The odd and interesting character in Jane Eyre

  Helen, Jane's friend at boarding school, as a 14-year-old girl, was neither feminine nor childlike, silent, untidy, unsociable, absorbed in the inner world. The most distinctive features were her religious stoicism, her wisdom beyond her years, and her over-rationality, which is unusual for any age. Seems to be waiting for the call of the end at any time, and finally as a pale shadow of the general quiet death. Another pale shadow is Jane's cousin Eliza, who does eventually become a religious nun, but is less religious than Helen, or much less human. Pursuing a life that runs like a machine, she chose Catholicism because she thought it was the religion that would allow her to live an undisturbed and "organized" life. Such images of women seem to be rare in nineteenth-century literature.