THE JANE MANIFESTO: or WHO IS JOHN’S MOTHER? (brought to you by me and @thebirdscomeback)
What do we canonically KNOW about John's birth and the Donaldsons?
John and Peter are half-brothers who have the same dad
John is approximately 2 years younger than Peter (considering he’s a senior in NMTD, but not yet 18 at Balthazar’s birthday), which means Peter was around a year or so old when Bill had his affair with John’s mother
In ‘CONFESSION’ and the rest of NMTD it’s very clear that John is used to a very different home life than what the Donaldsons offer, likely much more unstable, and he doesn’t really trust authority figures. SEE ‘CONFESSION’:
‘Dad and Ann...They're content. So boringly, brain-numbingly content with each other. They never raise their voices. Whenever I do something wrong, they apologise for letting me down.’
‘You never could resist an opportunity to tell me how exactly I didn't live up to the expectations of our parents. How I didn't have the capacity to achieve what I should've. I could always tell that they were your expectations. You didn't even try to understand me. So. I just slipped into the background, and became invisible to you.I know that you think I should "harden up". Conform. "Why can't you just be normal, John? Why can't you just play along? Everybody else does."’
John had to leave England to live with the Donaldsons for unknown reasons, but we don’t know exactly when.
In ‘one foot’ John says that ‘Balthazar's liked Pedro since Year 9’, to which Ben replies ‘Yeah, but, how? You weren't even at Messina back then. How do you know these things?’. The exchange makes it seem like John hadn’t yet joined them at Messina school, but was around in the general sense to experience Balth and Pedro up close.
In A Special Announcement Bea talks about meeting Pedro when they were 13. By her phrasing of “his family were swimming further out”, we can assume that this includes John. (Which means he was in Aotearoa by around 11)
Extrapolation that is fair and logical:
Considering the way John and Peter don’t fully consider each other brothers initially, John’s otherness within the family, it’s likely he was as old as possible when he got to the Donaldsons (say around 10)
John’s previous guardian, presumably his mother, had in some way been entirely unable to care for him, and no one else in England could take him. We think it likely she’s dead. That they never refer to these things in clear phrasings increase the chance of it being a sensitive and painful situation. See the description box of ‘CONFESSION’:
‘I dislike anything that resembles a funeral, in any case.’ - corroborates the argument that his mother is in fact dead.
‘Pedro, I think your Mum might be blaming herself for me running away, but this has nothing to do with her, or why I had to move from England.’ - One reading of this is that Ann has something to do with John leaving England, but that seems incredibly unlikely, so the logical reading is that John is reassuring everyone that Ann has not been a bad stepmother, and that this is all unrelated to his grief (dude get real). He wants them to believe that this is all his own moral failing.
Ann and Bill navigate taking in John without… divorcing, which makes it seem like Ann was not entirely blindsided. The addition of John seems to have been quite a shock to the family though, so it’s possible that Ann and Bill discussed Bill’s affair after it happened, but didn’t actually know about John until later. Getting over your husband cheating if he tells you right after it happens is one thing, while forgiving him for having a 10 year old bastard child without even knowing about an affair would be quite another.
In ‘CONFESSION’ John says ‘I know you've all decided that I've been depressed’, which must be a claim based on what Ann and Bill, and accordingly Peter thinks about it. This (and the rest of ‘CONFESSION’) opens for the idea of a Donaldson family that has tried to do everything ‘by the book’ ever since John came to stay with them, including giving him access to some kind of mental health service (grief counselling??) as a child.
We see the Donaldsons as (at least trying to be) a very normal family, always content but also always with certain expectations from each other. The way Pedro talks to John about being ‘normal’, as well as the way he performs a kind of role which eventually breaks down by the end of NMTD, implies a level of pressure he feels implicitly to be the ‘right’ kind of person. It’s clear then, that the Donaldsons care about appearances, are performing as a very put together family which is threatened when John comes into their lives
In these next sections we will refer to John’s mother as Jane Venter, a name we have chosen based on the historical Jennet (or Jane) Davenant, who is sometimes said to be the mother of one of Shakespeare’s bastards (considering the Bill Shakespeare and Ann(e) Hathaway of it all).
Proposed sequence of events based on facts and (fan)fiction:
We think Bill and Ann separated for a relatively brief period after Pedro was born. Perhaps struggling with their relationship after having a child, perhaps they had a miscarriage, perhaps because Bill was having a bit of an existential crisis (which we will elaborate on later). They took some time apart which is when Bill went to England.
Our general idea for the reasoning of England is some kind of work trip. This ties into him trying to do things the ‘right’ way, and focusing on starting a career.
We think the affair happened in England rather than Aotearoa for a few reasons. It would be easier for Bill to feel okay with his decision if his wife and small child was on the other side of the world. We like to think that Bill told Jane about his marriage, which she didn’t mind because of a self-destructive drive. Knowing that it can’t be a long-term relationship makes her more willing to start it.
We think that Bill must have been fairly attached to Jane to take in their child later, and accordingly that their relationship must have lasted a while and meant a lot. This seems more likely the more separate he could be from Peter and Ann.
In short, Bill is in England on some kind of extended work trip, and then meets Jane at a bar she works at (this is because historical Jane Davenant was the wife of a tavern-keeper). falls in love. (SEE. the hit bill/jane fanfiction you've touched her perfect body with your mind)
They proceed to have one of those life-changing flings you see in indie films that inevitably ends in tragedy. Imagine with us, for a moment, the summer of ‘97 in London:
Bill is living out some manic pixie dream girl movie. He’s far away from his family, he's considering whether he loves his wife, he's working in business. He’s having a Pedro/Peter-esque breakdown about whether he really wants 2.5 children and a white picket fence. He meets this woman who's like everything he (or his wife) isn't. She's so carefree and doesn’t care about conforming. Probably she’s a bit younger than him and not in a rush to have a family. They fall for each other, but he realises more and more how dysfunctional she is. He breaks it off when he leaves England, realising he does in fact really love his wife and cares about what they're building together. Johns mother doesn't tell him she's pregnant.
Bill comes home to Aotearoa, picks his marriage back up, tells Ann about Jane, and they work through it.
The Donaldsons don't know about John until they’re supposed to take him in. This drags up the cheating Ann and Bill dealt with years ago. They’re now visibly imperfect in the eyes of the community, which possibly adds onto the pressure John feels, even if they (and he) don’t express it.
Speculation that is driven by our personal whims (this is where extrapolation merges into headcanon):
Jane then acts as a kind of anti-Donaldson figure. Where Ann and Bill are kind to John, he struggles to accept that they really love or understand him. This makes sense if John is used to a different kind of love (as referenced in our post from CONFESSION) In his critiques of the Donaldsons we see him wishing for a kind of familial relationship which doesn’t pretend to be so picturesque or clean.
The vision of Jane then in contrast becomes someone who is disorganised, open, chaotic, lively and emotional. The love John is used to is, we think, more outright, but also more messy.
Considering Jon’s volatile reactions (including Peter’s hug in ‘PROJECT VI- MONTAGE’), it does seem likely he has grown up in a somewhat neglectful or abusive home. He generally gives the impression that he thinks he knows how to, and prefers to, take care of himself. The Donaldsons caring for him freaks him out, ergo he is not used to it from before.
We do think he felt the loss of Jane very keenly, so our thought is that she was very unstable; loving, but not someone to count on. She can be quick to snap.
With this and the fact of her early death, there’s a strong option she was in some way dealing with addiction.
The way John acts with Peter implies a certain level of comfort in conflict, as in our poems in the NMTDaily zine John thinks that ‘love is supposed to have claws’. We think he and Jane experienced the epic highs and lows of love and mother-son relationships!
This is only the beginning of us being incredibly insane about Jane. We have many more things to say, but probably this essay is enough for now. The Donaldson backstory forever haunts us.
