25 Facts About Edward Rochester

Edward Fairfax Rochester is a character in Charlotte Bronte's 1847 novel Jane Eyre.

The brooding master of Thornfield Hall, Rochester is the employer and eventual husband of the novel's titular protagonist Jane Eyre.

Edward Rochester is the oft-absent master of Thornfield Hall, where Jane Eyre is employed as a governess to his young ward, Adele Varens.

Edward Rochester is fascinated by his rough, dark appearance as well as his abrupt manner.

Edward Rochester is intrigued by Jane's strength of character, comparing her to an elf or sprite and admiring her unusual strength and stubbornness.

Edward Rochester quickly learns that he can rely on Jane in a crisis.

Jane and Edward Rochester grow closer and fall in love with each other.

Edward Rochester tells Jane he is to be married, at which point Jane is prepared to leave Thornfield, believing Blanche is his bride.

Edward Rochester asks Jane to marry him and she accepts.

Edward Rochester admits to this, but believes he is justified in his attempt to marry Jane.

Edward Rochester takes the wedding party to see his wife of fifteen years, Bertha Antoinetta Mason, and explains the circumstances of his marriage.

Unable to live with Bertha due to her madness, Edward Rochester tried to keep her existence a secret and kept her on the third floor of Thornfield Hall with a nursemaid, Grace Poole.

Edward Rochester confesses that he had travelled around Europe for ten years trying to forget his failed marriage and keeping various mistresses.

Edward Rochester asks Jane to go to France with him, where they can pretend to be a married couple.

Much later, she finds out that Edward Rochester searched for her everywhere, and, when he couldn't find her, sent everyone else away from Thornfield and shut himself up alone.

Edward Rochester rescued all the servants and tried to save Bertha, too, but she committed suicide by jumping from the roof of the house and he was injured.

Now Edward Rochester has lost an eye and a hand and is blind in his remaining eye.

Jane returns to Mr Edward Rochester and offers to take care of him as his nurse or housekeeper.

Edward Rochester asks her to marry him and they have a quiet wedding.

Edward Rochester is adept at disguise and deception; while his guests are staying, Rochester disguises himself as a fortune-teller gypsy woman in order to spend time alone with Jane and interrogate her about how she feels about her employer.

Andrew McCarthy, the director of the Bronte Parsonage Museum, suggested that Edward Rochester may have been inspired by Constantin Heger, a tutor whom Bronte fell in love with while studying in Brussels in 1842.

John Sutherland argues that Edward Rochester is a wife-killer like Bluebeard; questioning why Edward Rochester does not place Bertha in professional care for her insanity, he considered the character to be responsible for Bertha's death through "indirect assassination".

Edward Rochester has been equivalated with the sultan Shahriyar in the Middle Eastern folktale collection Arabian Nights, as a disillusioned despot who distrusts women.

Edward Rochester is given a childhood to mirror Jane Eyre's, with a father and brother who are cruel towards him and being raised in a boarding school.

Jean Rhys' 1966 novel Wide Sargasso Sea gives an account of Edward Rochester's meeting of and marriage to Antoinette Cosway.