Jarndyce

I want to touch on John Jarndyce and his issue with the East wind. I've read and reread some parts of the novel in search of his problem with when the wind blows from the East but I can not figure it out, does anyone else remember a part that maybe I don't? while on thsi I want to just talk about Jarndyce in general. In class some people were mentioning that it was creepy when he was proposing to esther and I know that by the end of the novel most everyone had changed their mind about him being creepy but I still want to talk about before everyones mind was changed.

The reason that it was found creepy to begin with had been because he is her guardian but when you go back a little bit to when theya re sitting and talking, I'm pretty sure this is the night that Esther can't sleep at all so she does some work and comes across Jarndyce who can't sleep either because he is "troubled" with his thoughts. When we go back to then he asks her how she thinks of him and when she gives her answer that he is like a father or her guardian he becomes even more troubled even if it's just that flash in his eyes for a moment this is when we get the first sign for how much he cares about Esther.

When he proposes this makes him creepy suddenly because he is her guardian but for me it seems to be less creepy when I remember that it seems like he doesn't even want to be just her guardian or a father figure to her. I feel like for everyone it would seem less creepy if he were younger but this was not an unusual age difference for that time period when girls got married very young anyway and most likely to older men. Maybe an even bigger then the difference between Jarndyce and Esther's age.

By the end of the novel everyone seems to like him again because of what he has done for Esther so my question is would we have adored him if we knew he was as caring and listened and payed more attention than any other man who wanted Esther before she became ill? For me I found him a better man through the novel even when he wasn't exactly the best father figure. But he doesn't want to be her father he wants to be with her it seems. he still doesn't make the best father figure especially to Richard but he tried to get him on the right road it's just unfortunate that Richard got caught up in the case which at that point I don't think that there was anything Jarndyce could have done to get him back.