Rochester Flashcards
Rochester ____ into Jane’s life as if destined to fulfil his role as powerful masculine incumbent of secluded, brooding Thornfield
thunders
First meeting with Rochester quotes
he rides a ‘tall steed’
his ‘rude noise’ breaks the evening calm
accompanied by a ‘great dog’ - a ‘lion-like creature with long hair and a huge hair’
Duke Zarmona and its tale of scandal, betrayal and romantic domestic treachery provide a ____ for Rochester and his backstory of sexual intrigue in Madeira and India.
prototype
The exotic exploits and fiercely passionate individualism of Byron’s Don Juan is evoked in the successive association of Rochester with Persian King ____, with the ____, and with a ____ in possession of a harem, as well as in his history of sexual licence.
Ahaseureus,
Grand Turk
sultan
Rochester’s name connotes the _______ verse of the Restoration poet, the 2nd Earl of Rochester
sensationally erotic
In October 2009 a _______ poll found Mr Rochester to be ‘the most romantic character in literature’ - receiving more votes than both Mr Darcy and Gabriel Oak
Mills & Boon
Rochester is also Bronte’s version of Byron’s ___
Cain
what was the biblical story of Cain and Abel?
cain slays his brother Abel
What did Bronte describe Byron’s poem as
‘a magnificent poem’
How is Rochester like Byron’s Cain?
he compares himself to a ‘fallen angel’ and a ‘snake-like tempter’; like Cain who is condemned to roam the earth as an isolated and resentful outcast, burdened with a curse of his own sinful making
Rochester’s frequent association with a ‘volcanic’ secret nature suggests forbidden, subterranean demonic powers.
‘that opened../ now and then, in his eye, and closed again before one could fathom the strange depth’
How did Bronte correct Romantic literary forbears into ‘realist’ fiction?
‘the man, the human being, broke the spell at once’
What is the first thing Rochester does?
fall of his horse
Implications of Rochester falling off his horse
gives an implicit side glance to the fallenness of his past life and current spiritual state; Rochester ‘the human being’
‘He laid a heavy hand on my shoulder, and leaning on me with some stress, limped to his horse’
Rochester rendered absolutely ‘the human being’ a fallen fellow creature, vulnerably in need fo another’s succour, aid and care.
Rochester’s character doesn’t simply reverse the terms of its Romantic prototype; rather,
the novel complicates and interrogates this model
Where we expect highly charged feverish drama - at the ___________ - we get the grimly realistic black humour of ________
symbolic burning of his bedchamber
his cursing at the wetness of his bedclothes
Where Jane projects upon Rochester the ____________ he confronts her emotionally in the _______.
suavity of the successful suitor to Ingram
gear of an old fortune-telling crone.
Where we expect _______ after the exposure of his pre-contracted marriage to Bertha, Rochester’s strategies of ________ seem to emulate the worst excesses of Gothic male oppression
remorse and self-flagellation
seduction and narrowly aborted rape
Rochester is a _____ creature whom even as he ____ at his punishment, absolutely wants to be saved.
fallen
baulks
