In 2001, the Nokia 8250 was produced, making it the first phone/cell phone with a monochromatic display (Datta). In addition, compared to earlier cell phone models, the Nokia was compact, which made the phone popular (Datta). 

As ReJane takes place at the beginning of the new millennium, we can see the subtle ways technology and the development of technology, such as cell phones, impacted life. While the first mobile phone was invented by Motorola in 1973, cell phones did not become popular until the ‘90s and early 2000s (“A (Mostly) Quick History of Smartphones”). And after 2001, the amount of people who owned a mobile phone only grew. 

Yet, in ReJane we only see the beginning of this development. Only some people own mobile phones, but many still do not. For example, Jane does not seem to own a cell phone at any point in the novel. When living with her Uncle Sang, she uses the family’s house phone to maintain communication with people, such as when Beth is hiring her. When Jane is living in South Korea, she mostly uses email–through a public cafe’s wifi network–to contact people, such as Nina, Ed, and future employers in South Korea. Jane flies to South Korea right before the 9/11 terrorist attacks, and when Jane finally opens her email a few days later, she sees the panicked emails from Beth (Park 158-159). While Jane had used a pay phone to call the family after she had landed to reassure Devon and the family, the emails show just how frightening a lack of communication was during an event like this. Today, people can shoot off a text instantly in moments like this–and a lack of a response is worrying to people. Yet, this was not the reality a lot of the time in 2001.

When Jane and her boyfriend, Changhoon, are preparing for Nina’s visit to South Korea, Jane notes how Changhoon had just sent a text to his friends, and they had already immediately responded to him. Jane notes, “He’d gone through his entire social network in less time than it took me to compose a single text in Korean” (Park 213). 

I think Patricia Park chose to include these moments of technological difference for possibly a few reasons. First, Jane and most of her family and friends lacking cell phones aids the miscommunication aspect of the original Jane Eyre. In Jane Eyre, when Jane runs away from Thornfield and Rochester, she has no contact with Rochester whatsoever. While in ReJane, Jane emails Ed a few times while she is in South Korea, yet the communication is very limited between them. I also think Changhoon, who seems to be more involved in the developing technology scene, having a cell phone, while Jane is confused by the rapid communication he has with a cell phone, sets up a cultural and socioeconomic contrast between the two of them. In 2001, it seems that only people very involved and interested in developing technology, as well as potentially wealthy people, owned cell phones. On the other hand, people like Jane are confused and uninterested in such developments, as it was not until many years later when cell phones became a necessity. 

Works Cited:

Datta, Dhriti. “18 Game-Changing Phones From 2001 to 2019.” Digit.in, Digit, 2 June 2019, https://www.digit.in/features/tech/18-game-changing-phones-from-2001-to-...

“A (Mostly) Quick History of Smartphones.” Cellular Sales, 28 Sept. 2021, https://www.cellularsales.com/blog/a-mostly-quick-history-of-smartphones...

Park, Patricia. ReJane. New York, Penguin, 2015.