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JANE LANE:
Hero in the Making?
The Lawndale Lanes and the
Wold Newton Family
©2010 The Angst Guy (theangstguy@yahoo.com)
Feedback (good, bad, indifferent, just want to bother me,
whatever) is appreciated. Please write to: theangstguy@yahoo.com
Synopsis: Is Jane Lane the offbeat
artist soon to become Jane Lane, Hero for Hire? Her genetic code might hold the
answer, thanks to a potential stockpile of famous Lane ancestors, courtesy of
science fiction’s Wold Newton family!
Author’s Notes: This essay began with an online essay by James “CINCGREEN” Bowman,
connecting the Lawndale Lanes to the Wold Newton family of literary heroes
created by famed science-fiction author Philip José Farmer. It has since grown
all out of proportion to its origins.
This
article has been revised with new material added on
Acknowledgements: Profuse thanks go to Outpost Daria
(http://www.outpost-daria.com) for carrying the valuable information that made
this essay possible. Thanks also to James Bowman, who brought up the Wold
Newton connection that blew my mind, because I am a long-time fan of the
dynasty that Farmer put together. Corrections and suggestions for this essay were provided
by Scissors MacGillicutty (for mentioning the art movie at the start of
“Monster”) and Gregor Samsa (for mentioning the Croatian movie at the start of
“The Story of D”).
*
Crossover Daria fanfiction occasionally suggests that Jane Lane has famous
relatives, most often Lois Lane of Metropolis. In his serial tale, “Shadow of a
Cynic,” Ranger Thorne does a very nice job with Jane as a descendant of Margo
Lane, paramour of The Shadow. Recently, however, new information has come to
light that hints that Jane has ancestors that only authors of the wildest
fiction could possibly imagine—and, indeed, have.
The issue came to light when James “CINCGREEN”
Bowman posted a speculative essay on “The Daria Fandom Blog”
(http://dariafans.blogspot.com/), dated April 15, 2005, entitled: “Jane and the
More Amazing Lanes.” In the essay, he examines possible connections between the
Lane family of Lawndale and Philip José Farmer’s Wold Newton family, a
genealogical chart Farmer developed that is quite famous in science-fiction,
fantasy, comics, and pulp-adventure fiction circles.
Generation of the Wold Newton Family tree
began with Farmer’s assumption that many heroic (and a few villainous) characters
in fiction are genetically related, their common ancestry being a small group
of people who in December 1795 were riding in two horse-drawn coaches near Wold
Newton, Yorkshire, England, when a meteorite irradiated them and altered their
chromosomes. Their descendants allegedly include such worthies as Doc Savage,
Tarzan, Solomon Kane, Captain Blood, the Scarlet Pimpernel, Sherlock Holmes, Wolf
Larsen, Phileas Fogg, The Shadow, and James Bond. A good starting point for
exploration of the Wold Newton family’s current state is its Wikipedia.org
entry at:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wold_Newton_family
The original source material is even
better, if one has access to Farmer’s seminal works on the subject: Tarzan Alive and Doc Savage: His Apocalyptic Life (especially the latter). The
temptation to connect the Lawndale Lanes with the Lanes in the Wold Newton
family is almost overwhelming. James Bowman explores the topic in “Jane and the
More Amazing Lanes.” Possible links between the Lane family of Lawndale and the
vast Wold Newton group were suggested by reading an essay about a Wold Newton
branch with the surname of Lane, described in detail online at:
http://web.archive.org/web/20040201211045/http://hometown.aol.com/kickaha23/Lane.htm
(NOTE: Link is archived and works, as AOL has shut
down its Hometown pages.)
A
diagram of the Lanes’ family tree (sans the Lawndale Lanes) appears at:
http://www.pjfarmer.com/secret/graphictrees/amazing-lanes.gif
Wold Newton family members, according to
various sources, tend to be highly intelligent and drawn to crime fighting,
though they often disobey the law if it interferes with their pursuit of
criminals. As Farmer states in his book on Doc Savage, the crime fighters are
more interested in gaining justice than in adhering to legalities. This
disregard for law can reach extremes: a few family members are notorious master
criminals. Many are adventurers and explorers, though not necessarily nomads;
they return to their respective home bases sooner or later. And many members,
primarily but not exclusively male, have great physical abilities and fighting
skills. A few had curious gold or yellow irises. The one thing they all had in
common was a complete lack of the ordinary.
James Bowman postulates that Jane Lane’s
connection to the Wold Newton tree is through Lazarus Lane, her
great-great-grandfather through her father, Vincent (see the online articles
for details). Lazarus Lane was a Californian crime fighter of the Old West
known as “El Diablo.” Jane’s distant cousins, descendents of Lazarus Lane’s two
brothers, include Barbara Gordon (Batgirl of Gotham City) and Lois Lane (of
Metropolis). She is also distantly related to Dr. Henry Jekyll (of Mr. Hyde
fame) and
Jane’s connection to
http://www.dcdatabaseproject.com/El_Diablo_(Lazarus_Lane)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/El_Diablo_(comics)
Does black-haired, blue-eyed, lanky Jane
Lane measure up to Wold Newton standards? What unusual abilities does she
possess that set her apart from the crowd?
She’s exceptionally intelligent, for one
thing. Any high-school student who has more than a passing knowledge of Pavlov,
Goya, Joan of Arc, Jasper Johns, Van Gogh, Toulouse-Lautrec, Picasso, Warhol, Willem de Kooning, Jackson
Pollock, and chromosomes is not an intellectual lightweight. Granted, she tells
boyfriend Tom that she likes movies with exploding eyeballs and doesn’t get
into “the cinema” (“Fire!”), but she also wants to see Russian art films from
the 1930s (“Monster”) and deconstruct Croatian comedies (“The Story of D”).
Mentally, she’s in a completely different galaxy from everyone else at Lawndale
High School, except Daria.
A clever and witty conversationalist,
if on the sarcastic side, Jane dishes out pointed but accurate social
observations and is an inventive storyteller (“Pinch Sitter” and “Legends of
the Mall”). She speaks Spanish well enough to create “Spanglish” neologisms
like que ironico (Is It Fall Yet?). However, she says she
isn’t the sort who uses all the big words she knows, and claimed to not know the
meaning of one big word—verisimilitude—though she did pronounce it correctly (“Monster”
and “The F Word”). Smarts, she’s got plenty of, and she can hold her own intellectually
even against the genius of Daria Morgendorffer. Her native intelligence is backed
up with a huge dose of mature wisdom. She sees the world realistically and
offers good (if sharp-edged) advice to others, though it is rare for anyone but
Daria to do as she suggests.
It is noteworthy that at age sixteen, and
despite conflicts with her parents and siblings, Jane possessed a strong sense
of responsibility to keep her family intact. This may have been in reaction to
her parents’ failure to do the same. When her parents asked her and Trent to
attend a family gathering that she knew ahead of time would have a hostile atmosphere,
she went anyway (“The Teachings of Don Jake”). She cared for her oldest sister’s
children (“Pinch Sitter”), fed Trent when he camped out for months in the
backyard (“Lane Miserables”), saved the house from being repossessed (The Daria Diaries), rebuilt the gazebo with her own money (“Art
Burn”), and possesses her parents’ “Do Not Resuscitate” orders (The Daria
Database, “Under the Beds, Jane’s & Trent’s”). Her morale fiber was
illustrated when she passed through a period of guilt over wishing Tommy
Sherman dead moments before his unexpected and actual death (“The Misery
Chick”), though she was also content to leave a hazardous spill on a dance
floor if only her annoying classmates would be harmed (“Daria Dance Party”).
In
short, Jane, not Trent, is the glue that keeps the family going when everyone
else has fled on their own self-indulgent wings. Her parents’ gross irresponsibility
is well detailed in an earlier essay, “Jane and the Lanes: An Essay About the
Lane Family of Lawndale.” In their favor, Vincent and Amanda Lane appear to
have saved enough money for Jane to attend college (“College Bored”), though
they could not be bothered to see her graduate from high school (Is It College Yet?).
A strong sense of self-preservation lies
at Jane’s core, despite the appearance she gives of living on the wild side. Her
decision to put off having sex until college speaks well for her strong sense
of self (“My Night with Daria”). Even when partially intoxicated, she had the
presence of mind to ward off the sexual advances of a fellow art student (Is It Fall Yet?). Jane describes herself
as a survivor (“Speedtrapped”), likely for her ability to cope with being
abandoned by everyone else in her family but Trent—and with Trent not being very
helpful, either, because he is so unreliable.
Jane’s best-known talents are in the
sphere of fine arts. She is frequently shown to be a creative, original, and multitalented
artist skilled at sketching, painting, assembled and hand-molded sculpture,
computer multimedia, interior decoration, poster-making, murals, photography, coats
of arms, gluing pottery shards to walls, etc. She took life drawing in her
mid-teens, which is unusual and a sign of maturity. It is my impression that
most artists specialize and never become the Renaissance Man (or Woman) that
Jane is. While many of her works are caricatures or involve offbeat subjects,
she can forge masterworks with such skill as to profit greatly from it (“Art
Burn”), though her copies can be identified as such by experts. She gained
admission to a prestigious art school on the strength of her own work (Is It College Yet?), so copying the work
of others is hardly her only calling.
In the physical sphere, Jane is an extremely
fast runner with great endurance. She was briefly an award-winning track star in
high school (“See Jane Run”), and it appears no one was ever able to beat her
in competition. In her free time, she runs regularly and appears to stay in
good condition despite her eating habits (see below). The only time she was
shown actually fighting was when she cursed and pounded on Tom Sloane with her
fists after discovering his unfaithfulness (“Dye! Dye! My Darling”). Surprise
and Tom’s unwillingness to fight back gave her the upper hand, which was good
because her fighting technique is sadly lacking. Her rage burns off quickly so
her common sense can take over, but she can carry a grudge a long time. Good combat
technique or no, she is not above offering to rip the lungs out of those male
classmates who annoy her (The Daria
Diaries); it is unlikely she ever carries out such threats, however. She
can dance well (“Life in the Past Lane”). She was also once in the Girl Scouts
and might recall survival skills from that period (“Antisocial Climbers”). And,
of course, she learned to drive long before Daria Morgendorffer did, despite
their similar ages (“Speedtrapped”).
Though she often dresses predictably, Jane
has a chameleon quality about her. It appears she can adopt any look or
disguise with ease, but she always maintains her basic persona (“See Jane Run,”
“The F Word,” and “Life in the Past Lane”). She will try new styles and outfits
if she thinks they will appeal to her boyfriend of the moment. Why she pierced
both ears three times each is unknown, but she seems to like the look (“Dye!
Dye! My Darling”); it is not known if she has any other piercings or tattoos. Known
to be forward with members of the opposite sex to whom she is attracted, Jane
wears bright red lipstick that is her trademark. Interestingly, when she wants
to be ignored, she is often successful, as if she can turn her attractiveness
on and off like a light switch.
Jane is not perfect. Characterized by her
best friend as “snide, antisocial, and resentful,” she nonetheless takes little
in life seriously, mocking convention at every turn. Her sarcasm surfaces most
sharply when confronted with pretension and fakery; her scorn is applied
directly and in heaping amounts, even to her best friend. She is anti-authoritarian
with a casual regard for rules and rule-enforcers (see incident in which she
was ticketed for crossing center line in “Speedtrapped”). Vandalism and other
criminal activities are possible if her artistic integrity is threatened (“Arts
‘N Crass”). Jane does not socialize with her peers, for whom she has boundless
disdain, and she does not like to be around her self-absorbed family, except
for Trent (“Lane Miserables”). When possible, she and Daria separate themselves
from larger groups and go off on their own (“The Daria Hunter” and “Antisocial
Climbers”). Her loyalties lie only to her art, Daria, and Trent. She is fond
enough of Daria to forgive her friend for kissing Jane’s then-boyfriend, Tom (Is It Fall Yet?).
Until Daria appeared, Jane was content to
be a lone wolf. By habit or nature, Jane is lazy and oversleeps; her personal
life is undisciplined and dominated by impulse, especially in choosing
boyfriends and art projects. Her bedroom, which doubles as an art studio, is a
mess. Her dating relationships are a bit of a mess, too. Though criticized by Daria
for cutting back on their time together in order to go on dates, this is a
necessary evil for anyone looking for a partner, as Daria discovered later with
Tom (“Boxing Daria”). The heart of Jane’s dating problems is paradoxically one
of her greatest strengths: her refusal to compromise her identity. She won’t
give up important parts of herself or her world to make a dating relationship
work; a potential boyfriend must take her just as she is, and must measure up
to certain standards. She dumped “Bobby Bighead” for being a clumsy kisser (“The
Invitation”), Evan for telling her to dump Daria as a friend (“See Jane Run”),
Tom for being unfaithful (“Fire!” and “Dye! Dye! My Darling”), and Nathan for
being too self-absorbed (“Life in the Past Lane”). Jane’s sexual chameleon
quality, noted earlier, never changes her true identity. She can go into a
laundry room with Bobby, become a track star for Evan, try to dye her hair for
Tom, and dress and dance retro for Nathan, and she can even dress in popular
styles and try out for cheerleading practice (“The F Word”), but she’s always and
forever Jane, heart and soul.
Anyone who fails to deal with this also
fails to get her, a prime example being Tom, who didn’t like her running off to
take photos (“I Loathe a Parade”) or her tastes in movies (“Fire!”); he
accidentally ate gummy bears for one of her art projects and had to replace them
(“Mart of Darkness”). In the end, though, Tom knew what Jane was about, telling
her, “You’re smart and you’re funny, you have a great attitude, you do
everything on your own terms. You’re, like, from a cooler world” (“Dye! Dye! My
Darling”). These virtues were not enough for him to maintain interest in her,
though.
Perhaps Jane’s most serious personal issue
is a fear of abandonment. Her accurate fears that boyfriend Tom was becoming
interested in Daria caused her to become so jealous and paranoid, she felt she
was no longer acting like herself (“I Loathe a Parade,” “Fire!” and “Dye! Dye!
My Darling”). Her response to her mother’s butterfly quote spoke volumes for
her feelings about having her parents run off on her (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?” —from “Lane Miserables”). She prefers to be the dumper, not
the one dumped, as it gives her control over a part of her life she once had no
control over: being left behind by someone with whom she is in a close
relationship.
Despite Jane’s obvious intelligence (and
despite her claims that she does not do well with grades), she deliberately underachieves
in school, maintaining a C average to hide the extent of her knowledge and stay
off the radar of others—or perhaps because she is too lazy to apply herself to
tasks she thinks are of little worth (“Esteemsters,” “Gifted,” “It Happened One
Nut,” and “Prize Fighters”). Her math skills appear to be worse than Daria’s,
as she is in a separate math class (“See Jane Run” and “Gifted”). Jane sings
poorly and apparently does not write music (“Jane’s Addition”). Her appetite
for junk food (or any kind of food) is boundless. Curiously, though she once
claimed she liked having low self-esteem because it made her feel special
(“Esteemsters”), she has a very strong sense of who she is and what she’s about,
as noted above.
Summary
Could Jane be a hero in the making? It is
telling that she volunteers the services of herself and Daria in accompanying
Mr. DeMartino into a blizzard (“Antisocial Climbers”). However, this seems to
have occurred in part because they were sick of being around their fellows. She
has all the self-confidence and courage a hero could ask for. She lacks only
the sustained motivation to maintain an aggressive heroic life.
The prognosis for further development,
however, is very good. Jane’s laziness may have begun to wane by the time she
graduated high school. Under Daria’s continued prodding, Jane made an extra
effort to get into the Boston Fine Arts College and succeeded, in spite of her
pessimism (Is It College Yet?). She
also appears to have completely gotten over the triangle/betrayal problem with
Daria and Tom, though she never appears close to Tom in any scenes after the
breakup.
Jane Lane is far out of the ordinary. She
has not yet established herself as a mythic character on the level of some of
her ancestors and relatives in the Wold Newton family, but it would not be
difficult to see that come about in fanfic.
Of course, it is possible Jane’s
connection to the Wold Newton group lies not through her father, but through a
lover of her mother’s. Her notorious comment to Ms. Morris about her family’s
genetics (“We
share certain chromosome pairs. Beyond that, I’m not supposed to say.” — from
“See Jane Run”) implies she might be at best a half-sister to her other
siblings. Did Amanda Lane have an affair with one of the present-day
descendants of the Wold Newton family? Only your local fanfic author knows for
sure.
Final Note: In
a separate essay, James Bowman suggests that Jane Lane’s best friend, Daria
Morgendorffer, was also a Wold Newton descendant and a distant cousin of Jane’s.
The essay is at:
http://www.geocities.com/cincgreen/morgendorffer.html
(NOTE: Link is inactive, as Yahoo has shut down
GeoCities pages.
Keeping link until website is restored elsewhere)
Original: 06/02/05, modified 10/05/06, 02/10/07, 04/24/08, 04/24/09, 08/30/09, 05/10/10
FINIS
