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.