Jenny Calendar - Influence

Influence

Following her death, Jenny Calendar's character continues to have an influence on the series. Among the female Scoobies, it is Willow who most looks up to Jenny. Willow is skilled with computers and her mother is emotionally distant from her; Willow expresses several times that her parents are mostly disinterested in her. As Jenny offers both mentoring and validation for Willow, she becomes a substitute mother for her. Jenny furthermore argues that traditionally, knowledge has been kept from people as a result of systemized patriarchy, and she champions computers and the Internet because she believes they will create a new society. Author J. P. Williams asserts that Jenny Calendar's feminist viewpoints resonate with Willow, as Willow receives similar commentary about patriarchy in the media on the rare occasions her mother speaks to her. Jenny is limited, however, by the very patriarchy she fights. Her first lessons from her people are about vengeance, and she is fully committed to her duty to watch Angel. Although she treats Giles as an equal and demands the same from him, her deference to her uncle stifles her. Enyos' withholding information from Jenny is echoed in Giles' frequent ignorance of facts the Watcher's Council deliberately withholds from him. Because Jenny is not told the full details of the curse, she is unable to warn Buffy and Angel, thus her ignorance essentially kills her. Williams writes, "Whether Buffy will eventually provide an alternative model of womanhood is perhaps the series' most intriguing cliffhanger."

In an analysis of the treatment of Romani people in literature and media, Nikolina Dobreva asserts that the show deserves to be criticized for associating Gypsies with curses, primitivism, and for stereotyping Gypsies as "irrevocably foreign" in clothing, speech, and for perpetuating the persistent air of mystery surrounding them. However, Dobreva praises the character of Jenny Calendar, writing in 2009: "Jenny’s character, despite the reversion to a few stereotypes, is arguably one of the most multi-faceted and positive representations of a female Gypsy in the past 20 years. In sharp contrast to all other Gypsy portrayals, she is technologically savvy, and, instead of resorting to incantations or obscure rituals, is able to create a computer algorithm that would make possible the restoration of Angel’s soul."

In the episode "Becoming", Willow finds the spell that Jenny translated and casts it herself, successfully restoring Angel's soul and leading to her own foray into magic. Willow attempts to learn more about magic in the fourth season by joining her college Wicca group, only to be met by women who are ineffectual, whom she labels "wanna-blessed-bes". She takes magic very seriously, becoming competent enough in the fifth season to achieve what Buffy cannot. By the seventh season, Willow's magical gifts are so powerful that she is the strongest person in Buffy's circle. Additionally, Jenny's comfort in expressing sexuality is a model for all the young women. Her "sexual (or sensual) aggression" is noted by Buffy studies writers. Williams asserts that Jenny's influence on Willow is evident when, in the fourth season, Willow falls in love with another woman, Tara Maclay (Amber Benson), expressing little self-doubt when she realizes she has.

Jenny appears twice more in the series, first in "Becoming", as part of an illusion the vampire Drusilla (Juliet Landau) creates to beguile Giles into telling Angelus, who is torturing him, what he needs to know. She again appears in the third season episode "Amends" in the guise of the First Evil, who assumes the faces of many people Angel has killed, tormenting him and insisting he kill Buffy.