Bertha Mason

Outer characterization

Bertha Mason is an important character in the novel Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë. She is a Creole woman from a wealthy family in Spanish Town, Jamaica, and has one older brother, Richard Mason, and a younger brother who has an intellectual disability. Bertha suffers from hereditary insanity, her mother having been admitted into an asylum for insanity.

Her father and Rochester’s father arrange a marriage between Rochester and Bertha to increase their wealth. Five years into her marriage with Rochester, he takes Bertha to Thornfield in England and confines her to a room on the third floor under the watch of her keeper, Grace Poole.

Bertha is described as a very beautiful, tall, and large woman, with dark skin and long curled black...