Mr. Rochester

The way that Rochester sees Antoinette is very different from the impression that I got from her. I saw her as basically an average little girl leading a difficult life, or at least that was what I took from her narration. But, as soon as Rochester took over and I saw Antoinette from his point of view,  I saw her as  slightly crazed and psychologically a bit messed up. She obviously needs to feel safe, and needs Rochester's love and attention to feel happy. She is drawn by these needs to act in ways that do not become her usual personality, such as slapping Amelie, who loses respect for her, and then poisoning Rochester. He witnesses each of these, and ends up liking her even less. He acknowledges her beauty, but now he also recognizes that she, while doing her best not to, has developed a similar mental illness as her mother.

I think that this recognition is what drove him to sleep with Amelie, because she is just as beautiful as Antoinette, but in a very different way, and this attracts Rochester. Not only did they sleep together, but Antoinette heard, and neither of them seemed to regret it. I get the feeling that she is only going to commit similar acts as she did before, probably even worse, and be slowly driven to insanity. Rochester acts very selfishly here, and I must say, my opinion of him did not improve when i read this.

When I first met Rochester, I thought he was an agreeable person, and, like Antoinette, in an unfortunate situation because he is being used by his family to increase their wealth. It was plain to the readers that he did not love Antoinette, but he played her, in the sense that he made her agree to marry him when he knew he didn't love her, and pretended to love her until she loved him back. I don't understand why he felt the need to suddenly stop talking to her or pay her any attention at all. Perhaps if he had kept up his little charade she never would have felt the need to ask Christophine for a love potion and end up unintentionally poisoning him, which was the top of the downward spiral of their marriage. I also feel that when he realized that he had been poisoned (I have no idea how) he overreacted a lot. A chain of events led to this: first, when he got to Jamaica he knew that something was being kept from him, which made him paranoid. Thus, when Daniel Boyd's letter arrived, he thought that he had figured out what the great mystery was. Because he was under the impression that Antoinette was going mad just like her mother, her slipping him drugs seemed like the beginning. Therefore, I suppose he immediately jumped to conclusions, assuming that she was trying to make him sick, without even stopping to consider the possibility that she only wanted him to love her, as Christophine said.

Towards the end of Part II, it seemed to me that it was Rochester who was veering towards madness rather than Antoinette. He was acting like a raving paranoid, no longer narrating the events that occurred, but rather his own train of thought. He comments passionately that he "hates this place" and Antoinette alike, because she is the "mad girl" with "blank lovely eyes". Just his voice gives off an air of insanity, that Antoinette's never did until Part III.

I can understand why Rochester did what he did, but I don't relate to it at all. Perhaps the readers are biased towards Antoinette because we know her back story, but anyway I found Rochester to be a selfish coward who locked his wife up because he was unable to take care of her. I have no respect for him.