As Jamie enters the house to wait for Jenny to give birth--and to be with her in spirit, if not actually in the room--he surprises a neighbor, who is reading to the children from the Bible:
“ ‘ And Adam was not deceived, but the woman being deceived was in the transgression,’ ” read Mrs. Kirby. There was a loud, rolling scream from upstairs, that seemed to go on and on. Mrs. Kirby paused for a moment, to allow everyone to appreciate it, before resuming the reading. Her eyes, pale gray and wet as raw oysters, flickered toward the ceiling, then rested with satisfaction on the row of strained faces before her.It is an interesting literacy moment because of the type of literacy represented. First of all, it is didactic. There is both an implicit and an explicit lesson. The words that Mrs. Kirby is reading indict every female in the guilt of Eve--not an uncommon argument, even in contemporary Abrahamic religions--and that childbearing saves women. Implicitly, pain in childbirth is punishment (a point that is explicit in Genesis 3:16), and Jenny--for some of them, their own mother--is an exemplar of this. (I do wonder what a literal reading of the Biblical passages would mean for women who opt for an epidural... No pain, no heavenly gain?)
“ ‘ Notwithstanding, she shall be saved in childbearing, if she continue in faith and charity and holiness with sobriety,’ ” she read. Kitty burst into hysterical sobbing and buried her head in her sister’s shoulder. Maggie Ellen was growing bright red beneath her freckles, while her elder brother had gone dead-white at the scream. (66)
I do take issue with this scene, as it assumes that women in the 18th Century would not have had pain management techniques. A well-prepared woman need not scream, even without modern medicine, and Jenny would have had the wisdom of her midwife, of women around her, and of her own previous births, as well as the endurance of a woman who was used to having to endure other pain and discomfort in daily life! But then, this vision of childbirth goes along with an agenda that is subtly apparent throughout the books--the danger, hardship, and pain of childbearing. The combination of this Bible verse and childbirth in this particular novel suggests childbearing as a Purgatorial act for women--although the context (the cruelty of Mrs. Kirby's didacticism; Jamie's intervention) argues strongly that if Christianity teaches that childbirth is Purgatorial, that this is evidence of Christian teaching about women being skewed.
The other reason that it is interesting is because of the text, which is from 1 Timothy 2:14-15. No, I'm not that good. That's what Google is for. The text also appears to be taken from the King James Version, which is another thing I need to ponder. The King James Version, while poetic, is a notoriously bad translation, as a semester of Ancient Greek made clear. Just for fun, here's a sample from Catholic apologist Jimmy Akin. I'm a little fuzzy on whether an 18th Century Scottish Catholic household would have a Bible in English, much less the King James Version (albeit the nod to the Stuarts). I don't have a source that I can check for this a the moment, only the internet (I could go over to the library databases of the university for which I work, and in order to answer the question sufficiently, I would have to do more research than that...), but for now, I simply have the question: To what extent was the King James Version of the Bible adopted by Catholics in/by the 18th Century? I would expect that, in Scotland, the Bible would have been in Latin, or if possible, Gaelic, with an alternate translation being the third choice. The dominant Catholic translation would have been the Douay-Rheims. Jamie might have had a French Bible. The question is an interesting one. In the meantime, here are some parallel translations of the line in question.
Incidentally, here's the Douay-Rheims:
{2:14} And Adam was not seduced; but the woman, being seduced, was in the transgression.{2:15} Yet she shall be saved through child bearing; if she continue in faith and love and sanctification with sobriety.The language is much more Catholic.
Jamie enters in this mist of this troubling literacy moment, disperses the crowd and confiscates the Bible in displeasure. It is a nice detail that Jenny’s bookshelf is "battered and scarred from the last incursion of Redcoats, three months ago." (67) When he hears the sounds of Jenny's suffering, he unwillingly turns to the words in the book he holds--not verses this time, but records:
Hearing a prolonged moan from above, he glanced down involuntarily at the Bible in his hand. Not really wanting to, still he let the book fall open, showing the page at the front where the marriages, births, and deaths of the family were recorded. (67)What follows in the novel is a text-based reminiscence of Jamie's family history, beginning (in a way) with the birth of his older brother, William:
The entries began with his parents’ marriage. Brian Fraser and Ellen MacKenzie. The names and the date were written in his mother’s fine round hand, with underneath, a brief notation in his father’s firmer, blacker scrawl. Marrit for love, it said— a pointed observation, in view of the next entry, which showed Willie’s birth, which had occurred scarcely two months past the date of the marriage.Mention of William, and the record of his niece's death, encourage his consideration of all of the uncertainties, from the "what if" of his own inherited role as laird after his brother's death, to the "what if" of his inability to provide:
Closing the book, his eye caught the last entry— Caitlin Maisri Murray, born December 3, 1749, died December 3, 1749. Aye, if. If the Redcoats had not come on December 2, would Jenny have borne the child too early? If they had had enough food, so that she, like the rest of them, was no more than skin and bones and the bulge of her belly, would that have helped?Literacy, in these moments, causes introspection and torment.
Gabaldon, Diana (2004-10-26). Voyager (Outlander) Random House, Inc.. Kindle Edition.
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