Been a while! My son is almost a year old! It's been tricky making time to write, and I don't have time to write the blog I want to write, but if I had time, it would go something like this.
Started reading Outlander after watching the pilot and I'm in love. I wish I had read her before I had written Beast in Exile. I would have taken more chances and bored you guys to death on even more historical minutiae (not that the author is boring, but in my less capable hands, yeah, probably so) and taken the time to fill in the story I thought everyone wouldn't care about, Diana Gabaldon is superb and I want to be her if I ever grow up.
Anyway, if I had time, I would write something titled Jamie's Body. I'm not even sure what the thesis would be, something about Diana Gabaldon redefining romance and rape, but this is what I've noticed.
From the very beginning of the show, Jamie's body is on display, for those of us who enjoy the male figure and in a very different way, for the people in the show. He is on display for Black Jack as an object of lust that symbolizes beauty and innocence Black Jack of course wants to crush into oblivion and he is on display for the people Dougal hopes to convince to join the Jacobite cause. Dougal romanticizes Jamie's body to stir up anger and sentiment, even though Jamie's floggings have little, if anything, to do with succession. This is fun ironic because normally it is the woman's body on display, and while yes, I know men are totally objectified (as honestly attested to above), I have three words for you: Game. Of. Thrones.
But the romanticizing here is much more than sexual, although it is a male from the beginning using Jamie's body. There's more here, but I don't have time, damnit!
So a popular theme this last season is rape. Like ALL OVER THE PLACE.
This is not new in the romance tradition. It goes back as far as Samuel Richardson with Pamela (1740) and Clarissa (1748) (reeeeeally hope those dates are right), through to Anne Radcliffe, through to the arguments we get into today about 50 Shades of Grey and so on. This seems to be a go-to for sensationalism. The distressed female about to lose her virtue is a disgustingly common trope. Even Sir Walter Scott got in on the action with my favorite character Rebecca, who, incidentally, does escape her pursuer.
Claire fulfills her romance duty by being assaulted twice, once with the nefarious, taking forever build-up of having her corset strings cut one by one as Black Jack tries to ruffle up some inspiration.
Her sister-in-law Jenny likewise is threatened. Trying to think of more before baby needs me, I'll fix it later when I remember.
However, I don't think any of the women are successfully raped and the one time Claire is saved by a man, it is Jamie with an unloaded gun. Lacking inspiration again, Black Jack is unable to hurt Jenny. The first time, Claire rescues herself by stabbing the man accosting her, where there could be an argument for stabbing being a phallic, penetrating symbol.
Jamie's rape by Black Jack takes the unfortunate aspect of the romance tradition and rips out its lungs, kinda like Arabella after she throws herself in a lake to get away from "would-be ravishers" (actually just guys riding by on horses) and almost kills herself. I don't believe this is a common plot point in other romances, though I haven't read everything there is to read in romance or any other genre for that matter. I kinda wonder if this isn't challenging the distressed female trope and calling bullshit. Jamie's pain is even given a greater significance by the fact that Black Jack drives a nail through his palm as a down payment for his sacrifice.
I haven't finished the second book yet, but there is a scene where Jamie uses Claire to get information out of a captive (no spoilers! saying no more!) and it is quite ruthless and all I could think was, wow, what a journey this character has had. He is not the same young man from the beginning of the first novel, the innocence destroyed and a new man reborn in the monastery (wait, was it a monastery? a place with a whole bunch of holy dudes).
Just for the record, I don't think rape is fun or particularly interesting, I just noticed this, and was thinking about everything you could do with the discussion. There are levels and levels of conversation and analysis that I would love to pick apart, freakish as that is. I'm not quite in a position to do that now, so help me out here and tell me what you think, what you notice, if I'm crazy, or any thoughts you have.
Anyway, just things I noticed that I would totally write a paper on if I could.
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