Today in class, we discussed the possibility that Rochester has an inferiority complex. This is definitely a possibility, because he often longs to write a searing letter to his father, whom he partially blames for this mess. He has spent his whole life feeling wronged an inferior. He is thus very compassionate to anyone who sympathizes with him, and indulges this feeling in him. He likes to hear that people feel bad for him. This is why he is immediately taken by Cosway's letter: he loves Antoinette very much, but as soon as he reads the letter, he stops physically loving her (which seems to be the only love he has with her, except maybe a small flame of "mental" love in danger of burning out).
He is pretty compassionate with Antoinette when she begins to tell him her story, but he does not feel very connected with her, still. It is almost as if they are struggling to give life to the flame of "mental" that has been almost stamped out. And then, the next morning, he realizes immediately that he has been wronged, again, from his point of view, because Antoinette has put a love potion in his drink. He is addicted to this feeling, and immediately relapses, because it is difficult to shake this off after his whole life of this worldview. In light of this, to get back at Antoinette, he goes to the girl who has always sympathized with him...does he feel that she understands him better than Antoinette does? In any case, she sympathizes with him, and he is attracted to this sympathy, as one of the few people who expresses sympathy for him in his entire life. His act with Amelie also makes him feel superior, something that he has long wanted.
And yet, in this act, he has spurned Antoinette, who wanted to love-potion him simply to improve their relationship. She has been struggling her whole life to have someone love her, truly, and hsi subsequent act with Amelie makes her madly angry.
Thus, both Antoinette and Rochester are, in a sense, looking toward similar goals, but in ways that are not compatible. Rochester is trying to stop feeling wronged and start being told truths; Antoinette is trying to stop feeling wronged and start being loved. Yet their thoughts about the way they are being treated are based on their perceptions. Since both tend to percieve themselves as statically deceived/unloved, and it would be difficult for anyone to change their perceptions about the way they are being treated, their happiness and fulfillment of their wishes is neigh impossible. When one perceives the relationship to be on the upward slope in terms of their personal goals about how they are treated as an individual, the other is usually questioning. Neither has enough faith in the relationship to make it work. Neither one knows or understands the other, so neither can believe that the other could fulfill their wishes about how they should be treated.
When the steps relationship finally does inevitably fail, it could (theoretically) have had a chance for recovery. Yet the relationship does not recover, because of the extreme one-sidedness of the blame that is placed on the mishap. In the end, Rochester places none of the blame on himself, and Antoinette places all of the blame on herself.
The reason for this difference is derived from their childhood situations. Both Antoinette and Rochester grow up feeling that they should be considered innocent, but only Rochester is able to fully legitimize this feeling of innocence in his childhood mind.
Antoinette is constantly being told that she is somehow direly guilty, even though she could not possibly be guilty of her parents’ deeds. She cannot simply brush these people off in a racist manner, since she loves Christophine and Tia. Yet she also cannot blame her parents for what they did, because she loves her mother. She therefore internalizes the guilt partially, but gets a mixed message about her innocence.
Thus in the relationship between Antoinette and Rochester, Antoinette is constantly wavering between feeling and acting innocent in the relationship problems, and taking full self-blame, that she was not good enough for him. She never blames her historical setting for anything that happens, and she never blames Rochester, or her family, or Christophine for the failure of the potion. Even at the end of the book, when she is mad, she refers to Rochester as “the man who hated me” (189), which shows a frightening spectrum of the depth of her self-blame and her lack of feeling loved by anyone, even to the end.
Rochester, on the other hand, is able to place blame on his father, his family, and on the fact that he was born the younger brother. Since he was not alone in this feeling (he almost without doubt shared them with other younger brothers his age), placing the blame on others became part of his nature. Thus, even when he is going to Jamaica to achieve monetary success as a younger brother, he is quick to remove the blame from himself when the situation does not work out. He is quick to blame his family as soon as Cosway writes him. Later, he also blames Christophine. Interestingly, he also blames Antoinette, but not as harshly because he does not understand her situation fully.
Thus, when Antoinette calls him a wide variety of names, it is really injurious, because she is essentially calling him inferior. This is as close as she comes to placing the blame on him; and it seems to be a last-straw moment for Rochester. Yet Rochester still cares about Antoinette’s well-being and is mad at Christophine for making her a drunk even after their whole fight. He tries to stamp out the flame of love from their relationship but at this point he still wants to stay friends, in a sense. He visualizes them living in the same house.
So why does Antoinette end up by herself in an attic, saying that Rochester never came back?
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