Jane, an American from Baltimore, Maryland, is the daughter of professor Archimedes Q. Porter, the love interest and later the wife of Tarzan, and subsequently the mother of their son Korak. She develops over the course of the series from a conventional damsel in distress who must be rescued from various perils, to an educated, competent and capable adventuress in her own right, fully capable of defending herself and surviving on her own in the jungles of Africa.
She first appeared in the initial Tarzan novel, Tarzan of the Apes (1912), then later reappeared in: