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.