Analyse and evaluate Bronte's presentation of Rochester and St John Rivers

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Analyse and evaluate Bronte’s presentation of Rochester and St John Rivers

Bronte portrays Rochester in a very different way to St John Rivers; you could say they are complete opposites. Rochester has very dark features, such as dark hair and dark eyes with a heavy brow yet he isn’t handsome. The impression we get of Rochester is that he is a very powerful man, he’s first introduced on a horse in a dark alley alone and he scares Jane. This represents him as a stallion and a strong man. This is also a mysterious setting and keeps us in suspense not knowing who he is and Jane doesn’t realise she works for him. Rochester’s manner is very bossy and also makes him seem powerful, his first line is “what the deuce is to do now?” this is almost swearing and it’s a rhetorical question and is rude.

When Jane tries to help him he says to her “you must stand to one side” this is bossy and commanding and gives us the impression of him being powerful. Later on we realise that it is because Rochester is so used to giving orders and being bossy but as this is the first scene we do not realise, it makes us think of him as rude and bossy. The description Jane first gives us of Rochester is that he isn’t handsome and she isn’t intimidated by him but as he seems powerful to us we would have expected her to be intimidated by him, this softens our opinion of him. Rochester treats Jane as an equal, even though he is so used to giving orders which he sometimes does to Jane but he always apologizes.

St John is introduced very differently. He is very unlike Rochester, the impression we get off St John is that he is very handsome but he is cold hearted, detached and very private. We immediately get the impression of a handsome man by the way jade describes him “twenty eight to thirty, tall, slender, his face riveted the eye”. Though we get the impression he’s handsome we also get the feeling that’s he’s a cold person showing no feelings. Throughout the book we are constantly being reminded about this by him being referred to as ice and marble, for example “a marble immobility” and “no longer in flesh, but marble”, “know me to be what I am, a cold hard man”.

When Jane first sees St John when she is in a fit state he continues reading and chooses to ignore Jane and not acknowledge her, this gives us the impression that he’s rude and feels as though he is better then Jane and doesn’t need to talk to her. “he did not direct me one word” The first instance when St John is introduced though he is kind to Jane as he is the one that insists in taking in a poor homeless woman and he is kind but he is without feeling and Bronte uses this to strongly think less of him. He is a very strict Christian so he feels that he is always doing the moral thing which in a way he is but he doesn’t love or show strong feelings except for his job.

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  We see St John as an arrogant man by the way he addresses Jane. “Ill or well she will always be plain”. This immediately puts the reader off him. The big difference between St John and Rochester is that Rochester is a passionate man who always shows his feeling and often acts on them where as St John hides his feelings and has strong control over them. “Keeping his eyes fixed on the page he perused, and his lips mutely sealed”.  There’s something repressed about St John as well “St Johns eyes difficult to fathom”

Rochester is dark ...

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