In 'Jane Eyre', what is the name of the madwoman in the attic?

In Jane Eyre, the madwoman in the attic is Bertha Mason. She is Edward Rochester’s first wife, secretly confined in an attic room at Thornfield Hall before Jane learns the truth about Rochester’s past.

Bertha’s presence drives several of the novel’s most mysterious incidents, including the strange laughter in the house, the fire in Rochester’s bedroom, and the attack on Richard Mason. Rochester explains that he married Bertha in Jamaica after being pressured by his family, but says that her severe mental illness eventually made their life together impossible.

Bertha is not Adele Varens, Rochester’s young ward, or Blanche Ingram, the aristocratic woman Rochester appears to court. Helen Burns is Jane’s friend at Lowood School. The phrase “madwoman in the attic” later became famous beyond the novel through Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar’s 1979 feminist study of nineteenth-century literature.