Jane
and the Lanes:
An
Essay about the Lane Family of Lawndale
©2003 Roger E. Moore
(roger70129@aol.com)
Feedback (good, bad, indifferent,
just want to bother me, whatever) is appreciated. Please write to:
roger70129@aol.com
Synopsis:
It is
possible with a little math work and careful study of “Daria” show scripts to
work out the approximate ages of Jane Lane’s many siblings and the
circumstances of their birth, feeding interesting speculation about the Lane
family’s history and sources of their interpersonal problems. More fanfic about
the Lane family is called for.
Author’s Notes: This essay evolved from a
March 2003 investigation I made into the Lane family as presented on “Daria,”
for character details for the fanfic, “There Beneath the Blue Suburban Skies”
(about Penny Lane, of course). It is hoped that fanfic writers will find value
in this work for their future stories.
This
essay has been revised, with new information added from the fifth-season
episode “Art Burn,” as well as information gleaned from the two official
“Daria” books, The Daria Diaries (Anne D. Bernstein, Pocket Books: New
York, January 1998) and The Daria Database (Peggy Nicoll, Pocket Books:
New York, November 1998).
Acknowledgements:
Profuse
thanks go out to “Outpost Daria” for carrying the valuable information that
made this essay possible! Thanks also to James Bowman and Ruth Margolis, who
brought up “Art Burn” and the information therein, and Robert Nowall, who
reminded me of the two “Daria” books and their contents.
Happy families
are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.
—Leo Tolstoy, Anna
Karenina
Because
it is large, full of interesting people, and not well defined, the Lane family
from Lawndale (living at 111 Howard Drive, according to The Daria Diaries)
is a tempting subject for “Daria” fanfic. Not much has been revealed about this
rather dysfunctional family and its history. However, with a bit of math and
detective work (and a lot of flat-out guessing), some of the ages and the birth
order of Jane Lane’s siblings—and some notes about her nieces, nephews,
parents, and other relatives—can be deduced.
To
begin with, I tend to agree with the birth order given for Jane’s siblings on
the “Lane Family” webpage at “Outpost Daria”:
http://www.outpost-daria.com/ch_lane_family.html
Jane
is obviously the youngest, followed in ascending age by Trent, then (it is
guessed) Penny, Wind, and Summer. This webpage is a good starting point for
anyone who wishes to become familiar with the Lanes of Lawndale (as it includes
excellent screen shots of the whole family), particularly when you combine this
with the given ages for Jane and Trent Lane from the 1998 MTV “Daria Day”
marathon script from Season One:
http://www.outpost-daria.com/ts_dday.html
The
relevant text follows:
====================
Daria:
Hey. We’re back with your questions from MTV Online. Robert of Vasleia,
California, wants to know how old we are. Should we tell him?
Jane:
You first.
Daria:
Bob, I’m sixteen.
Jane:
Yo tambien.
Daria:
My sister Quinn is fourteen and a half.
Jane:
My brother Trent is twenty-one.
Daria:
And my mother is—
Helen
[VO]: Daria!
Daria:
We’ll be back with more letters soon.
===================
These
ages apply to their sophomore year, right after Daria’s birthday. Daria is a
Scorpio (October 24-November 21), per data obtained from the “Beavis &
Butthead” show. Jane is probably a little older than Daria. Quinn’s birthday is
about six months away from Daria’s, likely in the spring (a Taurus in May?). It
is interesting that Quinn and Daria, so opposite in temperament and nature,
were born at opposite times of the year.
In
the episode “The Teachings of Don Jake,” Jane talks with one of her relatives.
================
Woman:
And how’s your sister Penny?
Jane:
I think she’s a little disappointed in the Mexican job market. She may try
Nicaragua next.
Woman:
And how’s your brother Wind?
Jane:
He’s thinking of getting remarried if he can just figure out whether his
divorces were legal.
Woman:
How about your sister Summer?
Jane:
You know, the private detective found three out of her four kids.
================
http://www.outpost-daria.com/ts_ep112.html
This
conversation completely sums up the spin each of Jane’s oldest siblings gets in
the series. Jane is obviously in contact with her three oldest siblings on a
more-or-less regular basis, either directly (by phone or postcards) or through
Trent or their parents.
In The
Daria Diaries is a postcard from Penny, who is in Nicaragua and unhappy
with the job market there, per Jane’s comments about her in “The Teachings of
Don Jake.” Penny says she plans to head next for Honduras. She comes home from
Costa Rica in “Lane Miserables,” doubtless having gone there after Honduras.
Penny
Lane’s age can be deduced from the second-season episode, “See Jane Run,” in
which Jane and Ms. Morris, the girls’ Phys Ed teacher, have the following conversation:
===================
Ms.
Morris: Jane Lane, you’re just like your sisters, aren’t you?
Jane:
We share certain chromosome pairs. Beyond that, I’m not supposed to say.
Ms.
Morris: You know what I mean. Can’t be part of a group. Always have to be different.
Your sister Penny never wanted to participate, either. I taught her a thing or
two about the American competitive spirit.
Jane:
You sure did. That’s why she’s spent the last ten years out of the country.
Ms.
Morris: I know what kind of upbringing she’s had. What’s your excuse?
Daria:
I’m just plain no good?
==================
http://www.outpost-daria.com/ts_ep211.html
Ms.
Morris knew both Summer and Penny personally, and she apparently had difficulty
with the red-haired, anti-establishment rebel, Penny. (For a sample of Penny’s
attitudes, see her Nicaraguan postcard in The Daria Diaries.) Ms. Morris
doesn’t think much of Jane’s upbringing, either. Penny has been out of the
country for 10 years at this time, so if she left right after high school (average
age at graduation is 18 years), then she was 28 when Jane was 16. We thus have
Jane (16), Trent (21), and Penny (28) pinned for ages in Jane’s sophomore year.
Penny
registers in the “crafts” end of the arts-and-crafts spectrum. She is very
fluent in Spanish and independent enough to wander Mexico and Central America
by herself. Jane knows some Spanish, too. One wonders if the two of them get
along together, as Jane appears to defend Penny in “See Jane Run,” but this
does not seem likely. Penny comes across as a cold, tense loner with a bad
attitude toward any and all authority, and a bad attitude toward her siblings
as well. In The Daria Diaries is a postcard from Penny, who addresses
her postcard to her parents only (“Mom and Dad Lane”), not to Jane or Trent,
though the parents are away from home for long periods of time. Penny was not
at all demonstrative toward Trent or Jane in “Lane Miserables,” preferring to
call a Costa Rican government official and complain about a volcano eruption
(as if it were the fault of the government) rather than talk to Jane. Her first
words upon entering the house in “Lane Miserables” are a snide reference to
Wind’s marriage problems. Summer makes a comment to Penny in “Lane Miserables”
suggesting that Penny has never been married, and she is never mentioned as
having any children.
Penny’s
room is still maintained at the Lane home, apparently in much the same
condition it was in when she left the U.S. over a decade earlier. It can be
viewed in the fourth-season episode, “Fire!” as Daria’s temporary residence.
Wind
has been divorced at least twice, which is confirmed in the third-season
episode, “Lane Miserables.” Katie (on the houseboat) was his third wife, and
likely the person Jane spoke of as Wind’s next spouse in “The Teachings of Don
Jake.” Claudia was wife #1 or #2, who threw out and divorced Wind “years ago.”
The script for “Lane Miserables” can be found at:
http://www.outpost-daria.com/ts_ep308.html
Wind,
too, sends a postcard to “The Lane Family” in The Daria Diaries, but
here he says that he is about to marry someone named Sheila who “isn’t like the
other ones,” so she is likely pre-Katie if the engagement was later broken off.
The same postcard says that the marriage immediately before the one planned to
Katie was essentially annulled because the person who officiated it was not
legally empowered to marry couples. Wind’s almost-marriages could be numerous,
as he appears to get carried away by his emotions. He does not appear to have
ever had children, however—and one wonders why. It is possible he has one or
more children from his many failed liaisons, but they aren’t ever mentioned. If
he does, he appears to have no involvement in their lives.
No
transcript exists for the fifth-season episode, “Art Burn,” in which the gazebo
in the Lanes’ backyard is destroyed by a defective special effect while Jane is
filming Mystik Spiral. Wind appears unexpectedly and hugs Trent and Jane (the
latter of whom appears very unenthusiastic about this greeting), then says
Katie locked him out of their kitchen and he came over because he was hungry.
Thus, Wind and Katie are still married while Jane is a senior, and they live
very close to Lawndale, if not in Lawndale itself. Wind thinks for a moment
that Daria is actually Penny, so he either rarely sees Penny or has a terrible
memory (the former is more likely, as Penny is out of the country so often).
Also
in “Art Burn,” Wind becomes hysterical when he sees the gazebo is wrecked. He
claims it was the “naming gazebo” in which the Lane parents named each of their
children when they were born. This is the first time Jane and Trent have heard
of this story, but they see to it that the gazebo is fixed. When the Lane
parents reappear at the episode’s end, Amanda Lane says the story was not
true—she made it up to keep Wind from (understandably) changing his name to
Ronald several years earlier. Many fans of this show suspect Wind was treated
to a barrage of predictable jokes about his name all through school and
probably afterward.
Despite
Wind’s hypersensitivity and fondness for hugging, he is narcissistic, needy,
immature, and uninterested in or unable to deal with the problems of others.
Jane’s Nieces and Nephews
(Summer’s Kids)
It
is interesting that more is known about Summer’s children than about Summer
herself. Indeed, most of what we know about Summer has to do with her (poor)
parenting skills. In the episode “Pinch Sitter,” Daria and Jane have this
conversation at the Guptys’ home:
=================
Daria:
Where did you learn to baby-sit?
Jane:
I used to help with my sister Summer’s kids till they got old enough to run
away.
=================
http://www.outpost-daria.com/ts_ep108.html
Jane
is thus older than the oldest of her nieces and nephews by Summer, likely by
several years, at least. Was Summer living with her parents when she had small
children and Jane helped out? It appears so; Summer must have been recently
divorced at that time.
If
the oldest of Summer’s four kids is 12 at the show’s start, just to pick a
likely age, Summer started having kids at about age 20. (These ages can be
tinkered with to a fair degree, so it could have been earlier or later in her
life.) It is possible that none of Summer’s four kids has the same father,
given the suggestion of her history of divorces and the possibility of
following in her mother’s footsteps for marriage and mating habits (see later,
“Amanda and Vincent Lane”). A father figure seems entirely absent from her
children’s lives, which sort of follows if you assume Summer had a strange,
chaotic childhood, being raised early on in an anarchistic, unstructured hippie
commune—or in the anarchistic, unstructured Lane home. As a child, Summer was
allowed to eat nothing but Pez for a year, according to Amanda Lane (“Lane Miserables”).
It
is certain that all of Summer’s kids have run away from home, possibly multiple
times and certainly all of them at once on at least one occasion, by the time
Jane is 16. It is likely that at least one of Summer’s kids is missing at any
given time. A postcard from Summer in The Daria Diaries announces that
Adrian and Courtney (see later) have run away from her, apparently while they
were at a cheap motel in Pennsylvania; Summer dropped the other two children at
the Lane home in Lawndale, perhaps before the trip. (“No one was home,” writes
Summer, “so I told them to wait.”) The two errant siblings send a postcard from
“Amish Country” (probably Pennsylvania), then a later card from the “Petrified
Forest” (Arizona), where they are earning small amounts of money selling chips
of petrified wood to tourists—a trade that is illegal, by the way. The kids
don’t appear to be distressed at being on their own, writing: “If you hear from
Mom, tell her to chill. We’ll call her in a few weeks.” The cards are neatly
printed in all capitals and correctly spelled, so the children are quite
intelligent.
Adrian
and Courtney could be the youngest of Summer’s kids, given that Summer came to
pick them up in “Lanes Miserables” without bringing any other kids with her.
(Maybe the others ran away again, or were being cared for by neighbors or other
family.) Adrian and Courtney seem to be about 10-12 years old. This is in the
third season, though, assumedly in Jane’s junior year in high school, so in
Jane’s sophomore year they would be about 9-11 years old. It is possible they
are fraternal twins and tend to stick together; they play together and run away
together, at least, and they seem inseparable judging from their postcards in The
Daria Diaries. The two of them think highly of Vincent and Amanda, given
that they often write to or run away to the Lawndale Lanes’ home and get
presents from them (per a postcard in The Daria Diaries).
All
of Summer’s children thus appear to be skilled at running off, hitchhiking,
stowing away, or taking refuge with other relatives or distant friends. The
potential for child abuse on the road is substantial—sorry to say it, but there
it is. Why do they run away? Good question. Summer clearly has little control
over her kids and complains loudly about it. She seems to lack her mother’s
easygoing temperament and could be neglectful or unpredictable, even
emotionally abusive. If she dumped two children at the empty Lane house in
Lawndale, she’s not much of a mother. Jane (and possibly Trent) likely cared
for these runaway nieces and nephews on numerous occasions, a point rarely
brought up in the fanfic about either of them. In “Lanes Miserables,” Summer
declares that the Lane home is the last place on Earth she wants to be. Why?
A
last note about siblings, nieces, and nephews: In The Daria Database
(“‘While We’re Away…’ Housekeeping Notes from the Lanes”) is a note from Amanda
warning “Janie” and Trent to be sure that if people are discovered living in
the Lane home’s basement, “Make sure it’s not one of your brothers or sisters
or their kids before you call the cops.” This appears to leave the door open
for children by Wind or Penny, but this does not seem likely. Still, Wind might
have kids from one of his many marriages. Who knows?
It
is my guess that Amanda Lane, Jane and Trent’s mother, is about the age of
Helen Morgendorffer. For the sake of argument, let’s say Amanda is 48 at the
time of seasons one and two (c. 1998), so Amanda was born about 1950, a nice
round guesswork figure. Jane was thus born when Amanda was 32, Trent when she
was 27, and Penny when she was 20. Nothing is ever said if the pregnancies were
planned or unplanned.
If
siblings Wind and Summer are older than Penny, Amanda was a teenage parent.
Lots of interesting speculation comes into play now. It is possible that
Vincent, guessed to be about the same age as Amanda, is not the biological
father of Summer, Wind, and Penny—this is per a comment Jane made about her
sisters in “See Jane Run”: “We share certain chromosome pairs. Beyond that, I’m
not supposed to say.” Perhaps she was just being her usual sarcastic self,
perhaps not. Vincent might have adopted the oldest three or acted as their de
facto father after Amanda and Vincent married, became handfasted, or
whatever—perhaps they have a common-law marriage. Summer and Wind were born
before 1970 if they are the oldest, and thus were children during the hippie
era, which explains their peculiar names (and Penny’s, of course). That Trent
and Jane have normal names further emphasizes the difference in upbringing
these two groups of siblings had. The tale of the “naming gazebo” in “Art Burn”
does not negate this possibility, as Amanda reveals the story was false. Wind’s
parentage could still be an open question.
For
the sake of argument, it is assumed that Wind and Summer were born about 1-2
years apart, and Wind is assumed to be 1-2 years older than Penny. Amanda would
thus have started having kids at about age 16, 18 at most. She might have been
married previous to meeting Vincent and could have been divorced at least once.
Indeed, given a probable hippie past, Amanda might have raised Summer, Wind,
and Penny in a commune (in California?), without ever being married, and their
biological fathers might be nearly impossible to determine at this late date.
Draw your own conclusions about what that was like for Amanda’s kids—it doesn’t
appear to have bothered her, however. The fanfic potential here is
enormous and almost untapped.
Given
that Ms. Morris recalls Penny and Summer Lane, the Lanes have been in Lawndale
for at least two, possibly three decades. Amanda and Vincent may have moved to
Lawndale after the birth of Penny and their own marriage, in whatever order
those events came. How they got the money to buy a big house is a good
question, too. Maybe Vincent had financial resources of some kind.
In
Daria’s second diary entry from The Daria Diaries, she says of Jane,
immediately after they meet in their sophomore year at high school: “Her
parents are out of the country for a few months and forgot to leave the
mortgage payments.” (Jane’s parents are thus more than a bit irresponsible.)
The postcards from Vincent and Amanda in The Daria Diaries clearly show
that both are gone from the Lane home for extended periods of time of up to
weeks and months, and each is likely to have no idea where the other is on
Earth at any given moment. Only Trent and Jane are assumed to be at the house,
and Trent is sometimes gone on band tours. Amanda’s notes to “Janie” and Trent
in The Daria Database (“‘While We’re Away…’ Housekeeping Notes from the
Lanes”) reveal their home to be just short of a disaster area, with visits even
from the health department. Parental involvement is also a disaster area. In “Lane
Miserables,” Trent apologizes to the Morgendorffers for staying out too late
while he and Jane are sleeping over.
=================
Trent:
I’m sorry I broke the rules. We don’t really have any rules at our house.
Right, Janey?
Jane:
Well, there’s that one about not building a fire in the rooms that don’t have
fireplaces.
=================
When
did Vincent and Amanda begin leaving Lawndale for extended periods of time,
forcing their oldest children to care for the smallest siblings? Penny might
have gotten stuck with this job in particular, a job she may have resented. If
Summer and her children were at the Lane home during one of Summer’s divorces,
Summer probably ran things for a time, too, though clearly Jane was a major
help with the kids. Jane also delivered sandwiches to Trent when he lived in a
backyard tent for six months as a child, so Jane has always had significant
responsibility for others, which doubtless accelerated her maturity. Does Jane
resent her parents for running off on her so often? The following conversation
from “Lane Miserables” makes her feelings clear.
=================
Amanda:
You know, if you try to hold a butterfly tightly in your hand, it will die. You
have to let it go. And if it comes back, it is truly yours, but if doesn’t, it
never really was.
Jane:
How about if you tear off its precious little wings?
=================
It
appears that Amanda’s three oldest children form one conflict-prone,
antagonistic group of individuals, and Trent and Jane—following so far behind
them in birth order—are the “out group,” not well connected with the rest of
the family. Several episodes in the series support this. For example, in Is
It College Yet?, only Trent is present to see Jane graduate from high school.
Trent is also stressed out at the possibility of Jane going to Boston for
college, as she is the only Lane he knows who has consistently been around the
house. Sibling rivalry and conflict is a much-repeated theme in “Daria,” and
the close bond that Trent and “Janey” share is a rare and precious thing in the
Dariaverse. It appears that Jane has more authority in running the house than
Trent does, given how she manages Trent’s time in “Art Burn” and her possession
of her parents’ “Do Not Resuscitate” orders in The Daria Database
(“Under the Beds, Jane’s & Trent’s”).
Summing
up so far, early in Jane’s sophomore year (first season), we have:
Jane,
16
Trent,
21
Penny,
28
Wind,
29-31 (assumed)
Summer,
30-33 (assumed)
By
the end of Is It College Yet?, all are about two and a half years older,
closing in on three years older by the start of the next school year.
The
chance that Penny bonded with Jane is low (as noted earlier). In fact, Jane
probably finds her oldest three siblings to be more strangers than family, and
she obviously resents their intrusions during “Lane Miserables.” None of the
oldest siblings connect with Jane in “Lane Miserables,” being consumed with
their own problems. Note the scene in “Lane Miserables” in which Trent does not
want to become involved in the relationship role-playing session between
Vincent and Wind. Trent may feel exactly as Jane does toward their three older
sibs, as he and Jane both fled their home for the Morgendorffers’ place.
Were
the five Lane children ever home together as they were growing up? Given their
sudden migration home as adults in “Lane Miserables,” in Jane’s junior year,
this is possible, but it doesn’t seem likely they were ever together for a long
period of time. The three oldest siblings simply don’t like each other that
much; Penny and Summer have strong hostile feelings toward each other and
others in the family, and Wind thinks only of himself. Their grand feud at the
end of “Lane Miserables” is taken by all to have been predictable and
typical—and useful to Jane and Trent in clearing away unwanted family members.
When
Penny was age 18, Trent was 11 (fifth or sixth grade?) and Jane was 6. Jane was
7 in first grade, if she was 16 as a sophomore; Jane was thus in first grade
when Penny was 19, which might have been Penny’s senior year in high school or
the first year she was gone from home. Tommy Sherman won the state football
championship for Lawndale three years before the first-season episode, “The
Misery Chick,” which would have been when Trent was 18—a junior or senior who
shared classes with Tommy—and Jane was 13, in seventh grade.) Summer and Wind
might have left home by this time, off on their first marriages.
One
interesting option mentioned by some fans of “Daria” is the possibility that
Penny is the oldest of Jane’s siblings. If so, you could space the Lane
children in the following order in the first and second seasons of the series,
giving a year’s time between births.
Penny:
28 (minimum)
Wind
and Summer: 22-27 (probably 25 or older)
Trent:
21
Jane:
16
The
problem here is that Summer has to give birth to four children (all capable of
running away from home at this time), and Wind has to get divorced at least
twice, then married a third time. It can be made to work, but it will get
crowded. Penny, Wind, and Summer still form a group of three dysfunctional
siblings who rarely interact with Jane and Trent.
The
Lanes of Lawndale own two cats named Zachary and Taylor, according to The
Daria Database (“‘While We’re Away…’ Housekeeping Notes from the Lanes” and
“Under the Beds, Jane’s & Trent’s”). The cats never appear in the TV show,
but cats never appear when you want them to appear. Perhaps they eventually ran
off like so many of the Lanes do.
Penny
has a colorful parrot, Chiquito (Spanish for “very small,” a not-uncommon pet
name in some places), she was somehow, despite customs regulations, able to
bring home from Central America. Chiquito is “very possessive,” sometimes
screeching at or attacking other people (as does Penny in a verbal way), or
getting into mischief.
Courtney
and Adrian wrote from Arizona that they wanted their mother to pick them up in
her van, as they now have a dog. No other information is available on the dog,
but if it became a part of the family, it will likely run away with the two
kids.
And
what of the rest of the family? “The Teachings of Don Jake” is crucial here.
==============
Jane:
Do you know where I’ll be this weekend? The Lane family reunion. Dozens of
Lanes from all over the country converging in one Midwestern split level to
remind themselves why they scattered in the first place.
Daria:
Wow. I didn’t think your parents would be caught dead at something like that.
Jane:
They wouldn’t. We’re the black sheep of the clan. We’re only invited because
hating us brings them all closer together. My parents are much too smart for
that trick. So they’re sending me and Trent as their representatives.
==============
This
situation sounds more than a bit like what happens in “Lane Miserables.” As
Jane calls it the Lane family reunion, the temptation is to see the meeting as
being her father’s relatives, not her mother’s. If Jane’s family is unpopular,
this is even more likely.
If
Amanda ran away from home in her mid-teens and had children out of wedlock in a
commune, or in a messy, chaotic first marriage far from the rest of the family,
one now has a reason why the other Lanes consider Amanda’s clan to be “black
sheep.” It is interesting that Jane and Trent obey their mother and father in
going to the family reunion, and curious, too, because the oldest three kids
are out of the picture. Maybe Jane and Trent, being children from a legal
marriage (they have their father’s hair color), are made slightly more welcome
than the others by conservative members of their extended family—though the
rest of the family doesn’t seem to show them any respect.
“The
Teachings of Don Jake” contains bits and pieces of information about relatives
such as Aunt Ellie (and her vacation pictures), Cousin Jimmy (and his modeling
career), Aunt Bernice (and her straw hats, from Middleberry), Uncle Max (the
bum who likes Trent), and the highly critical Grandma. It is tempting to think
of Grandma as Amanda’s mother, because she is so abrasive that one can
understand why Amanda might have run away from her an early age to become a
hippie, starting a sort of chain-reaction of dysfunction in her children.
However, Grandma is probably a Lane, thus being her father’s mother. We have
not yet met Amanda’s relatives, alas, though Jane does have a pile of
paint-by-number kits under her bed (per The Daria Database), all
identical and sent by one of her grandmothers—possibly the one on her mother’s
side.
And
there you have it, the Lanes of Lawndale. Fanfic writers—go!
Original:
7/30/03, revised 8/6/03, revised 9/21/03
Essay
FINIS