Protagonist and narrator Lucy Snowe, as her surname suggests, conceals much of herself under a cool blanket of seclusion. Despite her isolation and implied past traumas, Lucy insulates herself from despair with a rich interior life and sharp, judgmental assertions about those around her. In her character, the author depicts a woman trapped between the expectations of a middle-class Victorian lady and the desires and conflict of a young person seeking true independence. Throughout the course of the narrative, Lucy experiences loss, depression, ridicule, and abandonment, emerging as a resilient and industrious individual who learns to prosper in a world hostile to female empowerment and success.

Lucy’s abstracted and austere narration is due partly to the distance she has from her story. She chronicles her history from several decades in the future, which allows for a more philosophical and contemplative view of her life. Lucy often refers to herself as a stoic, someone who endures hardship with little show of emotion:

I had a staid manner of my own which ere now had been as good to me as a cloak and hood of hodden grey, since under its favour I had been enabled to achieve with impunity, and even approbation, deeds that, if attempted with an excited and settled air, would in some minds have stamped me as a dreamer and zealot (56).