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Jane Eyre,
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Jessica
To answer the question around blindness= Jane and Rochester's love is founded on the words that they exchange. In turn, Rochester is able to greater appreciate the language he shares with Jane, as his blindness enables him to concentrate more fully on words without being distracted by his vision. Moreover, Brontë might have also taken into account the fact that blindness was associated with poetry in her decision to blind Rochester. Perhaps Rochester's blindness elevated his language to a poetic status. Perhaps, also, Rochester grew more heroic in the nineteenth-century reader's mind if the reader acknowledged his apparent association with Homer and Milton "the two greatest poets" ("The Lost Senses") who also became blind at the end of their lives. Consequently, Rochester's blindness served a dual purpose: to sharpen his language capabilities and to allow him to become closer to Jane than any two people, independent of one another, could become.
Josh
Whether it's okay for Jane to marry Rochester or not is ultimately a judgment for each reader to make for themselves, but if you're interested in the preferred reading (the one largely understood to accord with Bronte's intentions) then here's why Jane and Rochester end up together.
Throughout the novel Jane is fighting to develop an independent identity for herself and to have that identity recognised by others. The famous opening line of the final chapter - "Reader I married him" - is confirmation that when she and Rochester finally tie the knot it is done on her terms. SHE marries Rochester - not the other way around - she is the active one in the sentence - Rochester becomes the object of the verb. This suggests that she is no longer someone who is subject to the whims of others, but someone who has taken control of her own life, and that Rochester has come to accept this. He, of course, has become a much reduced figure because of the injuries he has sustained and so Jane finds herself in a more dominant position over him - one which he is apparently only too happy to accept. Jane has also inherited a large fortune, meaning that she is of independent means and in no way reliant on Rochester - they can marry as social and economic equals, something which was not the case when she first agreed to marry him. Finally, of course, Bertha is dead which means that there is no religious bar to them being married.
Hope that helps.
Throughout the novel Jane is fighting to develop an independent identity for herself and to have that identity recognised by others. The famous opening line of the final chapter - "Reader I married him" - is confirmation that when she and Rochester finally tie the knot it is done on her terms. SHE marries Rochester - not the other way around - she is the active one in the sentence - Rochester becomes the object of the verb. This suggests that she is no longer someone who is subject to the whims of others, but someone who has taken control of her own life, and that Rochester has come to accept this. He, of course, has become a much reduced figure because of the injuries he has sustained and so Jane finds herself in a more dominant position over him - one which he is apparently only too happy to accept. Jane has also inherited a large fortune, meaning that she is of independent means and in no way reliant on Rochester - they can marry as social and economic equals, something which was not the case when she first agreed to marry him. Finally, of course, Bertha is dead which means that there is no religious bar to them being married.
Hope that helps.
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