Based on the earliest estimate of when this novel might begin, the earliest that Jane Moore’s parents likely died is the January of 2001. Lindner chooses to begin the novel relatively shortly after these deaths. By the third page, Jane remarks that her "parents died four months ago, black ice" and that "the spring semester was coming to a close and [she]'d be homeless in less than a week" (Lindner). Sarah Lawrence's undergraduate dorms close May 9 for the Spring semester of 2020, so it could be reasonably estimated that Jane's parents died four months prior to May, in January of 2001 (Academic Calendars). 

The death date of Jane Moore's parents is significant because she's the first of the “Janes” studied who loses her parents in adulthood and is thus never sent to live with a cruel aunt and cousins. To compensate for this difference in plot, Lindner gives Jane cruel siblings instead of writing her as an only child. She also writes indifferent parents who force independence, loneliness, and a lack of parental validation upon her, personality traits and emotional baggage which mirror the hypotext and the other hypertexts.

This is best exemplified by the adapted Red Room scene in Jane. The Moores don't have a sprawling Victorian mansion with lots of rooms, nor do they have reason to suspect a specter of a dead uncle lurking about. There is no Mrs. Reed to punish Jane and lock her away. Lindner, instead, situates Jane's entrapment as a cruel prank played by her brother Mark in which he "lock[ed her] in that attic crawl space and [left her] there all night" without her parents ever realizing her absence (192). 

“Academic Calendars.” Sarah Lawrence College, Sarah Lawrence College, www.sarahlawrence.edu/academic-calendar/.
Lindner, April. Jane. Little, Brown, 2011.