The Ministry of Higher and secondary education of the Republic of Uzbekistan The Uzbekistan state World Languages University

Irony With Weddings

Perhaps the only thing more unexpected than the good girl and the bad boy falling in love is discovering that somebody else got to him first. The secret that has turned Rochester bitter is that he has a wife: Bertha Mason. Bertha's and Rochester's marriage was more of a business arrangement than it was a love match. Rochester had a family name and no money. Bertha had money and no name. Sounds like a perfect union, right? Wrong. The couple's marriage quickly disintegrates, and Bertha falls into mental illness.
By the time Jane arrives on the scene as governess of Rochester's ward, Adele, Bertha Mason is stark raving mad, secretly locked in the attic of Rochester's estate, Thornfield Hall. Rochester himself describes the irony: the bride he wants, Jane, is cool, sedate, and rational. Bertha, the bride he has, is tempestuous, volatile, and wildly irrational. Even more ironic, Rochester's secret is revealed at the wedding altar, seconds before he and Jane take their vows. The virtuous and seemingly incorruptible Jane is seconds away from becoming not a wife, but an adulteress.

Irony With Wealth

After the disastrous near-wedding, Jane leaves Mr. Rochester and strikes out on her own. She quickly finds herself lost and penniless, when, in her distracted state, she leaves her money and belongings in the carriage she hired to take her away from Thornfield. Jane wanders the English moors, until, nearly starved and frozen, she collapses at the doorstep of the Rivers siblings, Diana, Mary, and St. John. They take her in, nurse her back to health, and even find her a job as the headmistress of.


CONCLUSION

The way a narrative concludes indicates a great deal about its meaning, and judgments of a novel's end have much to do with judgments of its perceived meaning. That some twentiteh-century critics have disliked the end of Jane Eyre tells us just as much about their agendas — their belief and values — as about Brontë's. According to R. B. Martin, "Those critics who have suggested that Miss Brontë has dodged the real issue of the novel by having Jane leave Rochester until his first wife is dead have neglected the careful structure of the plot up to this point. The issue is never whether Jane should become Rochester's mistress. To settle for nothing less than the best is not to be narrow; the test is to become worthy of love, not to take it on any terms but to deserve it: not to violate one's own nature and morality but so to expand that nature that it deserves reward. Jane and Rochester, learning to respect the inviolability of the soul as much as earthly delights, become a microcosm of man's striving for Christian reward" (83).

Part of the reaction to the conclusion derives, of course, from our view of Rochester, as, as Martin points out, "The modern temptation in reading this novel is to forgive Rochester for his life of dissipation on the grounds that the failure of his first marriage is not his fault. Clearly, this was not the view of Miss Brontë, for she goes to considerable trouble to indicate that he marries in accordance with the conventions of society, and avoids "the prurience, the rashness, the blindness of youth" (94-95). Moreover, the marriage is arranged for financial gain.