"No oath or bond is laid...": A Notable Moment from Fellowship of the Ring

This is a Notable Moment post, and what I mean by "notable moment" reaches back into my purpose(s?) for keeping up this blog (intermittently):  to give an outlet to my instinct for analysis, to stay in touch with my academic side, to develop my theory of rhetorical reading, and to practice close reading on the web (or at least closer than your average book review!)

Notable moments are "rhetorical responses."  They stem from the circumstances of reading--what readers might be looking for (like me with literacy), what their life experiences have been, what they have been reading, thinking or talking about reading.  This is the value of rereading--each reading situation is different.  The work itself hasn't changed, but we read it differently:  bringing different things to the text and taking different things away.

Notable moments are a teaching and research methodology.  They

• encourage reader engagement with the text
• provide a basis for class discussion
• stimulate connections (synthesis, to use a $0.10 pedagogical word) between what readers already know and what they are reading
• validate active reading
• collect ideas that might evolve into research paper/article ideas

They also work particularly well as blog posts.

Recently, I have been rereading The Lord of the Rings.  I have read it and listened to the unabridged audiobook numerous times at this point, so that it is almost too familiar.  It is slow going, because there isn't the compulsion to read, but at times, having read more contemporary writing lately, I am struck by how simply exquisite the language is--to say nothing of plot and character development, world building, mythos, and all that makes Tolkien fabulous.  In the midst of my reading, I read Darwin's response to George R. R. Martin's somewhat offhanded critique of Tolkien on war.  I also find myself reading Tolkien with the American History Channel series The Revolutionary War as background noise.  And so, I come across this passage:

"The others go with him as free companions, to help him on his way.  You may tarry, or come back or turn aside in other paths, as chance allows.  The further you go, the less easy it will be to withdraw; yet no oath or bond is laid on you to go further than you will.  For you do not yet know the strength of your hearts, and you cannot forsee what each may meet upon the road."

     "Faithless is he that says farewell when the road darkens," said Gimli.

     "Maybe," said Elrond, but let him not vow to walk in the dark, who has not seen the nightfall."

     "Yet sworn word may strengthen quaking heart," said Gimli.

     "Or break it," said Elrond. (FOTR 274)

I paused over this passage initially, thinking about war.  Thinking about the British in particular, and the treatment of deserters in the Great War--the first "modern" war, a for which young British males volunteered enthusiastically, for which they were unprepared.  It is also, famously and notably, the war Tolkien experienced first hand.

As Elrond commends the newly-formed fellowship to their journey, it is tempting to see this passage as a statement of sympathy, if not with deserters, than certainly with those who volunteered for a war they could not possibly understand.  Whether or not the cause is the epic mythology of good and evil, Elrond's wisdom asserts that resolve alone can't necessarily drive one through fear.  Later, in Return of the King, Aragorn deals gently with men who were ill-equipped to march into Morder, setting them to tasks that were appropriate to their ability, and which preserved or restored their dignity.

And yet, even though Aragorn and Boromir intend to head to war, the situation of the fellowship is different.  Two pages earlier, the narrative asserts that "[t]he Company took little gear of war, for their hope was in secrecy not in battle" (272).  Perhaps, then, Elrond's conditions are not applicable to war.  After all, what general can command men who are not bound to follow orders? Could Tolkien possibly mean that soldiers should only serve insofar as they were able?  This seems doubtful, and yet, the association between oaths in war and the oaths of the fellowship is hard to avoid, and perhaps it is in Aragorn's generosity and skill with men that the question is resolved.

What is interesting is the exchange of proverbs--not quite platitudes--between Gimli and Elrond, which represent two seeminly opposed approaches to oath-taking, and perhaps to human nature more generally.  The opposing views may also characterize the particular races of Middle Earth--the elves, who keep to themselves, who belong to families and kinds, but who are very individualized, and the dwarves, who seem to be of one kind, but who are more clanlike, joining together in common purposes.  Elrond is for individual freedom; Gimli, for allegience and loyalty.  Inevitably, both are right, but Elrond seems more right.

It is not a theory; simply an observation, and a question.  Is this about war?  Politics?  Individual freedom?  Individual will?  How does being bound to another affect individual will?

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.

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.

Is there a Postcolonial Scotland?

This post starts from a couple of places. First, Marc Gunn's blog, where he writes about the differences between Scottish and Irish Celtic music in the context of his experience with each:

"It’s like the Irish songs were seeped in hundreds of years of oppression and Scotland broke free from that feeling. Oh wait! They did!"

Now, reading this from where I am now, analyzing a series of historial fantasy/fiction that dramatizes the  definitive defeat of the Highland clans and the aftermath of that conflict seen through the lens of a fictional Highlander and various 20th Century characters, it struck me that this conclusion was a bit too... easy, perhaps?  So I posted a couple of responses on Facebook:

You might say that the English crushed the opposition more definitively in Scotland in the 18th C, so there wasn't the festering subversive element as in Ireland. The clans didn't really survive as such. The Irish didn't have the obvious social/political structure in place, so it wasn't as easy to rout out. And even in the 18th C, Scotland was more influenced by Protestantism. In Ireland, the English Protestant landowners formed a superstructure on top of the native Irish--with more integration in Ulster. You might say that the religious question was already native to Scotland, so it wasn't an imposition from without as in Ireland.

And specifically with reference to music:

Also - I would venture that the complex stories are there in Scottish ballads, but those aren't the songs we remember as being quintessentially Scottish. I think the songs we remember as quintessentially Scottish are the ones with bagpipes and brogues. Many of the songs that we think of as *Irish* actually appear among the ballads collected by Frances James Child in the Nineteenth Century in England and Scotland!

So really, it's more complex in terms of folk-tradition.  Why is there this connection?  What was the folk culture exchange between Ireland and Scotland?  I'm sure someone has written on this subject.  And politically, I'm not sure I feel comfortable with the idea of Scotland more easily accepting its position relative to England.

Now, on this blog, I have posts that ask postcolonial questions.  But I am not really asking them of Scotland, but of the novels--which are 20th and 21st Century American novels. Not British.  Not Scottish.  So really, the novels don't tell us anything at all about Scotland, only about the perception of Scotland that the novel represents.  A historical novel has the potential to act as a piece of historical commentary, arguing more effectively than any textbook or essay that the reader should view the past from a certain perspective.  Films do this, too.  Consider Gone with the Wind, for example--because it's an easy one, and both a film and a novel.  It definitely presents a very specific view of the South from before and after the Civil War. The problematic character of Scarlett O'Hara might make each work's sympathies harder to sort out.  By contrast, the reader's lot in the Outlander novels is cast irrevocably with Jamie's sympathies and experiences, even if sometimes tempered by Claire's 20th Century hindsight.

Scotland was never a colony.  Ireland was.  America was.  Scotland and England have shared monarchs, dynasties, land mass,  religious movements.  As an English major and History minor, I never learned about Scotland as separate from England.  The one reference to Scottish history I will never forget was my history professor Dr. Schlunz, who said that James I looked around at Parliament and said, "I know what you are!  You're a bunch of goddamned Presbytarians!"  Irish history, I learned through studying Yeats and largely under the tutelage of Dr. Mary FitzGerald (and to a degree, O'Flaherty's Irish Pub).  But there was no "in" for me in Scottish literature--Burns?  Not someone I ever liked, in part because I had no real interest in the 18th Century, and no real interest in Scotch Gaelic.  I studied French, Latin and Greek, and considered Irish, but I wanted my English literature in English.  I didn't give Old English any serious attention until grad school, and didn't really have the patience for Chaucer's Middle English.  So only through some Celtic music, like "Culloden's Harvest" by Deanta, which I enjoyed but didn't investigate, and now through the Outlander books, do I get a sense of Scottish history.  (And I've read a few bona fide history articles, though not a lot.)

America was a colony.  So it makes sense that I grew up feeling a hefty sense of righteous indignation toward Imperialists--England, and especially Spain, which was vilified in all textbooks of the 1980s and early 90s, to my knowledge.  I have an affinity for postcolonial criticism and literature--Marxism notwithstanding.  I like the idea of a center and a periphery, and an exchange between the two--that the colonizer is influenced by the colonial subject.  I like the idea that by exercising power over others, the colonizer is debased.  I like subtle subversion of colonial power.  I do not think we would be better off had the Spanish not wiped out the Aztecs, nor if Christianity had not spread.  I am definitely an imperfect postcolonialist.  I do think that England caused immeasurable, lasting global political harm with its Empire.  But...  Scotland was not a colony.  So when I look for that postcolonial sentiments in Outlander, it is to satisfy my own righteous indignation at the atrocities committed in Scotland, by the English, in acts that were similar to the oppression/suppression under colonization, but not technically colonization.

Scotland has nationalism, but not postcolonialism.  The clans--who would offer resistance to English rule--were well-organized, and easily stamped out.  Robert Burns may have actually been fairly typical of the non-Highland response to the Jacobite rising, if you consider his version of the Anti-Jacobite/anti-war "Ye Jacobites by Name":

YE Jacobites by name, give an ear, give an ear,
Ye Jacobites by name, give an ear,
Ye Jacobites by name,
Your fautes I will proclaim,
Your doctrines I maun blame, you shall hear.	5
What is Right, and What is Wrang, by the law, by the law?
What is Right and what is Wrang by the law?
What is Right, and what is Wrang?
A short sword, and a lang,
A weak arm and a strang, for to draw.	10
What makes heroic strife, famed afar, famed afar?
What makes heroic strife famed afar?
What makes heroic strife?
To whet th’ assassin’s knife,
Or hunt a Parent’s life, wi’ bluidy war?	15
Then let your schemes alone, in the state, in the state,
Then let your schemes alone in the state.
Then let your schemes alone,
Adore the rising sun,
And leave a man undone, to his fate.

It might be summed up as "don't rock the boat," or "why can't we be friends?" And perhaps the Jacobites were to blame.  (Come to think of it, Bono from U2 might be the Irish equivalent of Robert Burns in "Ye Jacobites by Name."  Turn that one over for a moment!)  But it seems that there was an element of identity at stake--personal identity, religious identity (for the Catholics), and national identity.

Because it is the clans and the plaids--and the symbols of the past that was so definitively cut off by Culloden--that signify Scottish Nationalism today.  When you look to representations of Irish Nationalism in popular culture, they're not always pretty--Patriot Games, for example.  (Also see Patriot Games and "The Patriot Game.")  But the examples are contemporary.  When we look for movies that celebrate Scotland--and Patriot Games in no way celebrates Ireland, by the way.  I would look to The Secret of Roan Inish or The Field or The Commitments or even The Quiet Man--when we look for celebrations of Scotland, we get Braveheart or Brave.  One historical, one fantasy--both idealizations of a far, far distant past.  Postcolonial, post-British Nationalist Scotland is, in fact, pre-British Scotland.  As in Outlander.

I think that American audiences, and maybe contemporary audiences, want to see oppression opposed.  And so I look for postcolonial perspectives (for so they are called) imposed onto 18th Century Scotland by the author--to ignite my righteous indignation and to satisfy my innate sense of justice.  And sometimes, I find them.

Voyager: Claire's Vocation (again)

So the question of vocation gets sticky when tangled with Roger's self-perception and first tentative questioning of why he is what he is, and Frank's insecurity with Claire's vocation and passion and his relative lack of vocation, and passion.  As Claire is the central character and common denominator, her own experience of vocation carries greater weight, and Roger and Frank at this point serve to "fill in" the picture of Claire.  So it is worth noting when Claire remembers Mrs. Graham's fortune telling as it reflects on fate and individual destiny:

“The lines in your hand change as you change,” she had said. “It’s no so much what you’re born with, as what ye make of yourself.” (107)

So destiny.  Is it a thing?  Identity.  Is it fixed?  Both seem to be a series of choices.  And that means a lot for a time traveler.  It also means a lot for a mother.

And it is as a mother with a vocation that I am interested in all of this.  The word "vocation" is one I would not necessarily have used before becoming Catholic.  At root, it means a sort of divine calling--usually to the priesthood and religious life.  But it has been expanded to give value to work in general, or for specific roles--motherhood in particular.  It can be used to validate women who are mothers, and for whom motherhood is their primary vocation--because motherhood absolutely is still a calling!  But it is often not acknowledged as such--often not even acknowledged as a valid lifestyle choice, much less a vocation.  On the other hand, marking motherhood as a vocation heightens the conflict inherent in choosing motherhood in addition to another occupation--particularly an ambitious one.  Because the rhetoric of "vocation" is somewhat absolute--and having dual "vocations" is not generally permissible in the rhetoric of vocation.

Now, this is problematic when you have marriage and motherhood as vocations, though for men, having a vocation as a husband and father is seamless with providing for the  family through work.  The specific type of work isn't generally mentioned as a "vocation"--which is the more secular meaning--except in the case of privileged service professions, like teaching and medicine, interestingly enough.  Really, the concept works best in the context of consecrated religious life, since being a priest, brother, or religious sister does preclude other vocations--marriage and parenthood most obviously--it gets tricky again with the diaconate.  What emerges is that sometimes vocation means something like "work," while other times it means something like "lifestyle," but it always means something like "calling."

It is from this context--and the context of a woman who is a mother, and who feels called to a particular kind of work, from which I am currently estranged, and which seemed much more compatible in many ways with motherhood than what I am now doing (working 40 hours rather than holding an academic teaching position)--that I write about vocation.  So when Claire mentions her competing vocations, and laments that she once experienced a unified identity, I take note:

Once I had thought I was whole—had seemed to be able to love a man, to bear a child, to heal the sick—and know that all these things were natural parts of me, not the difficult, troubled fragments into which my life had now disintegrated.  (107)

Perhaps predictably, we return to the (romanticized) difference in life between the 20th Century and the 18th.  And while part of this is no doubt Jamie, part of it is also the seamlessness of existence in the  (romanticized) 18th Century--which Claire only gets to experience because she is married to Jamie.  I doubt that Dougal McKenzie would have permitted such freedom, or enabled such unity.  And yet, Jamie epitomizes his age for the reader.  There is passion and vitality, there is not time for anxiety, because survival is the first priority.  And so Claire enjoys a more unified existence.  And so in the 20th Century, she throws herself into medicine, in order to recover a sense of purpose if she can't recover the wholeness.  It is hardly a surprise that there are bumps, but the consolations are what elevate Claire's work to a calling:

“Frank was right, in a way, though. It isn’t necessarily easier if you know what it is you’re meant to do— but at least you don’t waste time in questioning or doubting. If you’re honest— well, that isn’t necessarily easier, either. Though I suppose if you’re honest with yourself and know what you are, at least you’re less likely to feel that you’ve wasted your life, doing the wrong thing.”  (110)

Such is the epitome of "vocation."

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

Voyager: Frank's Vocation -or- The Supportive Spouse

In a way, this is another post about Claire's vocation.  But in particular, it is about how her vocation affects her 20th Century husband, Frank, and his own concept of his vocation.  The conflict between a man's and a woman's vocation is a very 20th Century phenomenon.  When women are limited to vocations that complement those of men (and notice I did not say "women's vocation is to serve men," or women's vocations are limited to home and family," because I feel that those statements are too stereotypically feminist and reductive), then there could be no conflict.  Even in the 18th Century, Jamie did not feel that his own role was threatened by Claire's vocation--by other things, certainly, and sometimes by Claire's 20th Century sensibility, but not specifically by her vocation.  The reasons for this difference remain to be seen...

During their discussion of vocation, upon hearing that Frank made Claire's medical career possible, Roger remarks to Claire that he didn't think Frank would have approved.  Claire confirms--Frank did not approve.  This is important in itself, because Claire's vocation did indeed come into direct conflict with Brianna's wellbeing--hence, with Claire's other vocation, and what many today, especially in religious circles, would still see as her primary vocation: motherhood.  The narrative here evokes a long debate, since pioneering voices in women's rights--Wollstonecraft and Gilman in particular, for very different reasons--felt that not every woman (whether or not she had borne a child) was suited for motherhood as a vocation.  The event (which I'm not going to recount) that brings the matter to a head for Frank and Claire is sufficiently dramatic, but, though Frank does, the reader is never expected to judge Claire as an unfit mother.

Nevertheless, Frank, in a not-so-rare moment of clarity, voices the contrast between Roger's sense of a "natural" vocation as something he continued to do out of habit, and Claire's as something she was driven from within to continue to do:

“Ah, Claire.” He spoke impatiently, but with a tinge of affection nonetheless. “You’ve known forever who you are. Do you realize at all how unusual it is to know that?”  (105)

Frank contrasts her passion with his sense of simply doing very well one of many things he might have done well:

"I haven’t got that absolute conviction that there’s something in life I’m meant to do— and you have.”
     “Is that good?” The edges of my nostrils were sore, and my eyes puffed from crying.
     He laughed shortly. “It’s damned inconvenient, Claire. To you and me and Bree, all three. But my God, I do envy you sometimes.” (106)

That envy becomes even more clear as Frank contrasts his own scholarly occupation, which, like Roger's, does not seem to ascend to the level of a vocation, with the men whom he and others study:

“To have that passion for anything”— a small twitch tugged the corner of his mouth—“or anyone. That’s quite splendid, Claire, and quite terribly rare.” He squeezed my hand gently and let it go, turning to reach behind him for one of the books on the shelf beside the table.
     It was one of his references, Woodhill’s Patriots, a series of profiles of the American Founding Fathers.
     He laid his hand on the cover of the book, gently, as though reluctant to disturb the rest of the sleeping lives interred there.
     “These were people like that. The ones who cared so terribly much— enough to risk everything, enough to change and do things.  Most people aren’t like that, you know. It isn’t that they don’t care, but that they don’t care so greatly.” He took my hand again, this time turning it over. One finger traced the lines that webbed my palm, tickling as it went.
     “Is it there, I wonder?” he said, smiling a little. “Are some people destined for a great fate, or to do great things? Or is it only that they’re born somehow with that great passion— and if they find themselves in the right circumstances, then things happen? It’s the sort of thing you wonder, studying history  …   but there’s no way of telling, really. All we know is what they accomplished. (106-107)

In the midst of this HUGE, AMAZINGLY HUGE foreshadowing, I am curious about those "circumstances."  Frank's question seems particularly valid and compelling, considering that Claire and Jamie found themselves in those circumstances, on numerous occasions--Claire in World War II, and then in the 18th Century.  Only back in the postwar 20th Century is she compelled less by circumstance than by inner passion.

Frank lacks that passion, but--like Roger--is drawn by it to Brianna. But he is somewhat absolved, perhaps, because he did not have the circumstances to inspire passion.  He can blame his more lukewarm existence in a more passionless age (World War II notwithstanding).  Here again, as in Outlander, Frank represents a time period that is lacking immediacy and passion.

Frank perhaps redeems himself further when, in deference to Claire's vocation--which he defines with reference to an inner calling and passion--he offers his own brand of support (albeit reluctantly):

“I said,” he repeated patiently, “that I’ll take Bree. She can come from her school to the university, and play at my office until I’m ready to come home.” (107)

This is a gesture that was not only alien to Frank--it was alien to the 1960s.  In fact, in certain academic cultures, it is still alien, though I have believed academia to be more family-friendly than most professions.  For a man to make this kind of sacrifice at this moment in history is about as much an element of fantasy as travel back in time through standing stones. However, as a narrative gesture, it speaks to the necessity of support for a mother who would accomplish external goals.  Claire had to have some support on the parenting side, otherwise she would not--could not--have become a doctor.

However, Frank's attitude does not make things easier for Claire.  His support is itself a condemnation (he has already implied that she will "pay" for her passion), and a punishment, and he remains slightly despicable:

     “Why?” I asked bluntly. “It isn’t that you’re dead keen on my being a doctor; I know that.”
     “No,” he said thoughtfully. “It isn’t that. But I do think there isn’t any way to stop you— perhaps the best I can do is to help, so that there will be less damage to Brianna.” His features hardened slightly then, and he turned away. (108)

However, his actions did facilitate Claire's career.  And perhaps Frank is justified in his hurt, and in his assessment.  Claire is not a motherly mother.  But he is well-established by this time as an unsympathetic character.

As historical commentary, it is worth noting that Jamie was more accepting of Claire's vocation than the 20th Century Frank, just as Claire's healing seems--in some ways--more of an anomaly in the 20th Century.  Frank wants Claire's identity to be more one-dimensional than Jamie.  Which perhaps makes for a reactionary commentary:  do 20th Century men keep tighter reign on women because, unlike in the 18th Century, men's power is not absolute?

As for what motivated Frank...

“So far as he ever felt he had a destiny— something he was really meant to do— he felt that Brianna was it,” Claire said. She stirred her cocoa meditatively.  (108)

This is a moment in the narrative that should give every reader pause, as the implications are painfully profound.  In Outlander, Frank is unable to entertain the notion of adoption--his first revelation of his selfishness--because he does not feel that he can ever truly love a child that is not his own.  And yet, he does more than adopt Brianna--he accepts her as his own, even knowing that she is not a child of his body.  Perhaps a noble act, it nevertheless carries quite a bit of selfishness.  He cannot father children.  He will never have another child.  And... he needs a purpose.

What does it mean to have as your purpose--the closest thing to a passion-driven vocation--the nurturing of the child you will never have?  Particularly as a man obsessed with genealogy.  The position has the potential to be deeply humbling and uncomfortable.  He is, in essence, in love with another man's progeny, when in the first place, he has a debt of honor to receive the woman who has been married to another man and is carrying another man's child--by virtue of the fact that he (Frank) is still married to her.  That's a bit of a twisted cruller.  But in a way, Frank is bound by another debt of honor.  One might wonder if--in her full disclosure--Claire has told Frank about Jack Randall and Jamie.  The Frasers and Randalls seem to be bound by blood and sex--and now, honor.

I have said before that Voyager feels purgatorial in some ways.  Is it too much to suggest that in Frank's adoption of Brianna--by making her the focus and the meaning of his life--he is atoning for his own sin of adultery and his ancestor's sins toward Brianna's father?

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

Voyager: Vocation (Roger and Claire)

Following closely on all of the literacy moments in Ch. 7, Roger, thinking about how he stepped into his role as scholar after his uncle and adoptive father, the Reverend Wakefield, and how Fiona stepped into the role as housekeeper after her grandmother Mrs. Graham, considers vocation as a possible hereditary inclination:

     It made one wonder, he thought, as he went into the study. In the old days, when a man’s son usually followed his father’s profession, was that only a matter of convenience— wanting to keep the business in the family— or was there some sort of family predisposition for some kinds of work? Were some people actually born to be smiths, or merchants, or cooks— born to an inclination and an aptitude, as well as to the opportunity?  (101)

He provides for exception, but seems to rest on the idea that certain families do have a predisposition to a certain vocation:

      Clearly it didn’t apply to everyone; there were always the people who left their homes, went a-wandering, tried things hitherto unknown in their family circles. If that weren’t so, probably there would be no inventors, no explorers; still, there seemed to be a certain affinity for some careers in some families, even in these restless modern times of widespread education and easy travel. (101-102)

As this contemplation comes right after Roger's condescending (but affectionate) regard for Fiona as not really literate by his definitions, and after his memory of Mrs. Graham "manning the stove, supplying the old man's bodily needs during bouts of late night scholarship, just as Fiona was now doing for [Roger]" this might not register as very positive.  After all, a hereditary predisposition to a certain kind of work forms a rather neat justification for limited social mobility.  If people are inclined to keep menial work in the family, why should social mobility be an issue?  And in this case, it means that he gets a really great housekeeper (who might have aspired to more through her designs on Roger).  It might be such moments that Roger seem a rather uninteresting character--at least to this reader!  I actually think he has quite a fan following, but when he is introduced in Dragonfly and Voyager, he is defined by his somewhat stuffy scholarliness--something he doesn't ever quite shake--and his attraction to Brianna.  I read Roger as another contrast between 18th Century men and 20th Century men, not unlike Frank Randall--and this develops more later.  But unlike Frank Randall, Roger is exposed to, and feels the pull of, that vivid physicality that Claire finds in Jamie, which we assume will redeem him.

It is Claire who pulls Roger out of his contemplation, asking about his thoughts, and in response to his question about "how people become what they are," and how she became a doctor, for example, asks him how he came to be a historian (102).  For his part, Roger opts for nurture, not nature:

     “I grew up in the midst of it all; I was ferreting round the Highlands in search of artifacts with my father from the time I could read. I suppose it just seemed natural to keep doing it.” (102)

Claire, who did not grow up around doctors, nevertheless claims a similar experience, but it registers very differently:

“Well, it was something like that for me,” she said. “It wasn’t so much that I suddenly decided I must become a doctor— it was just that I suddenly realized one day that I’d been one for a long time— and then I wasn’t, and I missed it.” (102)

She elaborates, drawing on her experiences in World War II and in 18th Century Scotland and France:

“I’d seen Paree,” she said softly. She looked up from her hands, alert and present, but with the traces of memory in her eyes, fixed on Roger with the clarity of a second sight. “And a lot of other things besides. Caen and Amiens, Preston, and Falkirk, the Hôpital des Anges and the so-called surgery at Leoch.  I’d been a doctor, in every way there is— I’d delivered babies, set bones, stitched wounds, treated fevers  …” She trailed off, and shrugged. “There was a terrible lot I didn’t know, of course. I knew how much I could learn— and that’s why I went to medical school. But it didn’t really make a difference, you know.” She dipped a finger into the whipped cream floating on her cocoa, and licked it off. “I have a diploma with an M.D. on it— but I was a doctor long before I set foot in medical school.”

The sense of doing what is "natural" or comes naturally is common between Roger and Claire--and, by proxy, between Frank (whose profession Roger shares) and Claire.  They choose their professions because the profession simply means the continuation of something that feels "natural," as Roger says--though it could be argued that a profession is artificial, not natural.  But as they describe what natural means, a difference emerges.  Roger feels that scholarship seems natural because he accompanied Rev. Wakefield as a lad.  Claire feels it is natural because she has already done it.  And when she doesn't do it, she misses it.  To be a doctor is, to Claire, a part of her being.  For Roger, it seems as though being a historian is simply a matter of habit.  Roger will have a long and difficult road to real discernment.

But next time, Frank...

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

Voyager: A Faith in Documents (A Literacy Moment)

Perhaps this will be easier if I just say it--this has been a hard post.  It has been a hard post to think about, a hard post to write, and mostly a hard post to think about writing.  And I think that's because there's a lot going on in Voyager Ch. 7, and it all begs to be analyzed.  So I guess I'll just begin at the beginning and stretch this out a little bit more...

First of all, Chapter 7 announces its literacy theme in its title:  "A Faith in Documents."  One of the reasons that Voyager feels preoccupied with literacy is because at the beginning, in 1960s Scotland, the action centers on finding what happened to the historical Jamie Fraser.  Roger Wakefield, being a historian like Frank Randall, knows and follows all of the usual channels.  It is Roger who possesses the unflappable "faith in documents."  Brianna mostly has faith in Jamie (having accepted him), and Claire has very, very little.  But that's all part of the narrative moment.

The chapter is replete with reading material.  First a letter:

He picked up the thick manila envelope and held it for a moment, weighing it. Then he ripped the flap recklessly with his thumb, and yanked out a sheaf of photocopied pages.
     The cover letter, on heavy university stationery, fluttered out. (95)

Which Claire reads:

“‘ Dear Dr. Wakefield,’” I read. “‘ This is in reply to your inquiry regarding the execution of Jacobite officers by the Duke of Cumberland’s troops following the Battle of Culloden. The main source of the quote in my book to which you refer, was the private journal of one Lord Melton, in command of an infantry regiment under Cumberland at the time of Culloden. I have enclosed photocopies of the relevant pages of the journal; as you will see, the story of the survivor, one James Fraser, is an odd and touching one. Fraser is not an important historical character, and not in line with the thrust of my own work, but I have often thought of investigating further, in hopes of determining his eventual fate. Should you find that he did survive the journey to his own estate, I should be happy if you would inform me. I have always rather hoped that he did, though his situation as described by Melton makes the possibility seem unlikely. Sincerely yours, Eric Linklater.’”
     The paper rattled in my hand, and I set it down, very carefully, on the desk.

This is interesting for a couple of reasons.  First, it is evidence of the community of scholars and researchers who are linked together by common pursuit and willing to help one another.  Dr. Linklater is a very collegial sort, in the true academic sense of the word.

Second, it illustrates the research process, and highlights the use of primary sources to answer questions.  It is not simply enough to read books by historians, because historians necessarily write with a filter of what seems most significant to the story they wish to tell.  In this case, Jamie Fraser was not historically significant.  What is interesting about this is that the member of the Fraser regiment who survived Culloden was actually, in real-world-outside-of-the-novel history, important enough to make it into historical accounts just by virtue of having been a survivor (see "Massacre of Wounded Officers" on this page for the "remarkable escape of one of their number, Alexander or John Fraser, commonly called MacIver").  Roger contacts Dr. Linklater after reading the book that Linklater wrote about Culloden in order to find out whether the sources he used in his book gave any account of Jamie Fraser.  And as it turns out, they did.

The third thing that strikes me as interesting might simply strike me as interesting--from the perspective of a would-be or had-been humanities scholar.  Since most scholarly activity in the humanities deals with perceptions--how we understand the events at Culloden, how those events were recorded, how what was left out of the accounts has shaped our understanding, and what happens when we add those left out bits back in... You know, exactly what the documentaries do with the Bible.  That's a prime popular culture example:  The Gospel of Judas; The Gospel of Mary Magdalen; The Gnostic Gospels; why they were left out, by whom, and what they might mean if we integrate them into the canon. At any rate, because scholarly activity deals so much in perception, humanities scholars spend their lives arguing that perceptions are real, and the other part of their lives feeling self-conscious that their work has little real meaning or influence ("poetry changes nothing" vs. poets as the "unacknowledged legislators").  Here, in Voyager, scholarly activity has real meaning.  The work that Roger is doing--the information he is uncovering--will shape not only the perception of the past held by a handful of people (and notably Claire); it has the potential to shape the past itself (well, maybe.  See my posts on time travel for a sense of just how complex that question is...)  Claire's decision whether to return to the past hinges on what Roger can find out about the fate of Jamie Fraser.  It is perhaps an enviable position for a humanities scholar--to know he is significant.

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

Voyager: Translation and Torment (A Literacy Moment)

This post is sort of a side note in two different ways--it is a side note to the last post because it discusses a literacy context that frames the scene in which Jamie waits anxiously in the house as his sister Jenny gives birth.  It is also a side note to the literacy theme of Voyager (and if I haven't said it before, I think that Voyager has more of a literacy sub-text than the others--at least up to this point in the series).

As Jamie enters the house to wait for Jenny to give birth--and to be with her in spirit, if not actually in the room--he surprises a neighbor, who is reading to the children from the Bible:

     “ ‘ And Adam was not deceived, but the woman being deceived was in the transgression,’  ” read Mrs. Kirby. There was a loud, rolling scream from upstairs, that seemed to go on and on. Mrs. Kirby paused for a moment, to allow everyone to appreciate it, before resuming the reading. Her eyes, pale gray and wet as raw oysters, flickered toward the ceiling, then rested with satisfaction on the row of strained faces before her.
     “ ‘ Notwithstanding, she shall be saved in childbearing, if she continue in faith and charity and holiness with sobriety,’  ” she read. Kitty burst into hysterical sobbing and buried her head in her sister’s shoulder. Maggie Ellen was growing bright red beneath her freckles, while her elder brother had gone dead-white at the scream. (66)

It is an interesting literacy moment because of the type of literacy represented.  First of all, it is didactic.  There is both an implicit and an explicit lesson.  The words that Mrs. Kirby is reading indict every female in the guilt of Eve--not an uncommon argument, even in contemporary Abrahamic religions--and that childbearing saves women.  Implicitly, pain in childbirth is punishment (a point that is explicit in Genesis 3:16), and Jenny--for some of them, their own mother--is an exemplar of this.  (I do wonder what a literal reading of the Biblical passages would mean for women who opt for an epidural... No pain, no heavenly gain?)

I do take issue with this scene, as it assumes that women in the 18th Century would not have had pain management techniques.  A well-prepared woman need not scream, even without modern medicine, and Jenny would have had the wisdom of her midwife, of women around her, and of her own previous births, as well as the endurance of a woman who was used to having to endure other pain and discomfort in daily life!  But then, this vision of childbirth goes along with an agenda that is subtly apparent throughout the books--the danger, hardship, and pain of childbearing.  The combination of this Bible verse and childbirth in this particular novel suggests childbearing as a Purgatorial act for women--although the context (the cruelty of Mrs. Kirby's didacticism; Jamie's intervention) argues strongly that if Christianity teaches that childbirth is Purgatorial, that this is evidence of Christian teaching about women being skewed.

The other reason that it is interesting is because of the text, which is from 1 Timothy 2:14-15.  No, I'm not that good.  That's what Google is for.  The text also appears to be taken from the King James Version, which is another thing I need to ponder.  The King James Version, while poetic, is a notoriously bad translation, as a semester of Ancient Greek made clear.  Just for fun, here's a sample from Catholic apologist Jimmy Akin. I'm a little fuzzy on whether an 18th Century Scottish Catholic household would have a Bible in English, much less the King James Version (albeit the nod to the Stuarts).  I don't have a source that I can check for this a the moment, only the internet (I could go over to the library databases of the university for which I work, and in order to answer the question sufficiently, I would have to do more research than that...), but for now, I simply have the question:  To what extent was the King James Version of the Bible adopted by Catholics in/by the 18th Century?  I would expect that, in Scotland, the Bible would have been in Latin, or if possible, Gaelic, with an alternate translation being the third choice.  The dominant Catholic translation would have been the Douay-Rheims.  Jamie might have had a French Bible.  The question is an interesting one.  In the meantime, here are some parallel translations of the line in question.

Incidentally, here's the Douay-Rheims:

{2:14} And Adam was not seduced; but the woman, being seduced, was in the transgression.{2:15} Yet she shall be saved through child bearing; if she continue in faith and love and sanctification with sobriety.

The language is much more Catholic.

Jamie enters in this mist of this troubling literacy moment, disperses the crowd and confiscates the Bible in displeasure.  It is a nice detail that Jenny’s bookshelf is "battered and scarred from the last incursion of Redcoats, three months ago." (67)  When he hears the sounds of Jenny's suffering, he unwillingly turns to the words in the book he holds--not verses this time, but records:

Hearing a prolonged moan from above, he glanced down involuntarily at the Bible in his hand. Not really wanting to, still he let the book fall open, showing the page at the front where the marriages, births, and deaths of the family were recorded. (67)

What follows in the novel is a text-based reminiscence of Jamie's family history, beginning (in a way) with the birth of his older brother, William:

     The entries began with his parents’ marriage. Brian Fraser and Ellen MacKenzie. The names and the date were written in his mother’s fine round hand, with underneath, a brief notation in his father’s firmer, blacker scrawl. Marrit for love, it said— a pointed observation, in view of the next entry, which showed Willie’s birth, which had occurred scarcely two months past the date of the marriage.

Mention of William, and the record of his niece's death, encourage his consideration of all of the uncertainties, from the "what if" of his own inherited role as laird after his brother's death, to the "what if" of his inability to provide:

Closing the book, his eye caught the last entry— Caitlin Maisri Murray, born December 3, 1749, died December 3, 1749. Aye, if. If the Redcoats had not come on December 2, would Jenny have borne the child too early?  If they had had enough food, so that she, like the rest of them, was no more than skin and bones and the bulge of her belly, would that have helped?

Literacy, in these moments, causes introspection and torment.

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

Historical Fiction in Dialogue with History and Fiction

I have always like the idea of having texts "talk" to one another.  When I was an undergrad, I was excited to see the ways in which The Chronicles of Narnia, which I had read a hundred times, echoed the literature I was reading.  I liked the idea of "reading backwards"--reading contemporary allusions first, and discovering the originals, almost as commentary on the later works.  It was a perspective thing.  Later, I taught an Intro to Lit course using parallel ancient Greek and later British and American works--not really my best course concept (a bit sophomoric)--and also a course on "retellings."  So while this is nothing new--for me, or perhaps for anyone, I still like the idea of teaching contemporary texts alongside their historical counterparts. (I also like having a few "revealing" novels to illustrate historical social movements as the basis for British literature survey courses, but while related, that's sort of different.)

Today I am thinking about the way survey courses integrate background material and even literary criticism.  I have not met too many undergraduates (translate: none) who relish reading journal articles about literary works, and lecturing on the historical period is not my favorite way to pass the time.  It's too much work for too little return, and really? there has to be a better way to get students to get a sense of a historical period.

Take historical fiction, for example.  Writers of good historical fiction do their homework--they have to!  They immerse the reader in the historical period, and even when they take liberties, those liberties can be interesting topics for discussion, as in my reactionary moments posts on the Outlander novels.  They tell us something about history, but they might tell us more about our own historical moment and how we regard the past.  That they do so in the guise of fiction is perhaps a boon, since though there is the tendency to view historical fiction as historical, there is more of a tendency to view historical nonfiction as TRUTH.  And in truth, that's a bit of a gamble sometimes, especially when the critical method falls into certain ideological categories.  So regarding historical fiction as a type of literary criticism can actually give a healthy perspective on how we regard criticism--with some skepticism.  This in turn teaches critical thinking and active reading.

In addition to Outlander, which I think could serve to jump-start a course on 18th Century literature and history, Steampunk provides some good material to use when looking back on the 19th Century.  Consider Gail Carriger's Parasol Protectorate.  Nothing but fun there.  It shatters, in a way, the notion that the Victorians were nothing-but-stuffy while playing up that stuffiness at the same time.  Most Steampunk novels that I've read include little bits of commentary about how Victorians regarded class and objects.  This is one of the best, from Carriger's Soulless:

Everything was perfectly clean and chosen with utter precision, each object occupying the space it had been given with immense dignity. (83)

Also consider:

Miss Tarabotti could not help but compare it to the Duchess of Snodgrove's palatial residence.  Here there was more real affluence and grandeur, the kind that did not need to display itself openly--it simply was. (82)

In a book I decided not to read after downloading a sample, I noted the distinction between antique white-and-blue china, and the mass-produced variety that social climbing households acquired to imitate the upper crust.  These few fictional moments replace at least three intolerably dull, overtheorized and overwrought articles I had to read in grad school.  Having read the latter, I can recognize the former.  But wouldn't it be fun to tell students--see?  This is a commentary on a real fact of Victorian social climbing.  This kind of thing comes to a head in expat Henry James's 20thC novel The Spoils of Poynton, which, when we read it, will seem even more dull and Henry James-ish by comparison.