Chapters 26 and 27 of Jane Eyre cover Jane and Mr. Rochester’s failed attempt to get married as well as the backstory for Mr. Rochester’s hidden marriage with Bertha Mason, the woman he kept locked in the attic since returning to England from Jamaica. Though he had successfully kept the identity and relation to the woman a secret for fifteen years, Mr. Rochester admits this truth upon being prevented from marrying Jane, and he invites everyone to visit “Mrs. Poole’s patient, and [his] wife” who he was “cheated into espousing” (262). In trying to provide explanation and reassurance to Jane, Mr. Rochester reveals that doctors “had discovered that [his] wife was mad” and that he had entered the marriage under false pretenses regarding her age, her well-being, and the affect she would have on his life (275). Though there are larger implications for Mr. Rochester’s decision to lock his wife away for years, taking a closer look at the matrimonial and divorce laws of that time period and region may provide some helpful context for the absence of divorce as a solution in the novel. 

Having been published in 1847, Jane Eyre was constructed in a time that divorce was not an easily available option in England. According to the UK Parliament, “the only way of obtaining a full divorce which allowed re-marriage was by a Private Act of Parliament” before the mid-nineteenth century, and there were only 314 divorces from 1700 to 1857, mostly initiated by husbands (“Obtaining a divorce”). However, divorces were only granted for adultery, and they were mostly limited to the very wealthy due to its costly process (“Obtaining a divorce”). Since Bertha was unwell rather than engaged in an adulterous affair, Mr. Rochester could not legally and publicly end his marriage. 

It was not until 1857, ten years after the publication of Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre, that the Matrimonial Causes Act would pass and allow married couples to divorce through a special court while essentially keeping the grounds for divorce the same: men could divorce their wives for adultery “but a woman could only obtain a divorce if her husband was physically cruel, incestuous or bestial in addition to being adulterous” (Wood). However, Gail Savage notes that divorce remained an unlikely option for a large population since the court was located only in London, and while "expense barred most of the working class from the court,” the societal expectations and “the social stigma must have discouraged many of those who could have borne the cost” (103, 108). 

Had the Matrimonial Act of 1857 been passed sooner and had her circumstances been different, Bertha Mason could have potentially tried to end her marriage with Mr. Rochester for his adultery and physical cruelty if she wanted. The likelihood of this being obtainable, however, would still largely depend on her ability to prove it all, her wealth, and likely her well-being as well. Instead, she faced being married to a man that took ownership of her wealth and locked her away during a time where no laws had been made to fairly apply to both husbands and wives and where divorce was virtually impossible, especially when initiated by a woman. 

Works Cited 

Brontë, Charlotte. Jane Eyre, edited by Deborah Lutz, 4th ed. Norton, 2016. 

“Obtaining a Divorce.” UK Parliament, https://www.parliament.uk/about/living-heritage/transformingsociety/private-lives/relationships/overview/divorce/. Accessed 21 January 2022. 

Savage, Gail L. “The Operation of the 1857 Divorce Act, 1860-1910 a Research Note.” Journal of Social History, vol. 16, no. 4, Oxford University Press, 1983, pp. 103–10, http://www.jstor.org/stable/3786994. 

Wood, Margaret. “Marriage and Divorce 19^th Century Style.” Library of Congress,https://blos.loc.gov/law/2018/02/marriage-and-divorce-19th-century-style/. Accessed 21 January 2022.

Image Citation  

Houses of Parliament, London, England. [Between 1890 and 1900] Photograph. Retrieved from the Library of Congress, www.loc.gov/item/92518894/.