Of all the narrators, none makes any radical change to his life or personality other than Rochester himself; It is only after Jane's departure from Thornfield following Bertha's revelation and later the loss of his sight that Rochester becomes a complacent man, whose tone resembles Jane's own personality. Bertha's role in the novel, while compelling, strikes a sad note to the story on the surface, but scholars urge her to be viewed critically as a symbol of its era in which passionate women were either mad or a monster. In writing such a novel – especially one with such a gothic tone – there was no doubt that he threatened the masculine gender of the Victorian era and perhaps, in some way, having a protagonist So placid and a passionate minor antagonist could reflect the authors' own conflict between submission and rage. The Madwoman in the Attic, a phrase used by theorists Gilbert and Gubar (Donaldson, 2002) as they developed an argument about what exactly the “madwoman in the attic” represented. Perhaps she embodied all the pain and rage felt by the author of the text. We can be locked up, hidden, diagnosed crazy, but we cannot ignore the intensity of his character: his hardness of heart, his sexual power and his spirit make him an unforgettable character. Instead of ridding himself of such a burden, the character chooses to end his life. If the madwoman in the attic was a reflection of Brontë herself, what might it mean for her to kill her fictional lover?