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.