Jane is the novel’s protagonist and point-of-view character. At the time of the novel’s main action, she is a young woman working as a maid for the upper-middle class Nivens and engaging in a clandestine love affair with Paul Sheringham, the son of another well-to-do family. Later in life she moves to Oxford, marries a philosopher, and becomes a novelist.

After becoming a famous writer, Jane reflects on how she is often asked whether she “write[s] under [her] own name, [her] real name?” (98). Her response is that she writes under her “given name” but that “it might as well be a pen name” (98). This is because “Fairchild” was a name given to “foundlings”—children abandoned without names on the steps of orphanages. Meanwhile, as Jane says, her first name is just a generic name given to young girls. Jane was not just an orphan; she was one without any sort of “name” or connection to the past whatsoever.

This position contributes to her unique power of imagination. Without any clear identity of her own, Jane finds it easy both to imagine scenes involving others and to actively inhabit their roles. This is most vivid when Mr. Niven is driving Jane back to Upleigh.