Drums: More "Women's Issues" (Pt. 2)

The writing of this post resembled a research paper--I can only hope it doesn't read like one.  Here, I try to give an overview of how the Outlander books build up a preoccupation with sexuality, bound up with fertility, that develops, in later books, into a curious near-feminist statement on birth control and reproduction.

The Early Books

From the first novel, Outlander, Gabaldon's novels have been focused on reproduction and fertility in one way or another.  At first, the focus is negative--that is, the absence of fertility. Claire wants to get pregnant. She has a duty  to get pregnant.  But she can't get pregnant.  The novel ends on a positive note for Jamie and Claire.

Geilie Duncan, on the other hand, does get pregnant in Outlander, and does so deliberately, in order to have a hold on the father.  I believe that there is also the implication that she dabbles in abortifacients, for her own unwanted offspring and for other women.  Her pregnancy is both her means of exposure and her means of buying Claire's escape (Outlander) and eventually her own (as Claire learns in Voyager).

Fertility becomes a problem for Claire and those around her in wholly new ways in Dragonfly in Amber, as Claire experiences pregnancy complications, and as she befriends a coquette who finds herself pregnant by her lover at an inopportune time, and a young girl who is completely ignorant of sex and its ties to reproduction.  In these contexts, and in her work at L'Hopital des Anges, Claire first encounters and contemplates Eighteenth-century abortion, and first teaches sex-ed (of a sort).   Nevertheless, Claire's advice to Mary after an interrupted rape is not textbook Twentieth-Century advice:

"Am I going to have a baby?" she blurted out, looking  up fearfully.  "You said..."
"No," I said , as firmly as I could. "You aren't. He wasn't able to...finish." In the folds of my skirt, I crossed both pairs of fingers, hoping fervently that I was right. The chances were very small indeed, but such freaks had been known to happen.  (Dragonfly 360)

Claire is clearly hedging here, but the certainty she expresses to Mary to prevent the girl from panicking contrasts directly with her stance on coitus interruptus in Drums of Autumn, and although the two situations are different--in one case the man is forced to discontinue the incomplete act while in the other, he does reach climax--the risk of pregnancy is similar in each case, speaking biologically rather than statistically.

Eighteenth and Twentieth Century Men and Fertility

In previous books, the relationship between men and fertility is straightforward:  Frank wants a child of his own (though he's not too sure he could love an adopted one); Jamie wants a child of his own. In Voyager, things get more complex for men and women, in the Eighteenth and Twentieth Centuries.

In Voyager, a good part of the action takes place in the Twentieth Century, which generally manifests its own particular form of sexism under the veneer of more enlightened attitudes toward sexuality.  Frank has learned that he can, indeed, love another man's child--particularly since he is infertile himself.  Nevertheless, he manifests Twentieth Century chauvenism by philandering while staying with Claire while they raise Bree.  This wouldn't seem to lend itself to judgment of Bree, but he seems to presume that she is as guilty of promiscuous tendencies as any undergraduate of the college, stating bluntly that "she'll be off with the first fellow who--" (what, we don't know).  (If Bree only knew, she might not think that Frank would be kinder to her than Jamie, when Jamie calls her a wanton in Drums of Autumn...)  When Claire interrupts Frank, defending Bree, she adds a certain Sexual Revolution "wisdom":  "Besides, all young people experiment, that’s how they learn. You can’t keep her swaddled in cotton wool all her life”  (Voyager 268).  The curious thing is that she upholds Bree's right to experiment--suggesting that Bree might, in fact, be "off with the first fellow who..." and at the same time defends Bree's virtue.  Frank continues with a particularly nasty bit of racism.

While Claire is living with philandering Frank in the Twentieth Century, Jamie adopts some of Claire's erstwhile Eighteenth-Century roles, namely sexual education (albeit in an ironic sense), critique of his century's (Biblical?) view of women, and acknowledment of the dangers of childbearing.  All of these contexts interact in interesting ways with his own masculinity, showing clearly how female identity and its constraints and dangers influence how men are able to be--and expected to be--men.  The most poignant damage done to Jamie's masculinity happens through the person of Geneva, who blackmails him into sex, conceives his child (perhaps intentionally, as she "looks at him with new interest" when Jamie warns her to summon him when she is least fertile), and dies in childbirth.  When explaining the situation to Claire, he confesses his guilt, which carries the realization that his sexuality, which he has already felt as shameful because of Geneva, is also deadly:

“No,” he said softly. “She  …   wanted me. I should have found a way— should have stopped her, but I could not. She wished me to lie wi’ her. And I did, and  …   she died of it.” He did look down then, long lashes hiding his eyes. “I am guilty of her death, before God; perhaps the more guilty— because I did not love her.”  (Voyager 940-941).

Claire's Mission 

In both centuries, it is up to Claire to be the voice of Enlightment as regards sexuality in general, and contraception in particular.  So Voyager functions as a kind of primer of Claire's mature knowledge of and philosophies on sex and reproduction, influenced by her medical training against the backrdrop of emerging Twentieth Century attitudes toward sex and their culmination in the 1960s.  Claire's return to the past represents not only a reunion with Jamie, and the continued consummation of their love, but also a mission of sorts--to spread sexual education to 18th Century women, thus improving their overall condition (we learn in Drums that this has been a Twentieth Century mission of hers as well--more on this later).  It starts with her observation of the affects of childbearing on women who were ignorant of hygiene and nutrition:

Nineteen when the eldest was born, and Maisri was ten now. She was twenty-nine. And I, blessed by good nutrition, hygiene, and dentistry, not worn down by multiple pregnancies and hard physical labor, looked a good deal younger than she.  (Voyager 311-312)

The dangers of childbith, and the detriment to men and women that come from those dangers, are so much a part of Voyager that Jamie picks up that traditional wartime rhetoric--the comparison between childbirth and battle:

“I’m a man, Sassenach,” he said, very softly. “If I thought there was a choice  …   then I maybe couldna do it. Ye dinna need to be so brave about things if ye ken ye canna help it, aye?” He looked at me then, with a faint smile. “Like a woman in childbirth, aye? Ye must do it, and it makes no difference if you’re afraid— ye’ll do it. It’s only when ye ken ye can say no that it takes courage.”  (Voyager 877)

A less comfortable revelation than his night with Geneva, Jamie's failed marriage to Laoghaire makes clear, by degrees, that women stand not only to lose their looks, their health, and their life, but also sexual pleasure.   Influenced by her mother's warnings and fears of Jamie, Laoghaire's daughter Marsali, who has seen that Claire enjoys sex, confides her fears that childbearing will prevent her enjoyment of the marriage act.  Marsali is comparatively well-educated on the topic when she poses her question to Claire:

     “Weel, it’s to do wi’ bairns,” she explained. “And how ye get them.”
     I raised one eyebrow. “Your mother didn’t tell you where babies come from?”
     She snorted impatiently, her small blond brows knotted in fierce scorn. “O’ course I ken where they come from! Any fool knows that much. Ye let a man put his prick between your legs, and there’s the devil to pay, nine months later. What I want to know is how ye don’t get them.”

Specifically, she confesses to Claire, anticipating her marriage to Fergus, “I want to like it.... When we get to the prick part”  (Voyager 706-707).  Marsali's question leads Claire into her first explicit lesson on contraception, 18th Century style:

     “So there is a way?”
     “There are a lot of ways, and unfortunately most of them don’t work,” I told her, with a pang of regret for my prescription pad and the reliability of contraceptive pills. Still, I remembered well enough the advice of the maîtresses sage-femme, the experienced midwives of the Hôpital des Anges, where I had worked in Paris twenty years before. (Voyager 711)

[....] 

     “Here,” I said, pulling out a large chunk of cleaned sponge. I took one of the thin surgical knives from the fitted slots in the lid of the box and carefully sliced off several thin pieces, about three inches square. I searched through the box again and found the small bottle of tansy oil, with which I carefully saturated one square under Marsali’s fascinated gaze.
     “All right,” I said. “That’s about how much oil to use. If you haven’t any oil, you can dip the sponge in vinegar— even wine will work, in a pinch. You put the bit of sponge well up inside you before you go to bed with a man— mind you do it even the first time; you can get with child from even once.”  (Voyager 711-712)

So here we have it--explicit instructions for the 18th Century contraceptive sponge.  And at the same time, the first really direct contraceptive propoganda, complete with the admonition that a woman can get pregnant even from the first time--which, by now, we have learned from Jamie and Geneva.  This is textbook sex ed, though interesting.  I would want to know whether this is a historically accurate birth control method (something I suppose Google would tell me--or the dreaded Wikipedia), and what the actual effectiveness is, given that Claire is recommending it as at least somewhat reliable from her Twentieth-Century authority and her Eighteenth-Century practical wisdom.

But more than that, I wonder about the role it plays in the novel.  It signals to the reader, certainly, that Claire is serious about contraception, and signals this in a big way.  Whereas there is commentary earlier in the books on the state of women who are burdened with multiple pregnancies, particularly in an age lacking in hygeine and nutrition, and action in the novel that dramaties the dangers of childbirth and its implications for men and women, when Claire actually dispenses birth control rather than providing commentary, the reader is asked to take notice in a whole new way.  The gesture not only says, "Unregulated birth is a problem for women," it provides the solution, backed by Claire's medical authority, Twentieth Century wisdom, and position as the central character in the Outlander novels.  Moreover, the action is presented as amoral.  There is no indication that the Church or religion condemn contraception, although there are a couple of digs at St. Paul for not particularly liking women.  Rather, there is a strange little scene when Claire visits her stillborn daughter Faith at the Hôpital des Anges:

As we walked slowly back, I noticed other small stones set here and there among the larger ones.
     “Are those all children?” I asked, a little surprised.
     “The children of the nuns,” she said matter-of-factly. I gaped at her in astonishment, and she shrugged, elegant and wry as always.
     “It happens,” she said. She walked a few steps farther, then added, “Not often, of course.” She gestured with her stick around the confines of the cemetery. “This place is reserved for the sisters, a few benefactors of the Hôpital— and those they love.”
     “The sisters or the benefactors?”
     “The sisters...."  (Voyager 629)

This clearly means that the sisters have had tristes, and that those unions have resulted in children.  The fate of the children is less certain.  Did they simply die?  It might be strange for so many to have died in childhood, though perhaps not.  The uniformity of the size of the graves suggests infanticide or abortion--sinister alternatives glossed over with a shrug and almost... understanding.  Not quite a divine pass, but definitely stopping short of narrative condemnation, since neither of these strong, authoritative women seems to condemn.

So why the contraceptive propoganda--why now, in the third book?  Why continuing throughout the series--even into the newest volume, due out in March?  What seems clear is that fertility is a preoccupation of the author--as well it might be for a female author.  As it is, in fact, for me. And there is no doubt that the novels romaniticize sexuality.  They do so, however, in a very specific way--by romanticizing near-impossible marital sexual passion and prowess.  If a reader isn't paying attention, however, good sex with a tall Scotsman might be mistaken for the union between Claire and Jamie, and it is a reality that there are many, many women--many young women certainly, and just as certainly women of other staeges of life--who are confused or deluded about sex--whatever "being confused about sex" means to my readers, who no doubt see sexuality and reproduction in a few different ways, complete with nuances.  The novels are not, I would say, feminist overall, but they do have this element of feminism:  the need to warn women about the reprocussions of sexual activity.  Perhaps it has to do with responsibility--the woman's, or the author's.  In the first two novels, Claire either fears herself barren, or carries a child.  So in the books in which sexuality carries such a locus of power, there is, in fact, very little emphasis on unwanted consequences.  So perhaps the lesson from Voyager forward is that Claire's barrenness shouldn't lure young women into false securiy?  What, in fact, is the reader supposed to glean from these lessons?

I do read them as a lesson for the reader--and one that is reemphasized, almost ad nauseum.  But for all that, there is still some ambiguity, and some room for the reader to negotiate levels of awareness of fertility and its power, use of birth control, and occasions of self-giving.  Jamie and Claire remain open--well, almost.  So the conflict between what is good for the woman according to Claire's wisdom, and what is powerful and vital, is played out between the other "power couple"--Brianna and Roger.

To be continued...

Gabaldon, Diana (2004-10-26). Dragonfly in Amber (Outlander). Random House, Inc.. Kindle Edition.Gabaldon, Diana (2004-10-26). Drums of Autumn (Outlander). Random House Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

Drums: More "Women's Issues" (Pt. 1)

It's an ambitious title for a post, no? [Refers to a previous title] And a long time coming.  It's the post that I really wanted to write when I intially finished the books, but the more I reread, the less I want to write about it because I've already got it all worked out in my head and now I want to move past it.  But it's very much a part of the Outlander books.  So here goes...

One thing that struck me when I was initially reading Outlander is that the novel did not toe the feminist line by denouncing historical gender roles as necessarily oppressive and unjust.  Rather, it is often the case that the historical limitations on what women could do in society, the need for women to be protected by their men (most often from other men), are validated, and the lot of women not so terrible--or at any rate, no worse than what men had to endure.  A good example of this is the should-be-scandalous spanking scene.  Reading the Little House Books to my daughters, I recently realized that the justification in those books for corporal punishment was much the same as Jamie's justification to Claire in Outlander, and while she is his wife rather than his child, the fact that her disobediance did endanger everyone does suggest the need for some type of consequence--at least in that society.  Repeatedly through the first two books, Claire's twentieth-century headstong nature, while one of her strengths, proves to be out-of bounds and dangerous to her and to those around her.  In the struggle between female independence and history, history prevails.

I was also struck after a while--though not at first--by representations of 18th Century women and their fertility.  Claire is the only major female character in Outlander, and she is unable to become pregnant--first in the Twentieth Century, and then in the Eighteeth Century.  She seems to be barren.  In the Twentieth Century, she and Frank want a child.  In the Eighteenth Century, she is expected to want a child, and while she is a bit more ambivalent about the prospect, she is still open to the possibility of life--and after a while, she wants to give Jamie a child.  The first book, then, treats fertility as something desirable, if risky.  Even the fecundity of Jenny and Ian (the elder) is basically a good thing, though she is weary.  Jenny wouldn't have it any other way, and expects to bear many children.  In Drums of Autumn, Jamie articulates it very simply in response to the implication, stated by his own (unknowing) offspring, that Scots breed like rabbits:

“Scottish families are sometimes large, aye.” Jamie plucked a wren’s down feather from the small box and laid it delicately against the shank of his hook. “We think children a blessing.”

However, as the books progress, the narrative seems to make an effort to correct the error inadvertantly committed in Outlander, the book that Diana Gabaldon wrote, according to her own account, as an experiment, never completely expecting it to be published.  It is a risky novel, and by implication (as a discourse on the dangers of pregnancy and the need to limit births creeps in) one of the bold and perhaps inadvisable moves (Books 2 through 7 suggest) is the depiction of unrestricted, unprotected sex.  It is perhaps the prominance of the birth control message in the subsequent books that make it seem not only like a backlash against its absence in the first book, but also like a particular, pointed message aimed at the reader.  Don't think, the books seem to suggest, that this is the right way to live.  Even Claire's Twentieth Century pregnancy is risky, and Claire denies medicated childbirth because she is afraid that she will die in childbirth, even with available medical interventions.

The discourse of birth control does not, however, revolve around Claire, though Claire is the source of much of the emotional and physical vulnerability that surrounds pregnancy and childbirth, including miscarriage.  In fact, it is striking that the sexual relationship between Jamie and Claire--which is the ideal around which the novels are built--remains largely untainted by concerns with birth control. Once or twice we do learn that the pre-menopausal Claire is not taking chances this time around, but for other characters, birth control is much more a part of the story, and in the case of Bree and Roger, it is much more an anxiety of the male.  More on this later, because I don't think it actually works out in poor Roger's favor.  The message we get, increasingly, is that children are good, childbirth, pregnancy, and unregulated births are dangerous to women and undermine their autonomy.  However, the contradictory message that we get is that children are good--very good--much to be desired, that children strenghten a family and provide a powerful bond between men and women that is not always respected, and that men for whom female fertility is a source of anxiety are comparatively weak.  This will require some proving, I know.  So my feeling is that the narrative of birth control is still somewhat reactionary, which makes it all that much more artificial to me--again, as if the reader is being cautioned not to see unrestrained sexuality as an absolute good.  If there's a discourse on chastity, I haven't found it--such would be the Catholic remedy for the tendency toward licentiousness.

But what begins in Dragonfly in Amber surfaces in a big way in Drums of Autumn.  In my next post, I plan to review how the theme builds.  Eventually, I will take a closer look at some of the scenes, dialogues, and curcumstances that build into the discourse on birth control.

Gabaldon, Diana (2004-10-26). Drums of Autumn (Outlander) (Kindle Locations 10291-10292). Random House Publishing Group. Kindle Edition. 

Sex and the Catholic Fairy Tale: Rapunzel Let Down, Take 3

Although my reading of Rapunzel Let Down by Regina Doman has slowed to about one chapter every couple of nights, as I pack to move, enjoy a couple of unusual visit with friends who have pools, and--oh yeah, reread Harry Potter (I'm on Goblet of Fire--just because), I have worked my way through eleven chapters.  The chapters are short, and there are many of them, but this means that I have gotten through the (first?) sex scene.  And I'm sorry to say, but I think it's a bit of a mess.  It is fairly subtle, yes.  There's enough to work with that it might give some reader lustful feelings--particularly if that reader has not encountered intimacy of this sort in literature before.  There are no real descriptions, but there is enough tension and mention of skin and nudity to get the reader's imagination going, in spite of the necessary guilt.  It is in my nature to be both tongue-in-cheek and skeptical, and that's about all of the disclaimer I'm going to provide right now--but I will say that if this--and I mean strictly the mechanical aspects--were a sex scene that was situated in a novel that was saying something positive about sex, it would be subtle, and would pass as not too offensive, immoral, or whatever.  But it's not.  And the context is what bothers me.

I have problems with the way it is represented and executed--as if premarital sex could not be consensual; as if premarital sex cannot be enjoyable or intimate in the non-sexual meaning of intimacy; as if premarital sex is necessarily something seedy that borders on rape.

I have larger problems, however, with what the male protagonist (and the scene is written from his perspective) believes about sex.

Let me start with the first problem.  It lies with the author's essential motivation, and so is not something I can legitimately complain about without simply wishing for a different book.  This book does not set out to say something positive about sex.  It sets out to make a very negative point about the dangers of premarital sex.  And it does so by stacking the decks a bit.  He is 17, she is 15--so there's a difference in age and knowledge.  She is mature, but very sheltered.   No sexual interaction between the two can possibly be equal.  Frankly, this sort of creeps me out.  BUT--in fact, this makes a very excellent point.  There is often a differential of knowledge and experience in extramarital sex, especially for a virgin.  So--yes.  This is a very good point.

The problem lies in the fact that the sex was premeditated on his part--if only by a little bit--without knowledge on her part.  This might be realistic, but doesn't register as true, given that they are supposed to be friends.  There is a tenderness.  And he violates it completely.  Yes, he is selfish.  But I have a difficult time empathizing with his guilt, and this is the start of it.  And yet, the perspective is his.  So am I supposed to sympathize?  Or am I supposed to pass judgment?  I suspect that I am supposed to pass judgment.  But if I'm busy judging him, then as a reader I'm setting myself way outside of the context and above his actions.  I'm saying to myself, "Well, clearly he is wrong.  He should know he is doing wrong, because I know that he is wrong."  It's not too much of a leap for the reader to think, "Well, I could never be in this situation, and if I were, I would not act this way, because I know it is wrong."  Being inside Hermes's head simply pounds the message--this is wrong this is wrong this is wrong.  As the reader, I'm not feeling it.  And so I'm not really learning and experiencing along with the character at this point.  How can I?  Even as a teen reader, I'm morally superior--not necessarily because I'm truly morally superior, but because (and here we get into narrative theory) the author has implied that the reader is morally superior by placing the reader in a position of judging rather than a position of empathizing.  The moment that a reader can think, I can totally see myself doing that, or I feel so sorry for what s/he is going through, the judgment becomes more difficult.  But I can't imagine too many of Doman's readers thinking either of those things.  Hermes has just acted like a total creepy stalker--definitley stepping over a line, and not just the simple "taking it too far and having sex" line.

So that's where I start.  I rather feel like the whole "how they had sex" is unbelievable.  Had they been kissing, and both wondering whether they would or not, or simply not thinking and doing, that would have seemed more realistic, and made it seem less like a statuatory rape situation (it's a good thing he hadn't turned 18 yet!).

So my second problem. Hermes is an imperfect moral compass, yes.  But it remains true that he is  the moral compass of the novel thus far.  He is Catholic.  She is atheist or agnostic, and completely ignorant of religion.

Now, we don't know his family terribly well, but his brothers hardly seem the model of virtue.  They have definitely bullying tendencies.  And his brother Christopher seems pretty good at scamming on chicks (to use the colloquial).  He snatches Melissa out from under Hermes in the first three pages of the book or so.  Definitely a ladies' man, and no telling how far he takes it.  So there's no telling how his moral upbrining has been.  Their parents seem pretty good--father in politics notwithstanding (maybe he'll have his own sex scandel in a chapter or two, but that's doubtful with the way it has been set up so far).  The family is overtly Catholic--not just passively so.  They have a priest over for tea (and vocation scouting) regularly.  And all boys have attended Catholic school.  I have no reason to suspect that the values imparted to Hermes have been faulty--which is good, because it at least doesn't provide an additional "out" for the reader who wishes to judge Hermes:  "Well my Catholic upbringing was better--I wouldn't fall into that trap," etc. etc.

And therein lies the problem.  If Hermes knows he is sinning (and he does), and his upbringing and values are trustworthy from the reader's perspective (and I have no reason to think that they'll break down in the future chapters), and his Catholicism is orthodox, then that means that the assumptions he makes about sex and sin are supposed to be read as basically correct--because he is going against his conscience when he acts.  It is possible that his understanding is meant to seem flawed, but I have no reason to think that his ideas about Catholic sexual morality are supposed to be extreme.  And yet, I find them to be exactly that.

Hermes' first misstep occurs when he climbs Raphaela's tower and sees her undressing--quite by accident.  He acknowledges her innocence.  He knows he should look away.  But he can't.  He has seen naughty magazines (though is not accustomed to viewing them), and sees that she is real.  He can't look away.  He sees her naked.  (She's compared to a child here, by the way--which I still find disturbing, even if it is an intentional move...)  And he can't look away.  And his next conclusion is that "from a moral perspective, he would have been better off if he had been spotted and shot on the way up."  And I find that incredibly disturbing.  Because really?  This was not a willful act.  Certainly he should have stopped looking.  But I heard a priest offer in a homily once that if he found himself entranced by a pretty girl, admiring her in ways that he perhaps should not, he said a prayer of thankfulness for her beauty.  I found that an amazing--and imminently practical--testimony.  Our protagonist is not so morally mature, but to condemn himself so fully--especially since he had a lot of other deceit that should have been confessed that was much worse than accidentally seeing a naked girl--seems incredibly harsh.  We can perhaps chalk it up to moral immaturity, so I'll move on...

Hermes's next rhetorical move is to declare her "mentally deflowered."  Now, in my book, his peek is a violation of her privacy, and if we're working with feminist--yes, feminist!!--theory, she has been subjected to his "Gaze," which is a male, patriarchal gaze, and is akin to metaphorical rape.  But if she is as innocent as a child undressing, then his accidental viewing can't really violate her. So...  is the reader to believe that (as feminist theory would suggest), she has been sexually violated?  Has she been changed by his glance?  Or is he justifying his future actions by declaring her to be already ruined?  I am disturbed by the implication that she has been deflowered by his accidental viewing.  It had nothing to do with her.  I see it as a violation, yes, but to have Hermes use the phrase suggests that this is a Catholic interpretation.  And I do not think that to look at a woman lustfully deflowers her.  That speaks to a change in her, when, in fact, the lust changes him.  A violation--yes.  A change in her--no.  Let's not grant The Gaze the full weight of feminist theory and imbue it with moral significance.

So what does Jesus say?  Our hero remembers:  "'He who looks at a woman with lust commits adultery,' Jesus had warned. He knew it. And he knew that merely looking wasn’t going to be enough for him much longer."  So first, the actual Bible verse emphasizes the change in him rather than her.  But when Hermes says that "merely looking wasn’t going to be enough for him much longer," a couple of things happen.  First, he evokes the Law.  And interestingly, he emphasizes the Law in a way that rather feels like the way the Jews treat the Law according to St. Paul (more on that in a bit).  But the second thing is, Hermes makes a quick jump from accident to fascination to lust to action--and the first three steps are somewhat collapsed, and happen in an instant.  He's neither scared by the feeling nor intimidated by the prospect of deflowering the girl whose innocence he lamented a moment ago.  Nope.  It's a slippery slope--and a fast one.  No performance anxiety here.  We don't even get a glimpse of Hermes wondering whether she will want to.  And yet, before seeing her naked, sex doesn't seem to have entered his mind.  The moral?  Never look at a naked girl.  Because we know where that leads!  (Remember that he has already declared himself better dead rather than see her naked--and while I get the reference to plucking out your eye if it causes you to sin, it wasn't really his eye that caused the problem! The real problem happens when he decides to keep climbing into her tower...)

To emphasize the legalism of Hermes' thinking, and the slippery slope, he thinks to  himself:  "He couldn’t go up to receive communion, tomorrow, not with lust on his soul."  And on one sense, this is good, sound thinking.  Technically, perfect contrition and intent to go to Confession, combined with the intentionality of the sin (or lack thereof), might have meant that he could take Communion.  But that's a bit technical--too technical--for the story.  So he has condemned himself fully.  His sin must, by implication, be mortal, meaning that Hermes has judged it to be both serious and conscious.  I still quibble with the "conscious" part, though it gets "conscious" pretty fast.  So he has condemned himself--by the Law: by taking the instinctive lust and applying it to himself in a legalistic manner, complete with penalty, he has condemned himself.  At that point, it seems that since he will not live up to virtue, he can only continue with sin.  And so he does.  (Perhaps I am misreading what St. Paul has to say in Romans about the Law vs. Faith, but had Hermes turned his mind to faith rather than judging himself legalistically, it seems that he would have given himself a bit more of a chance...)

The icing on the cake is, for me, the most destructive idea of all for a reader, and yet it seems to be coming from a frankly Catholic perspective, albeit Hermes' guilty perspective:

She should have been a bride, resplendent in white, with a ring on her finger and joy on her face in the sunlight to show the world she was loved. If he had really loved her, he would have given her that.  

But he had taken that away from her. And left her with— what? The chance to watch him steal away into the shadows like a thief? And she didn’t even realize what he had taken away from her. Instead of feeling like Romeo leaving Juliet, he felt like a dog skulking off with a piece of stolen meat. An animal. No, lower than an animal. She had trusted him. He had wanted her. And he had taken her.  

And she would always be with him. And he would always be with her. Whether they wanted it or not.

She is ruined, and he would always be with her and she with him, because they had ruined each other--a permanent bond that registers here as more violation.  The metaphor, "he felt like a dog skulking off with a piece of stolen meat," is particularly unsavory.  Is she a piece of meat?  Is he a dog?  But more importantly, is she a piece of meat???  Stolen meat???  This does not bode well for countless women who are deflowered before becoming brides--whether or not that choice or state of being is the ideal or morally preferable one.  Where did he get this idea?  Catholicism?  That's what the reader is lead to believe.

Recently, an article by Calah Alexander discussing the problems with abstinence-only education came to my attention (H/T Melanie).  It was written from a Catholic perspective, so it was not voicing a problem with abstinence, only with how it is presented to young people.  The article was occasioned by the testimony of Elizabeth Smart, whose will to resist kidnapping and sexual abuse was broken because abstinence-only education conditioned her to feel like a "chewed piece of gum."

I did not experience abstinence-only sex ed.  I had the biological kind that taught you how to prevent pregnancy and STDs.  And it was fine.  Nicely amoral.  It didn't make a huge impression, but it was informative.  I would be okay with having my children taught the same things.  So this account of abstinence-only education was a bit shocking, and I can immediately see how it would be damaging to the psyche.  And yet, here it is in Rapunzel Let Down.

I suppose it's admirable on some level that Hermes feels bound to her at all.  But on such terms as these!! And I know from reviews that she becomes pregnant.  And he goes to prison.  And wow!--they are completely ruined.  So the natural consequence of sex out of wedlock is. . . ruin and despair.  This actually doesn't seem too different from the prevailing attitude about unwed motherhood or unexpected pregnancy--but the time frame is shifted back to the initial act rather than to the resulting pregnancy.

I understand that the book is supposed to be hopeful (eventually).  I understand that the book is supposed to be dark because it deals with these "issues."  But it also presents an unrealistic and potentially damaging vision of premarital sex--how it happens, why it happens, and how it should be regarded by a moral person.  The emphasis is squarely on judgment, and does not ask the reader to experience the fear and pain--at least at this particular moment.  And for these reasons, I can't help but reject it.  Again.  *sigh*

Post-script:  It has occurred to me that some might question my claim above that "the whole 'how they had sex' is unbelievable.  Had they been kissing, and both wondering whether they would or not, or simply not thinking and doing, that would have seemed more realistic, and made it seem less like a statuatory rape situation."  Why should premarital sex be shown to be more consensual in this kind of novel?  Why should they get "carried away" mutually?  And well, the reason is this:  it's fine to condemn premarital sex (or any other kind of sin) when it obviously looks and feels wrong--as this does, and very much so.  But if it feels and seems good--and if there is real affection between the couple, at least for the duration of the sexual act, then it becomes a bit more like the confusion of actual premarital sex between attached people, and a bit more confusing as well--because how could such an act be objectively wrong?  It's a harder question to answer, and a harder truth to explore.  If everything goes to hell in a handbasket afterwards, the context of the sexual act (out-of-wedlock) becomes the problem, and provides a dramatic contrast to what the characters think is a neutral or good act (though it isn't, because of the context--right?).  The sex act itself remains good or neutral (at least potentially), and the context is highlighted as the sinful part of it.  Because again--it's easy to rationalize--"Well, their situation was different.  We are equal and in love."  And so the potential for real empathy with the characters and real instruction is broken down--because who can learn when the narrative places the reader in the role of spectator and in a position of moral superiority?

Why I like The Hunger Games (Pt 3): The love triangle that wasn't

Twilight and Cassandra Clare's Infernal Devices are prime examples of the angst-ridden heroine tormented by her attraction to, and need to choose between two equally compelling alternative potential lovers.  As Candace in Disney's Phineas and Ferb puts it, "Imagine if you had to choose between a bloodthirsty undead walking corpse and a slobbering lupine man-beast as a boyfriend...."  What girl could resist that?  (To be fair, that is not exactly the choice in Clare's novels.  In those novels, you have two angel-spawn demonfighter boys who are closer than brothers.  Yeah.)  But in spite of the presence of two boys, and of fans who want to belong to "Team Gale" or "Team Peeta," there is no love triangle in The Hunger Games.  Yes, I stand by that assertion.  In fact, the novels sort of subvert the love-triangle trope in Young Adult lit by pointing out the "young" part of the equation--without being condescending or reductive about it.  This is a bold move considering that this stuff does sell to the intended audience, but it is also a clever move, considering that The Hunger Games trilogy is about subversion, as much as it is about anything else.  It practically gives kids a handbook explaining what political subversion is (more on this later...)

So when I say that there's no love triangle in The Hunger Games, I am not ignoring the fact that there are two boys who seem to be more or less in love with the heroine.  Nor am I failing to acknowledge the affection and the sense of obligation that Katniss feels toward each one.  However, I am starting from the premise that when you're talking about a "love triangle," it's not really about him, it's about her.  How is she going to act, whom is she going to choose? The exception might be Marion Zimmer Bradley's portrayal of Lancelot in The Mists of Avalon. In that novel, it really was about Lancelot for the reader, who probably came away wanting Lancelot, and if not Lancelot, it was about Morgaine (Le Fay--remember her?), who wanted Lancelot not to want Gwenhwyfar.  In the usual convention, the two men are there. They compete--and exist--for her pleasure.  Or torment.  Whatever.  The existential dilemma belongs solely to the female, who no doubt ponders it incessantly.  But we already know that Katniss is not the pondering type. So what are those two boys doing there?

First of all, Gale and Peeta exist--as literary devices--in order to evoke the love triangle.  I did have a student in my college-level children's lit course tell me that The Hobbit was a "boy book" because it didn't include a love interest.  So perhaps if it is to be a novel directed towards girls of a certain age, there has to be a love interest or particular love interest in addition to the female protagonist?  I'm going to leave that one up in the air.  It is certainly true that the expectation is out there.  But in The Hunger Games, the purpose of evoking the love triangle seems to be entirely different.  Is there jealousy on the part of the boys?  Yes, but it's understated.  Does Katniss wonder if she is betraying one or the other of them?  It comes up every now and then, but it is not her central focus.  Frankly, it can't be.  There are more important things to worry about.

Katniss's approach to both boys is very practical.  She is also loyal to each one.  Both of these are traits associated with ISTJs, if you were curious!  So in fact, the boys are there to show Katniss's key character traits in their best and most troubling light.  Her inability to "choose" between them is not a product of her feminine weakness and vacillation, or indeed, of her introspection and self-doubt.  Rather, the choice between them is not an immediate need, and since she feels affection of a sort (albeit a sort that is secondary to affection for her sister) for them, and since these boys are boys to whom she feels a sharp loyalty, she resists the choice.  If this were Lord of the Flies--and it might have been--her loyalty to Peeta would have dissolved in the arena.  But it isn't.  And it wasn't.  And that is a significant commentary on human nature by way of Katniss--and might also represent a sort of footnote to Lord of the Flies.

On the other hand, both male characters serve to instruct the reader (if not necessarily Katniss) on some of the deeper issues involved with male-female relationships.  By eschewing the typical roles into which novels place boy and girl, we are able to get a more sophisticated portrait of interpersonal relationships than is common in Young Adult novels (I am not partial to that designation, but a friend has convinced me that "teen literature" is an inferior term).

So what about Gale?  Gale shows the reader that a boy and a girl can be friends... except when they're not.  Okay, maybe they can't be, unless both are asexual.  And Katniss, let's face it, is fairly asexual.  She is completely chaste--without meaning to be.  This is a point that is made explicit in Catching Fire, when she is mocked both by Fennick, the exploited and oversexed, and by Johanna, tree girl.  Gale grows to feel that way for Katniss, but they begin as rivals, then hunting buddies with an almost brother-sister thing.  He is already grown up--in a way--when they meet, and as she grows up, he sees her differently.  It's a little creepy when you think of it--and isn't there something like this in Twilight?  But he's not really on her radar.  Because she doesn't have that sort of radar.  She's only 16.  She's not ready to marry.  She may never be ready to marry.  But more on that in a minute.  The complexities here are when romantic awareness and attraction enter into a male-female friendship, and when the two friends have different intentions or goals.  Gale's and Katniss's goals are very different, though Gale assumes they see eye-to-eye.  And don't underestimate the "challenge"--Katniss is, for Gale, close and yet unattainable, and as he is something of a charmer, well... he's a pretty realistic character himself.

Peeta, on the other hand, is hers to lose from the beginning.  Literally.  But he won't go away.  He represents a courtly lover.  He has been content to watch and admire her from afar.  But sometimes, in such circumstances, interaction is necessary.  Or forced.  Or in this case, potentially deadly.  So maybe not a terribly realistic scenario... and yet...  Lizzie doesn't like Mr. Darcy very much, but he grows on her.  Their love begins as animosity and blooms into a love that is like friendship.  And this is a trope in its own right--and one that Jane Austen even mocks on occasion as she employs it.  Lizzie is no coquette, and neither is Katniss.  But both experience complex feelings ranging from resentment to affection that are difficult to understand.  And perhaps because it is a contemporary representation rather than an 18th Century courtship, or a novel with all of the conventions of the novel--like, say, dialogue--that I have come to expect as a contemporary reader, I find Katniss's evolving non-relationship with Peeta more realistic.  As futuristic alternate-reality dystopian adventure novel relationships that mean life-or-death go.  Treading lightly to avoid hurting someone is a common--and complex situation.  Casting off the person because you just can't deal with their affections--also realistic.  And having the person persist.  And persist.  And persist.  Well, that can happen, too.  And if their love is unconditional, and is willing to wait and let you be who you are--then, wow.

Brokenness is real, too.  And Katniss, Peeta, and Gale are each, at one point or another, studies in brokenness.  And how relationships can heal--or else, can heighten--that brokenness.

Finally, the love triangle isn't a love triangle because it's not all about sex.  After all, it wasn't an issue that Lancelot was in love with Guinevere until they consummated their desire.  Before that, it was courtly and proper.  So when teen novels have "love triangles," even when the love is supposedly chaste, it's all about sex.  Specifically, it's about when SHE is going to have sex and WITH WHOM.  Because we all know the boys are ready and willing, right?  Well, maybe not specifically.  Rather, it's like sex is this inevitable... ahem... black hole that the heroine is drawn toward (wait, shouldn't that be the guy?  never mind...) and the reader is dragged along for the ride because all of this is dreadfully important.  Even Regina Doman's Shadow of the Bear captures this notion that sex is inevitable, if for the purpose of presenting a chaste model.  And well, yes.  It does feel that way to a teenager sometimes.  And sometimes to a young adult.  And sometimes to a single adult in a bar.  Every road leads to sex--but when?  and with whom?  Enter the love triangle.  But that is something that is largely a construction--albeit an old construction.  Paolo and Francesca.  Lancelot and Guinevere.  Tristan and Isolde.  But The Hunger Games acknowledges that the love triangle and the inevitability of sex are constructs by completely failing to play along.

And why is it not about sex?  It could have been.  Anyone who has read my posts about Diana Gabaldon's Outlander series knows that I have no problem with sex.  I don't object to reading about it, even in fairly graphic terms, and I'm fine with writing about it.  Just don't get me started about Fifty Shades of Gray, because it won't be pretty....

Frankly, it was quite restrained of Collins not to have The Hunger Games include rape.  After all, there's cannibalism in past Hunger Games.  I'm trying to think if there's something that could be considered symbolic rape in the way tributes were killed in The Hunger Games, and I don't think so... although somewhere, at some academic conference or in some academic journal, some graduate student or terribly, terribly clever professor (who doesn't actually read children's literature, but is smugly dabbling because Hunger Games is a popular culture phenomenon) has made exactly that argument--possibly involving a dark mine shaft or Peeta's oven.  But folks--it's Simply. Not. There. Not even there as it is in Lord of the Flies.  Not even like that.  But it could have been.  The "career tributes" might have raped their victims first, and the Capitol might have liked the extra entertainment.  And then the books really would have been sordid, as some people still believe them to be.  And I will never, ever read Hunger Games fan fics.

Sex is not on Katniss's radar because hers is a hard life, and there are more things to think about than sex.  It is not on her radar because her own survival and the survival of her family are uppermost in her mind.  She can't take on the responsibility of a new family--her own family--because her current responsibilities prevent it.  She can't conceive of having children because she already has dependents, and also because children are the Capitol's means of control.  So not having children would be her act of self-preservation--her means of not allowing herself to be hurt by the political situation in which she lives.  So not having children is, quite literally, an act of subversion, though Katniss is not able to articulate it as such.

And sex, to her, is not recreational--it is procreative.  The union of man and woman produces children.  Period.  And quite definitely only happens within marriage.  Even Peeta's bluff presents sex as happening within marriage.

Sex--especially recreational sex--is (implicitly) the province of the Capitol, along with all things glittery and corrupt.  It is in the Capitol that sexual exploitation occurs--to others.  Katniss is not corruptible, because her loyalties are too solid to allow for infiltration.  Even when she is caught up in the Capitol glam, and made to seem a sex symbol of sorts, it is not really sex that she projects.  She is almost too good to be true--except for her complete lack of awareness of her own virtue.  All she sees is what is in front of her, and that something is survival--always.

So to borrow a quote from Miss Piggy in The Muppet Takes Manhatten, "But what about the huggies?"  There are moments on the train.  With Peeta.  They do sleep together.  And it is never sexualized in any way.  They sleep together in a completely chaste manner--suggesting, perhaps, that a boy and a girl can sleep together in a completely chaste manner.  Even when he loves her, and wants her.  In fact, their nighttime interaction even suggests that man and wife--or an engaged couple--or two pretending to be man and wife--can be chaste.  And there is so much more that is unifying and life-affirming in their embraces, to borrow the language of Theology of the Body, than there would be in the sexual act.

And so the novels, which represent sex, marriage, and procreation as things to be feared in certian contexts, do, after all, find their way to affirmation of life--and to a much more profound place than the center of a love triangle.

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.

Voyager: Men, Childbirth, and Helplessness

In the early chapters of Voyager, Jenny gives birth to her youngest son Ian, who becomes one of the central characters in Outlander series and the primary motivation behind the plot action in the latter 1/3 of the novel. Although he has had warning that there are British soldiers in the area, Jamie feels compelled to be nearby in the house while Jenny gives birth.  In the scene of Jamie's waiting, and his subsequent conversation with Jenny, several of the notable threads that run through the books come together.

The overarching theme is a further development of the position of men in relation to women's fertility--but not simply their fertility.  The word "fertility," in fact, sounds a bit like critical or clinical jargon as compared to the fully developed process--from copulation, to conception, to birth, to breastfeeding--that is the fruitful potential of woman.  The Outlander books develop this very well in some places--particularly with reference to Jenny and Claire, and Jamie's relationship with the women whom he loves.  Other times, women's fertility is treated in less of a rich, full manner--particularly with reference to the adult Brianna, or at other times when "women's issues" are invoked as such.

The difference depends to a large degree on perspective.  When Jamie's perspective on women and childbirth enters into the narrative, fertility is that large, encompassing, nurturing, desirable thing.  Jamie desires to be both lover and child (in a way that Frank achieves--well, almost), to protect woman and be protected by her, all the while aware of the danger and joy inherent in every sexual act and every procreative act. There are times when his fear does reduce female fertility to more of a medical concern, though this is under Claire's 20th century medical (contraceptive) influence.

What becomes apparent in this particular scene in Voyager is that Jamie, who is strong and fearless as a warrior, is helpless--reduced to a child himself--when confronted with childbirth.  Birth unmans men, who are nevertheless complicit in the creation of the child--except that Jamie is not complicit in the creation of this child.  This child is Ian's and Jenny's.  So as he waits, Jamie experiences fear and reverts somewhat to childhood, calling on his older brother who died when they were children:

Another scream came from upstairs, and a spasm of fear clenched his hands on the book. “Pray for us, Brother,” he whispered, and crossing himself, laid down the Bible and went out to the barn to help with the stock. (68)

Here, the ghost of Jamie's brother William is invoked as a saint--to pray for the living, as a friend or priest or whomever would pray--from a position that is closer to God.  However, since William died as a child--when Jamie was a still younger child--Jamie positions himself as a childlike younger brother once more when he asks his brother to pray for him and for Jenny.  This is the comfort he seeks in the face of childbirth--the comfort that a small child seeks from a beloved older brother: "he had always felt safe, with Willie standing behind him" (68).  It is always in moments of severe self-doubt when Jamie invokes his brother as a saint, as in Dragonfly in Amber.

When he goes to see Jenny with the newborn Ian, Jamie reveals some of that self-doubt:

     “She was with child,” he said softly at last, speaking to the reflection. “When she— when I lost her.” How else could he put it? There was no way to tell his sister, where Claire was— where he hoped she was. That he could not think of another woman, hoping that Claire still lived, even knowing her truly lost to him for good. 

     There was a long silence from the bed. Then Jenny said quietly, “Is that why ye came today?” He sighed and turned sideways toward her, leaning his head against the cool glass. His sister was lying back, her dark hair loose on the pillow, eyes gone soft as she looked at him. 

     “Aye, maybe,” he said. “I couldna help my wife; I suppose I thought I might help you. Not that I could,” he added, with some bitterness. “I am as useless to you as I was to her.” (74-75)

Warrior though he is, Jamie is reduced to a child by the awesome power and risk of childbirth.

It is interesting to me here that while women's "devouring sexuality" is often represented as a thing to be feared--or so argue generations of feminist critics who enjoy ferreting out such things--here, it is the bringing forth of life that is dangerous to men--primarily because of its danger to women.  Woman takes in the man in the sexual act; she contains him in the womb.  In Outlander, both the "taking in" and the "containing" are good.  It is in the bringing forth of childbirth that she endangers him--primarily by endangering herself.  Of course, this could be because--as the narrative repeats again and again--she already has possession of his soul.

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

Reading The Awakening Wrong**

I've always hated Kate Chopin's The Awakening, ever since it was forced upon us in high school.  When, as a 19-year-old college senior, 8 months pregnant, I was designated in my Literary Criticism  class to read aloud the Marxist feminist essay on The Awakening that argued that motherhood rendered a woman's life meaningless, I was amused, but not more inclined to like the tale.  I have not quite decided to reread it, as I am still inclined to think that trotting out The Awakening as a long-lost, long-forgotten classic that was suppressed because of the patriarchal slant of the canon was bona fide First- or Second Wave feminist nonsense, but as I was turning it over in my mind today, I decided to jot down a few thoughts.

While it may seem like a drastic departure from the Outlander series, I'm not sure that it wasn't, in fact, Outlander that brought it to mind.  Or at least, it was Outlander with its discourses on gender, sexuality, and motherhood, combined with my own thoughts on those very same subjects--which happen, actually, to be some of my very favorite subjects, just not as they are usually treated by literary critics and gender theorists.  My own model of literary criticism would take as a starting point the reader's reactions and the connections that proceed from those reactions, rather than taking as a starting point some external point of reference, like Marx (for an easy example).  It is entirely possible that Marx might become relevant (though usually not here), and certainly external theorists, philosophers, and critics--many more (and many more classical and Enlightenment philosophers) than exist in the current canon in the humanities--should be available as a point of reference.  But in order for the writer to be truly invested in the analysis, in order to be writing something that is, for her, meaningful, and in order for the result to have originality and resonance, the initial spark should be at least somewhat personal.  This is why student papers on "Good and Evil in XY Literary Work" will always be doomed to failure (well, one reason)--lack of personal investment.  (The same can be said about hot topics in composition courses.  Because really?  They don't have much invested in a paper about lowering the drinking age, even if they think they do.)  It is the original combination of influences, experiences, and knowledge that shape an original critic.

So I found myself thinking about motherhood.  And thinking about my recent posts, here and here, about women in some stage of becoming mothers claiming the child as their own, I realized--this is a necessary step in becoming a mother.  It is, in some ways, a sign of the maturity and capacity to mother a child.  It is--at least in Dragonfly in Amber and Voyager--an Awakening.  But it is clearly a step that is missing from Chopin's Awakening.

So I thought to myself, perhaps that's the point.  Perhaps the feminist icon Edna Pontellier was not a model of subversion and rebellion.  Certainly, she achieves self-negation rather than succumbing to the role of mother.  But is this the result of a deep character flaw, or a nobility of cause and purpose?  She is petulant.  She is childish.  She is weak.  She is hardly an admirable character.  And yet I remember having the distinct impression that her act of self-negation, because it was rebellion against the only possible role available to her as a woman, was a noble act.  Is it any wonder I regarded the work with disgust?  I do remember asking how her original audience received the story.  I'm not sure my teacher in high school new the answer--and when I was in college, my questions about reception were automatically dismissed as irrelevant.  I believe that Chopin was popular--it's one of the arguments for retaining her in the revised canon (If she was relevant in her own time, why have we dismissed her? Because she's a woman?  And yet, Tolkien is often considered unworthy of graduate study because he is popular, as when a course on his novels was proposed in my degree-granting department.)

Thinking further about Pontellier, though, I remember how she was set up against Adèle Ratignolle, the epitome of perfect, devoted motherhood.  While I find Edna repugnant, Adèle is not a suitable alternative, because to be held up to such a model of perfection could make any woman feel that self-annihilation is preferable to 1) that model of motherhood, or 2) trying to live up to that model while knowing the impossibility of achieving it.

I couldn't help visualizing this New Yorker cover, with its take on women and identity.

It seems that every model of womanhood in The Awakening is impossible, or imperfect, or undesirable, and perhaps that is more to the point than the claim that motherhood negates one's identity.  Edna Pontellier did not have an identity.  She looked for one in the women she knew, and she looked for one as a lover of the men she knew, and she was unable to find anything to fill her own void.  Rather, she becomes aware of herself as the Self that cannot be signified (a reference to Lost in the Cosmos by Walker Percy).  She cannot identify herself except with reference to others, and finds, finally, that her self does not exist, and yields to non-existence.  I find this slightly more interesting, but I still find Edna Pontellier to be a waste of a significant chunk of novella.

As it reflects on motherhood, though--it is her failure as a mother to claim her children that seems significant.  I have written papers (in grad school) about the need for the postfeminist woman to come to terms with fertility, and the choice to--or not to--mother.  But women constantly have choices put before them regarding their fertility, though they are not discussed as such. The "choice" that is commonly evoked with reference to women's fertility is, in fact, and act of violence that negates that fertility.  The choice that Edna never makes is the choice to claim her children as her own.  And it is only when she makes that choice that she can construct an identity that includes the act of mothering, even if her identity is not limited to Mother.

**I leave it open whether I am reading it wrong--intentionally against the grain--or whether I think that the feminist readings I was taught were wrong.  At the end of the day, I am not, in fact, committed to the text, though I am invested in the ideas of motherhood, choice (no, not that kind of choice!), and identity.

Dragonfly: Mother and Child

As I wrap up Dragonfly in Amber and move on to Voyager, I know that I will be looking back on Dragonfly from time to time.  There are things that are set up in Dragonfly that are not quite ripe for discussion--like how the narrative and the other characters view the time traveling women as "Others."  That's a sneak preview!

The last moment I want to discuss in Dragonfly without waiting for the theme to pop up in another book is the moment after Claire finishes her narrative--replete with details that a child would probably not want to hear from her mother (*ahem* "thighs...slick and wet with Jamie's seed" (894) *ahem*), but which, presumably, the reader needs.  As a follow-up to the narrative, Claire mentions her dangerous pregnancy, and her ambivalent feelings toward her daughter, and Brianna pursues the issue:

Brianna didn't move; didn't take her eyes from her mother's face. Only her lips moved, stiffly, as if unaccustomed to talking.
"How long... did you hate me?"
Gold eyes met blue ones, innocent and ruthless as the eyes of a falcon.
"Until you were born. When I held you and nursed you and saw you look up at me with your father's eyes."
Brianna made a faint, strangled sound, but her mother went on, voice softening a little as she looked at the girl at her feet.
"And then I began to know you, something separate from myself or from Jamie. And I loved you for yourself, and not only for the man who fathered you." (897)

The "hatred" might seem cold to some, but might also register as quite normal and natural given the trauma of the birth, the circumstances--and the postpartum state.  Motherly feelings do not always spring to life with the birth of the baby, as anyone who has experienced it can testify.

The moment is interesting from narrative and thematic perspectives as well, and connects rather nicely with a previous post of mine on the topic of "women's issues."  The post examines the moment at which a woman "claims" a pregnancy, and moves from trying to escape it to trying to protect it.  Specifically, in answering Claire's question of whether she wants to keep her baby, Louise de La Tour, married mistress of Charles Stuart, moves from attributing her reason for wanting the baby to her feelings for the father to identifying the baby as her own:

     She lifted her head and stared at me in astonishment.
     "But of course I want it!" She exclaimed. "It's his--it's Charles's! It's..." Her face crumpled, and she bowed her head once more over her hands, clasped so tightly over her belly.  "It's mine," she whispered. (243)

Though it comes at the conclusion of a pregnancy rather than at the beginning, Claire's description of her feelings for Brianna models the process by which a mother accepts the child that she must protect--this time, with an affirmation of the separate selfhood of the child.  She moves from resentment based on her own personal circumstances--the distance she has had to place between herself and Jamie because of the baby, to love based on love for the father, and finally, to love for Brianna as a separate person.  This is a step that the reader does not see with reference to Louise, but which defines the relationship between Claire and her daughter throughout the novels--even when Claire is mooning over the resemblances between Jamie and Bree.

Dragonfly: "Women's Issues" #1

Okay, so there's something a little disingenuous about the title of this post--hence the quotation marks.  Though it is common for contraception and abortion to be termed "women's health issues," and though political platforms that provide for such are considered sensitive to "women's issues," I generally protest that designation, since it reduces women to their reproductive functions, while at the same time denigrating those functions, and relegating them to the status of a medical problem.  That said, I maintain the title of the post as a kind of protest of the designation, and a reluctant acknowledgment that "women's issues" is generally understood to mean reproduction--and specifically contraception and abortion.  This is the disclaimer for my own use of the phrase, and does not reflect at all on the author or the novel, though I may offer a critique of the ways in which the later novels deal with "women's issues"--as such.

Chemical abortifacients have been mentioned before this point, and the dangers of childbirth as well, but the chapter "Deceptions" in Dragonfly in Amber is the first "up close and personal" encounter that the reader has with a reproductive issue, and the narrative comes down on the side of protecting the unborn child.  The relevant scene, in which Claire discusses with Louise de La Tour, mistress of Prince Charles, Louise's proposed decision to abort her child, raises other issues of women's place in 18th C society, evoking in the process Wollstonecraft's admonition against a society that would value women for their most superficial attributes, leaving them virtually no choice but to act in shallow and immoral ways.

Louise is caught in exactly this trap--she is bound to a man whom she marries for status and money (Wollstonecraft advocates for friendship in marriage).  She has a vivacious personality, and finds herself attracted to Prince Charles.  Now, there is not much to say about this attraction, because the Prince, while portrayed as personable, and lordly at will, seems pretty vapid himself, mooning over Louise, and yet blaming her for getting pregnant before the time he deems appropriate. Their attachment seems genuine enough, and yet also proceeds from the coquetry of the time (for a primer of the French coquette, see Molière, who admittedly predates this period by 100 years, but who gives a scathing portrait of the woman presiding over admirers in Le Misanthrope).  One way or another, Louise finds herself in the position of asking Claire for an abortifacient potion, for fear of utter ruin, divorce, excommunication (Dragonfly 243).

Not being an expert, I am not certain of the origin of the term "angel-maker" (and Google is no help), but it is used in Dragonfly to underscore the prevalence of abortion in 18th C France.  Claire, while protective of her own unborn child and careful to indicate that her child is not subject to the practice, registers no shock at the practice.  No moral judgment is passed from Claire's character to others in the novel(s)--at least, not beyond Claire's exclamation at Louise's question of whether Claire has used the concoction:  "God, no!"  Claire's own struggles with (presumed) infertility might excuse the vehemence of her reaction.  Rather, as a good counselor, she questions Louise:

"Louise," I said.  "Do you want the child?"

I find Louise's response particularly revealing:

     She lifted her head and stared at me in astonishment.
     "But of course I want it!" She exclaimed. "It's his--it's Charles's! It's..." Her face crumpled, and she bowed her head once more over her hands, clasped so tightly over her belly.  "It's mine," she whispered. (243)

Louise moves, in these lines, from desiring the child for Charles's sake--because the pregnancy proceeds from the man she loves--to desiring it for her sake, and for its own.  "Owning" the pregnancy allows her to accept the circumstance of being pregnant, and to devise--with more than the hint of a suggestion from Claire--a strategy for keeping her child.  It's a useful exercise, and a valuable (pro-life?) literary moment to turn panic into planning.

Although Louise wants to save the child--a point reinforced by Jamie's assessment of the situation (247)--Claire's concern does not focus on the child, but on Louise herself.  With fresh memory of "a young servant-girl, dying in protracted, blood-smeared agony"(244), Claire sees "no good reason for her to risk her life for the sake of Charles Stuart's pride" (243).

I'm not sure I find that thoroughly convincing from a 1940s woman--even a field nurse.  Her moral compass, in 1940, would likely have registered both the child's life and the woman's, especially as a woman who had herself struggled with infertility.  But it is so that the novel skirts the issue of abortion and morality in the scene rather neatly, avoiding giving offense to either "camp" of readers (except insofar as portrayal of botched abortion is argument for legalized abortion--unless it is explicitly an argument for improved social conditions for women and a world in which abortion is not even on the table, like the world in Charlotte Perkins Gilman's Herland) while normalizing the practice--at least in 18th Century France.

It is perhaps worth noting that while Dragonfly rather openly allows for feminist interpretations in support of abortion choice, the narrative takes a definite stance on adultery:

     "Why, why couldn't I be as fortunate as you--to be bearing the child of a husband I loved?" [...]
     There were any number of answers to that particular question, but I didn't think she really wanted to hear any of them. (242-243)