What did she see in Rochester?

This is a discussion board for the movie, not the book, and I am talking about his character in the movie. He did not have any redeeming qualities except for being rich and handsome. He was even a bully to his little daughter. There needed to be a couple of scenes with him being decent to Jane. He was just such a jerk to her. I could not figure out what a seemingly intelligent, non-golddigging woman would see in him.

Yes, there has always been an extremely thorny, unforgiving aspect to how many people see Rochester. I can understand it because he is deeply flawed - he has so much psychological armor, including his arrogance. But Jane sees through that and he recognizes that she does, and he's also able to recognize her true worth. Rochester pays a high price to gain his humility.

I admit, it had been a LONG time since I read the book when I watched this version. The only other version I had seen, I so hated Rochester that I couldn't understand why Jane came back to him either. In this version, I did understand it. In the scene where he asks her, "Do you find me handsome?", I remember thinking that it was like he was teasing with her but was extremely out of practice. We see what he is like with the Ingrams, who he knows are gold-diggers who only want to enjoy his fortune/etc. yet care nothing for him as a person. With them, he is quiet, noticeably uncomfortable, and detached. With his staff, they scurry at his temper and they tend to act somewhat frightened of him (I'm not saying they didn't have any cause to be that way), and his family are all dead or have nothing to do with him. I think he was, to put it in modern terms, rusty at banter.

Jane, on the other hand, has never had someone speak to her as an equal or without some sort of secondary reason. Her aunt meant to poke at her and wound her, the people at the school sought to break her, and even Mrs.Fairfax wishes (especially in this version)to make it clear to Jane where her place is. Mr.Rochester speaks to her like he would an equal and she teases back with him as best she could manage without getting fully into "I am so fired!" territory. Rochester is accustomed to women wanting his wealth and them acting in whatever way their family has bid them to appear the most attractive (such as, in what I think is a deleted scene, where Mrs.Ingram tells her daughter to act like a blank slate that a husband can write upon), so for an employee to speak rather directly to him must have been refreshing. As he says, he sought to draw her out.

In other versions I have watched, I didn't get as much of that teasing where Rochester is trying to get her to 'forget herself' and not be so proper as Mrs.Fairfax/etc. tended to be, and he wanted to see the girl who teased him about how his land was too wild for fairies, he wanted to see the girl who held his gaze, and he liked the girl who drew things most women of the time wouldn't have thought about, let alone taken the time to paint. For Jane, who had always been an after-thought, burden, or akin to something stuck on their shoe, to have an educated man who had traveled the world, seem so attentive to her and who was so in love with her, likely had its own draw. More, I think that someone seeing her as an equal, who loved her keen mind, and who listened to her - was a siren's call.

And, there were times when he wasn't the jerk and there are things she knows about him that round him out. She knows that he worked to wake and save all his servants/staff at Thornfield when the fire started, and that despite what went on between he and his wife, he still risked his life to attempt to save hers. When Jane comes out, after their aborted wedding and nearly passes out, Rochester carries her off to get her water. While he does make another plea, he still respects the boundary she put up. He lets her walk away, which I can imagine no others had allowed her before in her life. When she needed to visit her aunt, he teased with her and he was as kind with her as he knew how to be. When she returned, he teased with her and did his best to make her feel welcome. The morning after his brother-in-law is attacked, he attempts to make his intentions clear to Jane and puts the flower in her hair. After they are engaged, he tries to protect her from the rain with his jacket. Later, he teases with her in the gardens. She sketches him and he teases with her the whole time. Then how she felt that connection to him, in the wind, when St.John was proposing to her and accusing her of unholy love for Rochester. I have not expirienced a life at all like Jane's (for which I thank all of my lucky stars, saints, and angels), however if I had seen someone coming out of their darkness that way and had enjoyed the teasing, shared confidences, and known the depth of caring someone (especially one who had professed to love me once) I had known so well and once cared for so greatly, I think I would have to come back at least to see if there was a chance.

"There is still hope." - Arwen

I think being Seen, had been a good part of it. As she says, she had not been trampled on, abused, or hidden away from all that was light/interesting. Rochester respects her far more than any man had before, he actually listens to her, and he banters with her. Doesn't hurt that he also does have a teasing, notty-boy smile combined with a bit of a period-appropriate bad-boy charm.

And he didn't have to take Adele, he could have left her in France. I'm sure there were children at the school Jane grew up in, who had been like Adele where their father wasn't proven and their mothers were gone. He may be cool, distant, and even harsh with her - but he does a lot more than most men of the age would have done, from Jane's perspective. Then seeing how he worked beside his men (especially in the deleted scene where Jane is playing bad-mitten with Adele, they show him working to dig up stumps with his gardeners and washing his hands in the cold pond water before speaking with Jane) and how he did not react with anger when teasing Jane resulted only in her taking back the game piece, then walking off to continue her game with Adele.

Honestly, for me, I tend not to really see it until the scene where she asks for leave to see her dying aunt as well as the pay she is owed at that point. When he tries to understand her reasoning, rather than just handing her a few bucks and telling her to just go and be done with it. And Rochester teases with her about the amount, even holding the bills to his heart and jokingly asking her if she trusts him. When she can't help but tease him a little saying, "Not a wit", and you see how his face changes at her teasing back with him. That was the scene where it clicked and I thought to myself, "Now I get it."

"There is still hope." - Arwen