crazy mother Rochester describes to Jane as the root of Berthas own illness is rendered as a humble and ostracized woman in her inherited familyland.After the death of her husband and fall of the old plantation system, Annette Cosway is not only left to raise her two children alone but is kept separate from the support of the white elucidate system which views her as an outsider, part of the hostility toward Annette stems from her being a French West Indian Woman in a British West Indian colony. This alludes to the centuries-long feud between the French and the English in the Eastern Caribbean (Gregg 85). opposed the British West Indian women, Annette came fro m Martinique as a trophy married woman for old Mr.Cosway. It is not so a great deal his death that she mourns in the first percentage of the Wide Sargasso Sea but instead the end of the society that he represented. The collapse of this society rewrote the rules of race relations and class distinctions, since as Gregg explains The racial superiority of the whites depends upon the economic ascendancy achieved by free b miss roil. Without money, Antoinettes family become niggers, isolated from the rest of white society (89).Antoinette excuses her mothers preoccupation with this change because of her youth and in view with a world that was any different than the established plantation society, She was young. How could she not try for all the things that had gone so suddenly, so without warning (Rhys 18). However, while Antoinette is able to find reason in her mothers psychological collapse, it gives the friendship outside of the walls of Coulibiri a chance to begin talking.It is he re that we see the initiation seeds of the gossip of madness that would later reach Rochesters ears via Daniel Cosway. It was not only Annette who was effected by the West Indian constructs of race and class, before the Emancipation and after but also all those touched by the enterprises comprising the economic structure, All human relationships are marked by slavery and the plantation society, and all are constructed, for the most part, within these parameters.Christophine, we are reminded, was a wed gift to Annette (Gregg 86). In this world, people are property, to be bought and exchange, to be trussed irreparably to their oppressors even when that oppressor is themselves. Annettes isolation is partly her own, she keeps herself sequestered and soundless from the abuse that is hurled and directed at her family from the blacks and whites. Black society is much more forward in their disembodied spirits, while white society speaks softly and when they imagine no one is listeni ng.Antoinette sensed the animosity from the whites and was confronted daily with that of the blacks, I never looked at any strange negro. They hated us. They called us white cockroaches (Rhys 23). Elaine Savory in her examination of the politics of a racially charged society observes, Displacement is a strong theme in the novel in relation to major characters such as Antoinette, her husband and Christophe . But strong displacement across racial and class lines severely affects coherent self-definition.Antoinette finds herself called white cockroach by black people, yet she has no place in white culture any (139). At the center of Antoinettes feelings of alienation is not only her relations with the other locals but also the lack of approve she feels from her mother, Rhys establishes a world in which everything rests on problematic and reach relationships between people of different nationalities, race, languages, classes, against which the struggle to maintain connection even within a family can seem puny and defeated (Savory 136).Annette is inappropriate from her daughter as she turns away from the outside world in the decaying of Coulibiri and she remains at a remove even as she shows more interest in Antoinette imminent social position or lack thereof. starting signal exposed to the renewed society, Antoinettes shabby dress makes her consciously aware of only her mothers judging eyes, All that evening my mother didnt speak to me or look at me and I apprehension She is ashamed of me(Rhys 26). The judgment Antoinette feels from her mother seems, in light of her later fate, more a look of calculated understanding.Annette understood from firsthand knowledge the path her daughters life would inevitably take, Both womens marriages are based on the economy of the slavery and post slavery societies, with their bodies as a site of negotiation in this economy (Gregg 97). The shame Antoinette imagines in her mothers eyes is really the cool assessment discrim inating that her daughter will be judged as property, enslaved in marriage. The fire at Coulibiri provides a closure to Antoinettes jaded childhood, When they had finished, there would be nought left but blackened walls and the mounting stone.That was always left (Rhys 45). The they in Antoinettes narrative is the disenfranchised and angry black mob aggravated by the new elevation of their previous oppressors and a fear over the loss of work with the importation of foreign and indentured labor. As Veronica Marie Gregg explains, This intensely charged episode emblematizes the post slavery disputes just about labor conditions between the plutocracy and the working people in the West Indies.In this historical moment, the opinion class, in order to practiced its socioeconomic position and to check up on labor, sees punitive and coercive measures such as immigration and Asian indentureship as a viable response to the laziness of the African people. The freedpersons respond with ma terial fierceness as part of their viable means of struggle and resistance at this point (Gregg 95). The individuals of the mob form into a solid image in Antoinettes selective sight, They all looked the same, it was the same face over and over (Rhys 42).The episode reinforces Antoinettes feeling of alienation and also solidifies the division between mother and daughter, as Annette finally descends completely into alcoholism and insanity. Worn out and beaten by the death of Pierre and the willful destruction of her home exemplified by her beloved parrot, she surrenders to her pain. Antoinette is at once orphaned completely, her stepfather serving on an absentee basis but still retaining guilt and thereby trying to secure Antoinettes future.It is interesting to note the similarities in the lives of Antoinette and Jane during the periods of their lives when they were both housed in benevolence house or convent. Both still have living relatives but find themselves living independentl y of familial love and guidance and both are able to develop relationships which seems, particularly in Antoinettes case, in a much lighter tone than her previous interactions. Her friendships are uttermost more equal, as the other young ladies at the convent are all white and themselves of upper class descendency.Like Jane Eyre who finds her first examples of friendship as a charity ward where class distinctions do not exist as there is only one class, unwanted, Antoinette finds a similar niche, where she soon forgot about happiness (Rhys 56) and only lived. It seems a contradiction to find comfort where there is no happiness but for Antoinette whose life has been at the mercy of emotion, the lack of it would seem a relief. For both women, this time period of their lives was the one in which they had the most ease. In Jane Eyre, Jane get words few of the belittling feelings directed at her by the Reeds.After the death of Helen Burns, there is secret code else until Jane decides to leave Lowood, I am only bound to invoke memory where I know her responses will take in some degree of interest therefore I now base on balls a space of eight years almost in gloss over (Bronte 77). Similarly, there is little of Antoinettes life except the convent where Everything was brightness, or dark (Rhys 57). There is a difference though in their views of their time fatigued secluded from the outside world. For Jane, Lowood is a temporary stop, a school and a home. For Antoinette the convent provides a solution to the outside world and not simply a new home.In the predictability she has found solace, if not happiness, in the mundane routines. However, Antoinette knows that the refuge she has been allowed in the convent is only temporary, sensing the fate her mother had seen in her from the day she was born a girl. She is not only a daughter to Mr. Mason or a sister to Richard Mason, she is an asset with her beauty and upper class distinction. In her final meeting with M r. Mason at the convent, she senses her future and is frightened anew, It may have been the way he smiled, but again a feeling of dismay, sadness, loss, almost choked me It was the likes of that morning when I found the exsanguine horse.Say nothing and it may not be true The girls were very odd but I would not answer their questions and for the first time I resented the nuns cheerful faces. They are safe. How can they know what it can be like outside? (59). She has learned from the example of her mother that the security Mr. Mason envisions for her is not a security against the uncertainties and animosities of the outside world she has so far experienced. As a sensitive child, she ascertained what it was to belong to the upper class, and knows that despite marriage or perceived respectability she will always be at the mercy of anothers will.As a woman she is destined for every the convent or marriage, understanding what marriage will mean she prefers the convent. While later s he fights against the imprisonment of Rochester, it seems only because she has come to an understanding of a third substitute which is freedom from either, first hinted at by her Aunt Cora. That Antoinette only realizes her freedom through her own death brings her initial fear full circle, Her fortune and her beauty make her a prized possession for him, an easy way to begin his attitude as an independent gentleman (Kendrik 236).When he realizes that he cannot attain this status through Antoinette he turns against her. The embodiment of Antoinettes fear lies in Edward Rochester, seemingly different from Brontes romantic hero but really an extension of his character, not so much a wholesale order of Brontes existing creation as a reillumination and reemphasization of aspects that are present, though perhaps not stressed, in the Rochester of Jane Eyre (Kendrik 239).Unlike Antoinette, he plays an integral part in both Jane Eyre and Wide Sargasso Sea. Brontes Rochester is a middle-ag ed man, misanthropic and lacking the attractiveness that would usually be found in a romantic hero. It is this lack of attractiveness that allows Jane to feel proper in first speaking with him, Had he been a handsome, heroic facial expression young gentleman, I should not have dared to stand thus questioning him against his will, and offering my operate unasked (Bronte 105).With Jane, Rochester is proud, jaded, inquisitive and crassly gentle he is at once attracted to and given up to suppress her independent streak but Janes ambiguous class status as a Governess prevents her from being an adequate mirror for Edward (Kendrik 240). They are able to overcome this class distinction only through Rochesters loss of property and face and Janes own inheritance. The largest distinctions between the Rhys and Brontes Edward Rochester lies in experience and the women of their lives.With Jane, Brontes Rochester has a puritanically astute woman whose will largely matches his own strength of ch aracter but whose correctitude largely outweighs any true acts of rebellion. As Terry Eagleton notes in his redness exploration of Jane Eyre, Brontes protagonists are an extraordinary contradictory amalgam of feel rebelliousness and prim conventionalism, gushing Romantic fantasy and canny hard-headedness, palpitation sensitivity, and blunt rationality. It is, in fact, a contradiction closely related to their roles as governesses or private tutors (Eagleton 30).Janes contradictions are largely predictable, Antoinettes he discovers are not of any kind he has known. Rhys turns back the time on middle-aged Rochester to reveal the personality and actions of a much younger, much angrier man. As Elaine Savory explains, Rhyss Wide Sargasso Sea not only privileges the Caribbean but does a great deal to move Rochester out of the realm of the Gothic romance and explain his capacity for cruelty (133). In part two of Rhyss text Rochester is left intentionally nameless (Rhys qtd.In Gregg 100 ), as Gregg explains, His entrance in the novel is a beginning with no introduction no thematic preparation or signal to the reader. This is an muniment of the structural origins of the narrative and history of imperial Europe, which designates the West Indies as a blank space on which to inscribe the desires of European man (100). From the onset his acquiring of Antoinette is that of the conqueror, their marriage is no love story but an line of battle made between Richard Mason and Rochesters father and brother.Given this understanding, the opening lines of part two, which could be read as a description of courtship take on a darker meaning, So it was all over, the advance and retreat, the doubts and hesitations(Rhys 65). In these lines we see not the mild flirtations of two young people but rather a hunter tracking its prey. In the beginning of their marriage it is remarkable that Rochester was not always seemingly against Antoinette but at first pictured a real future with he r despite her appearance of foreignness. On the road to Granbois he observes, She smiled at me.It was the first time I had seen her smile simply and naturally. Or perhaps it was the first time I had felt unprejudiced and natural with her Looking up smiling, she might have been any graceful English girl (Rhys 71). He attempts to draw parallels between the alien West Indian landscape and his own country, Next time she spoke she said, The state is red here, do you mark? / Its red in parts of England too (Rhys 71). By drawing this comparison he is at once dismissing Antoinette but also trying to locate himself within the larger world he finds himself.Though it is not addressed, it is most likely that young Rochester has little experience with the world outside of England and no concept from which to draw on in the landscape and people that he now finds himself surrounded by. He is deeply aware of the fact that his betrothal was not his own choice but is nonetheless pleased from a c ollectors standpoint in the beauty and seeming malleability of his new wife, She spoke hesitantly as if she expected me to refuse, so it was easy to do so (Rhys 67). He asserts his dominance, even as the circumstances of his being bought undermine any goodwill.Even from the beginning his feelings are unstable, I have sold my soul or you have sold it, and after all is it such a bad bargain? The girl is feeling to be charming, she is beautiful. And yet (70). There is no chance for happiness to grow from this doubt because even as Rochester moves forward he holds himself back out of a sense of Englishness, in Wide Sargasso Sea he is the immediate manifestation and enforcer of the network of patriarchal codes (sexism, colonialism, the English Law, and the law which demarcates and creates sanity and insanity) (Kendrik 235).Antoinette does not fit into the definition of any treat Rochester understands and is therefore permanently located outside of Rochesters feelings of self. During this beginning section of part two, we see one of Rhys subtle correlation to Brontes Jane Eyre. It is with this and other small concessions that Rhys connects the two texts in more than simply character name and geography. In his first days at Granbois, Rochester sits on the veranda with Antoinette reservation observations on the wilderness around them, in particular taking notice of a moth alighting by their candle,A large moth, so large that I thought it was a bird, blundered into one of the candles, put it out and fell to the floor. I took the beautiful creature up in my handkerchief and put it on the railing. For a moment it was still and by the dim candlelight I could see the soft brilliant colours, the intricate pattern on the wings. I agitate the handkerchief gently and it flew away (Rhys 81).In Jane Eyre, Brontes Rochester while on a walk with Jane draws her attention to a moths wings, Look at his wings, he said, he reminds me rather of a West Indian insect one does not often see so large and gay a night-rover in England (Bronte 220). By including details on the moth in her telling of Rochesters early life, Rhys draws a subtle thread connecting the older and the younger experience and memories. He becomes a continuous character, present in both manifestations. Though the West Indian landscape harbors fond memories, it also embodies Rochesters doubts and maturement hostility towards Antoinette.In the brilliantly colored flowers and trees, the exotic scents, and unknown regions of the islands geography, Rochester finds a metaphor for his new wifes inaccessibility, he has come to hate this landscape, because it signifies his wife and his failure to reach her, even to overpower or control her (Savory 144). Like Antoinette, he cannot deny its beauty but also like his wife he cannot reconcile this type of beauty with his previous experience and knowledge, It was a beautiful place wild, untouched, above all untouched, with an alien, disturbing, secret.I d find myself thinking, What I see is nothing I want what it hides that is not nothing (Rhys 87). In describing Antoinette, he is similarly disturbed, She never blinks at all it seems to me. Long, sad, dark alien eyes. Creole of pure English descent she may be, but they are not English or European either (Rhys 67). He finds himself as unable to penetrate the unknown about her as he is the landscape. In his lust for Antoinette he makes his only connection and breaks exhaust the barrier with which she has sought to protect herself, Very soon she was as aegir for whats called loving as I was more lost and drowned subsequently(Rhys 92).Like Jane when questioning Rochester on how he will feel about her license after the newness of the marriage has worn off, Antoinette is beset with doubts on her husbands true feelings toward her, If one day you didnt wish it. What should I do then? Suppose you took this happiness away when I wasnt looking (Rhys 92). In this exchange Rhys draws ano ther connection between the past and the future Edward Rochester. His similar conversation with Jane, though less emotionally fraught than his dialogue with Antoinette, brings into question his dominance,For a little while you will perhaps be as you are now, a very little while and then you will turn cool and then you will be impulsive and then you will be stern, and I shall have much ado to please you but then you will be well used to me, you will perhaps like me again, like me, I say, not love me. I suppose your love will effervesce in sextette months, or less (Bronte 229). In this conversation, Jane senses that Rochesters love and admiration are fickle in nature, Jane has doubts about Rochester the husband even before she learns about Bertha.In her world, she senses, even the equality of love between true minds leads to the inequalities and minor despotisms of marriage (Moglen 82). Antoinette discovers this through her own experience with him. Though Antoinette brought wealth to the union, in doing so she forfeited that wealth, since by English law it becomes her husbands alone. Resigned to this, she lets quite a little her guard and allows herself to love and lust after the man who becomes first her tease and finally her jailer. Jane Eyre knows a slightly different Rochester, less inclined to making love, but still fears for her own independence in a union under English law.She knows that legally she will become the subordinate of her husband but Janes nature prevents her from willingly giving into this precept. Without fortune of her own, Jane does not run the same risk as Antoinette but nor does she hold to same status socially, as a younger son of the gentry, has suffered at the hands of social convention and so like Jane has a history of deprivation but unlike her he has achieved worldly success, buts a glamorous figure in county society, and so blends social desirability with a spice of thwarted passion and an underdog past (Eagleton 34).With t his combination of traits so at odds with Janes own plainness it is easy to see the basis of her doubts. Just as Edward Rochester came to resent Antoinette for the society she represented and the wealth that bought, so also could he come to resent Jane for her lack of either class status or money.