Jane Eyre as a novel does have shades of the Gothic horror genre especially in its changing spatial frames from Gateshead to Thornfield to the burnt Thornfield later. The Red Room experience early on as well as the entire stay at Thornfield Hall with the spectre of Bertha Mason haunting the Gothic mansion, the novel does make use of this genre, but to call Jane a Gothic heroine would be isolating one element in her figure and turning it into an absolute.
She is like the Gothic heroine, a damsell in distress, but the odds she faces are not psychic or supernatural odds, but social odds too. Recently, Gothic heroine has also been seen as a representation of the patriarchal power system, but in Jane Eyre, whether it is the psychological or the paranormal or sociological level of Jane's quest, hers is a real success story. The Gothic element brings in an element of metaphysical justice to her achieved condition at the end of the novel. Bertha is like a potential Other, she has to overcome as a spectral figure to become the non-Bertha, a proto-feminist success-story.
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