Tarzan And: The Shame Of Jane
If we were to reconstruct a plausible plot based on the tropes of the era and the implications of the title, the story would likely center on a psychological crisis. Here is the most widely accepted "fan canon" reconstruction of the lost tale:
Synopsis: Set three years after the events of The Return of Tarzan, the story opens with Jane living in a modest bungalow on the Waziri tribal lands. She has given birth to their son, Korak, but is suffering from a deep melancholia. Tarzan, unable to comprehend emotions that cannot be solved with a knife or a wrestling match, grows frustrated.
The "shame" manifests when a British expedition, led by Jane’s former suitor, William Cecil Clayton (whom she believed dead), arrives. Clayton is horrified to find the cultured Jane Porter now dressing in animal hides, eating raw meat, and speaking the guttural language of the great apes. He whispers to his porters that she has "fallen from grace." tarzan and the shame of jane
The central conflict occurs when Jane is forced to return to London to settle her father’s estate. In the drawing-rooms of Mayfair, she is no longer the brave woman of the jungle. She is a sideshow. She accidentally uses her fingers to eat, she flinches at carriages, and she speaks too loudly. The "shame" is not her behavior—it is the realization that she no longer belongs to either world.
The climax reputedly involved Jane standing before a mirror, ripping off her Victorian gown to reveal the calloused, scarred body of a jungle woman, and whispering: “I am not ashamed of him. I am ashamed of how easily I forgot this body.” If we were to reconstruct a plausible plot
Whether Burroughs actually wrote such a scene is debatable. It feels too psychologically nuanced for the pulpy, action-driven style of the 1920s and 30s.
Several real works contain similar tensions: Tarzan, unable to comprehend emotions that cannot be
Modern critics (e.g., Marianna Torgovnick, Gone Primitive, 1990) argue that Jane’s shame is a narrative tool for disciplining female desire. She must be shamed for wanting Tarzan so that the reader can safely enjoy the “primitive” fantasy without endorsing it. Furthermore, Jane’s eventual “cure” (accepting Tarzan without shame) requires her to abandon civilization entirely—a problematic resolution that equates female fulfillment with the rejection of social structure.
This report examines the concept of “Jane’s shame” as a recurring subtext in Edgar Rice Burroughs’ Tarzan of the Apes (1912). While Burroughs never uses this exact phrase, the narrative repeatedly places Jane Porter in situations that generate acute social, moral, and sexual shame. Her shame serves as a narrative device to elevate Tarzan’s nobility and to critique the hypocrisies of “civilized” society. The report concludes that Jane’s shame is not a flaw in her character but a reflection of the era’s anxieties about female autonomy and racial/cultural purity.
Tarzan, created by Edgar Rice Burroughs, is a fictional character who was raised by gorillas in the African jungle after his parents' death. The character first appeared in a novel in 1914 and has since been featured in countless adaptations, including films, TV shows, and comic books.
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