Though Sigmund Freud is best-known for his Oedipal-Complex theory, he makes several other points that I find interesting and useful when thinking about literature. To show this I will refer to the point he made in The Uncanny and Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre.

One of Freud’s claims is that there is an important link between the fear of the loss of sight and the fear of castration. We, the reader, are told that during the fire that killed Mr. Rochester’s first wife he looses his eyesight.  A character in the novel claims that his blinding was a punishment for keeping a wife, secretly, and seeking to marry a second wife, i.e. his lust. I think this shows a definite correlation between this example and the example Freud’s example od Oedipus. Freud claims that Oedipus’ castration through being blinded is an “adequate” punishment for his lust just as the minor-character claimed in Jane Eyre.  However unlike Freud’s example of Oedipus, Mr. Rochester does, to some degree, regain his eyesight.  It is possible to argue that he obtains this through his re-established relationship with Jane, which he has only obtained through her forgiveness. Because he has atoned, he no longer needs to be punished.

With Freud’s view of the blind as a substitute for the castrated, I think it is possible to see the blinding of Mr. Rochester from a far cruder point of view.  With the death of his wife, and abandonment of his mistress, we could see Mr. Rochester’s ‘castration’ not as a punishment but simply because he no longer needs his testicles. When he is reunited with Jane and they later marry, he has a renewed need for his testicles and the ‘castration’ is reversed when he regains his eyesight. It is not until after Jane has shown the reader that Mr. Rochester’s eyesight is returning (the de-castration) that she announces that they have had a child.