Happy Ending

Mr. Rochester comes back from Jamaica worn down by the tragic insanity of his wife. She then burns his house to the ground, blinding him. He does, however, manage to hook up with Jane Eyre, live in perfect concord, and regain his sight, while generally being happy nestled in the bosom of his mother country. Get at the kid! Much as Rhys might dislike him (I get the feeling that she dislikes most men) she really can't take away the good old happy ending.  Depressing book, overall, but really it was quite uplifting for me, because the only character I really sympathized with--poor put-upon Rochester, tricked into marrying a madwoman and then raped and maligned at length by his rapists--manages, I know, to awake from the seemingly inescapable nightmare that is Jamaica and its aftereffects. It's almost like a Lovecraft story; the monster arises, we get twenty pages about just how existentially horrifying it is, and then it dies. The voodoo from Jamaica seems like it would end all chance at happiness Rochester might have had (I'd bet you anything that Rhys would love to add a smug epilogue about how the guilt over Bertha ate away at him until he died, afraid and alone) but a fine western woman solves all of that in a jiffy. Really life-affirming stuff.