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.