J.E. #8: Elf or Imp

Throughout the novel, Jane is described as something otherworldly allowing her to escape the binds her world places on women.

Perhaps in that world she was something mystical, something incomprehensible, something that to Rochester could only be described in a world not his own--a world where women were different. Rochester certainly had not encountered a woman like Jane before in his experiences with countless mistresses. He had not met with someone who had learned to value and respect herself for something special which came from within, something that surpassed vanity and radiated quietly with an otherworldly glow.

Jane is an elf because she is not like the women of her time. Even as a child she sees herself as "a strang little figure... like one of the tiny phantoms, half fairy, half imp, Bessie's evening stories represented" because even she cannot understand what she is, though she knows she does not belong in this world--a world where women can be regarded as property.

Jane's ability to be a creature of another world, or of another life, in a world where she is so clearly contrasting to the ideals around her aid Brontë in her illustration that Jane is an important individual defined not merely by marriage. In this way she defies the general guidelines of the marriage plot.