Jane Eyre Comparison Essay

Writers often use characters to represent a theme in a literary work or novel. Authors meticulously create characters to portray specific meanings and to highlight key factors about other characters in each book. Authors create antagonistic characters to highlight characteristics of the main characters. While protagonists are used to show how characters are the same, antagonists show how characters are different. In the novel Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte, Bertha Mason is an antagonistic character to Jane Eyre because the characteristics Bertha possesses enhance the reader’s view of Jane Eyre’s qualities.

When compared to Jane Eyre, Bertha Mason represents Mr. Rochester’s faults, failures, and mistakes. Mr. Rochester married Bertha Mason

fifteen years prior to meeting Jane Eyre. As Mr. Rochester states, “Bertha Mason is mad; and she came of a mad family; idiots and manias through three generations! Her mother, the Creole, was both a mad-woman and a drunkard! As I found out after I had wed the daughter: for they were silent on family secrets before” (Bronte 843). This quotation from the novel exemplifies Mr. Rochester’s disappointment in his marriage to Bertha. Mr. Rochester was led to believe that Bertha would be an acceptable wife to him. Bertha Mason is incapable of performing her domestic duties as a wife to Rochester. Bertha also represents Mr. Rochester’s secrets. Rochester hid Bertha in the attic because he is ashamed of his marriage to her. Bertha symbolizes the element that is hindering Rochester from attaining complete happiness; moreover, Jane is a symbol of Rochester’s complete happiness. Rochester wants to marry Jane Eyre for love, but he is unable to do so until Bertha dies. Rochester sustained many injuries from the termination of his marriage to Bertha, ‘“he was taken out of the ruins, alive, but sadly hurt: a beam had fallen in such a way as to protect him partly; but one eye was knocked out, and one hand so crushed that Mr. Carter, the surgeon, had to amputate it directly”’ (941). The injuries Rochester endures because of Bertha’s death symbolizes the destruction the marriage ensued upon his life. Bertha’s death compels Rochester to lose his nobility; comparatively, Jane enhances Rochester’s sense of dignity. Bertha represents a heavy burden Rochester must carry throughout his entire life; Jane conversely, is not a burden to Rochester but a helpmate.
Bertha failed as a wife in every aspect; on the contrast Jane represents a woman who will fulfill her duties as a wife in the nineteenth century.

Jane is everything Mr. Rochester wants from a marriage. Rochester compares the two women as he states, “compare these clear eyes with the red balls yonder- this face with that mask- this form with that bulk” (845). In this excerpt from the novel Mr. Rochester describes the physical differences between the two women; however, the reader can infer that Rochester values Jane for more than just her physical appearance. Rochester describes Jane with having “clear eyes” indicating Jane’s capability of in-depth thinking. Jane is intelligent and inspires heated conversation between her and Rochester. Rochester falls in love with Jane because she is his equal, ‘“my bride is here’, he said again drawing me to him, ‘because my equal is here, and my likeness’” (816). Bertha was never capable of challenging Rochester’s intelligence. Mr. Rochester wants to marry Jane for love, but he also wants to marry her because she is a representation of an ideal woman of this era. In the eighteen-hundreds women were expected to cook, clean, take care of children, and obey their husbands. Rochester’s first wife was incapable of fulfilling these duties; thus, Jane was depicted as a woman who was more than capable of fulfilling her duties as a wife to Rochester. Jane is also shown as an opposite to Bertha because Rochester married Bertha for money and social

status, but he wants to marry Jane out of love.
Although Bertha and Jane are complete opposites in the novel Jane Eyre, the women together represent the hardships of all women in the nineteenth century. Jane Eyre states:
Women are supposed to be very calm generally: but women feel just as men feel; they need exercise for their faculties and a field for their efforts as much as their brothers do; they suffer from too ridged a restraint to absolute a stagnation, precisely as creatures to say that they ought to confine themselves to making puddings and knitting stockings, to playing on the piano and embroidering bags. (711)
Jane was an orphan and grew up accustomed to an independent lifestyle; because of Jane’s upbringing, she believed that women were as intelligent as men and that women deserved opportunities to learn and grow.

From this excerpt from the novel, the reader can infer that Jane believes that if a woman is restrained she will lose a part of herself. Bertha represents women in the nineteenth century who were stifled because of their husbands’ ability to rule over them. Bertha represents a woman who fully depends on her husband for everything, while Jane represents a woman who loves a man, but is not fully dependent upon him for

anything.
Charlette Bronte created each character in Jane Eyre to symbolize an important theme throughout the novel. Jane and Mr. Rochester’s desirable qualities are highlighted when compared to Bertha Mason’s characteristics. Jane is a plain traditional girl in the nineteenth century. Without Bertha Mason’s antagonistic characteristics, Jane would not look as appealing to the readers. Bertha Mason sets the tone the readers adopt when analyzing Jane. Bertha was an atrocious wife, which causes the readers and Mr. Rochester to look upon Jane not as an orphan girl with plain characteristics, but as a woman, who because of the challenges she was faced with in life became strong, self-motivated, and independent. While compared against each other Bertha Mason and Jane Eyre are antagonists, but when put together both characters symbolize the hardships all women faced in the nineteenth century. Jane would not have been portrayed as the dutiful woman she was without Bertha. In many ways because Bertha is an antagonistic character to Jane, she is the most important character in the novel Jane Eyre.