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.