Why couldn't Mr. Rochester divorce his wife so he could marry Jane Eyre?

[alphaboi867]

@Morgyn

Wasn’t there also a law that if the spouse was mentally ill, you weren’t allowed to divorce them? I seem to remember that being a plot point in one of Agatha Christie’s novels (which means it may be subject to a large grain of salt).

Insanity wasn’t grounds for divorce in England until 1937. This was a subplot on Downton Abbey.

@Dendarii_Dame

One woman asked. Queen Victoria proposed to Albert, because he could not properly propose to a monarch. (Had he been a monarch himself, things might have been different.)

Granted the marriage had been negotiated & agreed to through intermediaries prior to Victoria actually proposing to Albert. And she still made the promise to obey in her wedding vows even after the Archbishop of Canterbury told her she could omit it.

[Leaper]

@KKKK

Three Act Tragedy. In that one, Sir Charles wanted to remarry, so he murdered his best friend (the only one who knew about the wife), plus two others as well. I’ve always thought it would have been easier for him to just kill the wife!

WHY can’t you divorce someone who’s insane?

Uh, I thought he killed those people because he was insane, and wanted to cover it up?

looks it up on Wikipedia Yup, he killed the priest as a dress rehearsal and his friend who knew about his insanity. He probably couldn’t get at the wife, since she was in an asylum (especially since the entire point was to disassociate himself from her), and the friend could blow it up anyway, if he ever heard of the death. So really, killing the friend was smarter; he had more access, and with him dead, no one would ever know about the wife.

[Cunctator]

@Leaper

Uh, I thought he killed those people because he was insane, and wanted to cover it up?

looks it up on Wikipedia Yup, he killed the priest as a dress rehearsal and his friend who knew about his insanity.

There are two versions of Three Act Tragedy: the British one and the American one.

In the British version Sir Charles kills his best friend the doctor because he (the doctor) is the only one who knows about Sir Charles’ existing wife in the loony bin and who could derail his plans to attempt a bigamous marriage with Egg.

In the American version Sir Charles kills the doctor because he (the doctor) knows that Sir Charles is insane.

And as for the Jane Eyre divorce question: surely the reason that confinement in an insane asylum, or similarly imprisonment, can’t be used as grounds for divorce is that in neither case is the ‘desertion’ by the spouse voluntary?

[Bridget_Burke]

@Lamia

This has also come up on Downton Abbey.

Indeed. Until 1937, the only possible grounds for divorce was adultery. For men, that is. For women, adultery was not enough–additional charges of sodomy, incest, etc. were necessary.

Insanity? Nope.

[Idilia_Dubb]

@Dendarii_Dame

One woman asked. Queen Victoria proposed to Albert, because he could not properly propose to a monarch. (Had he been a monarch himself, things might have been different.)

Baroness Angela Burdett Couts, a middle-aged spinster and the richest woman in 19th century England, proposed to the Duke of Wellington. Though he was fond of her and he needed money, he was offended by her effrontery and declined.

[Leaper]

@Cunctator

There are two versions of Three Act Tragedy: the British one and the American one.

In the British version Sir Charles kills his best friend the doctor because he (the doctor) is the only one who knows about Sir Charles’ existing wife in the loony bin and who could derail his plans to attempt a bigamous marriage with Egg.

In the American version Sir Charles kills the doctor because he (the doctor) knows that Sir Charles is insane.

Huh, I’m really surprised I never came across this fact before. Is there anywhere that tells the story behind this change?

[Cunctator]

@Leaper

Is there anywhere that tells the story behind this change?

Have you read John Curran’s two excellent volumes analysing Agatha Christie’s notebooks, in which she developed her ideas and plots? They are:

• Agatha Christie’s Secret Notebooks: Fifty Years of Mysteries in the Making, Harper Collins, London 2009; and
• Agatha Christie’s Murder in the Making: Stories and Secrets from her Archive, Harper Collins, London 2011.

The second volume attempts to unravel the development of the two separate plots for Three Act Tragedy. Curran notes that this transatlantic difference occurs in several of Christie’s works:

the US and UK texts of The Moving Finger and Murder is Easy/Easy to Kill are considerably different. In Three Act Tragedy we find the same situation but the disparity is even more dramatic.

He then goes on to outline the two different denouements that I mentioned previously: the UK ‘mad wife’ one and the US ‘mad Sir Charles’ one. He also notes the various textual changes which needed to be made to foreshadow the different endings.

As for the reason behind the changed plot, he has no definitive answer:

The reason for this change is more difficult to explain. And it inevitably leads to the question ‘which is the original version?’…As the book was published (both as a magazine serial and in book form) in the USA in advance of its UK publication it is likely that it was the latter edition that was altered. But the question remains: why?

In a letter (undated, as usual, but from internal evidence probably late 1972/early 1973) to her agent, Christie herself briefly refers to the problem and states, “I am studying the problem of Three Act Tragedy…in the Dodd Mead [the US edition] Sir Charles goes mad…I have a feeling that was what I originally wrote.” But this is by no means conclusive; and the Notebooks throw no light on this intriguing mystery.