What roles do women play in Jane Eyre?

This is a woman's novel, and in it, women play a large variety of roles. Jane Eyre herself is the steady force throughout the novel; this her story, and it is told in her voice. As an everywoman with no advantages of beauty or fortune, she attracts more than one man through her strength of character and manages to remain true to herself from start to finish. She is a protagonist a reader can easily identify with and root for.
Mrs. Reed plays the role of antagonist, a woman who favors her own children over Jane, who is Mrs. Reed's dead husband's poor relation. She is cold and hateful to Jane and ignores how Jane is abused by her spoiled son. She also adds to the abuse by calling Jane a liar.
When Jane leaves the Reed household, she finds female role models that she loves. At Lowood School, she learns patience and forbearance from both Helen Burns and Miss Temple. At Thornfield, she finds a companion in the housekeeper, Mrs. Fairfax, and possibly a double of her own repressed anger in the mad Bertha Rochester (at least, according to Gilbert and Gubar's The Madwoman in the Attic). In Blanche Ingram, a woman who is tall, beautiful, and arrogant, Jane meets a rival who is her opposite in every way.
After leaving Thornfield, Jane finds a true sense of family with her female cousins named Diana and Mary Rivers, who are kind, refined, and intelligent women.
Many other women weave in and out of this novel; they play a variety of different roles (from servant to mentor) and show different possible ways for women to interact with one another.