Jane Eyre
Mrs. Alice Fairfax
The Thornfield housekeeper
The kind, motherly housekeeper who welcomes Jane to Thornfield Hall.
Mrs. Fairfax is the housekeeper at Thornfield and a distant relation of Mr. Rochester. She is warm, tidy and old-fashioned. When Jane arrives frozen in the dark, she takes her cloak and brings her to the fire.
She is also anxious about her master's moods and does not like to ask questions. She tells Jane the facts she knows and not the ones she does not. She is a kind person in a household with a secret that nobody has told her about, or so the story suggests.
“You must be frozen, my dear. Come close to the fire and let me take your cloak.”
In the story
Contains spoilers.
Mrs. Fairfax shows Jane the house and its third floor, where Jane hears a cold laugh and is told it is Grace Poole. She announces that Rochester has gone to a house party and speaks of Blanche Ingram as the most beautiful lady in the county.
She belongs to the household that Jane leaves and later finds destroyed. Mrs. Fairfax does not appear in the story's final chapters.
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