Jane Lane (Daria)

Jane Lane is a fictional character who appeared regularly on the MTV cartoon show Daria, voiced by Wendy Hoopes.^[1]

In the show, she was main character Daria Morgendorffer's best friend and as of the show's final season was aged 18 years. She lived at 111 Howard Drive in Lawndale, and graduated from the local high school, Lawndale High. She is an aspiring artist and has created many unusual paintings, drawings, and sculptures. Unlike most other characters, Jane's bottom teeth are shown when she is talking as opposed to the upper ones. She is mostly seen wearing a red jacket, a black T-shirt, grey skater shorts, black tights and combat boots.

History

Early history about Jane's life that was revealed during the show is scarce, but there are a few facts that were confirmed by the character herself. She was, in her prepubescent years, a member of the Girl Scouts, during which time she was forced to attend a nature camping event, a memory she detests. This was revealed in Episode #402 "Antisocial Climbers".

Other camping events Jane has partaken in include Mr O'Neill's overnight field trip to local woodlands (as depicted in Episode #402) and a summer vacation to the Ashfield Artists' Colony (as depicted in the Daria telemovie, Is It Fall Yet?). Despite these infrequent occasions, Jane remains adamant that she does not enjoy camping in any sense of the word.

Jane had her first serious romantic relationship at the age of 17 with Tom Sloane, the son of a wealthy local family and then a student of Fielding Preparatory Academy. The relationship ended almost one year later with a marked deterioration marked by increasingly frequent fights where she was typically in the wrong. As Tom and Daria's relationship conversely grew stronger, this sparked a paranoid jealousy in Jane who felt increasingly threatened by this development. That ill feeling came to a climax when she persuaded a most reluctant Daria to help her in a hair dyeing experiment that ended disastrously. At this, Jane irrationally accused Daria of deliberately causing the incident to take away Tom. Eventually with the following development of Tom kissing Daria, Tom and Jane agreed the relationship had run its course. Jane and Tom remain casual friends.^[2]

At the age of 18, Jane graduated from Lawndale High and was accepted by Boston Fine Arts College into the midterm freshman class. Because the show ended before Jane actually began attending the college, her current status is ultimately unknown, but it is assumed that she still attends the college, socializing with Daria, who attends a college in the same city, on her free weekends. The end credits of "Is it College Yet?" show the two as adults hosting a daytime-talk show style program. Whether she achieved her possibly facetious stated goal of losing her virginity at "11a.m., move-in day" at college (Boston Fine Arts College) remains unknown.

Family

Jane's parents are Vincent and Amanda Lane, two artistic personalities with a very relaxed, uninvolved approach to parenting. She is the youngest of the Lane family, her older siblings being, in presumed ascending order, Trent, Penny, Wind and Summer Lane. Trent is a perpetually lazy grunge rock musician who performs in the garage band Mystik Spiral (a running joke being that the band are always seemingly thinking about changing the name, but never do); Penny, a disillusioned backpacker with a fondness for animals; Wind, an emotionally damaged three-time divorcé and Summer, a worn-out mother of four, including Jane's niece Courtney and nephew Adrian. Jane and Trent were the only two Lanes residing in the Lane household for the duration of the series. With Jane at college, it is presumed that Trent is now living alone in the house, but still with a firm loving relationship with his sister Jane.

For further information on the Lanes, see Characters in Daria.

Personality

Like Daria, Jane too is cynical with biting wit, but is better adjusted.^[3] Jane is surprisingly more outgoing and well-adjusted than Daria, and does treasure their friendship. Her longest relationship so far has been with Tom Sloane; after they broke up, he started dating Daria, a situation that temporarily caused tension between the girls. In the tie-in book The Daria Diaries, Jane's motto is quoted as being "every cloud has a smoky gray lining".

Jane's primary interest is art; she enjoys painting, sculpting, drawing and sketching. She also has a vague interest and substantial talent for running, in which she usually participates when emotionally overwhelmed. Her favorite food is pizza and her favorite television show is fictional oddity news program Sick, Sad World.

Jane's only real dislikes are materialism, conventionalism and commercialism, all of which her personality overtly disowns as components of a society and as social expectations. Jane also has a dislike for mathematics. In the episode Anti-Social Climbers, it is revealed that Jane hates blue M&M's.

See also

• Characters in Daria

References