Adèle Varens
Outer characterization
Adèle Varens is Rochester’s ward and Jane’s pupil at Thornfield in the novel Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë. Adèle is the daughter of Céline Varens, an opera dancer, who was Rochester’s mistress. Though Céline told Rochester Adèle is his daughter, Rochester does not believe this as Céline had a different lover whom he believes to be Adèle’s father. Still, when Céline abandoned her daughter to run away with an Italian man, Rochester took Adèle as his ward and brought her to England.
Adèle is a seven or eight-year-old girl who is “slightly built, with a pale, small-featured face, and a redundancy of hair falling in curls to her waist” (Chapter 11, 52%). She lives at Thornfield with her French nursemaid Sophie and Mrs Fairfax.
