Jane Eyre is a fractured fairy tale that confronts the gender power hierarchy traditionally reinforced in canonical fairy tales. The changeling heroine in Jane Eyre is based upon the pre-Victorian fairy lore Brontë both read and listened to when she was growing up in Haworth. This chapter takes a thin approach to regionalism, identifying explicit regional references in Brontë's fairy tales and fairy lore and contrasting that with the Victorian fairy lore generated by mainstream British artists. While critics' examination of several fairytale motifs in Brontë's novel is certainly significant, women writers in the nineteenth century were particularly intrigued by the concept of feminine tradition in Jane Eyre. The pre-Victorian fairy offers an alternative construction of female identity and female power, which clashes with Victorian ideals of feminine passivity and domesticity. While the pre-Victorian North Country fairy lore that empowered Brontë's heroine was not the remnant of a past matriarchy, it was lost to later literature.