Miss Ingram was a mark beneath jealousy; she was too inferior to excite the feeling…She was very showy, but she was not genuine. She had a fine person, many brilliant attainments; but her mind was poor, her heart barren by nature…She was not good, she was not original…Tenderness and truth were not in her…Other eyes besides mine watched these manifestations of character…Yes, the future bride-groom, Mr. Rochester himself, exercised over his intended a ceaseless surveillance; and it was from this sagacity…this obvious absence of passion in his sentiments toward her, that my ever-torturing pain arose.
– Charlotte Bronte
Jane Eyre, Chapter 18. Jane has watched Rochester and Blanche Ingram move closer to marriage, with both taking part in a mock-marriage charades game during Blanche’s stay Thornfield. But Jane doesn’t feel any jealousy. She ironically calls Blanche “inferior,” even though Blanche belongs to an aristocratic family and is a social class above Jane. But the real Blanche, as Jane sees her, is poor in mind and character, lacking in heart and full of show. Jane believes that Rochester doesn’t love Blanche, so it hurts her that he is going to marry her.