Dragonfly: No Second Troy?

As the inevitability of war creeps up on Jamie and Claire, it occasions another moment of pondering their role in the success or failure of the uprising, and the question of what good Claire's foreknowledge had been in preventing or facilitating the upcoming events (which we assume will be disastrous, but which they hope now to turn to success).  The themes of honor, and of foreknowledge, time travel, and fate all collide--or coalesce--as Claire (more late- than early-twentieth century) argues that "[h]onor without sense is... foolishness. A gallant foolishness, but foolishness nonetheless."

The narrative leaves some room for debate as to whether a Charles Stuart's cause is, in fact, honorable.  In fact, Charles' reasons seem wholly selfish and his action rash.  The honor, then, is in the adherence of Charles's Scottish supporters to the cause of Restoration.  To attach oneself to a doomed cause for sake of one's preferred affiliation, one's word, or a forged signature is perhaps the foolishness, as I have difficulty thinking (as Claire's words seem to imply) that fighting for the ideal itself is foolish.  After all, the later books deal with the American Revolution, and to apply the same idea that fighting for an ideal is foolish to that conflict would register somewhat differently.

Whatever the ideal of "honor" that is "foolish," Jamie objects to his less-than-honorable role according to standards of his time:

"Aye, it is. And it will change--you've told me. But if I'm to be among the first who sacrifice honor for expedience... Shall I feel nay shame in the doing of it?" (626)

Jamie laments "that bit of myself I have left behind," while Claire also "felt a true sorrow for his corruption, and shared a sense of loss for the naive, gallant lad he had been"--quite a damning admission given that the "naive, gallant lad" was the one who inspired the passion of the previous novel (albeit that passion is ongoing).

All of this is as it is set up in the novel--and I have discussed similar themes here and here.  What sets this particular moment apart is that the facades have seemingly lifted--Jamie and Claire each see their efforts for what they are:  futile, and not quite honorable.  The moment is reinforced by the following narration:

"And... what choice had either of us truly had, being who we were? I had to tell him, and he had had to act on it." (626)

The beauty of this line is that it recalls at least two other women--and one poet.  W. B.  Yeats.  If you didn't think of it immediately (and I don't remember whether or not I caught it on the first read), and if my post title didn't give it away, the lines echo Yeats's "No Second Troy," worth quoting in full (courtesy of Bartleby.com):

WHY should I blame her that she filled my days
With misery, or that she would of late
Have taught to ignorant men most violent ways,
Or hurled the little streets upon the great,
Had they but courage equal to desire?	5
What could have made her peaceful with a mind
That nobleness made simple as a fire,
With beauty like a tightened bow, a kind
That is not natural in an age like this,
Being high and solitary and most stern?	10
Why, what could she have done being what she is?
Was there another Troy for her to burn?

The poem is an extended metaphor comparing Maude Gonne, Irish Nationalist and unrequited love of Yeats's life, to Helen of Troy, for their similar ability to inspire passionate nationalism and violent action in men.  The poem's brilliance extends to the form, which is a 12-line poem written in iambic pentameter, with a rhyme scheme of ababcdcdefef--in short, a Shakespearean sonnet without the concluding couplet.  The syntax of the poem--a series of seemingly rhetorical questions--makes sense of the sonnet's missing conclusion, as does the title, which answers the final question, "Was there another Troy for her to burn?"

So what does it do for the reader, to compare Claire, or even Jamie and Claire, to Yeats's portrait of Maude Gonne by way of Helen of Troy?

When Claire's narrative voice says, "what choice had either of us truly had, being who we were?", the reference is to Jamie's and Claire's attempts to stop the Jacobite Rising of 1745, though the following sentence refers to Claire's need to tell Jamie what she knew of the disastrous outcome of Culloden, and Jamie's need to do something.  So by evoking Yeats, the text contrasts Gonne's passionate Irish nationalism--support of a Celtic identity in opposition to British rule--with Claire's complete lack of nationalistic feeling (and, indeed, of nationality).

To Gonne's tendency to inflame men to her cause, the one line--"what choice had either of us truly had, being who we were?"--compares Claire's efforts to keep men from action.

And turning itself back onto the poem, the sentence, which so closely echoes Yeats, takes the suggestion that Maude's "beauty like a tightened bow, a kind/ that is not natural" in the 20th Century, is, in fact, more suited to the 18th Century.

A reader of Yeats's poem might wonder whether having "a mind/ that nobleness made  simple as a fire" is a good thing.  Most assume not, though there is an undeniable--and wholly deceptive--nobility to the poem itself.  The poem adores her--worships her--in the same breath as it condemns her.  One might turn the poem's questions back on the poet himself--if she were other than what she was, would he love her?  Certainly, his poetry would have suffered from a more peaceful object with less of that primitive fire.  And in fact, the question, "why should I blame her" turns the contemplation of blame back onto the poet.  If not her, than whom?

On the other hand, Claire's beauty is repeatedly compared to those around her, and she, too, is unnatural--out of place in the 18th Century.  And yet, in Claire's postwar 20th Century perspective, might the reader see the kind of sensibility that Maude Gonne lacked, and which--by implication--would have transformed Yeats's love into someone more peaceful and less noble?  Certainly, except in her ability to inflame Jamie's desire--the desire of a man of action rather than the poet's desire--and to persuade him to do her will, Claire represents the opposite of Maude Gonne.  And as Yeats questions the code of honor that Maude represents--while depicting it so eloquently--so Claire's logic questions the code that Jamie represents--while the narrative depicts it as passionate as compared to the lukewarm 20th Century life (and love) that Frank Randall represents in Outlander.

So which side does the narrative ask the reader to take?  For that matter, what side does the poem ask the reader to take?  The side of legendary and passionate honor, or the side of rational compromise?  I come down on the side of intentional ambiguity.  The reader, I believe, is asked to weigh the options, and perhaps never to come to any conclusion except which one is more aesthetically attractive.

One conclusion we can draw, I think, is that the narrative is self-consciously echoing Yeats.  And if there is a Maude Gonne figure in the novels, then--a Scottish nationalist who bewitches men into doing her will, who might she be?  A hint--not Claire, but a time traveler, nonetheless.

Dragonfly: 'Culloden's Harvest'... Written by the Winners

Above you can hear the first introduction I had to the story of Culloden, as an undergraduate, from the CD Celtic Legacy (1995).  This song stayed in my head constantly the first time I read the battle accounts in Dragonfly in Amber.  I did not learn about it as a History minor.

In the last third of Dragonfly in Amber, Claire's specific knowledge of Culloden comes to light as she accompanies Jamie to war.  It is, perhaps, a postcolonial moment when Jamie asks what details she remembers of the uprising, and she can't remember any.  Her impressions of the devastation derive from a visit to the Culloden battlefield and memorial rather than from history--and she was married to a historian.  Her memory certainly couldn't have been perfect, for narrative's sake, but the lack of information becomes a focus, and a focus of implied criticism.

Searching her memory, Claire "could just recall the two-page section that was all the author had seen fit to devote to the second Jacobite Rising, known to historians as 'the '45.' And within that two-page section, the single paragraph dealing with the battle we were about to fight." (603-604)

She remembers the number of casualties, but "only thirty men" dead doesn't seem as small a number as historical accounts suggest, given that that was the exact number of Jamie's men.  And yet Claire tentatively observes:

     "Taken all in all," I said, feeling faintly apologetic, "I'm afraid it was really rather. . . unimportant, historically speaking."
     Jamie blew out his breath through pursed lips, and looked down at me rather bleakly.
     "Unimportant.  Aye, well."
     "I'm sorry," I said.
     "Not your fault, Sassenach."
     But I couldn't help feeling that it was, somehow.  (604)

The beauty of this account is in the contrast between history as it is written and the event as it is experienced--this difference calls attention to the accuracy of the account, and--perhaps for the first time (in this context)--to Claire's Englishness.  "Sassenach," used by Jamie as a term of endearment, registers more literally here.  Claire has read the "winner's" accounts.*  And the scarcity of accounts and limited details provided, as compared to the enormity of the event and its catastrophic consequences for the Highlanders, as well as the cruelty they suffered, serve to indict the English.  And even compared to the fictional events, this is a powerful gesture, because suddenly the reader becomes aware of the reality of how history is written rather than simply following the actions of fictional Scotsmen (or Englishmen--like Jack Randall).  And that might be about as postcolonial a gesture as we get in the Outlander books--at least, with reference to Scotland.

*Here's an Anglocentric account.

Dragonfly: Jenny Reading Pt. 2 (A Literacy Moment, contd.)

In Dragonfly in Amber, we get, alongside Jenny's love of books, details about the literacy of the Fraser household, and also something about the character of reading in the 18th Century:

The manor boasted a small library, in fact, and if the evening leisure between work and bed was short, still it usually included at least a few minutes' reading. (580)

"The manor boasted" a small library--which was, indeed, a boastable feature.  Here's a little blurb from an article on the topic of book ownership in 18th Century Scotland:

Late eighteenth-century Scotland saw a period of growth in the availability of print material set against the backdrop of the Scottish Enlightenment. Yet despite much scholarly attention having been paid to the Enlightenment and an increasing interest in the books people were reading, little attention has been paid to the books that would have been found in individual Scottish houses and what they reveal about Scottish mindsets in these years. This paper addresses this topic, using a local case study of after-death inventories of personal possessions. These rich records reveal the size of household libraries, the varieties of books they contained, variation by occupation and social class, and the extent to which their owners engaged with and were influenced by debates and ideas of the time. In addition, the evidence allows us to consider the uses to which different types of books were put, examine differences between urban and provincial Scotland, and consider how and where people bought their books.

(Thank you, EBSCO and Scottish Historical Review! And if I'm silently thumbing my nose at Wikipedia, Wikipedia is none the wiser.)  The main thing to note here (besides the very interesting research!) is that the availability of print materials increases in the late  18th century.  The early Outlander novels take place in 1743-45, with the Lallybroch library being compiled some time before, as both of Jamie's and Jenny's parents are dead by the time the events in the first book take place (their father is only recently dead).  So the library would have had to predate this growth in printing, which demonstrates the wealth of Lallybroch as well as the special place reserved for literacy and learning in the Fraser household.

Further, reading is a communal activity, though I do question whether French novels--which were notoriously scandalous to Louisa May Alcott's 19th Century American heroines--would have been good family read-aloud material. Both because of the scarcity of reading materials (who would have two copies of a novel?) and the rarity of literacy (in a later chapter, Claire notes that a woman watches her write "with an almost superstitious awe" (633)), reading aloud would definitely have been typical in the 18th Century.  Numerous scholars--notably, literature scholar turned literacy theorist Walter Ong--have discussed the influence of oral storytelling even in 19th Century novels.  Ong famously mentions how "the author intones dear reader" as a reminder of the storyteller or the reader in a communal setting.  It is a nice touch to see this social reality of reading included in a work of historical fiction, though the little glimpses of literacy do not become important until later novels in the Outlander series.

Given its limited function--what function does literacy serve in the plot? it's fairly incidental--one might wonder why it is included at all, or question this bold assertion of Jenny's literacy.  Would she have been educated?  We are led to believe that her class and her family's inclinations toward learning make this possible.  But as the female head of household, mother of three at this point...  What is reading for her?  What use would she have had for literacy?  Would she have had time to read?  If reading is an adventure, is it an escape?  Does it distract from other duties?

The narrative answers these questions very succinctly:

"It gives ye something to think on as ye go about your work," Jenny explained, when I found her one night swaying with weariness, and urged her to go to bed, rather than stay up to read aloud to Ian, Jamie, and myself.  She yawned, fist to her mouth.  "Even if I'm sae tired I hardly see the words on the page, they'll come back to me next day, churning or spinning or waulkin' wool, and I can turn them over in my mind." (580-581)

In fact, Jenny's reading allows her mind to escape while her body remains very much present.  And this is something that readers of Gabaldon's fictions can very much appreciate, I think.  It is perhaps a contrast to more male-centered versions of escapist reading (I'm thinking of E. M. Forster's "The Celestial Omnibus"--you can read about it in greater detail here) that her transcendent reading does not remove her from the material world of people who depend on her.

Interestingly, at this point in the scene, the issue of literacy drops completely, transitioning into a description of the somewhat unsavory occupation of "wool-waulking," but not without leaving the reader with a compelling discourse on literacy and its use in the life of an individual--the 18th Century stay-at-home mom.  Most stay-at-home mothers whom I know (at least through blogging) are either readers, writers, or seamstresses,* and almost always combinations of two or more, as if this life of the mind is a natural extension of the daily lives that they live with their children, managing their homes.  It seems, in fact, an essential part.  And the internet enables and gives testimony to it.

Thinking about what a busy woman--too busy to read, but who reads nevertheless--gains from literacy, I was reminded of my favorite poem by Adrienne Rich (1929-2012), "An Atlas of the Difficult World."  This poem provides Rich's own discourse on literacy, as the voice of the poet envisions the people who will read the poem, and recounts the reasons they will read:

I know you are reading this poem  

late, before leaving your office  

of the one intense yellow lamp-spot and the darkening window 

in the lassitude of a building faded to quiet 

long after rush-hour. I know you are reading this poem 

standing up in a bookstore far from the ocean 

on a grey day of early spring, faint flakes driven 

across the plains’ enormous spaces around you. 

[....] 

I know you are reading this poem by fluorescent light 

in the boredom and fatigue of the young who are counted out, 

count themselves out, at too early an age. I know 

you are reading this poem through your failing sight, the thick 

lens enlarging these letters beyond all meaning yet you read on 

because even the alphabet is precious. 

And among the seemingly endless, democratic, Whitmanic catalog, these lines stand out:

I know you are reading this poem as you pace beside the stove 

warming milk, a crying child on your shoulder, a book in your hand 

because life is short and you too are thirsty. 

The lines straddle the line between hope and despair, but "life is short and you too are thirsty" resonates as the most profound testimony to the function of literacy--of literature--in the life of an individual.  The written word feeds us.  Gives us nourishment.  Specifically, like a mother.  A mother's mother.

There are, of course, religious resonances in the idea of being fed by the w/Word--but let's leave it at literacy for now.  Reading.  It is what it is--but what does it do?

A: It feeds the soul, which sustains the body.

Literacy--in either context--keeps the body from forgetting that it also possesses a soul.

*I use the outdated, gendered term "seamstress" and reject the more contemporary "sewers," which evokes toilet water in my mind.

Dragonfly: Jenny Reading Pt. 1 (A Literacy Moment)

I go by "Literacy-chic," and that's no accident.  It's a name I came up with while working on my dissertation--when, in fact, my blog had very little to do with reading and everything with putting words together--still "literate activity," you might say, but still not quite what I meant by the name.

I meant it to be a play--not only was I a "literacy chick"--a female scholar concerned with representations of literacy in fiction, I was interested in seeing literacy become chic, en vogue, specifically with reference to literary criticism, which doesn't consider "the reader" in quite the way I was doing.  And I still see myself as "Literacy-chic," though I'm not currently writing formal literary criticism.  Instead, I'm writing informal literary criticism on whatever strikes me.  But I am still on the lookout for "literacy moments," or "scenes of literate activity."  Because looking at how writers conceptualize the act of reading, writing, or otherwise engaging with written texts can tell us a lot about what we think literacy does, and what we see as the place of literacy in society and in our own lives.

So any time you're reading a book, and some character is reading, the novel is drawing attention to the fact that the character is reading--"Look!  You're reading a book about someone reading!"  Frequently, there is an implied question:  "So why is this person reading?" and "Is this person reading for a good reason?  Are they getting anything out of it?" and "Okay, so what are they getting out of it?"

A reader might then be prompted to ask, "So why am I reading?" and "Why do I read?" That's a question I wish all of those people who pushed those shady gray books to the top of the charts would ask themselves (I really should have written the title out to get hits, but I decided not to)--for cheap thrills?  (Were they worth it?)  For escapism? I read for escapism, too--absolutely!  And an essential part of my escapism is to be found in the ideas I get when I read.  About things like why we read.  Things I can think about instead of the things I'd rather not think about.  So reading about the fictional reader reading should make us ask, "Why do we (people in general, certain types of people, people in society) read?"

In Dragonfly in Amber, when Jenny Fraser becomes ecstatic over the prospect of new reading material, the text very specifically asks exactly that kind of question:

"Ooh, three French novels and a book of poetry from Paris!" Jenny said in excitement, opening the paper-wrapped package.  "C'est un embarras de richesse, hm?  Which shall we read tonight?"  She lifted the small stack of books from their wrappings, stroking the soft leather cover of the top one with a forefinger that trembled with delight. Jenny loved books with the same passion her brother reserved for horses.  (580)

The level of delight is conspicuous, particularly in the last line.  The comparison--books to horses--is appropriate because of the relationship between Jamie and Jenny as siblings.  It is an obvious comparison, since Claire's narrative voice seeks to understand how the two, who grew up in the same household, measure up to one another and to Claire's understanding of Jamie.  Such comparison of siblings is a frequent narrative gesture in the chapters with Jenny.

However, the comparison is interesting for another reason.  Thinking about the comparison of books and horses, what exactly does it say about books?  Horses are living creatures.  Books are inanimate objects.  Horses belong outside.  Books are kept indoors.  Something might be said about exterior and interior spaces, and women being comfortable or belonging in interior spaces, but given all of Jenny's various activities, that's not really a relevant statement, and would reveal more about the critic's biases and sensitivities than about the novel itself.

Horses are active.  We might assume that books are passive, but the novel doesn't tell us that.  In fact, Friday's post will show that reading books is not, in fact, a passive activity for Jenny.

Perhaps the love of books runs deep in Jenny, and the love of horses deep in Jamie, because both brother and sister have strength of spirit that requires transport and freedom.  Both books and horses provide transport and freedom according to what each of them needs--or can use.  Admittedly, Jenny cannot run from the responsibility of the home--unlike Claire, who has no home, or Jamie, whose role as laird is largely forfeit throughout Outlander and Dragonfly in Amber.  An 18th Century novel might not have been self-conscious enough to declare reading a path to a kind of freedom, but Dragonfly in Amber (1992), as a 20th Century novel, comfortable with literacy and with all of the demands and expectations we have for reading, is free to make that claim.  Certainly, Jenny has a good reason to read.  She would have to have a good reason in order to make time, considering all of her other obligations.

But think about it--why do people read? Why does Jenny Fraser read? And what do authors and the characters and books they write tell us about why we should read?  Why do you read?

More on this next time...

Dragonfly: Saintly Ghosts

Looking back on Outlander as I finished the novel, I thought about a curious scene in which a seemingly ghostly Jamie looks in on Claire in 1945.  I will return to ghosts as I work through the rest of the novels, because while I don't necessarily see them functioning in the same way in each instance, the spirits of the dead remain with the characters in ways that become familiar.

In Dragonfly in Autumn, remembering the untimely death of his older brother and holding the small snake his brother carved for him when he was a child, Jamie describes how he talks to his brother:

"I talk to Willie, sometimes, in my mind," Jamie said. He tilted the snake on his palm.  "If you'd lived, Brother, if ye'd been laird as you were meant to be, would ye do what I've done? Or would ye find a better way?" (551)

There is a specific connection here to Jamie's own self-doubt, and feeling of humility at having inherited a role that should have belonged to his brother.  In a quite different way, he is also aware of his father's presence at unexpected times:

"I hear my father's voice sometimes, in the barn, or in the field.  When I'm not even thinkin' of him, usually.  But all at once I'll turn my head, as though I'd just heard him outside, laughing wi' one of the tenants, or behind me, gentling a horse."  (552)

There is obligation and responsibility that accompanies Jamie's memories of both his father and brother, but the interactions are different--his brother seems a confidante and guide; his father a trusted companion.

While Jamie's conversations register as manifestation of memory (mostly), but as Claire recounts her own experience of talking to the dead, there is a kind of shift from memory to a presence, particularly when she imagines her mother after her miscarriage:

"I do the same," I said softly, after a moment.  "With Uncle Lamb.  And my parents.  My mother especially.  I--I didn't think about her often, when I was young, just every now and then I'd dream about someone soft and warm, with a lovely singing voice.  But when I was sicker, after... Faith--sometimes I imagined she was there.  With me."  A sudden wave of grief swept over me, remembrance of losses recent and long past. (551)

The presence of Claire's mother beside her bed, as she coalesces after miscarriage, is of course the mother connection of childbearing women, but also hints at Claire's closeness to death.

Jamie crystallizes what they are both feeling:

"I think sometimes the dead cherish us, as we do them." (551)

In this particular exchange, with the descriptions of Claire and (especially) Jamie, I can't help hearing a kind of echo of Tevye talking to God in Fiddler on the Roof, but of course, without the conversation partner being God.  I also remember how, growing up, I imagined relatives I had never met, who died before I was born, looking down on me and watching over me.  Eventually, this is how I came to understand the Catholic concept of the Communion of Saints--not sure if I picked up on this from relatives who had been Catholic, or if it was just a child's way of theorizing death.  Either way, I see these ghostly memories, these presences, as being particularly saintly.  It is a comforting way of viewing the dead, and one that Gabaldon makes the most of in the Outlander series, beginning, in a way, with this conversation between Claire and Jamie.

Dragonfly: If you have ever raised chickens...

 This lovely rooster pic can be found here.  Photo is copyrighted to Thomas Laupstad.

...then you know how true this is:

     The sound of a cock crowing at full blast lifted me off the pillow, as though a stick of dynamite had been touched off beneath the bed. 

     "Idiot!" I said, every nerve in my body twanging from the shock.  I got up and cracked the shutter. It had stopped snowing, but the sky was still pale with cloud, a uniform color from horizon to horizon.  The rooster let loose another bellow in the hen-coop below. 

     "Shut up!!" I said. "It's the middle of the night, you feathered bastard!"  The avian equivalent of a raspberry echoed through the still night.... (Dragonfly 567)

This is one of the chickens my mother and siblings raised:

Enough said.

Dragonfly: Where is God in Time Travel?

There are definitely questions about which I'm not interested in speculating. These are mostly questions that resolve themselves within the novels, or questions that do not resonate outside of the novels.  They are interesting, but there is no need to elaborate.  One such question asserts itself in Dragonfly in Amber, in the chapters titled "Untimely Resurrection" and "The Royal Stud": the question of Jamie's vengeance upon Jack Randall, and whether Claire is right to make him postpone that vengeance.  It could be that I think Claire is more wrong about preventing Jamie from killing Jack Randall on this particular occasion than she is to make him betray his country and kin to prevent the Battle (and devastation) of Culloden.  I'll never tell.  But it's also true that Gabaldon brings the matter around very neatly, giving Jamie the ability to reclaim some of his own by determining his own reason for postponing vengeance (and getting in some nice foreshadowing as well).  It's a lovely narrative card that she plays, and well worth giving a nod.  (See pp. 401-403 in the small, Dell paperback version with the orange cover.)  But--it is part of the narrative, and in terms of Jamie's justification, what he does or does not owe Claire, the question of conscience, or anything involving their feelings about other characters, it works itself out, and doesn't really require speculation or further analysis of motivations.  I like to leave the characters to themselves, and allow their motivations to emerge through the action of the story rather than through my own suppositions and psychoanalysis.  It's why criticism is (or should be) sort of the anti-fan-fiction.  (Just for fun, check out Diana Gabaldon's Fan Fiction Policy.)

What is interesting in the maneuverings of Claire to prevent Jamie from killing Jack Randall too soon is (first) that the question is never the morality of the vengeance.  That is taken for granted, and I'm glad.  Moralistic posturing would do no one any good in this case.  Claire's conscience is evoked, rather neatly, to turn the guilt of preventing Frank's birth (indirectly, by the death of Jack Randall) to Claire's decision to abandon Frank for Jamie--at least, that is how Jamie casts Claire's decision not to pass again through the stones: "it's one thing to abandon a man, and another to condemn him to death" (401).  Non-birth/prevention of conception is not quite death, but we'll let that go for the moment.  Jamie's conscience is never an issue, except insofar as killing always leaves a mark:  "I remember the face of every man I've killed, and always will" (400).  And that's just fine.

But the deeper implications of the maneuverings leave some room for consideration.  If this novel is instrumental to the series, it may well be--first and foremost--the working out of what a time traveler can and can't accomplish with reference to history that gives it it's highest value in the big picture.  (I have other considerations of time travel here and here.)  The reason I drag God into it in my title is because the question of conscience was right in front of me in the narrative.  Brother Anselm and his theology, the moral implications of preventing someone from being born.  But a larger question emerges:  could anything Jamie and Claire have done prevent the beginning of the bloodline that eventually produces Frank Randall, Claire's husband in the year 1943?

It's something like the question my son asked of his 4th grade teacher at the fourth-rate Catholic school that he went to for most of that year:  if Adam and Eve hadn't sinned, would any of us exist?  Need I say that the teacher didn't know how to answer the question?  I consulted a deacon friend of mine, and came up with the response that our existence in God's plan didn't depend on sin.  We simply don't know how things would have worked out without it.  There is something tangentially related to this question happening in Perelandra, the second book of C. S. Lewis's Space Trilogy.  An alien world is experiencing its own Creation, and Lewis's Ransom is a spectator and intercessor, preventing the successful temptation of the newly-Created female of the alien species so that the world might emerge without the taint of Original Sin.  The idea is--Sin or no Sin, our existence as individuals is part of God's plan.

So is this worldview somehow reflected in Gabaldon's novel?  At first glance it may seem not to be.  Clearly, it is absent from the Back to the Future movie trilogy--things change, people disappear.  But there's nothing about God in those films.  Religion is simply not part of the picture(s).  By contrast, there's Catholicism all over the place in the Outlander series.  You can't get around it, the novels have a Catholic consciousness, whatever their orthodoxy.  You might say that it proceeds from what has been called "the Catholic imagination," though I wouldn't quote Andrew Greeley for orthodoxy's sake...

Without saying how, I will say that Frank's bloodline works itself out.  It works itself out with Jack Randall alive, but it does so in a way that his survival has precious little to do with the birth.  Clever.  So does that mean Predestination?  I'm not sure.  Although there is implied argument between Predestination and Free Will in the novels (especially with reference to Roger Wakefield in some of the later books), there seems to be quite a bit of room for Free Will--or really, would readers enjoy the books so much?  But characters' Free Will seems to feed directly into what they know to have been going to happen.  (I'm absolutely playing with verb tense there.  Too bad I'm not writing in a romance language!)  In other words, the characters end up proving their own instrumentality to the events that will unfold--or have unfolded--or will have unfolded.  Everything fits neatly into place.  Some would consider this as evidence for God in the Outlander worldview--or in its representation of time travel.  I think there's evidence, at least, that the man who was Frank Randall was "meant" to exist--which does, in fact, suggest some greater intentionality beyond the machinations of Claire and Jamie.

Dragonfly: A Question of Honor

My last post addresses the first significant treatment of reproductive issues in the Outlander series, with the question of whether Louise de la Tour, married mistress of Bonnie Prince Charlie, should chemically abort her child.  Although Claire expects that the "solution" to Louise's "problem" will anger Jamie, his reaction to "Louise de la Tour foisting a bastard on her husband" is more measured, revealing how Jamie is having to adapt to the business of espionage:

     "Well, I'm no verra much in favor of it, I'll tell ye, Sassenach, but what's the poor bloody woman to do otherwise?" He shook his head, then glanced at the desk across the room and smiled wryly.
     "Besides, it doesna become me to be takin' a high moral stand about other people's behavior.  Stealing letters and spying and trying generally to subvert a man my family holds as King? I shouldna like to have someone judging me on the grounds of the things I'm doing, Sassenach." (247)

The contrast between Jamie's own actions and Louise's seems an interesting rhetorical move:

"Louise de La Tour had a reason, too," he said. "She wants to save one life, I want ten thousand.  does this excuse my risking wee Fergus--and Jared's business--and you?" (247)

Although there is much more at stake, according to these terms, for Jamie, the sense is one of incongruity.  While she has violated the moral code a couple of times over, Louise's action--saving her unborn child--seems to redeem her betrayal of her husband, if not quite to Jamie's sensibilities. Nevertheless, he does seem to place her in a moral gray area.  Jamie's moral dilution puts him more in line with 20th Century thought--decidedly post-Scarlet Letter.  At the same time, Jamie's idealism was one of his defining characteristics in Outlander, part of what made his character attractive--his unwillingness to compromise his honor and his standards.

By contrast, Louise is already compromised, and, as a woman, her limited options are openly acknowledged.  If discovered as an adulteress, she will be divorced, cast out, possibly excommunicated (243).  By a single act of betrayal--which will be an ongoing act of betrayal if she succeeds in convincing her husband that the child is his--she will certainly save an innocent life.  By several, ongoing acts of betrayal, and by sacrificing his own idealism and honor, Jamie attempts to save the lives of many--an act that should seem noble, but perhaps is tainted by its political aspect, its uncertainty, or the hubris I mention here.

While Jamie has endured physical and psychological suffering--and indeed, has been broken and restored, it is in reference to this sacrifice of his honor--putting his will in the service of betrayal--that his face registers physical change:

The light flickering on his face hollowed his cheeks and threw shadows in the orbits of his eyes.  It made him look older than he was; I tended to forget that he was not quite twenty-four.  (247)

This might also be read as a reference to how differently people age in the past, but most of the time, the references are to Claire's relative preservation compared to 18th C women, and the usual reason is health care (and especially pregnancy).  A 24-year-old Jamie in 1745 would look very different from a 24-year-old in 1945 (and perhaps more different still in 1984 or 2013), but that does not seem to be quite the narrative point at this moment in the novel.

Jamie's struggle with betrayal--of vows, of family, of country--or with others' betrayal of him runs throughout all of the books in the Outlander series.  My sense is that it remains a personal struggle rather than a political or nationalist one, and that any inkling that there is a deeper betrayal in leaving one's country--which is very important to Jamie--in the hands of the conqueror is purely implied, at least with reference to Scotland.  There is an article that includes the Outlander books in a consideration of contemporary "Appropriations of Scottish Identity" that might offer a different perspective, but my sense is that the novels never quite reach postcolonial status.

If there is a postcolonial point to be made, it begins with Jamie's reconstruction of his identity in reference to, but without the comfort of, his native country.  Jamie has been in exile before (fertile backstory territory that Gabaldon covers--in part--in "Virgins," a novella to be published in the anthology Dangerous Women, ed. George R. R. Martin, info publication date to be found at the Outlandish Observations blog), but there was the sense that returning home would be a possibility.  In Dragonfly, the exile seems more absolute (for about half of the narrative), leaving Jamie in a position of  protective nostalgia with reference to his country, and not in a position suitable for fierce defensive nationalism.

The argument in Dragonfly seems to be that doomed nationalism isn't particularly noble, but neither is fruitless sacrifice.  Not a lot to latch onto ideologically, here, and Jamie becomes a rather tragic figure through the course of the novel--literally fighting a losing battle from beginning to end.

Dragonfly: "Women's Issues" #1

Okay, so there's something a little disingenuous about the title of this post--hence the quotation marks.  Though it is common for contraception and abortion to be termed "women's health issues," and though political platforms that provide for such are considered sensitive to "women's issues," I generally protest that designation, since it reduces women to their reproductive functions, while at the same time denigrating those functions, and relegating them to the status of a medical problem.  That said, I maintain the title of the post as a kind of protest of the designation, and a reluctant acknowledgment that "women's issues" is generally understood to mean reproduction--and specifically contraception and abortion.  This is the disclaimer for my own use of the phrase, and does not reflect at all on the author or the novel, though I may offer a critique of the ways in which the later novels deal with "women's issues"--as such.

Chemical abortifacients have been mentioned before this point, and the dangers of childbirth as well, but the chapter "Deceptions" in Dragonfly in Amber is the first "up close and personal" encounter that the reader has with a reproductive issue, and the narrative comes down on the side of protecting the unborn child.  The relevant scene, in which Claire discusses with Louise de La Tour, mistress of Prince Charles, Louise's proposed decision to abort her child, raises other issues of women's place in 18th C society, evoking in the process Wollstonecraft's admonition against a society that would value women for their most superficial attributes, leaving them virtually no choice but to act in shallow and immoral ways.

Louise is caught in exactly this trap--she is bound to a man whom she marries for status and money (Wollstonecraft advocates for friendship in marriage).  She has a vivacious personality, and finds herself attracted to Prince Charles.  Now, there is not much to say about this attraction, because the Prince, while portrayed as personable, and lordly at will, seems pretty vapid himself, mooning over Louise, and yet blaming her for getting pregnant before the time he deems appropriate. Their attachment seems genuine enough, and yet also proceeds from the coquetry of the time (for a primer of the French coquette, see Molière, who admittedly predates this period by 100 years, but who gives a scathing portrait of the woman presiding over admirers in Le Misanthrope).  One way or another, Louise finds herself in the position of asking Claire for an abortifacient potion, for fear of utter ruin, divorce, excommunication (Dragonfly 243).

Not being an expert, I am not certain of the origin of the term "angel-maker" (and Google is no help), but it is used in Dragonfly to underscore the prevalence of abortion in 18th C France.  Claire, while protective of her own unborn child and careful to indicate that her child is not subject to the practice, registers no shock at the practice.  No moral judgment is passed from Claire's character to others in the novel(s)--at least, not beyond Claire's exclamation at Louise's question of whether Claire has used the concoction:  "God, no!"  Claire's own struggles with (presumed) infertility might excuse the vehemence of her reaction.  Rather, as a good counselor, she questions Louise:

"Louise," I said.  "Do you want the child?"

I find Louise's response particularly revealing:

     She lifted her head and stared at me in astonishment.
     "But of course I want it!" She exclaimed. "It's his--it's Charles's! It's..." Her face crumpled, and she bowed her head once more over her hands, clasped so tightly over her belly.  "It's mine," she whispered. (243)

Louise moves, in these lines, from desiring the child for Charles's sake--because the pregnancy proceeds from the man she loves--to desiring it for her sake, and for its own.  "Owning" the pregnancy allows her to accept the circumstance of being pregnant, and to devise--with more than the hint of a suggestion from Claire--a strategy for keeping her child.  It's a useful exercise, and a valuable (pro-life?) literary moment to turn panic into planning.

Although Louise wants to save the child--a point reinforced by Jamie's assessment of the situation (247)--Claire's concern does not focus on the child, but on Louise herself.  With fresh memory of "a young servant-girl, dying in protracted, blood-smeared agony"(244), Claire sees "no good reason for her to risk her life for the sake of Charles Stuart's pride" (243).

I'm not sure I find that thoroughly convincing from a 1940s woman--even a field nurse.  Her moral compass, in 1940, would likely have registered both the child's life and the woman's, especially as a woman who had herself struggled with infertility.  But it is so that the novel skirts the issue of abortion and morality in the scene rather neatly, avoiding giving offense to either "camp" of readers (except insofar as portrayal of botched abortion is argument for legalized abortion--unless it is explicitly an argument for improved social conditions for women and a world in which abortion is not even on the table, like the world in Charlotte Perkins Gilman's Herland) while normalizing the practice--at least in 18th Century France.

It is perhaps worth noting that while Dragonfly rather openly allows for feminist interpretations in support of abortion choice, the narrative takes a definite stance on adultery:

     "Why, why couldn't I be as fortunate as you--to be bearing the child of a husband I loved?" [...]
     There were any number of answers to that particular question, but I didn't think she really wanted to hear any of them. (242-243)

Dragonfly: Humiliations Galore

Warning:  This discussion cites, and elaborates upon, some of the more intense and disturbing imagery in the first two Outlander books.

In The Princess Bride, as Fezzig wrestles the Man in Black (i.e. the Dread Pirate Roberts, i. e. Wesley, i. e. Cary Elwes), he says, "I just want you to feel you're doing well.  I hate for people to die embarrassed."  The line sounds amusing.  If one is about to die, what does embarrassment have to do with it?  Would having one's fighting ability validated in some way matter?

I believe that the Outlander books answer the second question constantly.  Death in battle is definitely the most noble way to die, for those who are able, but it is clear that this is not the only way that people die--and that many suffer much more ignoble deaths.

Of all of the tortures enacted upon Jamie Fraser in Wentworth prison by Jack Randall to satisfy his sadistic lusts, the most chilling account, to the mind of this critic, occurs in Ch. 8: "Unlaid Ghosts and Crocodiles," as Jamie presumably unburdens his soul onto Claire. The disembodied voice of Jack Randall, which Jamie tries to separate from all physical sensation, taunts him as it abuses him:

     "Have you ever seen a man hanged, Fraser?" The words went on, not waiting for him to reply....
     "Yes, of course you have; you were in France, you'll have seen deserters hanged now and again.  A hanged man loses his bowels, doesn't he? As the rope tightens fast round his neck." [...] He clenched his good hand tight around the edge of the bed and turned his face hard into the scratchy blanket, but the words pursued him.
     "That will happen to you, Fraser.  Just a few more hours, and you'll feel the noose." The voice laughed, pleased with itself. "You'll go to your death with your arse burning from my pleasure, and when you lose your bowels, it will be my spunk running down your legs and dripping on the ground below the gallows." (Dragonfly 156)

Taken out of context, the words lose some of their disturbing quality. We might get hung up on words like "spunk" and "arse," wonder whether the sadist and torturer would have really led off with the rhetorical question, "Have you ever seen a man hanged, Fraser?"  When I read, "A hanged man loses his bowels, doesn't he?" I think of a particular episode of Futurama, in which a comatose Leela hallucinates Fry's funeral, and the minister intones, "And it goes without saying that it caused him to empty his bowels."

But it is that bowel emptying, and the rapist's semen, and most of all, that the perpetrator should choose this particular taunt to a doomed man with no hope who is suffering every pain and indignity--these are what cause the horror that lingers, and prompts me to write this post.  The humiliation of the doomed.

There was a billboard that I used to pass every time a road trip took me through Orange, TX.  It said, "Raped While Dying."  There was a snippet of a story involving a man's rape and murder of his ex-wife, and possible desecration of her grave.  I can't find a link to the story, but I did find a Google archive of a Houston Chronicle archived story that no longer exists online:

This story held the same kind of haunting horror because it combined torture and humiliation with the sure knowledge of death.  Of course, the details are not really known when the victim dies.  Fictional Jamie lives to recount--remember--relive.  It is fiction, but the horror is real.

There is yet another account of humiliation in death that carries the same sickening sense of horror as the narrative moment in Dragonfly in Amber, as Jamie recalls Jack Randall's taunts.  This one feels particularly relevant, as it is World War II horror--the horror of the 20th Century war that Claire lived through.  Although I can't find a "linkable" reference, late night documentary-watching acquainted me with the execution of one of the members of--I believe--the Valkyrie plot, or someone only marginally associated with the plot, if memory serves.  He was filmed--being hanged--with his pants pulled down. Humiliation in death.

And so when I read the moment in Dragonfly in Amber, it sort of explodes in my mind.  Whatever else might be going on in the narrative--"bowels," "spunk," or "arse"--this particular moment conveys the kind of psychological torture that would break a man who seemingly could not be broken.  The preceding analogous examples underscore the emasculation that Jamie suffers, as well as the dehumanization.  And the humiliation--the blending of sex and death--makes the detail of Jack Randall's torture more chilling than the warning description of the traitor's death--hanging, drawing, and quartering--in a later chapter (430-433).

I am reminded of the line from Tolkien, "It is perilous to study too deeply the arts of the Enemy." Because to dwell on torture is to do exactly that.  I have not seen it questioned whether the depiction of torture was realistic, but the horror it evokes feels real, and brings me back to Fezzig's gallantry:

"I hate for people to die embarrassed." 

And that, by contrast, is why Jack Randall is a monster.  It's about dignity.

Dragonfly: The Danger of a Woman without Tact (A Reactionary Moments Post)

Twentieth-Century Claire does not learn her place in Outlander, and the reader, on the whole, can be grateful for that, since playing by the rules accorded to women in 18th Century France, where she and Jamie are for the better part of Dragonfly in Amber, would be unsatisfactory to Claire and to the reader who has become accustomed to the tensions that her 1940s, war-nurse sensibilities bring to the narrative.  But she is still not given carte blanche to act like a freethinking, liberated woman (insofar as we think women in the 1940s were "liberated" in the contemporary, post-1960s sense of the word!).

This becomes abundantly clear during Claire's first meeting with Jamie's cousin Jared, and with his rival the Comte St. Germain.  Ever-conscious of illness, hygiene, and infection, Claire diagnoses a case of smallpox among the crewe of St. Germain's ship, the Patagonia, in a very public manner.  To prevent an epidemic, the ship (and its pricey cargo) are destroyed.

A careful reader of Outlander might remember the Comte's name.  Or might not.  I did not--until rereading Outlander, having already read the rest of the series.  Among the books in Geilie Duncan's secret room in Outlander is L'Grimoire d'le Comte St. Germain: "A grimoire. A handbook of magic" (Outlander 503).  It is a connection--a name that likely means nothing to the reader (though St. Germain is a suspicious historical figure), hence a detail easily missed, and testimony to the value of rereading!

Historical details notwithstanding, the Comte becomes a focal point for further instruction for Claire on her social limitations as a woman, and simply the lethal rules of social interactions.  Jamie asks whether she values their attempt to prevent the Jacobite Rising, and when Claire responds affirmatively, Jamie lays things on the line for her:

     "Aye, well.  If ye do, then you'll come here, sit yourself down, and drink wine with me until Jared comes back.  And if ye don't..."  He paused and blew out a long breath that stirred the ruddy wave of hair above his forehead.
     "If ye don't, then you'll go down to a quay full of seamen and merchants who think women near ships are the height of bad luck, who are already spreading gossip that you've put a curse on St. Germain's ship, and you'll tell them what they must do.  With luck, they'll be too afraid of ye to rape you before they cut your throat and toss you into the harbor, and me after you.  If St. Germain himself doesna strangle you first.  Did ye no see the look on his face?" (Dragonfly 123)

In a comment on a previous post, Melanie Bettinelli of the Wine Dark Sea blog asks why Claire's character hails from the 1940s, rather than later in the Twentieth Century.  The point comes back to me as I consider Claire's readiness to diagnose.  I am not sure about the 1940s, but I do know (from my mother's experiences assisting in surgery and working in a VA hospital) that in the 1970s, a nurse would never, ever have been permitted to make a diagnosis.  And Claire is trained as a nurse, though she acts like a doctor given that her knowledge is superior to 18th Century medicine.  Still... she should have had more restraint when it came to making a diagnosis.  As a woman from later in the 20th C, Claire would have been able to be a doctor, and would have had more of an excuse for her brash brazenness.

Or perhaps this is a hint of an argument that a feeling of historical and cultural superiority--a real hubris--runs through the 20th Century, as early as 1945.

Dragonfly: Why Failure? (UPDATE)

Before leaving the idea of time travel and politics, I want to ruminate for a moment on Claire's particular historical perspective in Dragonfly:

     "What's to come."  What was to come?  I wondered.  What would come, if we were not successful in our efforts here, was an armed rebellion, an attempt at restoration of the Stuart monarchy, led by Prince Charles Edward Casimir Maria Sylvester Stuart, the son of the exiled king.
     "Bonnie Prince Charlie," I said softly to myself, looking over my reflection in the large pier glass.  He was here, now, in the same city, perhaps not too far away.  What would he be like?  I could think of him only in terms of his usual historical portrait, which showed a handsome, slightly effeminate youth of sixteen or so, with soft pink lips and powdered hair, in the fashion of the times.  Or the imagined paintings, showing a more robust version of the same thing, brandishing a broadsword as he stepped out of a boat onto the shore of Scotland.
     A Scotland he would ruin and lay waste in the effort to reclaim it for his father and himself.  Doomed to failure, he would attract enough support to cleave the country, and lead his followers through civil war to a bloody end on the field of Culloden.  Then he would flee to safety in France, but the retribution of his enemies would be exacted upon those he left behind.
     It was to prevent such a disaster that we had come.  It seemed incredible, thinking about it in the peace and luxury of Jared's house.  How did one stop a rebellion?  Well, if risings were fomented in taverns, perhaps they could be stopped over dinner tables.  (130-131)

There is a curious logic to Claire's and Jamie's attempt to prevent the Jacobite uprising.  There is no abstraction here--quite different from most 18th Century causes, in fact--no sense of justice or liberty to guide their endeavors.  Rather, this is what the genuine Jacobite's possess--and, in fact, what Geilis/Geilie possesses.

Knowing that an attempt--one, particular historical attempt--to recapture the throne of Scotland will end in failure, Claire decides that to prevent the failure, she (and Jamie) should try to prevent the attempt.  Best to stop the idealist--usurper?--rather than the English, who would be dealing out the retribution?  Assuming that it is possible to prevent the whole Rising, why would it not also be possible to insure its success?  If failure can be prevented by preventing the attempt, then surely failure might also be prevented by orchestrating success.  But then, how much of Claire's perspective comes from her own biases?  She was raised by an anthropologist, wedded to a historian, and remains altogether English.

For all the demonization of Geilis/Geilie, time traveler from 1968 whom, at this point in the narrative, the reader assumes burned as a witch, she is a Scot, and her (admittedly obsessive and fanatical) 1960s patriotism is a postcolonial one.  Perhaps it is once again a reactionary move that Claire, the representative of Empire, is the sympathetic voice?  Or perhaps the reader is asked to disagree with Claire and her prevention of the Rising.  I will be searching for narrative clues to whether the reader is asked to be skeptical of Claire's endeavor (which can theoretically happen--even though Claire controls the narrative).  I suspect that she is the voice of our sympathies--the worldly pacifist, or else the virtuous Imperialist.  At least, for now...

Update, January 10:

When I posited earlier that Claire chose failure rather than success for Charles Stuart's expedition, I was considering Claire's and Jamie's efforts to sabotage Charles's attempt at reclaiming the throne of Scotland in the hopes that he would change his mind and abandon the doomed quest. Since he does not change his mind, their efforts to sabotage and dissuade become successful efforts to sabotage his efforts--thereby insuring the failure of the Jacobite Rising. It's rather as if someone went back in time to sabotage the funding for weapons, supplies, and boats to carry soldiers to the beaches of Normandy in order to prevent the invasion from happening and prevent loss of life, only to have the plans carried out with inadequate resources so that the invasion ultimately fails, resulting in even more massive loss of life.  Except that in the case of Culloden, history does not change.

When it becomes clear that Charles has involved Jamie in treason, only one option remains. As his sister Jenny says,

"There's only one thing ye can do, my dearie. Ye must go and fight for Charles Stuart. Ye must help him win." (584)

Considering that Jamie is effectively forced to play the role he has been feigning throughout the novel, it becomes lamentable that he and Claire had indeed "succeeded in preventing Charles Stuart from getting money to finance his rebellion" (592). How, then, if they had instead used Jamie's business sense to finance it, and his apparent magnetism to gain the support of the nobles and the king?  Might we have had a genre change? And a whole lot more work for the author in the coming volumes?

Is it in fact the case that Jamie and Claire orchestrated the self-fulfilling prophecy of Culloden and the failed uprising and destruction of the Highland clans?

Speculative food for thought...

The Thing About Time Travel - Pt. 2

This discussion of time travel is continued from The Thing About Time Travel - Pt. 1.

I've already mentioned that it was hard for me to read Dragonfly in Amber the first time.  Let me qualify that--it was hard for me to reconcile myself to the beginning of the novel and its implications.  Once I was reading, I was zipping through.  However, it was very difficult for me to suspend my disbelief--specifically with reference to the time travel.  What was the problem?--you might wonder.  It clearly wasn't an issue with Outlander.  Stepping through standing stones into the 18th C--why not?  But hindsight-is-not-quite-20-20 with a time traveler transported the 18th C?--not so much.  Even so, there was a lot to keep me zipping through, and I will continue to chronicle those things.  But the whole premise--"should we change the course of history?"--grated on me.

It seems to me that the whole question of "changing the future" by the time traveler's actions is a fruitless question.  It's something akin to the "chicken and the egg."  Sure--the act of time travel changes something.  It must, right?  If we believe that even the smallest thing affects everything else, and we want to believe this.  George Bailey knows it to be true, whatever the dark, Walmart-facilitating, community-destroying implications of his progressive endeavors.

But here's the thing...  In the future from which the proverbial time traveler departs, it is not necessarily clear whether the time traveler's experience in the past has already happened.

Now, I don't know anything about Dr. Who, so perhaps the creators of the Dr. Who series (both of them) deal with this issue better.  But as a child of the 80s, I was raised on the logic of Back to the Future, so I know a thing or two about how time travel is supposed to work--when you go to the past, you either have to stay out of the way to prevent crucial events from being interrupted, or you have to engineer a way to get them back on the right track again--hopefully with better results than the first go-round.

These days, the time travel motif--its groundwork firmly laid by Back to the Future--can be casually employed without over-explanation (that whole "space-time continuum" thing) in the Disney children's series Phineas and Ferb.  Though the show is generally a stroke of genius, I nevertheless quibble a bit with their elimination of "alternate universe" Candace.  In the manner of Heinlein, in The Cat who Walks through Walls, I would like to see the alternate histories existing as parallels.

Heinlein employs agents in The Cat who Walks through Walls (O! Wikipedia, how I hate thee!) to alter history in a way that will be favorable to their cause--possibly the Lunar Revolt.  Each altered timeline creates a parallel universe in which events continue along their logical paths.  Long before I read the (somewhat convoluted) Cat who Walks through Walls, I remember seeing ads for a short-lived TV-show called Voyagers!, in which time-traveling agents are sent to correct historical events that were somehow disrupted.  Given the dates, I am surprised that I remember the commercial so vividly, but I do: a boy's shrill voice intones, "Moses was found by the pharaoh's daughter--" [pushes basket] "--in the Nile!"  We can only be grateful that the constraints of the TV show did not allow for the creation of parallel timelines.  There was only one, and its events were either correct or incorrect.

The Outlander books deal with time travel as a dilemma more or less frequently, depending on the novel.  The question hangs over Dragonfly in Amber like the sword of Damocles--(I stand by the metaphor)--because the actions of Claire and Jamie (which include multiple counts of betrayal) hinge on the question of whether one (or two) mere mortals might prevent the disastrous Battle of Culloden--or the entire Jacobite Rising of 1745.

George Bailey notwithstanding, I don't believe in the ability of one person or two to make that kind of impact, even with the benefit of limited hindsight.  It seems the height of arrogance for them to make the attempt, particularly since Claire, in so doing, completely sacrifices Jamie's personal honor.  So my own skepticism limits my enjoyment--and it's pretty important to be able to admit to these biases when reading.  It's part of the "rhetorical situation" of the reader.

Literarily speaking, if the characters accomplish what they set out to do, the books would change from historical fiction to alternate history.  So if we know what genre we're reading, it's a foregone conclusion.  Watching machinations that are doomed to failure makes me glaze over a bit, right up to the point when political intrigue becomes personal tragedy.  Consider the classic Star Trek episode "City on the Edge of Forever," which crosses personal and political destinies as Kirk is forced to sacrifice the woman he loves to prevent Hitler from winning World War II.

A far more interesting question to me--and perhaps what I think we should be asking--is whether history as the characters know it (which is also how the reader knows it) depends on time travel itself.  In Outlander, there is implicit suggestion of this very question in Claire's instructions to Jenny of what she should do to prepare for impending doom:

     "Plant potatoes," I said. 

     Jenny's mouth dropped slightly open, then she firmed her jaw and nodded briskly. "Potatoes. Aye. There's none closer than Edinburgh, but I'll send for them. How many?" 

     "As many as you can. They're not planted in the Highlands now, but they will be.  They're a root crop that will keep for a long time, and the yield is better than wheat.  Put as much ground as you can into crops that can be stored.  There's going to be a famine, a bad one, in two years.  If there's land or property that's not productive now, sell it, for gold.  There's going to be a war, and slaughter.  Men will be hunted, here and everywhere through the Highlands." (Outlander 672)

In preparing Lallybroch for the aftermath of Culloden, which in the 20th Century is historical fact, Claire might raise a question in the mind of the reader--when were potatoes introduced to the Highlands? Is the introduction of potatoes--and the survival of Lallybroch--a fact in Claire's 20th Century as well?  It is impossible to know, since Lallybroch was not on Claire's radar when she was in the 20th C (the first time--sigh).

The question of how time travel influences personal history is a little easier--both easier to accept change and easier to see the influence that has already occurred.  Would, for example, characters not exist had someone else not traveled back in time?  Well, no.  In fact, some characters would not exist if a time traveler had not traveled to the past.  So there are clues that the things Claire will go back and do in the 1740s will have already affected the future/present of1945 or 1965...  The very existence of Roger MacKenzie Wakefield--descendant of a woman who went from the 1960s to the 1740s (and arrived before Claire, our traveler from 1945)--strongly implies that history as we know it depends on the activity of time travel.  That's a little bit mind blowing, but not unprecedented!

Re-enter pop culture.  The Futurama episode "Roswell that Ends Well" actually has a nice treatment of the paradox of time travel--Professor Farnsworth's warning to the crewe is "You mustn't interfere with the past.  Don't do anything that affects anything.  Unless it turns out that you were supposed to do it; in which case, for the love of God, don't not do it!"  Fry takes the advice to heart, and when he inadvertently places his (presumed) grandfather in the way of nuclear testing, he assumes that his grandma must not, in fact, be his grandma, and assures his own existence by yielding to her advances.  History--and thus, the future--depend on time travel.

Meanwhile, H. G. Wells' time traveler plays it safe--he leaves the past alone and only meddles in the future, where he can't jeopardize his own existence or the history of the world.

I'm not going to touch Time Bandits.  After all, it proceeds from the warped mind of Terry Gilliam.

For me, having the characters actions explain history, or tie neatly into it, is preferable.  When there is a neat intersection, I can sit back and admire the cleverness of it all.  If changing history is going to be a valid possibility in a time travel novel, go big with it.  Have the Americans lose the Revolutionary War--I dare you!  But accept the consequences, and show me what would have happened. It never really is a possibility in the Outlander novels.  We know that from Roger's date with Brianna to view the Culloden battlefield in the beginning of Dragonfly in Amber that Jamie and Claire do not succeed.

So at the end of the day--and the novel--it really is the personal tragedy that is most important, and the impulse to change history, the hubris that propels it.  The function of the fantasy element, then?  Perhaps to reveal that hubris for what it is, and to justify Claire's suffering when she returns to the 20th Century.