Voyager: More Archival Research and Literacy Clues...

In Voyager, literacy provides the final proof to validate Claire's time travel story, the deed of sasine that ceded Lallybroch to Jamie's nephew, Jamie.   It is by using the deed as a handwriting sample that they are finally able to determine his whereabouts 20 years later.  The narrative provides a good dramatization of the detective work that goes into historical scholarship:

     I stared at the scrawling letters, browned with age. They were written by someone of difficult penmanship, here cramped and there sprawling, with exaggerated loops on “g” and “y.” Perhaps the writing of a left-handed man, who wrote most painfully with his right hand.
     “See, here’s the published version.” Roger brought the opened folio to the desk and laid it before me, pointing. “See the date? It’s 1765, and it matches this handwritten manuscript almost exactly; only a few of the marginal notes aren’t included.”
     “Yes,” I said. “And the deed of sasine  …”
     “Here it is.” Brianna fumbled hastily in the top drawer and pulled out a much crumpled paper, likewise encased in protective plastic. Protection here was even more after the fact than with the manuscript; the paper was rain-spattered, filthy and torn, many of the words blurred beyond recognition. But the three signatures at the bottom still showed plainly.
     By my hand, read the difficult writing, here executed with such care that only the exaggerated loop of the “y” showed its kinship with the careless manuscript, James Alexander Malcolm MacKenzie Fraser. And below, the two lines where the witnesses had signed. In a thin, fine script, Murtagh FitzGibbons Fraser, and, below that, in my own large, round hand, Claire Beauchamp Fraser. 

Interestingly, the literacy that has created the paper trail also provides evidence of the writing process:

     “See?” she said, twenty minutes later, as I bent over the desk in the manse’s study. On the battered surface of the late Reverend Wakefield’s desk lay a sheaf of yellowed papers, foxed and browned at the edges. They were carefully enclosed in protective plastic covers now, but obviously had been carelessly used at one time; the edges were tattered, one sheet was torn roughly in half, and all the sheets had notes and annotations scribbled in the margins and inserted in the text. This was obviously someone’s rough draft— of something.
     “It’s the text of an article,” Roger told me, shuffling through a pile of huge folio volumes that lay on the sofa. “It was published in a sort of journal called Forrester’s, put out by a printer called Alexander Malcolm, in Edinburgh, in 1765.” I swallowed, my shirtwaist dress feeling suddenly too tight under the arms; 1765 was almost twenty years past the time when I had left Jamie.

Jamie has entered into a literacy-based profession, though one that is also political.  As a writer and a printer, he achieves immortality of a sort, and is hence able to be traced.  As a former scholar, a former literacy scholar, and the wife of an archivist who works with early printing, this is a gratifying testimony to the power of the printed word.

For a scholar, or an archivist, the power and the value are intellectual rather than tangible.  We believe in access, and we believe in the knowledge that the written word preserves and provides.  But as a time travel novel, Voyager makes the power and value more tangible by way of Claire's reaction--and, indeed, the reaction of those who believe in her story:

     I sat down quite suddenly, putting my hand over the document instinctively, as though to deny its reality.
     “That’s it, isn’t it?” said Roger quietly. His outward composure was belied by his hands, trembling slightly as he lifted the stack of manuscript pages to set them next to the deed. “You signed it. Proof positive— if we needed it,” he added, with a quick glance at Bree.
     She shook her head, letting her hair fall down to hide her face. They didn’t need it, either of them.

Nevertheless, the narrative stresses the tangibility of the written word:

     Still, having it all laid out in black and white was rather staggering. I took my hand away and looked again at the deed, and then at the handwritten manuscript.
     “Is it the same, Mama?” Bree bent anxiously over the pages, her hair brushing softly against my hand. “The article wasn’t signed— or it was, but with a pseudonym.” She smiled briefly. “The author signed himself ‘Q.E.D.’ It looked the same to us, but we aren’t either of us handwriting experts and we didn’t want to give these to an expert until you’d seen them.”
     “I think so.” I felt breathless, but quite certain at the same time, with an upwelling of incredulous joy. “Yes, I’m almost sure. Jamie wrote this.” Q.E.D., indeed! I had an absurd urge to tear the manuscript pages out of their plastic shrouds and clutch them in my hands, to feel the ink and paper he had touched; the certain evidence that he had survived.  (285-286)

Not content, however, Roger provides--from a scholar's instinct--corroborating evidence, this one literary:

     “There’s more. Internal evidence.” Roger’s voice betrayed his pride. “See there? It’s an article against the Excise Act of 1764, advocating the repeal of the restrictions on export of liquor from the Scottish Highlands to England. Here it is”— his racing finger stopped suddenly on a phrase—“  ‘ for as has been known for ages past, “Freedom and Whisky gang tegither.” ’ See how he’s put that Scottish dialect phrase in quotes? He got it from somewhere else.”
     “He got it from me,” I said softly. “I told him that— when he was setting out to steal Prince Charles’s port.”
     “I remembered.” Roger nodded, eyes shining with excitement. “But it’s a quote from Burns,” I said, frowning suddenly. “Perhaps the writer got it there— wasn’t Burns alive then?” “He was,” said Bree smugly, forestalling Roger. “But Robert Burns was six years old in 1765.”
     “And Jamie would be forty-four.”  (286-287)

Perhaps it still doesn't matter outside of academic or fictional contexts.  But in a world that denies the value of scholarly activity, it is nice to see a testimony to its value, even it is to corroborate a story of time travel, and to locate a fictional character--20 years later--in the past...

Gabaldon, Diana (2004-10-26). Voyager (Outlander). Random House, Inc.. Kindle Edition.

Voyager: Is it 'The Gaze' if She Asks for It? (A Reactionary Moment)

Yes, the title of this post is intentionally provocative and potentially inflammatory.  I refer to the theoretical concept of "The Gaze," but use a kind of rhetoric of rape--and the comparison is apt.  "The Gaze" is a concept that is very closely related to feminist theory, but has roots in psychoanalytic theory (Lacan and Freud) and film theory, since the lens of the camera is a male-controlled eye that focuses on the female object, and also directs the audience toward that object as an object.  "The Gaze," then, is (masculine) force that objectifies and sexualizes the (female) object.  Here's a pretty good explanation with the right basic citations.  There is a sense in which "the gaze" becomes a sort of visual rape--hence the title of the post.

And yet, as I evoke feminist theory, I believe that Gabaldon's novel is doing the opposite--or rather, evoking feminist theory, and then discounting it in a single gesture.  As she prepares to return to Jamie, 20 years after leaving him in the past, assuming that he would die on the Culloden battlefield, Claire seeks the opinion of her medical school friend, Joe Abernathy--the same friend who introduces her to romance novels, and with whom Frank believes (and if Frank is to believed, others believe) her to be having an affair.  The exchange is both amusing, and telling:

     “Am I sexually attractive?” I demanded. His eyes always reminded me of coffee drops, with their warm golden-brown color. Now they went completely round, enhancing the resemblance.
     Then they narrowed, but he didn’t answer immediately. He looked me over carefully, head to toe.
     “It’s a trick question, right?” he said. “I give you an answer and one of those women’s libbers jumps out from behind the door, yells ‘Sexist pig!’And hits me over the head with a sign that says ‘Castrate Male Chauvinists.’ Huh?”
     “No,” I assured him. “A sexist male chauvinist answer is basically what I want.”
     “Oh, okay. As long as we’re straight, then.” He resumed his perusal, squinting closely as I stood up straight.
     “Skinny white broad with too much hair, but a great ass,” he said at last. “Nice tits, too,” he added, with a cordial nod. “That what you want to know?” (280-281)

So how does this register with you, the reader?  Is Claire violated in this scenario?  She has literally asked for "the Gaze":  "a sexist male chauvinist answer is basically what I want."  She is asking to be appraised--like a piece of property, or like livestock--and Abernathy delivers.  And in fairly... direct terms.  And Claire is satisfied.

However, the two are not only equals, between whom there is no sexual attraction, between whom there is personal and professional respect, and between whom there is a shared literacy context (the romance novel), the two are further linked by a professional disadvantage arising from what might be considered identity politics--he is black, and she is female.  Neither of them, however, is an activist for the cause.

So what is going on here?

Well, this is a nicely subversive moment.  A black man and a white woman--both doctors--are undermining the seriousness of the feminist movement in general, and female objectification in particular.  As the novels suggest elsewhere that what the late-20th-Century historian might see as oppression might actually have been social necessity (see here, here and here) , or even biologically-based necessity, so the narrative suggests here that fear of sexual objectification might be slightly laughable--that sexual attraction between men and women is visual, and so that gaze which could be cast as objectifying, is part of the whole picture of passion.

Joe is familiar enough with feminism to know the risk that he runs, but he succumbs to her request--in a way that also stresses her race and difference from him.  A few pages earlier, he has asserted the essential physical differences between black people and white, so it reinforces that point when he calls her a “Skinny white broad with too much hair, but a great ass.”  Claire is not offended, but relieved.  She still has what Jamie wanted.

And if you want to see what real sexism looks like, see Claire's doctor's commentary on her sex life.

Gabaldon, Diana (2004-10-26). Voyager (Outlander). Random House, Inc.. Kindle Edition.

Voyager: The Secret Life of Things

Virginia Woolf has a short story titled "Solid Objects."  It would be worth noting whether this story was originally published alongside "The Mark on the Wall" (which centers obsessively on the identity of a black mark on a wall, which reveals itself to be a snail by the end), because "Solid Objects" begins with this passage:

The only thing that moved upon the vast semicircle of the beach was one
small black spot. As it came nearer to the ribs and spine of the
stranded pilchard boat, it became apparent from a certain tenuity in its
blackness that this spot possessed four legs; and moment by moment it
became more unmistakable that it was composed of the persons of two
young men.

From this moment of objectifying the human person on the beach, Woolf moves on to the strange tale of a man who becomes obsessed with the collection and arrangement of things--the first of which is a piece of smooth green glass:

Whether this thought or not was in John's mind, the lump of glass had
its place upon the mantelpiece, where it stood heavy upon a little pile
of bills and letters and served not only as an excellent paper-weight,
but also as a natural stopping place for the young man's eyes when they
wandered from his book. Looked at again and again half consciously by a
mind thinking of something else, any object mixes itself so profoundly
with the stuff of thought that it loses its actual form and recomposes
itself a little differently in an ideal shape which haunts the brain
when we least expect it. So John found himself attracted to the windows
of curiosity shops when he was out walking, merely because he saw
something which reminded him of the lump of glass. Anything, so long as
it was an object of some kind, more or less round, perhaps with a dying
flame deep sunk in its mass, anything--china, glass, amber, rock,
marble--even the smooth oval egg of a prehistoric bird would do. He took,
also, to keeping his eyes upon the ground, especially in the
neighbourhood of waste land where the household refuse is thrown away.
Such objects often occurred there--thrown away, of no use to anybody,
shapeless, discarded. In a few months he had collected four or five
specimens that took their place upon the mantelpiece. They were useful,
too, for a man who is standing for Parliament upon the brink of a
brilliant career has any number of papers to keep in order--addresses to
constituents, declarations of policy, appeals for subscriptions,
invitations to dinner, and so on.

His obsession consumes him, to the exclusion of all else, but at the same time remains bound with his old ambitions, which included a career in Parliament.

Although they share only a preoccupation with objects, this is the story that comes to mind when I read in Voyager of Bree's "knack of objects," which she has in common with Frank:

     Some people have a way of arranging everything about them, so the objects take on not only their own meaning, and a relation to the other things displayed with them, but something more besides— an indefinable aura that belongs as much to their invisible owner as to the objects themselves. I am here because Brianna placed me here, the things in the room seemed to say. I am here because she is who she is.
     It was odd that she should have that, really, I thought. Frank had had it; when I had gone to empty his university office after his death, I had thought it like the fossilized cast of some extinct animal; books and papers and bits of rubbish holding exactly the shape and texture and vanished weight of the mind that had inhabited the space.
     For some of Brianna’s objects, the relation to her was obvious— pictures of me, of Frank, of Bozo, of friends. The scraps of fabric were ones she had made, her chosen patterns, the colors she liked— a brilliant turquoise, deep indigo, magenta, and clear yellow. But other things— why should the scatter of dried freshwater snail shells on the bureau say to me “Brianna”? Why that one lump of rounded pumice, taken from the beach at Truro, indistinguishable from a hundred thousand others— except for the fact that she had taken it? 

There are other moments in the Outlander when objects become significant.  I have not recorded them all, but one moment is in the beginning of Dragonfly in Amber, when the objects in the late Rev. Wakefield's house take on symbolic significance in reference to Claire's story; another moment is when Claire dreams of Frank giving a lecture on things, which I blogged about more recently.  I find it fascinating the variety of ways in which we think and talk about things, and I even designed a course for an interview in New Zealand titled, "Writing the Lives of Things," in which students would theorize "things" throughout the semester--how we control things, how they control us, how they are useful to us, how they are manufactured, etc.

The idea, in this passage, that the arrangement of the objects--or their very identity--takes on special significance because of the act of having been chosen, brings me from Woolf's "Solid Objects," which is a descent into thing-based madness reminiscent of the contemporary phenomenon of "Hoarding," epitomized by the TLC reality show, to Wallace Stevens' consideration of how the placement of a thing orders the universe around it by the very agency and artificiality of its placement in "The Anecdote of the Jar":

I placed a jar in Tennessee,
And round it was, upon a hill.
It made the slovenly wilderness
Surround that hill.

The wilderness rose up to it,
And sprawled around, no longer wild.
The jar was round upon the ground
And tall and of a port in air.

It took dominion every where.
The jar was gray and bare.
It did not give of bird or bush,
Like nothing else in Tennessee.

Frank and Bree take pleasure in the arrangement and collection of objects.  In so doing, they make an external representation of some aspect of their own minds, as in "Solid Objects," but they also imprint the objects, and transform the things themselves, which in turn, reorder the space around them, as in "Anecdote of the Jar" (although the surroundings are not "natural," as in Stevens' poem).

By contrast, Claire does not have a way with things, and things--including the comforts of modern life--have no hold on Claire.  As she describes this non-relationship with things, she relates it to Jamie:

     I didn’t have a way with objects. I had no impulse either to acquire or to decorate— Frank had often complained of the Spartan furnishings at home, until Brianna grew old enough to take a hand. Whether it was the fault of my nomadic upbringing, or only the way I was, I lived mostly inside my skin, with no impulse to alter my surroundings to reflect me.
     Jamie was the same. He had had the few small objects, always carried in his sporran for utility or as talismans, and beyond that, had neither owned nor cared for things.  (263-264)

I actually think that this is a similarity that is overstated.  Is it an oversight of the author's, I wonder, or the author's skilled manipulation of a character that results in this equating of Claire's and Jamie's relationship to things?  Because if it is the author, it is a flaw--Jamie prizes things, from the carved snake made for him by his older brother Willie, or the rosary he gives to his own son, or a piece of plaid.  Jamie believes strongly in symbolic objects, and his faith is an object-based faith.  Claire, who does not have faith, and who does not have roots, also has very little relationship with objects--aside from her wedding rings, which are not mentioned here.  If the author meant for this to be a mistaken observation on Claire's part, what does that mean?  To my mind, not much.  I really find this more of a flaw in the narrative (however slight) than in the character's understanding.

Rather than drawing attention to Jamie's and Claire's lack of attention to things, this reader finds that it draws attention to Jamie's use of things.  Claire attributes their indifference to objects to their dislocations--Claire was nomadic and Jamie was forced to live on the run at a young age, and so, the character posits that "perhaps it was natural to him also, this isolation from the world of things, this sense of self-sufficiency— one of the things that had made us seek completion in each other" (264).  And yet, there is a sense of home that accompanies Jamie with his things, inadequate as it is.  So when Claire observes that it was "Odd all the same, that Brianna should have so much resembled both her fathers, in their very different ways" (264), I have a nagging feeling that Brianna's "way with things" might also be attributed to Jamie.  Why the oversight, I wonder?

However, there is another possibility.  In her relationship to things, is there a hint of materialism? Roger and Bree will, in later volumes, bond over things in various ways--at times to recapture what they have lost from the 20th Century.  Claire can discard the material comforts of the 20th Century that she lacks while in the 18th Century.  Brianna can do it, too, but that attachment--an attachment often framed by way of things--remains.  So in her connection to things, Brianna is more firmly linked to the 20th Century.  And it is not terribly surprising that she and Frank, for all of their penchant for historical research, should have that in common.  That she and Roger should also have it in common points to something about their generation, perhaps (though Roger is older).  The 60s generation is something I plan to come back to in future posts on later books in the series.

Gabaldon, Diana (2004-10-26). Voyager (Outlander). Random House, Inc. Kindle Edition. 

Voyager: What Literacy Can't Do for Frank

The last two posts on Frank Randall examine his professional persona--from evidence of his scholarly inclinations to his teaching persona, which has little to do with books or bookishness, or the life of the mind in general.  Other posts of mine deal with various manifestations of literacy, including its uses, characteristics and benefits.  But it becomes apparent in the scenes of Claire and Frank in which his status as professor are in the forefront that there are definite limitations to how advanced--or even hyper-literacy, which is how I would classify anyone who makes a literacy-based living because of a particularly high level and intense use of advanced literacy--can influence a person's perspective for the better.

Frank, it seems, has particular reservations about Claire's--and Brianna's--associations with black people:

“Better [for Bree to be] swaddled than fucking a black man!” he shot back. A mottled red showed faintly over his cheekbones. “Like mother, like daughter, eh? But that’s not how it’s going to be, damn it, not if I’ve anything to say about it!” (268)

That is a particularly repulsive set of lines, and worse coming from a highly educated man.  The 1960s time frame does nothing to lessen my disgust, which increases as Frank continues speaking:

“You spend all your time with the man. It’s the same thing, so far as Bree is concerned. Dragging her into  …   situations, where she’s exposed to danger, and  …   and to those sorts of people  …”
     “Black people, I suppose you mean?”
     “I damn well do,” he said, looking up at me with eyes flashing. “It’s bad enough to have the Abernathys to parties all the time, though at least he’s educated. But that obese person I met at their house with the tribal tattoos and the mud in his hair? That repulsive lounge lizard with the oily voice? And young Abernathy’s taken to hanging round Bree day and night, taking her to marches and rallies and orgies in low dives  …”  (268)

So does the racism--which I see as wholly unexpected--add more to our perception of Frank's character than it does to the novels' theorization of literacy?  Well, I would say that it probably adds more to our perception of Frank.  Unnecessarily.  But since Frank's status as professor--like Roger's--is bound up with literacy and what it means or entails to be literate, I would say that the two are inextricably linked.  Frank is an ass in spite of his very advanced literacy, and by way of his advanced literacy, as in his affairs, which occur in the academic sphere by virtue of his position of power as a professor, and also as in his seduction-by-teaching or teaching-as-seduction.  It is a complex portrait--not only of a man whose ideas of sexual power are skewed--if in a more civilized way than his ancestral uncle, Jack Randall's--but of the role literacy can play in this game of sexual power, and of literacy's inevitable limitations--here, its failure to produce a humanistic awareness of others.

In a separate context, there is a slight suggestion that the position of hyper-literate academic in fact cements ideology rather than expelling stereotype and bias:

“Academics don’t give up theories easily,” I said, shrugging. “I lived with one long enough to know that.”  (280)

If you have a high perception of your own intelligence based on your scholarly activity, you can't always countenance the fact that you might be wrong.  Unlike Claire, however, I would not exempt doctors from this phenomenon.

Gabaldon, Diana (2004-10-26). Voyager (Outlander). Random House, Inc.. Kindle Edition.

Dragonfly and Voyager: A Portrait of Professor Randall Pt. 2

I'm going to give writing about Frank one more go, but it's not working out very well.  I have Frank post after Frank post piled up, because there's a lot to say.  I just don't feel like tacking it.  But since I've already started this, here we go...

In Dragonfly in Amber, Claire has a dream.  This is before the reader understands that there is a closer link between dream and reality--and especially a connection between loved ones who have been displaced in time--than there is between dreaming and the subconscious.  Dreams are real, for Claire and Jamie in particular, although Jamie's are more often memories than Claire's.  In this instance, Claire's dream is of Frank, and whether it is the product of Claire's knowledge of Frank, or an actual vision of a class that takes place at a place in time that is parallel to when or where in time Claire is with Jamie, the reader has no reason to doubt that the dream represents Frank as he really is.  In this dream, the reader gets an introductory picture of Frank as a lecturer--and it is this view that the final words between Frank and Claire evokes as the only other evidence of Frank's teaching persona.  Although I am not convinced that this dream is supposed to be understood as a sending or some kind of realistic vision of Frank*, as a product of Claire's own subconscious, it can still be understood as representative of the real Frank.

As Claire falls asleep, she sees Frank's face.  He is lecturing, at London University, about the difference between "[o]bjects of vertu" and "objects of use." He has a catalog of objects, which is important, because we learn in Voyager that he has a way of imbuing objects with his being--a talent that Brianna learns from him in some way.  The objects, borrowed from the British museum, are a silver candlestick, a "French counter-box," and a "white clay pipe," an "English gold-mounted scent bottle, a gilt-bronze inkstand with gadrooned lid, a cracked horn spoon, and a small marble clock topped with swans drinking."  He also has "a row of painted miniatures."

The objects are not as important for my purposes as the details of his behavior.  He handles the objects with a sensuality that is palpable--and it soon becomes clear that he is not simply doing so for the benefit of the objects--he is performing:

His long fingers touched the rim of a silver candlestick and the sun from the window sparked from the metal, as though his touch were electric.

And for whom is he performing, but his students?:

     He put his pipe to his mouth and pursed his lips around the stem, puffing out his cheeks, brows raised comically.  There was a muffled giggle from the audience, and he smiled and laid the pipe down.

He is "absorbed" by the objects, but plays to the students, and seems particularly aware of the attentions of the female students in particular.  When he does focus on a male student, it is a very practiced, artificial gesture:

     "The art, and the objects of vertu" - he waved a hand over the glittering array - "these are what we most often see, the decorations of a society. And why not?" He picked an intelligent-looking brown-haired boy to address. An accomplished lecturer's trick; pick one member of the audience to talk to as though you were alone with him. A moment later, shift to another. And everyone in the room will feel the focus of your remarks. 

 A moment later, he picks another female:

     "These are pretty things, after all." A finger's touch set the swans on the clock revolving, curved necks stately in twofold procession. "Worth preserving. But who'd bother keeping an old, patched tea cozy, or a worn-out automobile-tire?" A pretty blonde in glasses this time, who smiled and tittered briefly in response. (189)

And his attentions are not always positive, but verge on mockery, even if delivered with a smile:

     Now a middle-aged woman, scribbling frantically to catch every word, hardly aware of the singular regard upon her. The lines creased beside smiling hazel eyes.
     "You needn't take down everything, Miss Smith," he chided. "It's an hour's lecture, after all - your pencil will never last."
     The woman blushed and dropped her pencil, but smiled shyly in answer to the friendly grin on Frank's lean, dark face. (190)

Frank thrives on the manipulation of the crowd:

He had them now, everyone warmed by the glow of good humor, attention attracted by the small flashes of gilt and glitter. Now they would follow him without flagging or complaint, along the path of logic and into the thickets of discussion. A certain tenseness left his neck as he felt the students' attention settle and fix on him. (190)

Each time he delivers a successful quip, he relaxes a bit more.

Frank's willingness to engage in sexual banter becomes evident as he chooses a "plump blond girl" to unsettle with his question about perfume:

      "And what about those people? We think of historical persons as something different than ourselves, sometimes halfway mythological. But someone played games with this" - the slender index finger stroked the counter-box - "a lady used this" - nudged the scent bottle - "dabbing scent behind her ears, on her wrists… where else do you ladies dab scent?" 

     Lifting his head suddenly, he smiled at the plump blond girl in the front row, who blushed, giggled, and touched herself demurely just above the V of her blouse. 

    "Ah, yes. Just there. Well, so did the lady who owned this." (190-191)

And he responds in kind when another female student makes her own advances:

     Still smiling at the girl, he unstoppered the scent bottle and passed it gently under his nose. 

     "What is it, Professor? Arpege?" Not so shy, this student; dark-haired, like Frank, with gray eyes that held more than a hint of flirtation. 

     He closed his eyes and inhaled deeply, nostrils flaring over the mouth of the bottle. 

     "No. It's L'Heure Bleu. My favorite." (191)

I'm reminded of Indiana Jones lecturing, except that Dr. Jones always seemed unsettled by his female students' attentions--Frank thrives on it.

As the scene of the dream closes, Frank says, looking at a miniature that is a mirror of Claire--either literally or in some other dream-like sense--"once… once, she was real."  In Voyager, Claire's words echo his, creating a kind of cross-volume parallelism:

"I did love you. Once. I did.” (Voyager 273)

The dream-scene in Dragonfly makes lecturing an act of seduction for Frank, and given what we know of his easy adultery after Claire's return (and likely dalliances before she returned, and even during the War), this teaching persona registers as--well, creepy and inappropriate.  From a decidedly 21st Century perspective, it feels like sexual harassment at the most, and at the least, invasive.

Voyager reveals more details about Frank's relationship with his students.  First, Claire recognizes the allure his female students feel, and no wonder, given the lecture-as-seduction mode:

I pulled away and sat up, turning on the light. Frank lay blinking up at me, dark hair disheveled. It had gone gray at the temples, giving him a distinguished air that seemed to have alarming effects on the more susceptible of his female students. (266)

He treats Claire like a student, revealing an attitude that is not all seduction, but also condescension and impatience:

“Do be reasonable, Claire.” He looked down his nose, giving me Treatment A, long-suffering patience, reserved for students appealing failing grades.  (267)

His fears for Brianna in Claire's care speak of his actual opinions of the students he is not engaged in seducing at the moment:

“If you’d seen what I’d seen at the university— the drinking, the drugging, the  …”
     “I do see it,” I said through my teeth. “At fairly close range in the emergency room. Bree is not likely to—”
     “She damn well is! Girls have no sense at that age— she’ll be off with the first fellow who—”  (267-268)

At the same time, his opinion of Bree's character and her willpower suggest a low overall opinion of women--one that is borne up by other non-teaching-related examples.

His role as professor gives him access to women, and his lecturing is a seduction.  Overall, Frank seems unable to acknowledge boundaries where his power is concerned--one type of power (intellectual) bleeds into another (sexual).

Meanwhile, Claire's role as his wife, and as a faculty wife, is one lacking in power:

“What should I have done? Steamed open your mail and waved the letters under your nose? Made a scene at the faculty Christmas party? Complained to the Dean?” (269)

To keep her own dignity, she pretends an indifference to his seductions that she does not feel--quite--while he performs to the crowd.

*Some readers--like the ones on the GoodReads forums for the Outlander books, have suggested that this dream is a premonition, as other dreams throughout the series link Jamie and Claire in the past and future.  I resist this interpretation because the dream-link is a convention of the novels that emerges only in later books--Voyager is really the first with the clear dream-link, and it is first a link between Claire and Jaime.  I also find the timing and psychology troubling--when in Claire's brief absence would a scene occur in which Frank flirtatiously displays her image to an undergraduate lecture class?  And I don't find it credible that Frank would have harbored historic evidence of Claire's time travel unbeknownst to Claire.  There is also the small matter of the portrait becoming a mirror to Claire in her dream--this dream really registers as a dream.

Voyager: A Portrait of Professor Randall Pt 1

Well, I'm getting behind.  *sigh*

The truth is, I've been reading a new book--Cassandra Clare's Clockwork Princess. I may or may not have anything to say about that one.  It's the last of the series that I got hooked on a while back, and I'm glad it's the last, because I don't like Clare's worldview.  I'm hoping it will tie up some loose ends in the series so that I don't have to continue with her Mortal Instruments series, which is pretty awful--engaging at its best, demonic and dangerously transgressive at its worst.  Very disappointed.

I have also been sewing--first my daughters' Easter dresses, and then a casual dress for myself.  I would like to make another dress for myself, and some hooded knit dresses for the girls.  So basically, when I sew, and when I read, I am less inclined to blog.  I should have timed things better so that I had a backlog of posts scheduled.  Oh well!  Hindsight and all...

So I mentioned that I don't like Frank.  Perhaps this is why I have beaten around the bush for two full paragraphs before getting to the point.  Since a dream that Claire had in Outlander about Frank in his "professor" role, I have been meaning to write a post about Frank's teaching persona.  Teaching persona is something that I have thought a lot about.  I have written about it formally and informally.  It's how a teacher presents him- or herself to a class--on what his or her credibility rests, and how she or he establishes a rapport.  When I was an undergraduate, I wanted professors who were experts.  They were scholars.  They knew everything, and I could drink of their wisdom.  Ideally, I also wanted them to be approachable.  I wanted to be able to ask a question and have a conversation as we walked back to his or her office.  In grad school, I was taught that that model was outdated--students did not benefit from having experts, because being lectured to by an expert made them passive rather than active learners.  I was never a passive learner.  I was uncomfortable learning that the scholar/lecturer model was "outdated," because that was how I liked to learn.  I soon grew into it, as I realized that that was not how I liked to teach.  I like to be a co-collaborator and co-investigator with my students (when I have students).  I like to explore the subject with them so that we're discovering new things.  Frankly, I'm not confident enough to be a scholar/lecturer.  I do not have an "expert" persona, because I am always so very aware of what I don't know that I can't rest on what I do know.

Gabaldon--who, as a former professor herself, has thought of this as well--gives a few cues as to Frank's teaching persona.  And my assessment is that in this, as in everything, Frank is a bit of an ass.

The first thing to know, for our purposes, is that being a professor is all about literacy.  It's why Roger is all about the archives (which, of course, has nothing to do with wanting to seduce the 6-foot tall redhead--no, I'm not talking about Jamie).  It's why, at the beginning of their last conversation, Frank is in bed "reading with the book propped upon his knees" (265).  Being a professor.  It's a literacy vocation.  Like printing--but that's Jamie's gig.  That book-reading figures heavily in this scene.  Every snarky comment is punctuated with a gesture involving the book, which is related to being a professor:

“But what good does thinking do?” he asked, sticking a bookmark in his book. “You’ve done whatever you could— worrying about it now won’t change  …   ah, well.” He shrugged irritably and closed the book. “I’ve said it all before.”  (265)

Though specifically in reference to Claire's thoughts about her patient, and the surgery she had recently performed, there is something that feels wrong--sarcastic on Frank's part, or ironic on the part of the author--with a professor asking what good thinking does.  I rather feel as though it reflects back on his pedagogy in some way.  Don't think--just accept what I tell you.  The other angle is that it certainly sets his own vocation--one that involves thinking--above hers, which, by implication, only involves performing.

More to come in part 2...

Voyager: Frank as Ghost

Today I start a mini-series on Frank.  I'm not really crazy about Frank, so writing about him is more of a chore than some of my other topics.  On the other hand, Frank briefly ties in with a number of other themes that I've been addressing for the past few months.  So when we come to Chapter 19, we come to one titled, "To Lay a Ghost."  There are many ghosts in Voyager who are not exactly ghosts--strikingly, Jamie and Claire exist as ghosts to each other--but Frank does hang over this chapter like a ghost, and returns as a ghost in future Outlander volumes as well.

In this chapter, we learn some sad truths about Frank, notably that he was barren--that he, in fact, had himself tested and found that he was barren (271).  This pitiable fact renders him as castrated as Jack Randall--and in fact Jamie Fraser has a hand in the castration of Frank as well as Jack Randall, though he remains capable of performing sexually:

     “Did you know I couldn’t sire a child? I  …   had myself tested, a few years ago. I’m sterile. Did you know?”
     I shook my head, not trusting myself to speak.
     “Bree is mine, my daughter,” he said, as though to himself. “The only child I’ll ever have. I couldn’t give her up.” He gave a short laugh. “I couldn’t give her up, but you couldn’t see her without thinking of him, could you? Without that constant memory, I wonder— would you have forgotten him, in time?”
     “No.” The whispered word seemed to go through him like an electric shock. He stood frozen for a moment, then whirled to the closet and began to jerk on his clothes over his pajamas. (270-271)

Because of Jamie, Frank is incapable of being a husband to his wife, even though it was not exactly a cuckolding.  Finally, knowing that Claire would never have forgotten Jamie--Bree's real father--leads Frank to his death.  For Claire, the final parting between them was "twenty-odd years before, on the crest of a green Scottish hill" (273)--also a pitiful detail, but not, somehow, one that makes Frank more forgivable.


Frank lingers in the house as Claire says goodbye to her life in Boston:

The thought of Frank went with me into the bedroom. The sight of the big double bed, smooth and untroubled under its dark blue satin spread, brought him suddenly and vividly to mind, in a way I had not thought of him in many months. (264)

A process that starts her reminiscences, including her memory of his death.  Although a doctor, and a rationalist, with none of Jamie's superstition, Claire does have a spiritual understanding of death that lends itself to belief in ghosts, as her confrontation with his recently dead corpse reveals:

     I stood quite still, listening. I could hear the wail of a new ambulance approaching, voices in the corridor. The squeak of gurney wheels, the crackle of a police radio, and the soft hum of a fluorescent light somewhere. I realized with a start that I was listening for Frank, expecting  …   what? That his ghost would be hovering still nearby, anxious to complete our unfinished business?
     I closed my eyes, to shut out the disturbing sight of that motionless profile, going red and white and red in turn as the light throbbed through the open doors.
     “Frank,” I said softly, to the unsettled, icy air, “if you’re still close enough to hear me— I did love you. Once. I did.” (273)

With Frank safely buried, Claire is able to treat him with affection, and speaks to his ghost, although she does not (yet?) call on him for help, as Jamie does with his ghosts:

     My weeping done, I rose and laid a hand on the smooth blue coverlet, gently rounded over the pillow on the left— Frank’s side.
     “Goodbye, my dear,” I whispered, and went out to sleep downstairs, away from the ghosts. (273-274)

But though she lays the ghosts to rest, Frank doesn't go away, but stays--seemingly to look after Bree, or to oversee Claire's parenting:

     “What you found,” Roger corrected, squeezing her knee with one hand as he negotiated the tiny orange car through a roundabout. She gave him a quick glance and a reciprocal touch with an air of intimacy about it that set off my maternal alarm bells on the spot. Like that already, was it?
     I seemed to feel Frank’s shade glaring accusingly over my shoulder. Well, at least Roger wasn’t black. (284-285)

Frank's ghost lingers over at least the next book, and perhaps the next two, and his role is to become almost something like Claire's conscience--a role he has no right, in my mind, to fill.

Gabaldon, Diana (2004-10-26). Voyager (Outlander). Random House, Inc.. Kindle Edition.

Voyager: Claire's Romance Habit (Literacy and Metafiction)

Throughout the early part of Voyager, as I think I've mentioned before, we see Jamie's trials existing in parallel to Claire's 20th Century life.  It isn't too surprising, then, when, after Jamie participates in a romance-novelesque scenario, and reads Fannie Hill, that Claire is depicted reading an actual romance novel, and reflecting on her introduction to the genre via her med school friend, Joe Abernathy:

I closed the book in my lap and sat tracing the extravagant loops of the title with one finger, smiling a little. Among other things, I owed a taste for romance novels to Joe. (254)

Gabaldon has some notes on how her books fit in with the romance genre, here.  The short version is:  they don't.  But she is definitely familiar with the genre.  Some highlights from her FAQs related to the genre:

• I’ve probably read a couple of hundred “real” romance novels, ranging from traditional category romances to F/F/P (Futuristic/Fantasy/Paranormal). That’s why I say I don’t write romance; because I don’t.
• It’s not just that I didn’t intend to write romance (though I didn’t); there are major differences between what I write and the standard form of the genre—as a good many “real” romance writers were only too eager to let me know, when Outlander won the RWA’s RITA award for Best Book of the Year when it came out (that award, btw, isn’t—or wasn’t—limited to romances).
• [O]ne (quite well known) author sent me a private e-mail, saying that she thought she had better come out and tell me, since there were several messages from her on the board saying so, that she felt it was not right for OUTLANDER to have won, since “it wasn’t really a romance—there wasn’t enough concentration on the relationship between the hero and heroine, she was older than him (hey, everybody knows you can’t do that! (You want to know how many times I’ve heard “You can’t do THAT in a romance!”—from romance writers at romance conventions?) they didn’t meet until page 69, you didn’t know he was the hero until much later, it was much too long, and it had all that HIStory, it was in the first person!! (an utterly heinous crime in that genre, apparently), and as for what I did to Jamie…!!
• OUTLANDER alone has some elements of a standard romance—enough to make it appealing to romance readers in general—but none of the other books do; they deal with an ongoing relationship between two decent people who already love each other— there’s no falling-in-love, getting acquainted, now-we-like-each- other-now-we-don’t** kind of conflict.
  [**isn't that how I described it?]
• When we sold OUTLANDER, the publisher held onto the book for 18 months, trying to figure out what to sell it as. They finally decided that—of all the different classifications the books could fit in—”Romance” was by far the largest single market.   I agreed that they could market the paperback that way—provided that we had dignified covers (no Fabio, no mad bosoms), and provided that if and when the books became “visible” (which is publisherese for “hit the New York Times list”), they would reposition them as Fiction.

And that is heavily abridged!!  (But then, the author--like this reader/critic--is not really given to brevity!)

As it turns out, Claire was introduced to romance novels when she was finishing up her med school residency--specifically, after her first surgery--by way of the waiting room and the other "different" med student, Joe, with whom she later bonds over the fact that the other students wonder why she isn't at home tending to her husband and child, and "mostly don’t ask...anymore why [he] ain’t cleanin’ the toilets, like God made [him] to" (259).  The race issue in Voyager is one that is worthy of analysis, but which I will mention only with specific reference to Frank and the influence of his vocation on his perspectives (or lack thereof).  What I find interesting here is the med school-romance novel connection, as I'm pretty sure my mother mentioned that when she was in nursing school, many of the nurses did read romance novels to decompress.

As she bides time in the lounge, waiting for her patient to awake, we encounter a literacy moment:

The lounge wasn’t empty. Joseph Abernathy sat in one of the rump-sprung stuffed chairs, apparently absorbed in a copy of U.S. News & World Report. He looked up as I entered, and nodded briefly to me before returning to his reading. The lounge was equipped with stacks of magazines— salvaged from the waiting rooms— and a number of tattered paperbacks, abandoned by departing patients. Seeking distraction, I thumbed past a six-month-old copy of Studies in Gastroenterology, a ragged copy of Time magazine, and a neat stack of Watchtower tracts. Finally picking up one of the books, I sat down with it. It had no cover, but the title page read The Impetuous Pirate. “A sensuous, compelling love story, boundless as the Spanish Main!” said the line beneath the title. The Spanish Main, eh? If escape was what I wanted, I couldn’t do much better, I thought, and opened the book at random. It fell open automatically to page 42.  (254)

The range of reading material is interesting, as well as her reason for choosing the particular novel--escape.  Joe's reading material is notably respectable and non-escapist.  That the novel "fell open automatically" to a particular scene--a sign of frequent reading--is an amusing (and telling!) detail.

Strikingly, in addition to bad writing and a particularly incongruent metaphor ("fine white breasts to leap out of their concealment like a pair of plump partridges taking wing"), we have a scene that parallels Jamie's experience with Geneva, though unlike Geneva the heroine is (mostly? partly?) unwilling from the beginning:

     “Ah, mi amor,” he gasped. “I cannot wait. But  …   I do not wish to hurt you. Gently, mi amor, gently.”
     Tessa gasped as she felt the increasing pressure of his desire making its presence known between her legs.
     “Oh!” she said. “Oh, please! You can’t! I don’t want you to!” [Fine time to start making protests, I thought.]
     “Don’t worry, mi amor. Trust me.” (256)

Jamie's position as a parodic romance hero (which looks more like Valdez's parody of Jamie's unwilling participation in a similar sexual initiation) is cemented here: we have the romance hero unable to contain his desire, and the heroine protesting when he is past the point of no return--just as with Jamie and Geneva.  And ironically (that's dramatic irony), we have Claire's comment:  "Fine time to start making protests."  Against the backdrop of Geneva's fear, and the internet accusations that Jamie committed rape, Claire's critique of the romance heroine is particularly... prescient?  (Well perhaps not, since the event was in the past...)

There is far more (unpleasant) irony to come for the reader who remembers, while reading The Fiery Cross, that Claire's first romance novel involves rape by a pirate.

When Joe observes Claire's reaction to the novel, and as she retrieves the book she has dropped, they engage in what can only be called "literate discourse," given that it is conversation that is dependent on, and occasioned by, a shared reading experience:

     “Excuse me,” I murmured, and bent to retrieve it, my face flaming. As I came up with The Impetuous Pirate in my sweaty grasp, though, I saw that far from preserving his usual austere mien, Dr. Abernathy was grinning widely.
     “Let me guess,” he said. “Valdez just teased aside the membrane of her innocence?”
     “Yes,” I said, breaking out into helpless giggling again. “How did you know?”
     “Well, you weren’t too far into it,” he said, taking the book from my hand. His short, blunt fingers flicked the pages expertly. “It had to be that one, or maybe the one on page 73, where he laves her pink mounds with his hungry tongue.”
     “He what?”
     “See for yourself.” He thrust the book back into my hands, pointing to a spot halfway down the page.
     Sure enough, “ …   lifting aside the coverlet, he bent his coal-black head and laved her pink mounds with his hungry tongue. Tessa moaned and  …” I gave an unhinged shriek.
     “You’ve actually read this?” I demanded, tearing my eyes away from Tessa and Valdez.
     “Oh, yeah,” he said, the grin widening. He had a gold tooth, far back on the right side. “Two or three times. It’s not the best one, but it isn’t bad.”
     “The best one? There are more like this?”
     “Sure. Let’s see  …” He rose and began digging through the pile of tattered paperbacks on the table. “You want to look for the ones with no covers,” he explained. “Those are the best.”
     “And here I thought you never read anything but Lancet and the Journal of the AMA,” I said.
     “What, I spend thirty-six hours up to my elbows in people’s guts, and I want to come up here and read ‘Advances in Gallbladder Resection?’ Hell, no— I’d rather sail the Spanish Main with Valdez.” He eyed me with some interest, the grin still not quite gone. “I didn’t think you read anything but The New England Journal of Medicine, either, Lady Jane,” he said. “Appearances are deceiving, huh?”  (257)

The literate friendship of Joe and Claire again parallels the literary friendship between Jamie and Lord John, though in the former case, people gossip about (and Frank implies) an affair that doesn't exist, and in the latter case, Lord John wishes to initiate an affair that can't exist. Claire reflects:

[T]he friendship begun on page 42 had flourished, and Joe Abernathy had become one of my best friends; possibly the only person close to me who truly understood what I did, and why.
     I smiled a little, feeling the slickness of the embossing on the cover. Then I leaned forward and put the book back into the seat pocket. Perhaps I didn’t want to escape just now. (259)

Gabaldon, Diana (2004-10-26). Voyager (Outlander). Random House, Inc.. Kindle Edition.

Voyager: Candles before Images

At the beginning of Lent, and at the beginning of my blogging about Voyager, I suggested that the novel was somehow Purgatorial, because in many ways, the action was either waiting or stasis, and when movement happened, it was a going forward that stood in direct contrast to the stasis and waiting.  The novel is also full of punishment, deprivation, and prayer.  As I have wound my way slowly through, lingering on more moments than I anticipated, the Purgatorial thread has been obscured while others presented themselves to the reader.

Now that it is the Easter season, I have reached Jamie's brief parting conversation with his son.  In this scene, as Jamie prepares to make a sacrifice, forsaking his own feelings and removing himself from Helwater for the child's sake, we find a simple and elegant explanation of a much-maligned Catholic practice (and Gabaldon has a knack for giving simple, elegant explanations of Catholic practices):

     “What’s that little candle for?” Willie asked. “Grannie says only stinking Papists burn candles in front of heathen images.”
     “Well, I am a stinking Papist,” Jamie said, with a wry twist of his mouth. “It’s no a heathen image, though; it’s a statue of the Blessed Mother.”
     “You are?” Clearly this revelation only added to the boy’s fascination. “Why do Papists burn candles before statues, then?”
     Jamie rubbed a hand through his hair. “Aye, well. It’s  …   maybe a way of praying— and remembering. Ye light the candle, and say a prayer and think of people ye care for. And while it burns, the flame remembers them for ye.”

The scene culminates in a declaration by Willie, an "emergency" baptism, by which Willie is made a "stinking Papist, too" (239), and the gift of a rosary--in short, all of the trappings of Catholicism that can be conjured in a stable.

Gabaldon, Diana (2004-10-26). Voyager (Outlander). Random House, Inc.. Kindle Edition. 

Voyager: One More Romance Novel Post (and a bit of Metafiction)

After the mini-romance novel scenario in Chapter 14, Chapter 15 reinforces the point by finding Jamie reading the 18th Century equivalent:

My lips, which I threw in his way, so as that he could not escape kissing them, fix’d, fir’d and embolden’d him: and now, glancing my eyes towards that part of his dress which cover’d the essential object of enjoyment, I plainly discover’d the swell and commotion there; and as I was now too far advanc’d to stop in so fair a way, and was indeed no longer able to contain myself, or wait the slower progress of his maiden bashfulness, I stole my hand upon his thighs, down one of which I could both see and feel a stiff hard body, confin’d by his breeches, that my fingers could discover no end to. (qtd in Voyager 219)

Except that arguably the novel he is reading, Fanny Hill or Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure by John Cleland, is not a romance novel at all, but erotica.  On the one hand, it does dramatize the circumstances in which a young orphan from the country might land herself in the position of prostitute or kept woman in London, but it is dramatized in such a way as to titillate the reader with the spectacle of Fanny's "education" and desires rather than to underscore the social circumstances or her moral downfall.  Though I have not read to the end of my copyright-free Kindle edition, I suspect that there is no "awakening conscience," unlike William Holman Hunt's much later painting, or if there is, it is only meant to redeem the novel in some small way.

So what does the inclusion of this novel excerpt contribute to the conversation on genre? Because certainly that is why it is there.  The argument seems to be, first of all, for anyone who might be wondering whether the sexual practices discussed or enacted by the characters in the Outlander series were well-known during the 18th Century, that yes, everything that the characters do and discuss is historically appropriate.  So okay, most people would probably assume that sexual positions and acts are as old as the hills anyway.  I've read The Symposium.  And I've seen a fair sampling of Greek kylix (okay, one is Etruscan--and these are TAME).

 But there might be a legitimate question about inhibitions and whatnot--likely based more on stereotyped views of the 19th century.  There are countless rape narratives (including Pamela) from the 17th and 18th centuries.  Some are called "marriage plays" (proto-Romance novels?).  In many ways, Mrs. Bennett and Lydia in Pride and Prejudice represent the old way of getting husbands in literature, while Jane and Lizzie represent the post-Romantic movement way.  So Jamie's reading material, which offers him some variation from Defoe and Fielding, proves that erotica was a familiar genre for the time period,  and that depictions of sexuality in literature go way back.  In a way, this gives some validation to the frank depictions of sexuality in the Outlander novels.  However, if the reader goes a little bit further and actually investigates the 18th Century erotica in question, a contrast becomes apparent.  Fanny Hill exists for titillation.  The Outlander books do not have titillation as their primary purpose, though certainly scenes may titillate.  (I think that's the word of the day.  Use it whenever appropriate.)

So once again, the reader is asked to think about literature generally (or generically!) based on a scene or a literary reference or a quote in the text (and in case you were wondering, it's all about literacy) for the purpose of coming to (predetermined?) conclusions about the genre of Gabaldon's books (or at least, what they are not--too long, romance novels, or erotica).  So really, if the reader is open to it, Voyager is asking the reader to engage with questions that a reader does not always consider apart from the bookstore or the odd Amazon.com review--perhaps encouraging a more analytical reader.

Gabaldon, Diana (2004-10-26). Voyager (Outlander) Random House, Inc.. Kindle Edition.

Voyager: Jamie Teaches Sex Ed

The Outlander novels, on the whole, are preoccupied with sexual education.  There aren't just scenes of sex; there are instructional discussions of sex, sexuality, and matters of reproduction that occur (I believe) in all of the books, beginning as early as Outlander--I'll come back to that in a minute.

In Dragonfly in Amber, for example, Claire--with her 20th Century knowledge, her medical knowledge, and her sexual experience, corrects Mary Hawkins' misperceptions that Frenchmen do anything different from Englishmen or Scotsmen do in bed:

"Well," I said matter-of-factly, "there are only so many things you can do in bed with a man, after all.  And since I see quite a large number of children about the cite, I'd assume that even Frenchmen are fairly well versed in the orthodox methods."
     "Oh! Children.... well, yes, of course," she said vaguely, as though not seeing much connection. "B-b-but they said"--she cast her eyes down, embarrassed, and her voice sank even lower--"th-that he... a French-man's thing, you know...."
     "Yes, I know," I said, striving for patience.  "So far as I know, they're much like any other man's.  Englishmen and Scotsmen are quite similarly endowed."
     "Yes, but they, they... p-p-put it between a lady's l-l-legs!  I mean, right up inside her!"  This bit of stop-press news finally out, she took a deep breath, which seemed to steady her, for the violent crimson of her face receded slightly.  "An Englishman, or even a Scot... oh, I didn't mean it that way..."  Her hand flew to her mouth in embarrassment.  "But a decent an like your husband, surely he would n-never dream of forcing a wife to endure s-something like that!"
     I placed my hand on my slightly bloated stomach and regarded her thoughtfully.  I began to see why spirituality ranked so highly in Mary Hawkins's catalog of manly virtues.
     "Mary," I said, "I think we must have a small talk." (Dragonfly 254)

She has "the talk" with other young women throughout the Outlander series, and counsels and reassures Mary after an interrupted rape that she will not become pregnant, because he "didn't finish" (Dragonfly 360).

In Voyager, Jamie is a somewhat unlikely sex ed teacher.  Except that, if we consider the romance novel model, maybe it's not so unlikely that Geneva Dunsany's sexual instruction comes from the attractive near-stranger who also provides her sexual initiation (and, indeed, her sole sexual experience).  But his instruction begins immediately after he yields to her blackmail.  Now that he is a "co-conspirator," he gives her advice based on biology, of which she is clearly ignorant:

     “Arrange it, then,” he said, his stomach curdling. “Mind ye choose a safe day, though.”
     “A safe day?” She looked blank.
     “Sometime in the week after ye’ve finished your courses,” he said bluntly. “You’re less likely to get wi’ child then.”
      “Oh.” She blushed rosily at that, but looked at him with a new interest. (208)

There is no indication that this is information that Jamie has learned from Claire; however, because Jamie was a virgin when he and Claire were married, the encounter with Geneva necessarily recalls his own first time, with his own inexperience:

     “How much do you  …   I mean, have ye any idea how it’s done?”
     Her gaze was clear and guileless, though her cheeks flamed.
     “Well, like the horses, I suppose?” He nodded, but felt a pang, recalling his wedding night, when he too had expected it to be like horses.
     “Something like that,” he said, clearing his throat. “Slower, though.  More gentle,” he added, seeing her apprehensive look.  (212)

In Outlander, Claire's first experience as a sexual educator was, in fact, correcting Jamie's assumptions.

Jamie is sensitive to Geneva's desire to watch him undress and conflicting shyness; he addresses in a less direct way the physical change of erection.  He addresses with her whether the act will hurt, reassuring her that the experience will improve after the first time, and gives her the opportunity to satisfy her curiosity about his body (212).  He also imparts something of the sacred nature of sex, though the context is both forced (for him) and (once again) fornication.  First, in the context of a reprimand to Geneva, he indicates that there is honor in the sex act, for men and for women:

“I’ll serve ye properly,” he said, looking down at his working fingers, “for the sake of my own honor as a man, and yours as a woman...." (201)

Even as he acknowledges to himself that the loveless, all-consuming lust he feels in anticipation of a sexual encounter is not honorable:

But overall there was a terrible lust, a need that clawed at his vitals and made him ashamed of his own manhood, even as he acknowledged its power. (213)

Then, as he commences with Geneva, he instructs her in how she should feel about her own body, and how a man should treat her in bed:

“A man should pay tribute to your body,” he said softly, raising each nipple with small, circling touches. “For you are beautiful, and that is your right.” (214)

The emphasis is actually on her dignity.

When the act is complete, Jamie answers her confusion:

     “I’m sorry,” she said in a small voice. “I didn’t know it would hurt you too.”
     His eyes popped open in astonishment, and he raised himself on one elbow to find her looking at him like a startled fawn. Her face was pale, and she licked dry lips.
     “Hurt me?” he said, in blank astonishment. “It didna hurt me.”
     “But”— she frowned as her eyes traveled slowly down the length of his body—“ I thought it must. You made the most terrible face, as though it hurt awfully, and you  …   you groaned like a—”
     “Aye, well,” he interrupted hastily, before she could reveal any more unflattering observations of his behavior. “I didna mean  …   I mean  …   that’s just how men act, when they  …   do that,” he ended lamely. (216)

He tends to her, and even endures the indignity of her response to his ejaculation, another learning experience for her.

Jamie's final lesson to Geneva about sex is that it should not be confused with love, though there is something more akin to infatuation or puppy love than lust in Geneva's regard for Jamie, and certainly more akin to love than anything she was likely to experience in her arranged marriage.

     “No,” he said, but gently, shaking his head. “That’s the third rule. You may have no more than the one night. You may not call me by my first name. And you may not love me.”
     The gray eyes moistened a bit. “But if I can’t help it?”
     “It isna love you feel now.” He hoped he was right, for his sake as well as her own. “It’s only the feeling I’ve roused in your body. It’s strong, and it’s good, but it isna the same thing as love.”
     “What’s the difference?”
     He rubbed his hands hard over his face. She would be a philosopher, he thought wryly. He took a deep breath and blew it out before answering her.
     “Well, love’s for only one person. This, what you feel from me— ye can have that with any man, it’s not particular.” (217-218)

While he is trying to protect himself from the beginning, he is also trying to protect her.

Jamie's is necessarily a more comprehensive lesson than those usually given by Claire--even more so than her instruction of him, since she was not concerned with honor or dignity or emotion, simply with completing the act, and with pleasure.  Though I have argued that Geneva's tryst with Jamie parallels the expected plot of a romance novel, and though even these moments of instruction have correlations in the romance genre, the nature of the instruction, and in particular Jamie's honest and straightforward communication with Geneva and emphasis on her dignity, distinguish Gabaldon's imitation from the real romance novel genre, even making the romance novel seem a parody of this more serious representation of an inexperienced girl's willful manipulation of a man she desires into her bed for her edification.

Gabaldon, Diana (2004-10-26). Voyager (Outlander). Random House, Inc.. Kindle Edition. 

Voyager: The Romance Novel Within (More Metafiction)

I am not a reader of romance novels, but one or two have passed in front of my eyes over the years.  When I was in high school, one of my teachers (of English and History), one outspoken about her Christian belief and anything else that popped in her head, and who doubted (in a kind? way) my ability to write analysis, was an avid reader of romance novels.  Some of the girls in the class were also avid readers of romance, and she leant them books.  In retrospect, I'm not sure I approve, since the books are completely without substance, explicitly sexual, and promote highly unrealistic expectations of relationships, but at the time, I was curious, so she loaned me one.  I read it, returned it, and was done with the genre.  In fact, as I mentioned up front, I was sort of mortified when I was first reading Outlander to think that I might have to venture in the romance section of the bookstore to buy the next installments, and grateful when I found it shelved in "Literature" instead.  Literacy snob?  Perhaps I share that with Lord John Grey... to a degree.  But the real issue for me is that in order to escape into fiction, I have to have fiction that I can wrap my head around.  Obviously not a problem with Outlander.

If I read more than one romance novel (and I think I must have read one more), I did not notice a great distinction between them.  I did come away with a basic plot formula: strong-willed woman meets attractive, arrogant man with rippling muscles and flowing hair (possibly in disguise); they are attracted to one another, but hate one another; she is sexually naïve while he is sexually experienced; they torment one another, but can't resist the bubbling passion; they "get carried away" and have sex "without meaning to," which compromises her honor; he offers to marry her/marries her against her will; she still hates him, until he tames her, and she doesn't any more.  They live happily ever after many gratuitous scenes of fornication all along the way.  Obviously, Outlander doesn't fit the formula (forced marriage notwithstanding).  But continuing the subtle metafiction joke, which pokes fun at the Outlander novels' characteristic features beginning with Jamie's conversation with Lord John about Pamela, Chapter 14 is a romance novel microcosm.

My first (and almost only) romance novel went something like this:

Arrogant prince has to disguise himself.  He presents himself and his situation to a lesser nobleman, who knows who he is, and reluctantly agrees to permit the prince to work in the stables with the horses--noble beasts with which the prince is well-acquainted.  The nobleman has a daughter--youngish, strong-willed, sexually inexperienced--who is attracted to the new stablehand, but views him with contempt because of his station, and so torments him.  At some point, she asks him to "teach her about kissing," which he does.  When she feels him harden against her copious skirts, and when he begins to feel the inside of her thigh, etc. etc., she asks whether this is "part of kissing." He lies, and continues, eventually losing control and deflowering her in the stables.  She finally realizes what has just happened.  He goes immediately to her father, who is inexplicably overjoyed to see his daughter wed to a stablehand, and he leaves with her--for Scotland.  Yes.  Scotland was part of the scenario.  She is captured by highwaymen and nearly raped (again?), but he saves her.  This part is fuzzy, but I think he offers to set her free, but she realizes she loves him and vice versa.  She finds out that he is the prince, and they live happily ever after.

I have no idea what the name of the book might have been.  I think my second/other romance novel involved pirates, but it was even less memorable than this one.

Compare Chapter 14 of Voyager:

Dispossessed ex-laird and prisoner Jamie is brought by Lord John to Helwater, where he is to serve as groom for a noble, not-so-wealthy family.  He immediately catches the attention of the elder daughter Geneva, a spoiled headstrong girl, but remains carefully aloof.  At some point, she announces to him that she is to be married, that she disapproves of the match, and wants Jamie to come to her bed so that she doesn't have to lose her maidenhead to a nasty old man.  He is completely unwilling, but she threatens and then blackmails him so that he feels he must agree in order to protect those for whom he cares most.  She is completely ignorant, and Jamie must teach her about sex.  He endeavors to be slow, but has been celibate for several years.  He has also never been with a virgin.  So when he enters her, and she protests out of fear, he claps a hand to her mouth, tells her "No," and...  finishes anyway.  She professes love for him, and he gently chastises her.  He also gently fulfills his part of the bargain, serving and servicing her throughout the night as a lover and as the servant he more truly is.  He departs before dawn, and she is married as planned.

The parallel is striking.

If you find any complaints about Jamie or the novel on internet message boards and reviews, they likely cite this scene as rape.  This reading says more about our society's hyper-sensitivity to victimization** than it does about the actual events of the text, as the only time Jamie in the chapter that actually has any power--in the initiation and orchestration of the sexual act--he is, in fact, not in control because, in succumbing to Geneva's demands and beginning the sexual act, he has, in fact, relinquished what control he had of his bodily urges.  Given the circumstances (which include not only explicit consent, but coercion and blackmail from Geneva), 18th Century law would have convicted him--to flogging or perhaps even hanging--but 20th or 21st Century law likely would not.  Public opinion is up for grabs.

However, as my romance novel summary demonstrates, rape is, in fact, a convention of the romance genre--often a catalyst for both love and sensual pleasure, and a means to the "taming" of the spoiled or willful female.  If Jamie's experience at Helwater is a kind of microcosm of the romance novel scenario, then, the rape suggestion is no doubt part of the narrative strategy.  If we unpack the Voyager romance scenario, a kind of critique emerges:

• Sexual power dynamics are not always as they might seem, particularly when the male is of a lower class or inferior station.
• Sex can be scary, even to a woman who feels she is in control.
• Sexual desire is not the same as love--a point that is made explicitly in the dialogue between Jamie and Geneva--nor does it necessarily lead to love.
• When the dearly bought night is over, events continue as they would have anyway.  (Well, almost...)

A point that is perhaps left for the reader to figure out is that things might have gone much, much worse for Geneva had Jamie been like one of the other grooms--that is, had he not been an honorable man who was determined to honor her femininity and his masculinity through the sexual act (210).  But he is a laird in disguise.  Unlike the typical romance hero, Jamie is a very well-developed character, whom the reader recognizes as having self-respect, respect for women, and respect for the power and sacredness of sexuality.  He continually controls his very just anger toward Geneva--anger which, if unleashed, might have lead to true brutality.  The anger and desire for domination and control--which enters into the romance novel sex scene--is not present.  Jamie is "angry, scared, and most mightily roused" (214), but does not wish to dominate or control her. Rather, "[h]e closed his eyes and breathed deeply, striving for calm, seeking for gentleness" (214).  His unwilling empathy, response to her trust, and admiration of her courage does, in fact, lead to a small amount of tenderness.

It is a racy scene, to be sure, but inevitably a sad one, which leaves Jamie "feeling empty of everything" (218)--hardly the desired effect if the novel had been of the romance genre.

Gabaldon, Diana (2004-10-26). Voyager (Outlander). Random House, Inc.. Kindle Edition. 

**Not meaning to undermine the seriousness of rape, simply to critique the ways in which we make everyone a victim on the one hand, and yet confuse the issue when there are real victims involved.