Mrs. Alice Fairfax is a minor character in Jane Eyre (2011), who hires Jane as a governess for Adèle, the young girl in the care of Mr. Rochester who lives at Thornfield Hall. She is a minor character because she does not have her own storyline, but rather she serves to flesh out the storyworld as one of the major servant characters in the film. Mrs. Fairfax is the housekeeper at Thornfield Hall who reflects “a domestic (and thereby feminized) everydayness” (Straw 78). Her character reflects the type of traditional gendered life that potentially awaits Jane in her new role as governess. This representation is significant because Jane is not particularly passionate about becoming a governess, and merely does it out of necessity due to a lack of choice in careers for women in the mid 1800’s. Though Mrs. Fairfax is kind to Jane and a likeable figure, her character space is limited in that she has no thematic development of her own. Her role as an older widowed housekeeper allows for her character “to act in the way the audience expects, and to make use of that expectation” by requiring very little development in order to fulfill her character space and contribute to the complete character system of the film (Mathijis 90, Woloch 14). Mrs. Fairfax’s designated space is emphasised when, upon arriving at Thornfield Hall, Jane mistakes her for the owner and Mrs. Fairfax declares she is “only the housekeeper” (Jane Eyre 2011). This establishes her role in the overall narrative as being insignificant, even though she does contribute significant things such as taking on motherly attributes when discussing Jane’s relationship to Mr. Rochester, or revealing detailed information to Jane about how Thornfield Hall eventually burned down. Overall, Mrs. Fairfax is a minor character who assists the major characters in furthering the plot, and provides important background information to the viewers. 

Works Cited

Fukunaga, Cary, director. Jane Eyre. Universal Pictures, 2011.

Mathijs, Ernest. “Referential acting and the ensemble cast.” Screen, vol. 52, no. 1, 2011, pp. 89–96, https://doi.org/10.1093/screen/hjq063

Straw, Will. “Introduction.” Screen, Volume 52, Issue 1, Spring 2011, Pages 78–81, https://doi.org/10.1093/screen/hjq057

Woloch, Alex. The One Vs. The Many : Minor Characters and the Space of the Protagonist in the Novel. Princeton University Press, 2003. 

Who is Profiling the Character?: Ramona Stefanyk
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