Jane Eyre

Mr. Edward Rochester is the unattractive, wealthy, passionate, and somewhat eccentric master of Thornfield Hall. He is also the benefactor of Adèle, the young French girl Jane teaches as governess. Despite being Jane’s employer, Mr. Rochester insists on engaging with her as an equal in direct, honest, and intimate conversations. Jane develops a deep fondness for Mr. Rochester that ultimately evolves into love.

Mr. Rochester spends much of his life roaming around continental Europe, where he has sexual relationships with multiple women, including Adèle’s mother, a beautiful young opera dancer named Celine Varens. Though he seems reluctant to burden Jane with his secrets, what he does admit to Jane suggests that he harbors other even darker past indiscretions. Mr. Rochester initially denies his feelings for Jane, then wants to control and smother her with his love, until he finally realizes that he loves her as his “equal […] and [his] likeness” (631).

Mr. Rochester’s darkest secret is the existence of his first wife, Bertha, a mentally ill woman whose violent impulses Mr. Rochester discovered only after they were married. For years, he hides Bertha in Thornfield’s attic, employing Grace Poole as her guardian. She haunts the place, filling it with her strange, eerie laughter, and sometimes escaping to menace its other inhabitants.

For Jane, Mr. Rochester is the ultimate temptation and test of strength. Desperate to be with her but unable to marry, Mr. Rochester proposes that they run away to the south of France and live together. Jane is morally opposed to becoming Mr. Rochester’s mistress, which would be sexually immoral and put her completely in his power economically.

The end of the novel balances some of Jane and Mr. Rochester’s power differential. The fire Bertha sets at Thornfield partially disables him, making him physically reliant in some ways on Jane’s strength. Jane, meanwhile, has inherited a large fortune, making her financially independent of his wealth. Finally, Jane has a quasi-romantic relationship with St. John Rivers, giving her some of the sexual experience Mr. Rochester already has in spades. She thus feels capable of entering a marriage with Mr. Rochester as his equal. 

At the beginning of the novel, Mrs. Reed serves as the reluctant guardian of her orphaned niece, Jane Eyre. Though Aunt Reed allows Jane to live with her family in the illustrious Gateshead Hall, she resents her for being a dependent and encourages her children to behave cruelly toward Jane. After Jane retaliates against an unjust beating from her son John, Aunt Reed sends her away to a boarding school for poor girls. Aunt Reed is the first in the novel’s many hypocritical Christians, whose behavior towards Jane belies their professed piety.

Years later, when Aunt Reed is on her deathbed, Jane offers to reconcile. Aunt Reed, however, refuses Jane’s efforts, still bitter about her sister-in-law’s marriage beneath her station. Aunt Reed reveals that she always hated Jane because her husband Uncle Reed loved Jane more than his own children.

Georgiana Reed, younger daughter of Aunt Reed, is Jane’s cousin. Because she is very pretty, the maids fawn over her, and her mother spoils her. Though Georgiana treats Jane cruelly when they are children, she befriends and confides in Jane as an adult. When Georgiana attempted to elope with a local man she loves, her prudish sister Eliza sabotaged her. Georgiana happily marries a wealthy man after the death of her tyrannical mother.

Eliza Reed, elder daughter of Aunt Reed, is Jane’s cousin. She is not as beautiful as her sister Georgiana, and develops a prudish, self-righteous religiosity to mask her insecurity. Eliza joins a convent in France and becomes the Mother Superior.

John Reed, son of Aunt Reed, is Jane’s cousin. Throughout Jane’s childhood at Gateshead, the older John bullies and beats her. He becomes an alcoholic and gambling addict. Halfway through the book, Jane learns that he has committed suicide after accruing insurmountable debts.

Mr. Brocklehurst is the cruel headmaster of Lowood, a boarding school for poor girls. He preaches a doctrine that elevates self-denial and deprivation as the path to spiritual salvation—but only for the downtrodden young girls in his care. He uses this doctrine to justify the school’s refusal to provide for students’ basic needs, such as nourishing food and warmth. When Mr. Brocklehurst’s well-dressed wife and daughter visit Lowood, Jane sees that he is a hypocrite who profits from the school while the students suffer.

After multiple students die in a typhus outbreak, Lowood is investigated and Mr. Brocklehurst is dismissed and discredited. The conditions of the school greatly improve after his dismissal. 

Helen Burns is Jane’s closest friend at Lowood. Helen practices an extreme form of Christianity, consisting solely of self-denial, self-recrimination, and forgiveness. Though Jane admires the inner peace and angelic femininity Helen’s philosophy gives her, she does not understand how Helen can tolerate the unjust treatment she receives. When Helen becomes gravely ill with consumption, she looks forward to dying, convinced early death would spare her a miserable life as a deeply flawed person. She dies in Jane’s arms and is buried in an unmarked grave. Years later, Jane returns to mark Helen’s grave with a stone that reads, Resurgam: Latin for “I shall rise again” (202). In her biography, Charlotte Brontë shared that her inspiration for Helen Burns came from her own sister who died at a corrupt and torture-filled institution similar to Lowood. 

Maria Temple is a beautiful and kind teacher at Lowood. Contrary to the wills of Mr. Brocklehurst, she treats her students with compassion and dignity, attempting to provide for their physical and emotional needs. She serves as Jane’s earliest and most poignant role model of female strength.

Miss Alice Fairfax is the housekeeper at Thornfield, the manor owned by Mr. Edward Rochester. Because Mr. Rochester frequently travels abroad for long intervals, she often serves as head of the household. Though well-meaning and kind, Miss Fairfax participates in Mr. Rochester’s deception about his mentally ill first wife Bertha, kept prisoner in his attic. When Jane asks Miss Fairfax about the strange laughter she hears coming from the attic, Miss Fairfax lies, telling her the laughter is Grace Poole’s. 

Blanche Ingram is a beautiful young socialite who briefly becomes engaged to Mr. Rochester. She is only interested in his money and wants to marry him despite finding him physically unattractive. Jane develops a deep inferiority complex around Blanche and her beauty, seeing herself as plain and unaccomplished by comparison.

Grace Poole is the guardian of Bertha, Mr. Rochester’s mentally ill first wife. To cope with the strain of caring for Bertha, Grace drinks large amounts of alcohol. Whenever Grace becomes too drunk to watch over her, Bertha escapes and behaves violently.

Richard Mason is the brother of Bertha, Mr. Rochester’s first wife from Jamaica. After Mr. Mason confronts Mr. Rochester at the altar, Mr. Rochester reveals that he was tricked into marrying Bertha. Eager to be rid of the mentally ill young woman, Bertha’s family passed her off as a beautiful, well-mannered lady.

Bertha is Mr. Rochester’s violent and mentally ill first wife, whom he hides away in the attic of Thornfield under the care of Grace Poole. A formerly beautiful Creole woman, Bertha is now described as being in a permanently semi-bestial, cunning, and borderline psychotic state. In the novel, she functions more as a symbol than a character. She stands for Mr. Rochester’s sexual guilt and misdeeds and for his oppressive and controlling tendencies. At the same time, she is one of many examples of deeply unsuitable spouses in contemporary Victorian novels, as attitudes towards potentially allowing divorce were slowly starting to change. The novel asks readers to consider whether Mr. Rochester’s lifelong tie to Bertha should count as a valid marriage. More recently, many theorists have examined Bertha as an example of Victorian colonial racism and sexism.

St. John Rivers provides a job and a home for Jane when she runs away from Thornfield. Though he is very handsome, St. John’s manner and attitude are extremely cold. Jane often compares him to a beautiful statue, suggesting a classically attractive exterior and a firm, stonehearted will. St. John is a minister whose Christianity follows harsh Calvinist principles, stressing predestination and the idea that only the elect few will make it into heaven. Following his religious convictions, St. John wants to become a missionary in India. This means repressing his love for Rosamund Oliver, a beautiful woman who could never be happy with the hard work and sacrifice required of a missionary’s wife. When Rosamund gets engaged to another man, St. John proposes to Jane, offering her a utilitarian but loveless marriage. Jane refuses him, even when he accuses her of ignoring God’s dictates, because she cannot marry a man who doesn’t love her.

Diana Rivers is the sister of St. John and Mary. She becomes close friends with Jane, tutoring her in German and urging her not to go to India with her brother. When Jane’s Uncle John Eyre passes away, Jane learns that Diana, Mary, and St. John are also Uncle John’s nieces and nephew, making them cousins. Jane divides her inheritance equally between the four of them.