Jane Porter

**Jane Porter** is one of the main characters in the Tarzan Franchise.

## Background

Jane is a young woman living in Victoria-era Britain, alongside her father, the esteemed Professor Archimedes Q. Porter. What became of Jane's mother is unknown, though Archimedes briefly mentioned that their daughter takes after her, quite a bit.

At adulthood, Jane became an animal researcher in a field that allows her to work closely with her father. Together, they use their combined resources to garner a better understanding of animal habitats and behaviour. Their most ambitious expedition is one taking place in Africa, where a long-awaited journey to study gorillas was to occur.

### Personality

Despite her origins linking back to upper-class England, Jane is fairly eccentric and spontaneous, not unlike her father. She still has a sense of standards, however and tries to stay true to her roots as an Englishwoman, while also adapting to life in the jungle. Overall, Jane is nevertheless intelligent and greatly gifted in her skills as a zoologist and artist; seen several times throughout the film, Jane can conjure an extremely accurate respresentation of an animal (or even a human, such as Tarzan) and portray it on her sketch board with relative ease and exquisite detail. Though she primarily works from a reference, her sketch of Tarzan was done solely on memory, further exemplifying her talent.

Aside from art, Jane has a passionate admiration for wildlife of all kinds. She generally appreciates and respects the animal kingdom, and takes it as her responsiblity to be mindful of their living conditions during her explorations. This led to bitterness between herself and her arrogant guide, Clayton, who continuously doubted Jane's capabilities.

For all of her talents, Jane is far from perfect. She has a habit of getting herself into trouble and sometimes due to her own arrogance, such as when she teased and taunted a baby baboon, not realising his aggressive family was nearby and ready to protect their child. Within the jungle, she is also out of her element, meaning she initially had a difficult time surviving its perils upon encountering them, forcing her to be saved by Tarzan, repeatedly. Interestingly, however, she is somewhat quick to adapt. After her first encounter with Tarzan, Jane grew a natural understanding of the ape-man and the jungle itself. She slowly began to lower he defenses (visualised through her progressive change of attire), became more open-minded to the peculiar world in which she was exploring and eventually felt her home was not in England but in the jungle itself, and with Tarzan.

### Physical Appearance

In Tarzan, Jane is a woman in her early 20s with fair skin, blue eyes and long, brown hair. When she first appears in the movie, her outfit and personality wasn't adapted to the jungle but as the film moves on, her outfit becomes more revealing as she grows more attached to the jungle to the point that at the end of the movie her appearance is now similar to Tarzan as she now lives in the jungle. When Jane first appears, she wears a long yellow dress with a purple cravat, white gloves, white boots (with black on the soles, toes and heels, like Mary Jane shoes), white petticoat, white frilly knee-length pantalettes and her hair was in a bun. Later, when Jane is introducing Tarzan to her father, she wears a yellow shirt with a long green skirt with no shoes and her hair is let loose. Her next outfit is of a white tank top with a long, wrapped red skirt and like her previous outfit her hair is loose and she is barefoot. By the end of the movie, Jane wears only a red tank top that reveals his midriff and a matching short skirt.

In The Legend of Tarzan, Jane is almost always wearing her yellow shirt and green skirt as her main outfit, and barefoot.

## Appearances

### Film

* Tarzan
* Tarzan & Jane

## Disney Parks

Jane made regular meet-and-greet appearances in the Disney theme parks around the time of the film's initial release, dressed in her full, yellow exploration garb. She has generally been retired in recent years, however.

### Disneyland

Jane appears as a figure in the Tarzan's Treehouse walkthrough attraction in the Disneyland park.

In the original version of World of Color, Jane and Tarzan made an appearance in the "So Close" montage, before they were replaced by Rapunzel and Flynn Rider in a Tangled segment.

### Tokyo Disneyland

Jane appears in the Tokyo DisneySea version of Fantasmic!, appearing in projected footage swinging on vines with Tarzan during the jungle sequence.

### Shanghai Disneyland

In Shanghai, Jane plays a role in Tarzan: Call of the Jungle, which is a retelling of the original film. She encounters Tarzan while studying the jungle's wildlife at her campsite and engages in a ballet of vine-swinging before quickly falling in love. She also takes part in the "Trashin' the Camp" sequence, while "Strangers Like Me" has her showing human culture to both Tarzan and the apes.