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.

Voyager: One More Romance Novel Post (and a bit of Metafiction)

After the mini-romance novel scenario in Chapter 14, Chapter 15 reinforces the point by finding Jamie reading the 18th Century equivalent:

My lips, which I threw in his way, so as that he could not escape kissing them, fix’d, fir’d and embolden’d him: and now, glancing my eyes towards that part of his dress which cover’d the essential object of enjoyment, I plainly discover’d the swell and commotion there; and as I was now too far advanc’d to stop in so fair a way, and was indeed no longer able to contain myself, or wait the slower progress of his maiden bashfulness, I stole my hand upon his thighs, down one of which I could both see and feel a stiff hard body, confin’d by his breeches, that my fingers could discover no end to. (qtd in Voyager 219)

Except that arguably the novel he is reading, Fanny Hill or Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure by John Cleland, is not a romance novel at all, but erotica.  On the one hand, it does dramatize the circumstances in which a young orphan from the country might land herself in the position of prostitute or kept woman in London, but it is dramatized in such a way as to titillate the reader with the spectacle of Fanny's "education" and desires rather than to underscore the social circumstances or her moral downfall.  Though I have not read to the end of my copyright-free Kindle edition, I suspect that there is no "awakening conscience," unlike William Holman Hunt's much later painting, or if there is, it is only meant to redeem the novel in some small way.

So what does the inclusion of this novel excerpt contribute to the conversation on genre? Because certainly that is why it is there.  The argument seems to be, first of all, for anyone who might be wondering whether the sexual practices discussed or enacted by the characters in the Outlander series were well-known during the 18th Century, that yes, everything that the characters do and discuss is historically appropriate.  So okay, most people would probably assume that sexual positions and acts are as old as the hills anyway.  I've read The Symposium.  And I've seen a fair sampling of Greek kylix (okay, one is Etruscan--and these are TAME).

 But there might be a legitimate question about inhibitions and whatnot--likely based more on stereotyped views of the 19th century.  There are countless rape narratives (including Pamela) from the 17th and 18th centuries.  Some are called "marriage plays" (proto-Romance novels?).  In many ways, Mrs. Bennett and Lydia in Pride and Prejudice represent the old way of getting husbands in literature, while Jane and Lizzie represent the post-Romantic movement way.  So Jamie's reading material, which offers him some variation from Defoe and Fielding, proves that erotica was a familiar genre for the time period,  and that depictions of sexuality in literature go way back.  In a way, this gives some validation to the frank depictions of sexuality in the Outlander novels.  However, if the reader goes a little bit further and actually investigates the 18th Century erotica in question, a contrast becomes apparent.  Fanny Hill exists for titillation.  The Outlander books do not have titillation as their primary purpose, though certainly scenes may titillate.  (I think that's the word of the day.  Use it whenever appropriate.)

So once again, the reader is asked to think about literature generally (or generically!) based on a scene or a literary reference or a quote in the text (and in case you were wondering, it's all about literacy) for the purpose of coming to (predetermined?) conclusions about the genre of Gabaldon's books (or at least, what they are not--too long, romance novels, or erotica).  So really, if the reader is open to it, Voyager is asking the reader to engage with questions that a reader does not always consider apart from the bookstore or the odd Amazon.com review--perhaps encouraging a more analytical reader.

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

Voyager: Jamie Teaches Sex Ed

The Outlander novels, on the whole, are preoccupied with sexual education.  There aren't just scenes of sex; there are instructional discussions of sex, sexuality, and matters of reproduction that occur (I believe) in all of the books, beginning as early as Outlander--I'll come back to that in a minute.

In Dragonfly in Amber, for example, Claire--with her 20th Century knowledge, her medical knowledge, and her sexual experience, corrects Mary Hawkins' misperceptions that Frenchmen do anything different from Englishmen or Scotsmen do in bed:

"Well," I said matter-of-factly, "there are only so many things you can do in bed with a man, after all.  And since I see quite a large number of children about the cite, I'd assume that even Frenchmen are fairly well versed in the orthodox methods."
     "Oh! Children.... well, yes, of course," she said vaguely, as though not seeing much connection. "B-b-but they said"--she cast her eyes down, embarrassed, and her voice sank even lower--"th-that he... a French-man's thing, you know...."
     "Yes, I know," I said, striving for patience.  "So far as I know, they're much like any other man's.  Englishmen and Scotsmen are quite similarly endowed."
     "Yes, but they, they... p-p-put it between a lady's l-l-legs!  I mean, right up inside her!"  This bit of stop-press news finally out, she took a deep breath, which seemed to steady her, for the violent crimson of her face receded slightly.  "An Englishman, or even a Scot... oh, I didn't mean it that way..."  Her hand flew to her mouth in embarrassment.  "But a decent an like your husband, surely he would n-never dream of forcing a wife to endure s-something like that!"
     I placed my hand on my slightly bloated stomach and regarded her thoughtfully.  I began to see why spirituality ranked so highly in Mary Hawkins's catalog of manly virtues.
     "Mary," I said, "I think we must have a small talk." (Dragonfly 254)

She has "the talk" with other young women throughout the Outlander series, and counsels and reassures Mary after an interrupted rape that she will not become pregnant, because he "didn't finish" (Dragonfly 360).

In Voyager, Jamie is a somewhat unlikely sex ed teacher.  Except that, if we consider the romance novel model, maybe it's not so unlikely that Geneva Dunsany's sexual instruction comes from the attractive near-stranger who also provides her sexual initiation (and, indeed, her sole sexual experience).  But his instruction begins immediately after he yields to her blackmail.  Now that he is a "co-conspirator," he gives her advice based on biology, of which she is clearly ignorant:

     “Arrange it, then,” he said, his stomach curdling. “Mind ye choose a safe day, though.”
     “A safe day?” She looked blank.
     “Sometime in the week after ye’ve finished your courses,” he said bluntly. “You’re less likely to get wi’ child then.”
      “Oh.” She blushed rosily at that, but looked at him with a new interest. (208)

There is no indication that this is information that Jamie has learned from Claire; however, because Jamie was a virgin when he and Claire were married, the encounter with Geneva necessarily recalls his own first time, with his own inexperience:

     “How much do you  …   I mean, have ye any idea how it’s done?”
     Her gaze was clear and guileless, though her cheeks flamed.
     “Well, like the horses, I suppose?” He nodded, but felt a pang, recalling his wedding night, when he too had expected it to be like horses.
     “Something like that,” he said, clearing his throat. “Slower, though.  More gentle,” he added, seeing her apprehensive look.  (212)

In Outlander, Claire's first experience as a sexual educator was, in fact, correcting Jamie's assumptions.

Jamie is sensitive to Geneva's desire to watch him undress and conflicting shyness; he addresses in a less direct way the physical change of erection.  He addresses with her whether the act will hurt, reassuring her that the experience will improve after the first time, and gives her the opportunity to satisfy her curiosity about his body (212).  He also imparts something of the sacred nature of sex, though the context is both forced (for him) and (once again) fornication.  First, in the context of a reprimand to Geneva, he indicates that there is honor in the sex act, for men and for women:

“I’ll serve ye properly,” he said, looking down at his working fingers, “for the sake of my own honor as a man, and yours as a woman...." (201)

Even as he acknowledges to himself that the loveless, all-consuming lust he feels in anticipation of a sexual encounter is not honorable:

But overall there was a terrible lust, a need that clawed at his vitals and made him ashamed of his own manhood, even as he acknowledged its power. (213)

Then, as he commences with Geneva, he instructs her in how she should feel about her own body, and how a man should treat her in bed:

“A man should pay tribute to your body,” he said softly, raising each nipple with small, circling touches. “For you are beautiful, and that is your right.” (214)

The emphasis is actually on her dignity.

When the act is complete, Jamie answers her confusion:

     “I’m sorry,” she said in a small voice. “I didn’t know it would hurt you too.”
     His eyes popped open in astonishment, and he raised himself on one elbow to find her looking at him like a startled fawn. Her face was pale, and she licked dry lips.
     “Hurt me?” he said, in blank astonishment. “It didna hurt me.”
     “But”— she frowned as her eyes traveled slowly down the length of his body—“ I thought it must. You made the most terrible face, as though it hurt awfully, and you  …   you groaned like a—”
     “Aye, well,” he interrupted hastily, before she could reveal any more unflattering observations of his behavior. “I didna mean  …   I mean  …   that’s just how men act, when they  …   do that,” he ended lamely. (216)

He tends to her, and even endures the indignity of her response to his ejaculation, another learning experience for her.

Jamie's final lesson to Geneva about sex is that it should not be confused with love, though there is something more akin to infatuation or puppy love than lust in Geneva's regard for Jamie, and certainly more akin to love than anything she was likely to experience in her arranged marriage.

     “No,” he said, but gently, shaking his head. “That’s the third rule. You may have no more than the one night. You may not call me by my first name. And you may not love me.”
     The gray eyes moistened a bit. “But if I can’t help it?”
     “It isna love you feel now.” He hoped he was right, for his sake as well as her own. “It’s only the feeling I’ve roused in your body. It’s strong, and it’s good, but it isna the same thing as love.”
     “What’s the difference?”
     He rubbed his hands hard over his face. She would be a philosopher, he thought wryly. He took a deep breath and blew it out before answering her.
     “Well, love’s for only one person. This, what you feel from me— ye can have that with any man, it’s not particular.” (217-218)

While he is trying to protect himself from the beginning, he is also trying to protect her.

Jamie's is necessarily a more comprehensive lesson than those usually given by Claire--even more so than her instruction of him, since she was not concerned with honor or dignity or emotion, simply with completing the act, and with pleasure.  Though I have argued that Geneva's tryst with Jamie parallels the expected plot of a romance novel, and though even these moments of instruction have correlations in the romance genre, the nature of the instruction, and in particular Jamie's honest and straightforward communication with Geneva and emphasis on her dignity, distinguish Gabaldon's imitation from the real romance novel genre, even making the romance novel seem a parody of this more serious representation of an inexperienced girl's willful manipulation of a man she desires into her bed for her edification.

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

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: Title Changed to Prevent Search Engine Issues

It may not actually be the case, but it seems as though I have already written about sex more with reference to Voyager than with either of the other novels, and that feels strange to me, and a bit misleading, because when reading the books this time, it has felt as if the sex doesn't reach out and grab the reader by the appropriate appendage the same way in Dragonfly in Amber and Voyager as it undoubtedly does in Outlander. In fact, the point throughout Voyager is that, really, Jamie and Claire aren't having much sex.  They are separated from each other, and while they both find themselves in positions which require (though that seems too strong a word) more-or-less reluctant sexual intercourse, these acts are infrequent.  And yet, because the overall emphasis is on celibacy (sort of/not really--perhaps "denial" is a better word), each sexual act takes on thematic significance. It is in sex that things happen in this particular novel, and the sexual act is the locus of interaction between men and women, with all of the various complexities that sex--along with interpersonal connections, and gender and power relationships--entails.  (I find myself thinking, as much for my own benefit as others', "See?  Lit crit does tell us something about life.")  So while I was consciously not stopping to talk about each sexual encounter in Dragonfly and (especially) Outlander, I find myself feeling compelled to talk about each sexual encounter in Voyager.

And so it is, after remaining celibate for years after Culloden and Claire's departure (longer than Claire, whose encounter with Frank apparently happened within two years or so of returning), and refusing to think about a woman as a mate or a spouse or a sexual object for 7 years, Jamie is presented with a "gift"--a "sending off" and opportunity for tenderness and release from a woman for whom Jamie was laird and a benefactor of sorts.  This description suggests an unequal power relationship.  In fact, there is not one--or at least, not a traditionally unequal one, as Jamie does not, in fact, possess (or desire) power over her.  Lacking Claire, Jamie is always at a disadvantage when he enters into sexual situations with the three women with whom he copulates during her 20-year absence.**  Mary McNab is the first.

The occasion is Jamie's last night in a cave near Lallybroch before giving himself up to the English for a ransom to provide for his family and tenants.  Mary brings him his meal, and then lays out his bed.  When Jamie refuses her, she begins by giving him back his title, and granting him some of the power and identity that he has lost:

     “My lord!” she said.
     He stopped, but did not turn around. “It isna suitable to call me that,” he said.
     “Lallybroch is yours,” she said. “And will be so long as ye live. If ye’re its laird, I’ll call ye so.”
     “It isna mine. The estate belongs to Young Jamie.”
     “It isna Young Jamie that’s doing what you are,” she answered with decision. “And it isna your sister that’s asked me to do what I’m doin’. Turn round.” (90)

Because she is effectively restoring his position, I sense an ironic echo of the droit du seigneur--the right by which a French feudal lord could choose to deflower a bride on her wedding night.  Mary is not a virgin, and Jamie is not that kind of lord.  And that is largely the point.  Except that, through sex, she is able to restore him to his proper station--before it is stripped from him entirely.

The scene is one of a non-sacramental union.  From a Christian perspective, it would have to be regarded as fornication.  But though that is the perspective that formed Jamie's consciousness and world view long ago, he has been muted by sorrow and suffering, and a little bit of relativism from Claire (though not in the matter of sexuality, where she does, in fact, expect and demand a high level of honor and fidelity).  The issue of fidelity is raised, in the narrative, by the woman herself (and I wonder, here, if Mary McNab is a type of Mary Magdalene as she has existed in various traditions--giving something to her Lord that He could use):

     “I ken weel enough what ye’re thinkin’,” she said. “For I saw your lady, and I know how it was between the two of ye. I never had that,” she added, in a softer voice, “not wi’ either of the two men I wed. But I know the look of a true love, and it’s not in my mind to make ye feel ye’ve betrayed it.”
[....]
     “What I want,” she said quietly, “is to give ye something different. Something less, mayhap, but something ye can use; something to keep ye whole. Your sister and the bairns canna give ye that— but I can.” He heard her draw breath, and the touch on his face lifted away. “Ye’ve given me my home, my life, and my son. Will ye no let me gi’e ye this small thing in return?” (90)

And so what we have in this sexual moment is human need for tenderness and physical contact (though the emphasis is not on physical release), along with a pagan joining and sending off--a secular/pagan "communion" of sorts--and another testament to the integral nature of body and soul.  Sex has power, the narrative argues, even outside of the Sacrament.  Even so, it is used gravely, as a sacrifice, and with reverence.

Gabaldon, Diana (2004-10-26). Voyager (Outlander) (p. 90). Random House, Inc.. Kindle Edition. 

**There is a larger point to be made about the vulnerability of masculinity.  Jamie is thoroughly unmanned in this novel, and has been at risk since Outlander--from Jack Randall, from Claire, from the English, from childbirth, and now from women, though he retains dignity (perhaps separate from masculinity, or perhaps a redefinition of what masculinity means.  Still thinking about this...  It is certainly his vulnerability that makes Jamie such an attractive Romance hero for Diana Gabaldon's fans.)

Dragonfly: Jenny Reading Pt. 1 (A Literacy Moment)

I go by "Literacy-chic," and that's no accident.  It's a name I came up with while working on my dissertation--when, in fact, my blog had very little to do with reading and everything with putting words together--still "literate activity," you might say, but still not quite what I meant by the name.

I meant it to be a play--not only was I a "literacy chick"--a female scholar concerned with representations of literacy in fiction, I was interested in seeing literacy become chic, en vogue, specifically with reference to literary criticism, which doesn't consider "the reader" in quite the way I was doing.  And I still see myself as "Literacy-chic," though I'm not currently writing formal literary criticism.  Instead, I'm writing informal literary criticism on whatever strikes me.  But I am still on the lookout for "literacy moments," or "scenes of literate activity."  Because looking at how writers conceptualize the act of reading, writing, or otherwise engaging with written texts can tell us a lot about what we think literacy does, and what we see as the place of literacy in society and in our own lives.

So any time you're reading a book, and some character is reading, the novel is drawing attention to the fact that the character is reading--"Look!  You're reading a book about someone reading!"  Frequently, there is an implied question:  "So why is this person reading?" and "Is this person reading for a good reason?  Are they getting anything out of it?" and "Okay, so what are they getting out of it?"

A reader might then be prompted to ask, "So why am I reading?" and "Why do I read?" That's a question I wish all of those people who pushed those shady gray books to the top of the charts would ask themselves (I really should have written the title out to get hits, but I decided not to)--for cheap thrills?  (Were they worth it?)  For escapism? I read for escapism, too--absolutely!  And an essential part of my escapism is to be found in the ideas I get when I read.  About things like why we read.  Things I can think about instead of the things I'd rather not think about.  So reading about the fictional reader reading should make us ask, "Why do we (people in general, certain types of people, people in society) read?"

In Dragonfly in Amber, when Jenny Fraser becomes ecstatic over the prospect of new reading material, the text very specifically asks exactly that kind of question:

"Ooh, three French novels and a book of poetry from Paris!" Jenny said in excitement, opening the paper-wrapped package.  "C'est un embarras de richesse, hm?  Which shall we read tonight?"  She lifted the small stack of books from their wrappings, stroking the soft leather cover of the top one with a forefinger that trembled with delight. Jenny loved books with the same passion her brother reserved for horses.  (580)

The level of delight is conspicuous, particularly in the last line.  The comparison--books to horses--is appropriate because of the relationship between Jamie and Jenny as siblings.  It is an obvious comparison, since Claire's narrative voice seeks to understand how the two, who grew up in the same household, measure up to one another and to Claire's understanding of Jamie.  Such comparison of siblings is a frequent narrative gesture in the chapters with Jenny.

However, the comparison is interesting for another reason.  Thinking about the comparison of books and horses, what exactly does it say about books?  Horses are living creatures.  Books are inanimate objects.  Horses belong outside.  Books are kept indoors.  Something might be said about exterior and interior spaces, and women being comfortable or belonging in interior spaces, but given all of Jenny's various activities, that's not really a relevant statement, and would reveal more about the critic's biases and sensitivities than about the novel itself.

Horses are active.  We might assume that books are passive, but the novel doesn't tell us that.  In fact, Friday's post will show that reading books is not, in fact, a passive activity for Jenny.

Perhaps the love of books runs deep in Jenny, and the love of horses deep in Jamie, because both brother and sister have strength of spirit that requires transport and freedom.  Both books and horses provide transport and freedom according to what each of them needs--or can use.  Admittedly, Jenny cannot run from the responsibility of the home--unlike Claire, who has no home, or Jamie, whose role as laird is largely forfeit throughout Outlander and Dragonfly in Amber.  An 18th Century novel might not have been self-conscious enough to declare reading a path to a kind of freedom, but Dragonfly in Amber (1992), as a 20th Century novel, comfortable with literacy and with all of the demands and expectations we have for reading, is free to make that claim.  Certainly, Jenny has a good reason to read.  She would have to have a good reason in order to make time, considering all of her other obligations.

But think about it--why do people read? Why does Jenny Fraser read? And what do authors and the characters and books they write tell us about why we should read?  Why do you read?

More on this next time...

Dragonfly: Where is God in Time Travel?

There are definitely questions about which I'm not interested in speculating. These are mostly questions that resolve themselves within the novels, or questions that do not resonate outside of the novels.  They are interesting, but there is no need to elaborate.  One such question asserts itself in Dragonfly in Amber, in the chapters titled "Untimely Resurrection" and "The Royal Stud": the question of Jamie's vengeance upon Jack Randall, and whether Claire is right to make him postpone that vengeance.  It could be that I think Claire is more wrong about preventing Jamie from killing Jack Randall on this particular occasion than she is to make him betray his country and kin to prevent the Battle (and devastation) of Culloden.  I'll never tell.  But it's also true that Gabaldon brings the matter around very neatly, giving Jamie the ability to reclaim some of his own by determining his own reason for postponing vengeance (and getting in some nice foreshadowing as well).  It's a lovely narrative card that she plays, and well worth giving a nod.  (See pp. 401-403 in the small, Dell paperback version with the orange cover.)  But--it is part of the narrative, and in terms of Jamie's justification, what he does or does not owe Claire, the question of conscience, or anything involving their feelings about other characters, it works itself out, and doesn't really require speculation or further analysis of motivations.  I like to leave the characters to themselves, and allow their motivations to emerge through the action of the story rather than through my own suppositions and psychoanalysis.  It's why criticism is (or should be) sort of the anti-fan-fiction.  (Just for fun, check out Diana Gabaldon's Fan Fiction Policy.)

What is interesting in the maneuverings of Claire to prevent Jamie from killing Jack Randall too soon is (first) that the question is never the morality of the vengeance.  That is taken for granted, and I'm glad.  Moralistic posturing would do no one any good in this case.  Claire's conscience is evoked, rather neatly, to turn the guilt of preventing Frank's birth (indirectly, by the death of Jack Randall) to Claire's decision to abandon Frank for Jamie--at least, that is how Jamie casts Claire's decision not to pass again through the stones: "it's one thing to abandon a man, and another to condemn him to death" (401).  Non-birth/prevention of conception is not quite death, but we'll let that go for the moment.  Jamie's conscience is never an issue, except insofar as killing always leaves a mark:  "I remember the face of every man I've killed, and always will" (400).  And that's just fine.

But the deeper implications of the maneuverings leave some room for consideration.  If this novel is instrumental to the series, it may well be--first and foremost--the working out of what a time traveler can and can't accomplish with reference to history that gives it it's highest value in the big picture.  (I have other considerations of time travel here and here.)  The reason I drag God into it in my title is because the question of conscience was right in front of me in the narrative.  Brother Anselm and his theology, the moral implications of preventing someone from being born.  But a larger question emerges:  could anything Jamie and Claire have done prevent the beginning of the bloodline that eventually produces Frank Randall, Claire's husband in the year 1943?

It's something like the question my son asked of his 4th grade teacher at the fourth-rate Catholic school that he went to for most of that year:  if Adam and Eve hadn't sinned, would any of us exist?  Need I say that the teacher didn't know how to answer the question?  I consulted a deacon friend of mine, and came up with the response that our existence in God's plan didn't depend on sin.  We simply don't know how things would have worked out without it.  There is something tangentially related to this question happening in Perelandra, the second book of C. S. Lewis's Space Trilogy.  An alien world is experiencing its own Creation, and Lewis's Ransom is a spectator and intercessor, preventing the successful temptation of the newly-Created female of the alien species so that the world might emerge without the taint of Original Sin.  The idea is--Sin or no Sin, our existence as individuals is part of God's plan.

So is this worldview somehow reflected in Gabaldon's novel?  At first glance it may seem not to be.  Clearly, it is absent from the Back to the Future movie trilogy--things change, people disappear.  But there's nothing about God in those films.  Religion is simply not part of the picture(s).  By contrast, there's Catholicism all over the place in the Outlander series.  You can't get around it, the novels have a Catholic consciousness, whatever their orthodoxy.  You might say that it proceeds from what has been called "the Catholic imagination," though I wouldn't quote Andrew Greeley for orthodoxy's sake...

Without saying how, I will say that Frank's bloodline works itself out.  It works itself out with Jack Randall alive, but it does so in a way that his survival has precious little to do with the birth.  Clever.  So does that mean Predestination?  I'm not sure.  Although there is implied argument between Predestination and Free Will in the novels (especially with reference to Roger Wakefield in some of the later books), there seems to be quite a bit of room for Free Will--or really, would readers enjoy the books so much?  But characters' Free Will seems to feed directly into what they know to have been going to happen.  (I'm absolutely playing with verb tense there.  Too bad I'm not writing in a romance language!)  In other words, the characters end up proving their own instrumentality to the events that will unfold--or have unfolded--or will have unfolded.  Everything fits neatly into place.  Some would consider this as evidence for God in the Outlander worldview--or in its representation of time travel.  I think there's evidence, at least, that the man who was Frank Randall was "meant" to exist--which does, in fact, suggest some greater intentionality beyond the machinations of Claire and Jamie.

The Thing About Time Travel - Pt. 2

This discussion of time travel is continued from The Thing About Time Travel - Pt. 1.

I've already mentioned that it was hard for me to read Dragonfly in Amber the first time.  Let me qualify that--it was hard for me to reconcile myself to the beginning of the novel and its implications.  Once I was reading, I was zipping through.  However, it was very difficult for me to suspend my disbelief--specifically with reference to the time travel.  What was the problem?--you might wonder.  It clearly wasn't an issue with Outlander.  Stepping through standing stones into the 18th C--why not?  But hindsight-is-not-quite-20-20 with a time traveler transported the 18th C?--not so much.  Even so, there was a lot to keep me zipping through, and I will continue to chronicle those things.  But the whole premise--"should we change the course of history?"--grated on me.

It seems to me that the whole question of "changing the future" by the time traveler's actions is a fruitless question.  It's something akin to the "chicken and the egg."  Sure--the act of time travel changes something.  It must, right?  If we believe that even the smallest thing affects everything else, and we want to believe this.  George Bailey knows it to be true, whatever the dark, Walmart-facilitating, community-destroying implications of his progressive endeavors.

But here's the thing...  In the future from which the proverbial time traveler departs, it is not necessarily clear whether the time traveler's experience in the past has already happened.

Now, I don't know anything about Dr. Who, so perhaps the creators of the Dr. Who series (both of them) deal with this issue better.  But as a child of the 80s, I was raised on the logic of Back to the Future, so I know a thing or two about how time travel is supposed to work--when you go to the past, you either have to stay out of the way to prevent crucial events from being interrupted, or you have to engineer a way to get them back on the right track again--hopefully with better results than the first go-round.

These days, the time travel motif--its groundwork firmly laid by Back to the Future--can be casually employed without over-explanation (that whole "space-time continuum" thing) in the Disney children's series Phineas and Ferb.  Though the show is generally a stroke of genius, I nevertheless quibble a bit with their elimination of "alternate universe" Candace.  In the manner of Heinlein, in The Cat who Walks through Walls, I would like to see the alternate histories existing as parallels.

Heinlein employs agents in The Cat who Walks through Walls (O! Wikipedia, how I hate thee!) to alter history in a way that will be favorable to their cause--possibly the Lunar Revolt.  Each altered timeline creates a parallel universe in which events continue along their logical paths.  Long before I read the (somewhat convoluted) Cat who Walks through Walls, I remember seeing ads for a short-lived TV-show called Voyagers!, in which time-traveling agents are sent to correct historical events that were somehow disrupted.  Given the dates, I am surprised that I remember the commercial so vividly, but I do: a boy's shrill voice intones, "Moses was found by the pharaoh's daughter--" [pushes basket] "--in the Nile!"  We can only be grateful that the constraints of the TV show did not allow for the creation of parallel timelines.  There was only one, and its events were either correct or incorrect.

The Outlander books deal with time travel as a dilemma more or less frequently, depending on the novel.  The question hangs over Dragonfly in Amber like the sword of Damocles--(I stand by the metaphor)--because the actions of Claire and Jamie (which include multiple counts of betrayal) hinge on the question of whether one (or two) mere mortals might prevent the disastrous Battle of Culloden--or the entire Jacobite Rising of 1745.

George Bailey notwithstanding, I don't believe in the ability of one person or two to make that kind of impact, even with the benefit of limited hindsight.  It seems the height of arrogance for them to make the attempt, particularly since Claire, in so doing, completely sacrifices Jamie's personal honor.  So my own skepticism limits my enjoyment--and it's pretty important to be able to admit to these biases when reading.  It's part of the "rhetorical situation" of the reader.

Literarily speaking, if the characters accomplish what they set out to do, the books would change from historical fiction to alternate history.  So if we know what genre we're reading, it's a foregone conclusion.  Watching machinations that are doomed to failure makes me glaze over a bit, right up to the point when political intrigue becomes personal tragedy.  Consider the classic Star Trek episode "City on the Edge of Forever," which crosses personal and political destinies as Kirk is forced to sacrifice the woman he loves to prevent Hitler from winning World War II.

A far more interesting question to me--and perhaps what I think we should be asking--is whether history as the characters know it (which is also how the reader knows it) depends on time travel itself.  In Outlander, there is implicit suggestion of this very question in Claire's instructions to Jenny of what she should do to prepare for impending doom:

     "Plant potatoes," I said. 

     Jenny's mouth dropped slightly open, then she firmed her jaw and nodded briskly. "Potatoes. Aye. There's none closer than Edinburgh, but I'll send for them. How many?" 

     "As many as you can. They're not planted in the Highlands now, but they will be.  They're a root crop that will keep for a long time, and the yield is better than wheat.  Put as much ground as you can into crops that can be stored.  There's going to be a famine, a bad one, in two years.  If there's land or property that's not productive now, sell it, for gold.  There's going to be a war, and slaughter.  Men will be hunted, here and everywhere through the Highlands." (Outlander 672)

In preparing Lallybroch for the aftermath of Culloden, which in the 20th Century is historical fact, Claire might raise a question in the mind of the reader--when were potatoes introduced to the Highlands? Is the introduction of potatoes--and the survival of Lallybroch--a fact in Claire's 20th Century as well?  It is impossible to know, since Lallybroch was not on Claire's radar when she was in the 20th C (the first time--sigh).

The question of how time travel influences personal history is a little easier--both easier to accept change and easier to see the influence that has already occurred.  Would, for example, characters not exist had someone else not traveled back in time?  Well, no.  In fact, some characters would not exist if a time traveler had not traveled to the past.  So there are clues that the things Claire will go back and do in the 1740s will have already affected the future/present of1945 or 1965...  The very existence of Roger MacKenzie Wakefield--descendant of a woman who went from the 1960s to the 1740s (and arrived before Claire, our traveler from 1945)--strongly implies that history as we know it depends on the activity of time travel.  That's a little bit mind blowing, but not unprecedented!

Re-enter pop culture.  The Futurama episode "Roswell that Ends Well" actually has a nice treatment of the paradox of time travel--Professor Farnsworth's warning to the crewe is "You mustn't interfere with the past.  Don't do anything that affects anything.  Unless it turns out that you were supposed to do it; in which case, for the love of God, don't not do it!"  Fry takes the advice to heart, and when he inadvertently places his (presumed) grandfather in the way of nuclear testing, he assumes that his grandma must not, in fact, be his grandma, and assures his own existence by yielding to her advances.  History--and thus, the future--depend on time travel.

Meanwhile, H. G. Wells' time traveler plays it safe--he leaves the past alone and only meddles in the future, where he can't jeopardize his own existence or the history of the world.

I'm not going to touch Time Bandits.  After all, it proceeds from the warped mind of Terry Gilliam.

For me, having the characters actions explain history, or tie neatly into it, is preferable.  When there is a neat intersection, I can sit back and admire the cleverness of it all.  If changing history is going to be a valid possibility in a time travel novel, go big with it.  Have the Americans lose the Revolutionary War--I dare you!  But accept the consequences, and show me what would have happened. It never really is a possibility in the Outlander novels.  We know that from Roger's date with Brianna to view the Culloden battlefield in the beginning of Dragonfly in Amber that Jamie and Claire do not succeed.

So at the end of the day--and the novel--it really is the personal tragedy that is most important, and the impulse to change history, the hubris that propels it.  The function of the fantasy element, then?  Perhaps to reveal that hubris for what it is, and to justify Claire's suffering when she returns to the 20th Century.

The Thing About Time Travel - Pt. 1

     "And you, my Sassenach?  What were you born for? To be lady of a manor, or to sleep in the fields like a gypsy? To be a healer, or a don's wife, or an outlaw's lady?" 

     "I was born for you," I said simply, and held out my arms to him. (Outlander 650)

Admittedly, I couldn't resist this quote.  The beautiful thing about a blog post as compared to, say, an academic paper, is that you can quote simply for the sake of quoting, without heavy justification.  Not that academics don't quote because they feel like it--they simply load on the justification afterwards.  I do in fact have a reason for quoting this particular exchange--and it has to do with the complexity of who one is meant to be--one's vocation if you will--to which I will no doubt return when the question of Claire's doctoring becomes a narrative "big deal."  But here, the question of vocation is bound to marriage, and to what kind of man Claire is meant to be joined.  There is a strong sense of destiny that is very romantic, but not particularly Catholic--perhaps more pagan, or a hint of Scots Presbyterian predestination?

These lines also show Claire leaving behind a husband she chose--in the 20th Century--for one she did not choose in the same kind of conscious act of will, reversing a trope of Celtic music that is represented by such songs as "Mattie Groves" (one of the Child ballads) and "Raggle Taggle Gypsy" (which I first heard performed by the Jolly Rogues on the Irish and Celtic Music Podcast).  In these songs (and many more), the woman leaves or betrays the man she has married or been forced to marry for money or status for a man with only his charms.  Jamie is like those ideal men because he is less strictly "civilized" and does, in fact, have only his charms to offer.

And there is yet another question embedded here--can one be born in the future for someone who exists in the past?

The time travel post has been long in coming.  I'm posting now, in part, because we're heading into the new year, and it seems appropriate.  I am also posting now because I'm rereading Dragonfly in Amber, and in some ways the notion of time travel is more important to this particular novel than to Outlander--though for me, less satisfying, as it brings up more of the frustrations of the time travel motif.

If you ask "why time travel?" in reference to Outlander--which you might, considering that it could have been a perfectly satisfying historical novel without time travel--what do you get?  Well, a change in genre, for starters, and a whole fan base of druid-wannabes who will be stalking stone circles all over the British isles in the hopes of finding Jamie.  The kind of fan base that I belonged to in my Mists of Avalon days back in high school.  But that change in genre is important, because the addition of a fantasy element suggests that there's something more to the story than meets the eye.  Fantasy functions rhetorically to turn the reader's mind to difference, or to wonder.

In Outlander, the time travel difference throws into sharp relief the difference between the men--Frank and Jamie--and all they represent to Claire.  If there wasn't a suave, sophisticated, worldly, experienced Frank to calmly ask whether Claire had had an affair during the war (in not so many words) and reassure her that it would be okay (whether sincerely or not), then Jamie's sexual inexperience and more physical, rough worldliness would not have a foil.  The reader would only have his or her (let's just say "her," shall we?) experience of the Twentieth- and Twenty-first centuries to draw on for comparison, and with only a historical novel, neatly contained in the Eighteenth Century, would the reader make the comparison?  Some might.  I venture to say, though, that most wouldn't.  The novel's representation of the past would reflect only on the past, and the reader would remain quite comfortably in her own present, content to believe her current circumstance preferable in everything except the lack of a 6-foot Scot with rippling muscles and flaming red hair.  Oh, and a kilt.  Commando.

Time travel, as the "fantasy element,"functions as a means of turning the reader's attention to the contrast between the two time periods--and it does so admirably well, for the reader who is open to it.  Now, for my sister, who had regrettably read Outlander before I gave it to her for Christmas, the dilemma of whether Claire should return to Frank was a false one, given the (to her) obvious choice of Jamie.  But (Catholic understanding of faithfulness, Sacrament, and marriage vows notwithstanding), the choice of 20th Century husband vs. 18th Century husband, possible only because of time travel, underscores the differences between the men who are constructed by the centuries they inhabit.  And if the decks are stacked a bit against Frank, well... they just are.  But they're stacked against the 20th Century as well.

Now, none of this touches what I find bothersome and irritating about time travel.  And for that, because I'm being conscious of the length of my posts, you will have to wait for part 2, due after New Year's so that we can do a little time traveling ourselves.  (I know, I know.)

Happy New Year, friends!