Of Things Dropped and Lost

Outlander  3:1      By: Eleanor Ty

The third season of Outlander has so far been stunningly wonderful, almost as good as Season 1. My complaint about Season 2 was that, among other things, it lacked the emotional highs of the first book/season, and it was not strongly focused on romance. Season 2 featured lavish Parisian costumes, a lot of Jacobite plotting, but did not have the excitement of Season 1.

Well, so far, Season 3 looks very promising. Perhaps Ron Moore heard his fans’ complaints because even before Episode 5, the famed print shop scene, there is already plenty of scenes of bedroom ardour, though in unexpected places. What works particularly well is the constant juxtaposition between scenes of Claire in the 1940s and 50s with scenes of Jamie in the 1740s and 50s.

2 (Two), 20 (Twenty), 200 (Two Hundred) and 2,000 (Two Thousand)

The first few episodes have concentrated on the 2 (two) people we care most about: Jamie and Claire and how they have spent their nearly 20 (twenty) years apart, even as they are separated by 200 years (2 centuries) of historical time.  The cause of their separation was Claire’s foresight, her knowledge that nearly 2,000 (two thousand) Jacobites would be killed or wounded in the brief battle at Culloden in 1746 and afterwards by British soldiers who shot stragglers. The producers and writers seem to have made the most of twos and pairings, doubles and echoes to remind us not only of the dual time scheme which underpins the whole series, but also of scenes in previous seasons.

“Of Lost Things” is the title of the fourth episode, but it describes the general tone of the first few episodes of Season 3. Loss becomes an important theme. After all, Voyager, the book and the third season of the show, begins with Jamie buried alive amidst piles of bodies, those of Scottish Jacobites with whom he fought.  Initially, Jamie wakes believing he was in Hell or Purgatory (Voyager Chap 1).  His semi-conscious attempts to remember the fighting shows the horror of the slaughter of men, mowed down by muskets. Apparently, according to Murray Pittock, a scholar of Jacobitism, the battle wasn’t quite a victory of muskets over swords, since the Jacobites also fired many rounds at the British. In any case, it was a devastating loss for the Scots. Most of the Scottish soldiers are dead, and the Redcoats are using their bayonets to kill any still alive.

Things Dropped

When the men come to take Jamie away from the battlefield, the precious piece of amber that was a wedding gift drops from Jamie’s kilt. The loss of the amber, like the dropping of Claire’s wedding ring during her wedding night, is suggestive of the loss of a way of life. For Claire, it meant a new beginning with Jamie, but here, for Jamie, it means the end of his life with Claire (at least for now). The close-up of the amber on the ground signals a profound loss which will last for two decades.

Purgatory, which is believed to be an intermediate state, is an apt metaphor for the twenty years Jamie and Claire spend apart. When I first read the Outlander series, I thought it was awfully cruel of Diana Gabaldon to not allow the main characters the leisure to enjoy their youth, continue the passion, bring up Brianne, as other couples do. But Gabaldon seems to believe in Catholic punishments and purifications before paradise. There is much suffering, and even ghosts.  The ghost of Claire haunts Jamie in the battlefield, just as Jamie had haunted Claire in Inverness during her second honeymoon with Frank.

Gabaldon’s Voyager goes from Jamie in the battlefield to Roger, Brianna and Claire searching historical records, but the adaptation opts instead to recreate scenes of domestic life for Claire and Frank which are presented mainly as flashbacks in the book. These domestic scenes flesh out the ways Claire has been living: viewed in one way, it is a pleasant middle-class life with her husband, the professor, but viewed in another way, it has been a kind of tensed, waiting state. Within her, Claire feels an emptiness, a longing that she cannot share with anyone else. Claire and Frank try to carve out an amiable relationship based on their mutual love for Brianna but their marriage and their sex life are strained.  As Frank later remarks, their bedroom is already “crowded.” Claire exists, but rather like in limbo, not fully with Frank yet not with Jamie.

Where’s the Sex? Outlander Season 2

        Like many avid Outlander fans, I have been watching the Second Season waiting and wondering when the show was going to soar, not just entertain, but lift us up to those high emotional ecstatic states we loved in Season 1. Though not every episode was equally intense in Season 1, there were enough dramatic and romantic “highs” to keep us wanting more. Unforgettable scenes we watched over and over include: Claire setting Jamie’s dislocated shoulder (1.1); Claire cleaning Jamie’s wounds by the fire (1.2); the Wedding vows and the unparalleled sex scenes (1.7); Claire’s choice to stay in Craigh na Dun (1.11); Jamie’s rehabilitation after his rescue from Wentworth (1.12). Along the way were many amusing and suspenseful scenes. Who can forget precious lines, like, Dougal’s “the idea of grinding your corn does tickle me“ (1.6), and Geillis’s dramatic confession at the witchcraft trial (1.11). Outlander Season 1 was an extraordinary show that made us see the visual and aural possibilities of adaptation. We didn’t just imagine but saw Claire’s nursing skills and Jamie’s fighting abilities in action. We were presented with an example of how a dramatic TV series could enrich and add to our favorite novel.

We have now watched 12 episodes of Season 2, and there have been a number of high moments, but were they as dramatic an experience? In Season 2, the best episodes seemed to cluster in the second half while a number of the early episodes in Paris and about politics felt rather flat.   The most dramatic moments were tinged with sadness in Season 2. They include: losing Faith and the graveyard scene (2.7); Murtagh’s revenge on Sandringham (2.11); Claire ministering to Alex Randall and his deathbed wish (2.12); Colum’s plea to die and his deathbed wish for his clan (2.12); the death of Angus after Prestonpans (2.10); Claire’s traumatic flashbacks to World War II in the training camp (2.9); the attempted rape of La Dame Blanche (2.4).

From my lists of favorites in each season thus far, there is a marked difference in tone and content between the First and Second Season, where romance, love, and passion of Claire and Jamie featured much more prominently in First Season. In the Second Season, the dramatic moments often included loss, grief, and the demise of secondary characters like Alex, Colum and Angus. Having read Gabaldon’s books and knowing the history of Culloden, the Second Season seems to have nowhere to go but downwards to its tragic conclusion.

Yet, in Gabaldon’s Dragonfly in Amber, there were some passionate, and many tender expressions of love that didn’t make it to the screen. One scene that broke my heart (and might yet be included in the finale) occurs in the kirkyard of St. Kilda (Chapter 5 My Beloved Wife). Because of the rearrangement of the opening of the book in the show, this scene might not have the impact it did on Claire or the reader if it is shown.

There are also a few romantic scenes in the book that many readers have highlighted in Facebook groups or in Goodreads. One occurs when Claire compares her self to Jamie’s petite ex-girlfriend, Annalise.

 “Well, I’ll tell ye, Sassenach, ‘graceful’ is possibly not the first word that springs to mind at thought of you.” He slipped an arm behind me, one hand large and warm around my silk-clad shoulder.

“But I talk to you as I talk to my own soul,” he said, turning me to face him. He reached up and cupped my cheek, fingers light on my temple.

“And, Sassenach,” he whispered, “your face is my heart.”

It was the shifting of the wind, several minutes later, that parted us at last with a fine spray from the fountain. We broke apart and rose hastily, laughing at the sudden chill of the water.

Gabaldon, Dragonfly in Amber, Chapter 11 Useful Occupations

        Another scene between Claire and Jamie occurs when he still has nightmares about what Black Jack did to him and does not understand how love can be so closely linked to violence:

Jamie says, “Claire. To feel the small bones of your neck beneath my hands, and that fine, thin skin on your breasts and your arms…Lord, you are my wife, whom I cherish and I love wi’ all my life, and still I want to kiss ye hard enough to bruise your tender lips, and see the marks of my fingers on your skin.”

To which she replies:

“Do you think it’s different for me? Do you think I don’t feel the same?” I demanded. “That I don’t sometimes want to bite you hard enough to taste blood, or claw you ’til you cry out?”

I reached out slowly to touch him. The skin of his breast was damp and warm. Only the nail of my forefinger touched him, just below the nipple. Lightly, barely touching, I drew the nail upward, downward, circling round, watching the tiny nub rise hard amid the curling ruddy hairs.

The nail pressed slightly harder, sliding down, leaving a faint red streak on the fair skin of his chest. I was trembling all over by this time, but did not turn away.

“Sometimes I want to ride you like a wild horse, and bring you to the taming—did you know that? I can do it, you know I can. Drag you over the edge and drain you to a gasping husk. I can drive you to the edge of collapse and sometimes I delight in it, Jamie, I do! And yet so often I want”—my voice broke suddenly and I had to swallow hard before continuing—”I want…to hold your head against my breast and cradle you like a child and comfort you to sleep.”

My eyes were so full of tears that I couldn’t see his face clearly; couldn’t see if he wept as well. His arms went tight around me and the damp heat of him engulfed me like the breath of a monsoon.

“Claire, ye do kill me, knife or no,” he whispered, face buried in my hair. He bent and picked me up, carrying me to the bed. He sank to his knees, laying me amid the rumpled quilts.

“You’ll lie wi’ me now,” he said quietly. “And I shall use ye as I must. And if you’ll have your revenge for it, then take it and welcome, for my soul is yours, in all the black corners of it.”

The skin of his shoulders was warm with the heat of the bath, but he shivered as with cold as my hands traveled up to his neck, and I pulled him down to me.

Gabaldon, Dragonfly in Amber, Chapter 17 Possession

It is not possible to show every scene from Gabaldon’s novels, but I highlight these passages to make a point. The lack of sex and romance scenes in Season 2 was a choice (or inadvertent slip with so many different writers?) that the producers made. I am still glad that Season 2 gave us lavish Parisian costumes, and made the mud, the starvation, the history of the Jacobite rebellion come alive. But I also wished that more time was devoted to what Gabaldon readers really enjoy, namely the interaction between Jamie and Claire, their domestic trials and their passions, and yes, the sexual “conversation” between them. We are grown-ups… we don’t need the cutaway shots and the fade to black!

 By: Eleanor Ty

 

The Anxiety of Reproduction: Patrilineage in Outlander

Episode 206 ended with Captain Black Jack Randall bleeding from his groin and Claire Fraser losing blood from her pregnancy. Jack Randall’s wound threatens his masculinity and his ability to father children, while Claire is in danger of losing her baby. These two seemingly unrelated events are symbolic of the larger political issues of heredity and 18^th century notions of patrilineage: lineage based through the paternal line.

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What pushed Claire to 18^th century Scotland initially was her husband, Frank Randall’s search for his ancestor. Outlander is a novel about roots and the anxiety about losing one’s heritage, family, or clan, as well as losing the rights to one’s line. At the political level, Charles Edward Stuart, also known as the Young Pretender (pretend: to claim to be someone) is also concerned with patrilineage, his right to rule Scotland and England because he was the eldest son of James Stuart, the Old Pretender, whose father had been King James VII of Scotland and King James II of England. King James had ruled England briefly from 1685-1688 when he was deposed because of his Catholicism.

The anxiety about reproduction and family affects Claire’s thinking about Jack Randall because she believes that were Jamie to kill Black Jack, her husband, Frank would no longer come into existence. But this kind of thinking proves false, because as an individual, Claire is powerless to change history as it is recorded.

This is why it is so heartbreaking to watch these episodes. There is a sense of foreboding and doom that underlies the glitter and costumes and small talk in Paris. In the domestic world, as in history, conflicts are not magically resolved, as in fairy tales. There is much tension, unhappy consequences, and often lots of violence. But as the story unfolds, what we discover is that patrilineage does not necessarily ensure that the best man rules the country and that “father” can be performed in various ways.

All the World’s a Stage: Outlander 202/ 203

I hold the world but as the world, …
A stage where every man must play a part,
And mine a sad one.

Shakespeare. The Merchant of Venice. I.i.

Outlander in Paris has exceeded everyone’s expectations in terms of costumes, set design, and casting (see Linda Merrill).   The streets of Paris with their exquisite carriages, wigged footmen, the palace of Versailles with its the great hall are all splendid and magnificent thanks to the work of Jon Gary Steele, Gina Cromwell, Maril Davis and others. Terry Dresbach has outdone herself in costumes for both women and men – lace, frills, embroidered waistcoats, breeches, headdresses, caps, and of course, the sumptuous and lavish dresses with their wide panniers. The newest cast members, playing Mary Hawkins (Rosie Day), Louise de Rohan (Claire Sermonne), Master Raymond (Dominique Pinon), Le Comte St. Germain (Stanley Weber), and Mother Hildegarde (Frances de la Tour) are all marvelous and just as we imagined from reading Dragonfly in Amber. Even though the scriptwriters have taken some liberties with time, and the compression of certain scenes, the script remains fairly close to Gabaldon’s novel.

So, why are we feeling that the first few episodes of Season 2 have left us feeling a bit flat? I was very reluctant to admit this to myself, and noticed that other fans and bloggers have politely tried to not express disappointment by suggesting that the episodes needed a second viewing, or that it is getting better (Candida’s Musings , Erin Conrad). The truth is, the opening three episodes do not match in intensity or narrative interest of the first Season. In Episode 202 “Not in Scotland Anymore,” there were too many new characters being introduced. The episode served as an exposition, as in the first scene of a play, where background information is given. We learn about the reasons why Claire and Jamie are staying in France and about the sophisticated lives of Claires’ French friends, their different approaches to hygiene. In Episodes 203 “Useful Occupations and Deceptions,” while Claire and Jaime play a larger role than in the last two episodes, their relationship is visibly strained. The episode focused on politics and financial concerns again, and on Claire’s boredom and need to find herself a useful occupation as healer.

One reason for this feeling is that these episodes mirror Diana Gabaldon’s somewhat meandering and rambling novels after Outlander (Book 1). Gabaldon’s novels are full of subplots, incidental characters who sometimes become important, but sometimes stay as minor characters. But we also know that the last hundred pages of the novels tend to become faster paced, major things happen to major characters, and the loose ends are often tied up in unexpected ways. So, we will have lots of action to look forward to, as the season should play itself out this way, too.

Another reason that we are somewhat less engaged with the series right now is that our beloved characters, Jamie and Claire, as well as many of the other characters we meet, are not acting the way they usually do. So far in Season 2, the romance between Jamie and Claire has been strained, held back because the producers decided to represent Jamie suffering from trauma. In addition, both Jamie and Claire are engaged in a game of duplicity: trying to be sympathetic to the Jacobite cause and yet secretly plotting for its failure. This deception causes tension not only between them, but also between them and other characters like Murtagh, Jared, Prince Charles, the Minister of Finance, Frances Duverney, and others. It is as if we have entered a world where everyone is like the snake-like Duke of Sandringham, whom we do not trust. In Paris, all is glittery, but not everything is golden.

Episodes 202 and 203 highlight the theme of deception. For example, upon meeting Alexander Randall (Laurence Dobiesz), Claire finds out that Black Jack Randall is alive. But she withholds this vital piece of information from her husband, for fear that he would either go into a relapse or risk his life in order to seek vengeance. Jamie is forced to entertain and carouse with noblemen and the Prince in brothels, coming home late at night reeking of smoke and cheap perfume. This Jamie is very different from the sincere, brave, and romantic young man we fell in love with in the first Outlander book/season. The part that he has to play is a “sad one,” especially as we know what happens to the Scottish clans at the Battle of Culloden.

Even Master Raymond, who is Claire’s friend, has his secrets. Claire sees The Comte at his shop, not sure how well the two of them are acquainted. It is to him that Claire confesses that her life has become more conventional since she has been in Paris. Out of her time, and out of place, we know that Claire deplores convention. She is a twentieth-century woman who has found her calling in helping others. Now pregnant in Paris, working as a healer in a charity hospital is not what Jamie wants her to do.

The necessity for deception is highlighted when Jamie hires Fergus, the French boy who steals from patrons at Madame Elise. The fact that Jamie and Claire now have to resort to the help of a pickpocket in order to help them with their plan to thwart the Prince suggests that in Paris, we have left the pastoral and innocence of Scotland and entered a world where “all the world’s a stage, / And all the men and women merely players;/ they have their exits and their entrances” (Shakespeare, As You Like it, II.vii). It is an intriguing world, but not entirely enchanting or uplifting.

By: Eleanor Ty

 

Mirrors in Outlander 2.1: Through a Glass Darkly

By: Eleanor Ty

For now we see through a glass, darkly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; but then shall I know, even as also I am known.

I Corinthians 13:12

In modern versions of the bible, glass is translated as a mirror. The first episode of the second season of Outlander plays with the two senses of the word “glass.” It is full of mirror images and reflections, as well as veiled and imperfect fragments or parts, as if we can only see through a darkly tinted glass. The reflections remind us of a number of scenes from the past, and highlight the motif of the double.

“Through a Glass Darkly” begins with Claire lying dazed and confused in the midst of the standing stones, a scene which recalls the very first episode in Season One. This time, however, Claire has come back to her own time, something she so desired when she was first transported to 18^th century Scotland. She finds Inverness in 1948 as disconcerting as she first found the Highlands of 1743. She is bothered by the radio and the street noises outside her room. When her husband Frank approaches her, she flinches, which is later echoed when Jamie, too, flinches at the touch of Claire. Though now two hundred years apart, Claire and Jamie are both troubled by memories of Jack Randall.

The other very deliberate echo (noted also by Erin Conrad) is the hand reaching for Frank / Jamie which is featured in some of the covers of Season One DVD and soundtrack. This image of the hand has always been about choice, about Claire’s divided loyalties and her reaching for newly discovered desires. In this episode, Claire reaches out her hand to Frank as they step out of the airplane into their new lives in Boston. The scene cuts to a flashback of the time when she and Jamie step out of the ship to begin their new adventures in France. Season Two promises to be about both sets of adventures.

Reaching out

           The biblical quotation of the “glass darkly” is followed by one of the most famous passages in the bible. Often used in weddings, 1 Corinthians 13 reads: “And now these three remain: faith, hope and love.” Before this verse, Paul talks about the importance of love in this epistle: “love suffers long and is kind; love does not envy…. bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things” (1 Corinthians 4, 7). Claire has two husbands, and both of them love her in the way that Paul describes. Jamie sacrifices himself to save her, and Frank is willing to take her, in spite of the fact that she is pregnant with another man’s child. Both men, mirrors of each other, are willing to believe, hope and endure.

In Season One, especially in the last two episodes, many fans were unhappy with the producers because there was too much Tobias Menzies as Jack Randall. I, too, felt that more time could have been devoted to the Claire and Jamie love story. But here, in this first episode, I was completely enthralled by the depiction of the tension and relationship between Claire and Frank when they reunite. Ron D. Moore managed to write a script that filled in some of the gaps left by the twenty-year leap in Diana Gabaldon’s opening scene in Dragonfly in Amber. In her book A Theory of Adaptation, Linda Hutcheon notes that, “as a process of creation, the act of adaptation always involves both (re-)interpretation and then (re-)creation” (8). As Becky Lea writes, “The opening episode belongs to Menzies, enduring just about every emotion required in that initial forty minutes” (Outlander Season 2, Episodes 1-2 Review). Beth Wesson says, Moore’s adaptation “connected the dots and fleshed out Frank’s character.”

Among other fragments of his life that Frank reveals in this episode is his desperation, doubt, and confusion about Claire’s disappearance. He wonders whether she has been kidnapped or whether she has run off with another man. But most poignant of all is his revelation that he had himself tested, and has discovered that he is infertile. The possibility of infertility was discussed by Claire and Jamie earlier in Lallybroch, when Jamie accepts that he might not have natural heirs. In both scenes, the question of lineage is fraught with emotion and heartbreak. After all, the whole adventure would started with Frank Randall’s interest in his family history, and with his interest in his ancestor, Black Jack Randall.

Diana Gabaldon has said that she is not interested in writing a modern romance, but that her books “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” (Diana Gabaldon FAQ). While her comments apply primarily to Claire and Jamie, this episode, with its focus on Frank and Claire, promises to show the “mirror” relationship, the story not developed in the novels by Gabaldon.  In his adaptation, Ron D. Moore re-interpreted and re-created husband and wife relationship, showing the ways a couple has to deal with the surprises and pain that life often brings. There are rich possibilities to come.

In Season Two, Claire, Jamie, Frank, and Black Jack Randall will all find that they only know parts of the story, and that it is only with time that history will come to reveal itself. The doubles and the mirrors show the link between the past and the present, the blurred boundaries between romance and the everyday, the messiness of what we like to see as truth and falsehood, good and evil.

 

Works Cited:

Gabaldon, Diana. Dragonfly in Amber. 1993.

Hutcheon, Linda. A Theory of Adaptation. New York: Routledge, 2006.

 

Injured Bodies, Unbroken Spirits, and the Ethos of Care in Outlander

“You learn it when you become a doctor…. There are so many there, beyond your reach. So many you can never touch, so many whose essence you can’t find, so many who slip through your fingers. But you can’t think about them. The only thing you can do – the only thing– is to try for the one who’s in front of you…. One at a time, that’s all you can do.”

Diana Gabaldon. Dragonfly in Amber. Chapter 47 “Loose Ends”

 “We are not connected with one or two percipient beings, but with a society, a nation, and in some sense with the whole family of mankind.”

William Godwin. Enquiry Concerning Political Justice (1793). II.ii. “Of Justice”

         It is not accidental that the heroine of Gabaldon’s Outlander book series is a nurse, a healer, later, a doctor, and a wise woman. For one of the themes that weaves through all the books is that of care: the care of one’s self, of one’s family and loved ones, as well as the care of the community. Claire’s first impulse is always to help those who are hurt, even at the expense of her own safety and comfort. Several times in Outlander, Claire puts herself at risk because of her wish to help others: she tries to save an abandoned baby, believed by the 18^th century society to be a changeling;” she rushes to Geillis thinking that Geillis is ill in “By the Prickling of My Thumbs;” and defied Friar Bain when she heals Mrs. FitzGibbons’ nephew from poisoning.

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Diana Gabaldon has stated that she has read hundreds of romance novels, but that her books are not like the “modern romance” because they “deal with an ongoing relationship between two decent people who already love each other” and that she does not guarantee “happy endings” (“Genre Labels”). As readers and television viewers have seen in the first book/season, the characters are tested again and again in difficult situations, and Jamie and Claire are never left to just enjoy their life in peace for more than a chapter or a few minutes on screen. Outlander is not an ordinary romance. One reason for the constant battles, with the English redcoats, with Black Jack, with superstitious townspeople, with illness, with jealous lovers, is the need to infuse the plot with excitement and adventures. But what we love about our protagonists is that they rise to the challenges and show themselves to be capable, generous and noble beings.

One way they become heroic is through their ability to care for others and to show selfless love. Early on, Jamie reveals his chivalry by taking the punishment for Laoghaire, Mrs. FitzGibbons’ granddaughter (“Castle Leoch”) when she is charged with loose behavior. Like Claire, Jamie is a man who cares deeply and puts others before himself. He tells Claire that four years ago, he was willing to be whipped by Jack Randall in the hopes of saving his sister Jenny from rape. When he marries, he and his men risk their lives to save Claire from Jack Randall at Fort William (“The Reckoning”), and his ultimate sacrifice is to allow Jack Randall to use his body sexually in exchange for Claire’s freedom (“Wentworth Prison”).

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What is interesting about Outlander, however, is that it is not only the main characters who care much for others, who suffer and then triumph, but that there are a host of other characters who are tried and tested. We see many people with injured bodies, with missing limbs, who cannot speak or sing, but who are still able to function and act with goodness. Through this succession of broken bodies, Gabaldon suggests that life often presents us with a series of trials to be endured and overcome. One example is the minor character Hugh Munroe, who appears briefly to give Jamie the name of the English deserter who might clear Jamie’s name. Munroe has an extraordinary story of endurance: captured at sea by the Turks, he was tortured and had hot oil poured on his legs. As a slave in Algiers, his tongue was cut out. Yet in spite of his disabilities, he appears stoic, if not happy, and is able to bestow a gift of the “dragonfly in amber” to the newlyweds. Munroe’s story also reveals the consequences of 18^th century imperialism and colonialism. Too often, we hear grand stories of wars and empire, but not the stories of those soldiers who do the fighting, whose lives were irrevocably changed by these wars. Their valor and injuries are not recorded in history books.

Similarly, another character who is injured and disabled is Ian Murray, who lost his leg below the knee in a battle in France. Ian has a wooden leg, but is able to love and be loved by Jenny. His friendship and loyalty to Jamie have not changed and he is capable of running Lallybroch in spite of this physical limitations. Another character, Colum MacKenzie, Jamie’s maternal uncle, suffers from Toulouse-Lautrec Syndrome, a degenerative disease that renders his legs immobile and his body painful. However, he is still able to reign over the MacKenzie clan and rises to the occasion at Gatherings and when needed. These are heartening stories of people who suffer physically, but whose spirit remains unbroken.

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Lest we become complacent and think that all these scenes of violence and injury only happened in the 18^th century, Gabaldon and Ron D. Moore create parallels to show how we have not learned from history. We are still waging wars that kill and injure, only our weapons are now more sophisticated. In the opening episode set in the Second World War, Claire, clothed in a very bloody apron, is shown in a horrific scene where a soldier’s leg has to be amputated. This amputation scene is later repeated in Episode 6 “The Garrison Commander” where an English soldier has to suffer the same fate. The parallels force us to contend with the way history repeats itself, the way we do not heed the lessons from our past.

Significantly, after the season finale, a number of bloggers wrote about healing and therapy. We, too need comfort after those scenes of suffering at Wentworth. Beth Wesson writes about reader responses and quotes from a fan who commented to Diana Gabaldon that she “expected to be entertained, not healed” by her books. We may not all be able to change the course of history, but like Claire, we can help the person who is right in front of us, one at a time. Bodies may be injured, but spirits do not have to be broken. The end of Outlander gives us hope that there will be a new life ahead for Jamie and Claire.

Discussing happiness, the best use of time, and the advantages of industry, pragmatic and philosophical English author Samuel Johnson wrote: “To strive with difficulties, and to conquer them, is the highest human felicity; the next is, to strive, and deserve to conquer: but he whose life has passed without a contest, and who can boast neither success nor merit, can survey himself only as a useless filler of existence…” (Adventurer 111). Outlander is inspiring because Gabaldon and Ron Moore’s TV production show that real life is not about a couple riding off into the sunset, but a series of day to day trials. Often, we are hurt and suffer loss, but those who endeavor to move on in spite of disheartening encounters, big or small, are the ones who ultimately gain strength and our admiration. Learning from history, we can, like Claire and Jamie, create a caring and supportive community for the real heroes in our lives.

By: Eleanor Ty

Works Cited

Gabaldon, Diana. “Genre Labels and the big ‘romance’ question, are they or aren’t they?” FAQ: About the Books. http://www.dianagabaldon.com/resources/faq/faq-about-the-books/#romancequestion

Johnson, Samuel. “The Pleasures and Advantages of Industry.” Adventurer 111 Tuesday, November 27, 1753. http://www.readbookonline.net/readOnLine/29985/

Wesson, Beth. “I Expected to be Entertained, Not Healed”: Outlander and Reader Response. 9 June 2015. http://bethwesson.com/2015/06/09/i-expected-to-be-entertained-not-healed-outlander-and-reader-response/

Sex, Spirituality, and Salvation in Outlander: To Ransom a Man’s Soul

Deliver him from going down to the pit: I have found a ransom. His flesh shall be fresher than a child’s: he shall return to the days of his youth.                                                                                                Job 33:24

 In the abbey where Jamie and she are taking refuge, Claire finds a bible, and searching for an answer to Jamie’s despair, she reads a number of passages about help and strength. Of the many quotations she highlights, she likes this one about the possibility of being blessed without condemnation (Outlander, Chapter 39 “To Ransom a Man’s Soul”). In Job, God reassures us that to the justified, everything is adjusted because God has found a ransom in Christ and we are delivered out of the pit. Claire tells Jamie, “there’s nothing to forgive.”

There are a number of biblical echoes in Outlander, which Diana Gabaldon carefully adapts for her contemporary global readers. The richness of her prose comes from the way she is able to link the earthly with the intellectual, the mythic, the spiritual, and oftentimes, the scientific and historical. In Gabaldon’s books, love and passion are never just physical and sensual, they encompass a range of emotions that carry us from our mundane world to somewhere above the ordinary. Many of our favourite lines from Outlander are precisely this fertile mix of passion and spirituality:

Outlander 2014

“Ye are Blood of my Blood, and Bone of my Bone,

I give ye my Body, that we Two might be One.

I give ye my Spirit, ‘til our Life shall be Done.”              Marriage vows

Outlander 2014

“I am your master… and you’re mine. Seems I canna possess your soul without losing my own.”

What happens when both heroes and villains desire the kind of passion, fury, and glory that we yearn for? In Episode 1 x16 “To Ransom a Man’s Soul” we have Jack Randall who seeks a fulfillment for which he has been waiting for over four years, at the same time as we have Claire who is seeking to find a way to ransom Jamie’s soul. Blogger Candida notes the “sinister and heartbreaking” cuts between Randall and Claire in the show (Candida’s Musings), as they both touch and desire Jamie.

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The mixture of the sexual and the spiritual comes out in Ron D. Moore’s show to a certain extent. At one point in Episode 1 x 16, Jack Randall, unable to get much of a response from Jamie, says, “what, you are going to lie there like Christ with his bleeding hands?” Jack is only able to elicit the kind of sexual and spiritual response he wants by inflicting great pain followed by tenderness. The fact that he does, and succeeds in getting Jamie to momentarily forget himself, is what is disturbing.

In Western art, there is a long tradition of expressing intense feeling through a mixture of the religious and the sexual. In 1647, Gian Lorenzo Bernini sculpted the Ecstacy of St. Teresa which dramatized St. Teresa of Avila’s relationship with god. As the angel stabs St. Therese’s heart with his arrow, she felt the love of God as extreme spiritual pain, and also intense sweetness (akward42).

Violence seems to be part of the intensity of great love. This is the reason why the monks of the abbey could not on their own rescue Jamie. They are well-versed in the spiritual, but didn’t have the love and powerful desire that motivated Claire. We need both aspects of love–the physical and the spiritual, to be whole. In the novel, Claire uses her knowledge of drugs, spirituality, and psychology to pierce through the veil of Jamie’s trauma. Braving Jamie’s confusion and brutal reaction, she struggles with him until she brings him back from the pit. In the TV show, she takes on the role of the abandoned woman in order to appeal to Jamie. She tells him that own her life would not make sense if he dies, which succeeds in rousing his masculinity and protective spirit. He does reach out to her finally, which leads to his spiritual healing.

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For Claire, the spiritual healing comes partly from her confession to Brother Anselm who absolves her of both bigamy and murder. He reassures her, “Everyone’s actions affect the future” (Chapter 40 Absolution) which absolves Claire and also empowers her for what lies ahead. What we did not see enough of in the final episode, which many readers of the book have commented on, is the sensuality and spirituality between Claire and Jamie. We saw a lot of the sensuality of Black Jack and Jamie, but it seems like Ron Moore and Ira Steven Behr became enamored of the villain, as John Milton did with Satan in Paradise Lost, so that the episode became about him rather than about Jamie and Claire.

Blogger Erin Conrad notes, “the viewer hasn’t seen enough of [Claire and Jaime’s] growing love to completely buy into their soul connection” (Review Ep 16, TIBS). It is a pity that we could not have a version of the hot springs ending in place of “The Watch” or the “The Search,” which were fillers (Conrad). Not only was the hot springs scene the second-best erotic scene in the novel (next to the wedding night), it was the way to link back to Claire’s decision at the standing stones. For Claire had said then about her difficult choice: “You don’t know how close it was. The hot baths nearly won” (Chapter 25, “Thou Shalt not Suffer a Witch”). In Chapter 41 “From the Womb of the Earth” we have Jamie presenting Claire with his own “hot bath” deep underground, a fitting symbol of rebirth by water, but also the way life is different in 18^th century Scotland but still filled with beauty.

In the TV show, the episode ends with Claire and Jamie sailing away romantically on the tall ship bound for France. In place of the caves, we have a different kind of water and the journey motif, which signals a path to rescue and redemption. The open sea is a fitting image of the challenges and wide horizon in front of them: “And the world was all around us, new with possibility.” Just don’t expect Celine Dion’s “My Heart Will Go On” to be played on this boat…

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                                                                By: Eleanor Ty

  Works Cited

Akward 42. “Bernini’s The Ecstacy of St. Teresa.” 24 February 2015. https://akward42.wordpress.com/2015/02/24/berninis-the-ecstasy-of-st-teresa/

Candida’s Musings.” A True Fan’s Review of #Outlander Episode 116: To Ransom a Man’s Soul.” Candida’s Musings. 2 June 2015. Web. https://candidan.wordpress.com/2015/06/02/a-true-fans-review-of-outlander-episode-116-to-ransom-a-mans-soul/

Conrad, Erin. “Outlander Ep. 16 Review – Too Much, and Not Enough.” TIBS: ThreeifBySpace.net 31 May 2015. http://www.threeifbyspace.net/2015/05/outlander-ep-16-review-too-much-and-not-enough/

Wentworth: Violence, Death, and the Hell Within

For within him Hell

He brings, … nor from Hell

One step no more than from himself can fly

By change of place.

John Milton. Paradise Lost. Bk. 4

 

The episode we have all been dreading in Outlander aired and it was as horrible as we imagined it to be (1X15 Wentworth). The image of Jamie clutching his bloody crippled hand was extremely disturbing even though we were prepared for it. Many people, including the Sam Heughan and Tobias Menzies, have described the last couple of episodes as “dark” and, as the Wentworth episode coincided with a rape scene on Game of Thrones, a number of writers commented on the violence in both shows (ex. Sara Stewart). Yet we do tolerate the violence on Outlander, gruesome as it was. Why?

Diana Gabaldon has talked about the necessity of putting Jamie through such “pain and suffering” because it’s a “High Stakes” story and how the violence is necessary to show that Jack Randall was “a serious threat” (Gabaldon, “Jamie and the Rule of Three”). She also suggests that the Wentworth scene is part of a triangle of emotional climaxes of the book, which culminates in the Abbey.

Outlander 2014 from Starz

The Hell Within

For me, the Wentworth episode is central to the story because it is the moment when Jack Randall and Jamie confront their deepest fears and unconscious desires. In Paradise Lost, John Milton envisioned hell not just as a place, but as a state of mind. After his defeat, Satan leaves hell but talks about the “hell within” him which he carries to the Garden of Eden. Similar to the fiend, Black Jack Randall is a tormented man who takes pleasure in seeing others get hurt. Four years before, Jack Randall tried to break Jamie with sheer brutality and physical force (100 lashes on top of 100 lashes), but that failed to crush Jamie’s spirit. This time, he succeeds in penetrating Jamie’s core through a combination of love and brute strength. Initially, Jamie was unafraid of Jack and refused to surrender, but agreed later to comply with his wishes in exchange for Claire’s safety. Even so, Black Jack’s triumph comes at a cost to himself: he had to admit his desire for Jamie in order to gain the upper hand. Love is risky.

Outlander 2014 from Starz

What happened in the dungeon was not just physical torture but an experience that cut through the essence of one’s psyche. Jamie tells Claire later that he could have stood “being hurt, no matter how bad,” but it was the love that got to him. Black Jack aroused a visceral response in Jamie. It was the combination of love and pain, the confusion of anger, sexuality and desire that broke Jamie and made him feel shame and loathing for himself. Later, he becomes reluctant to touch Claire in the abbey because he feels that he would contaminate their relationship (Chapter 39 To Ransom a Man’s Soul).

Parallels Worlds

The Wentworth dungeon represents a hell in more ways than one. Milton had envisioned hell as fiery, in a state of “darkness visible,” and the imagery of fire and darkness permeates Starz’s production. Even the other prisoners all had the look of forsaken souls.

Significantly, this descent down to hell is introduced by numerous images of death. The episode begins with prisoner after prisoner being hung at the gallows, and the camera pans to a close-up of the noose. Jamie, MacQuarrie, and all the other prisoners are confronting one of our greatest fears in life, the prospect of annihilation.

In Episode 1X11, “The Devil’s Mark” Claire had faced a similar prospect, and she had also descended into a kind of hell in the thieves’ den. The imagery is suggestively similar: an underground dark, damp place crawling with creepy creatures. With Geillis, she was held prisoner for three days before being rescued by Jamie. After this imprisonment and near death, Claire has an epiphanic moment of revelation. At Craigh Na Dun, she realizes how much her emotions have shifted in the past six months. Having been given the choice by Jamie to return to her own time, she chooses to stay in the 18^th century.

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In a similar manner, Jamie also has three days before he is rescued and then redeemed. At one point, the brothers in the abbey give him a sacrament, both to heal and to serve as his last rites (Chapter 39). He is believed to be near death. A nail through the hand, the sacrifice of the self in order to save another, redemption and three days before resurrection are strong biblical echoes, as Gabaldon has remarked. It is the gravity of the scenes and the emotional weight of them that make a profound impact on us. The Wentworth episode is not a gratuitous rape scene. Wentworth is about confronting the limits of one’s self, acknowledging one’s weakness, and being able to find enough courage to come back from the dead, and pursue one’s dreams in spite of the lingering pain and suffering.

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By: Eleanor Ty

Works Cited

Gabaldon, Diana. “Jamie and the Rule of Three.” Dianagabaldon.com 9 December 2010.

Stewart, Sara. “Sexual Violence on Outlander vs. Game of Thrones. Women and Hollywood 21 May 2014. http://blogs.indiewire.com/womenandhollywood/sexual-violence-on-outlander-vs-game-of-thrones-20150521

Why Sassenachs (not just soccer moms) love Outlander

        In a somewhat tongue-in-cheek article in Business Insider, Jethro Nededog writes that Starz’s Outlander is a show mainly watched by women (64%), and more specifically by soccer moms who have become hooked by reading Diana Gabaldon’s novels, who like the characters’ family values, find inspiration in Claire and Jamie’s marriage, the strong female point of view, and the good-looking lead actor, Sam Heughan. These reasons are probably true for some people, but do not adequately explain the obsession readers and more recently, audiences have with the books and the TV series. Gabaldon’s books have sold 26 million worldwide, and the Starz production has averaged 5.1 million viewers each episode in the first half of Season 1.

Gabaldon’s books offer multiple levels of intellectual, emotional, aesthetic psychic engagement, and Ronald D. Moore’s production has been careful to replicate this experience on screen. Here are my five reasons why women (not necessarily just soccer moms) love Outlander:

1. A strong, competent heroine

Gabaldon presents a strong, intelligent heroine who is able to perform amazing feats of nurturing and healing because she has the advantage of 200 years of science and medicine. During the first encounter of Claire Beauchamp with the Highlanders, her ability to put back Jamie’s dislocated shoulder was the first riveting scene that made us and Jamie fall in love with the heroine. Not since Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe or Stieg Larsson’s The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (2011) have we seen such “competence porn,” the enjoyment derived from witnessing impressive feats of human capability” (Dartnell). Starz understood this attraction and made the most of Claire, and later, Jenny representing them as feisty, strong, and capable women, at home in Lallybroch and on the road.

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Outlander Episode 1 x 02

2. Melodrama

19^th century melodrama is characterized by the clash between extremes of good and evil, between strong and weak, rich and poor, but also by its use of archetypal, mythic beliefs. Gabaldon’s novels are full of heart-wrenching scenes of emotional conflicts and drama. The scene of Black Jack Randall flogging Jamie works at a number of levels. The flogging scene, with Jamie’s outstretched arms, is one of goodness and innocence at the hands of the wicked, suggestive of Christ at the hands of Roman soldiers. Diana Gabaldon describes Black Jack as a “pervert” and a “sadist” (Facebook post 28 April 2015), but even David Cameron appreciated the power of such a scene when he requested that Outlander not be shown in Great Britain before the Scottish referendum.

In the eighteenth century, sentimental novels used stock characters and scenes to create affecting scenes for readers: a seduced maiden asking for forgiveness at her father’s feet or the reunion between a father and his long, lost son. Different readers have their own list of gut-wrenching scenes in Outlander but for many it is the scene at the standing stones, when Jamie bids Claire to go back to her “own time on the other side” because “There’s nothing for ye on this side, lass!” (Chapter 25 Thou Shalt Not Suffer). Later, he admits that letting her go was the “hardest thing” he ever did. Instead of replicating the self-sacrifice through dialogue, the Starz production shows Jamie crying himself to sleep, and then weeping for joy when she returns to him at the cottage.

Outlander Episode 1 X 11

In addition, melodramas often feature orphans and emphasize the weak and the unappreciated. Interestingly, Claire and Jamie are both orphans, which intensifies their need for each other. Promises of unconditional care become more critical. Early on, Jamie tells her, “You need not be scairt of me.. Nor of anyone here, so long as I’m with ye” (Chapter 4 I Come to the Castle). Care is also given to Claire by Mistress Fitzgibbons who offers Claire a “kindly” welcome, dresses her and respects her as a healer. These scenes are important because Claire, and to a certain extent, Jamie, have been itinerants, without stable homes, and are emotionally- starved. In the Starz production, when Claire imagines telling someone who she really is, it is to Mistress Fitzgibbons to whom she dreams of confessing.

3. The Renaissance man as hero

Even though Sam Heughan has become the “alpha male” of 2015, most women would agree that we are in love with the fictional character Jamie Alexander Fraser rather than Sam. As well as being a brawny fighter and soldier, Jamie is a true Renaissance man, cultured and accomplished in the arts and sciences. He speaks English, Gaelic, French, German, and reads Latin. He is good with horses, is emotionally intelligent, often understanding people’s needs before Claire, and is a born leader. He can fix a mill wheel, knows how to run a farm, and later, can build log cabins with only an axe (Drums Of Autumn). He is a tender and passionate lover. The only thing he cannot do is sing. Okay, Jamie’s (and Sam’s) physique and handsome features help.

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4. Romance and transgressive sexual passion

Contrary to those who see Claire and Jamie’s marriage as the epitome of pure married love, I see their relationship as the embodiment of transgression and desire. All through the first two-thirds of Outlander, Claire’s feelings for Jamie are ambivalently tinged with admiration, love, but also feelings of guilt, worry, and her sense of impropriety. She knows she is married to Frank, and the relationship with Jamie is that much more exciting because it is, in the back of Claire’s mind, a forbidden one. Sure, Jamie and Claire’s relationship has been sanctified by marriage, but was she free to marry? There is nothing quite so exciting romantic as being reluctantly swept up into a passionate love affair, for once, letting one’s body (and soul?) judge what is right instead of following one’s reason.

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5. Nostalgia and Elegy

Outlander and Dragonfly in Amber are extended elegies for the Scotish clans, their kilts, their grand horses, and the Gaelic language. In the Starz production, Claire and Frank visit the battlefield of Culloden right at the beginning. In the novel, Claire warns Jamie not to participate in the Rising. She remembers “the clan stones, the grey boulders that would lie scattered on the field, each stone bearing the single clan name of he butchered men who lay under it” (Chapt. 25 Thou Shalt not Suffer). We are reminded that the Highlanders and their way of life are doomed, and the impending destruction infuses the story with a sense of melancholia and nostalgia. Even though readers and viewers may not have been to Scotland, we feel nostalgia for the rolling green hills, the craigs, lochs, old castles, majestic mountains, and heather-covered fields. The Starz production makes the most of the pastoral beauty of Scotland by highlighting its magic and mystery. Terry Dresbach’s meticulous and detailed costumes make even the drabbest wool and plaid come alive and look stunning. Is it any wonder that tourism in Scotland has increase by 30% since the show started?

By: Eleanor Ty

Outlander: Critical Musings

This blog page presents musings on Diana Gabaldon’s Outlander book and Ron D. Moore’s TV series.