Chapter 13: A Marriage is Announced

In this chapter, gruesome torture and several bombshells.

When last we saw Claire, she was mouthing off to an dangerous sadist who had just punched her in the gut. Somehow, she is not dead. Instead, she is downstairs recovering while Dougal MacKenzie has a shouting match with Black Jack Randall. What did you think was going to happen when you left her alone with him, Dougal?

I knew the man was not my husband, but the resemblance was so strong and my habits so ingrained, that I had been half-inclined to trust him, and had spoken to him as I would have to Frank, expecting civility, if not active sympathy.

Set aside for a moment the plausibility of the resemblance between Black Jack and Frank. If Claire sees Frank so clearly when she encounters Black Jack, I imagine the opposite would be true. What might it be like for her to go back to Frank and have to look at Black Jack's face every day? 

On the other hand, putting 200 years between Claire and this man seems like an excellent plan. Claire is thoroughly creeped out by him, noting the "extraordinary look of speculative acquisitiveness" on Randall's face. Run!

In fairness, Dougal and Claire do get the hell out of there. They ride for a while before Dougal leads Claire off into the woods without explaining where they are going. 

The next few paragraphs are confusing — I don't know whether to read this as a part of Claire's character or as a writing misstep. Dougal is hurrying along, snapping branches, moving "abruptly," clearly in a state of high agitation. Yet, Claire experiences this walk as peaceful. She hears birds singing (they are apparently not disturbed by the branch-snapping). She breathes in the "sharp scents" of the hillside and notes the abundant flowers. "I badly needed a little peace, and I felt it here." Perhaps Claire is someone who has an extraordinary ability to achieve inner calm in a moment of heightened stress. Because the way Dougal is acting would have me tensing for another punch, not waxing poetic on whether discarded trash in the forest is a fair price to pay for modern conveniences.

Dougal leads Claire to a "saint's pool," a small sulfur spring dedicated to the worship of St. Ninian. He urges her to drink, then starts battering her with questions.

"Are ye a spy for the English or the French? he asked, with another bewildering change of subject. At least he was being direct for a change.

Claire holds up well under the barrage, keeping her cool and answering honestly and simply. Dougal tries to unnerve her by covering all sorts of topics, including Jamie's whipping. He is surprised to learn that Jamie has already told her some of the story.

"He must think well of ye," he said musingly. "He doesna generally speak of it to anyone."

People do seem to tell Claire a lot of things they shouldn't. Convenient for the reader, but somewhat unsettling.

Jamie was my patient, and to some extent, my friend as well. I had no wish to discuss his personal history with Dougal, though I would, if pressed, admit to a certain morbid curiosity.

Honestly, it does not take much pressing. Your nosiness is one of the things I cherish about you, Claire.

"And I'll tell ye, lass, watchin' men bein' flogged is not pleasant."

The only time I have seen a flogging (through my fingers) is on TV, and yes, even the fake flogging is mighty unpleasant. This book does not really shy away from detailed descriptions, though. What are we to make of this? Is it just to satisfy the "morbid curiosity" of a protagonist standing in for the reader? Are we supposed to be thinking of Christ's torture? Or how Jamie's attitude toward his torture(s) changes over various incidents? I think I'll need to read through to the end before I offer any coherent thoughts on how this book deals with physical violence. A lot of it may be prurient, but the book seems to be interested in the physical experience of pain as a crucial element of character development. As someone who tends to live in my head more than my body, I find these characters' embodiment fascinating. That is, they seem to live in the now and to place trust in their physical selves in a way that is alien to me, and I am interested to see how Diana Gabaldon develops that strand of characterization.

Dougal went on with his ghastly story.

This is such an odd line. What sort of audience is Claire imagining here? Clearly, I, the reader, know that the story is continuing. I do not need to be told. Perhaps she is emphasizing that it is "ghastly" and that I should feel uncomfortable for my avid consumption of a torture scene? Or is she explaining herself, knowing that she is "morbidly curious" and trying to acknowledge that she is uncomfortable with a story that is both repulsive and sort of a violation of Jamie's privacy?

"Aye, lass, courage like that is uncommon rare. It wasna ignorance, mind; he'd just seen two men flogged and he knew the same was coming to him. It's just he had made up his mind there was no help for it. Boldness in battle is nothing out of the way for a Scotsman, ye ken, but to face down fear in cold blood is rare in any man. He was but nineteen at the time."

This is somewhat different than the earlier discussion of courage/cowardice involving facing down a mob. In this case, it's not a matter of taking a risk for justice rather than remaining safe — it's a choice of how one faces the inevitable. That's very different. Preserving one's sense of self in the face of torture is certainly admirable, but not quite the same as sacrificing body/dignity/reputation for someone else's sake. Jamie's courage here exemplifies a certain type of masculinity — stoic, continent, dignified, proud, strong ("He didna scream, though, or beg for mercy, or twist round to try and save himself."). It strikes me as not very Christlike. That is, if Christ's torture and death is the perfect, willing sacrifice of the self, Jamie's attitude here is the stouthearted preservation of the self in the face of terrible suffering.

More Dougal on courage:

"Ye know, lass, it's fairly easy to be brave, sittin' in a warm tavern ower a glass of ale. 'Tis not so easy, squatting in a cold field, wi' musket balls going past your head and heather ticklin' your arse. And it's still less easy when you're standing face to face wi' your enemy, wi/ your own blood running down your legs."

Dougal apparently tried to bribe Black Jack Randall to spare Jamie the second flogging, but no dice.

Aaaaand more flogging. Yeesh, the first flogging description was bad enough, but the second is gruesome.

I feel like I have been reading an awful lot of flogging scenes lately. Here, I am reminded of the flogging scene early in The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Traitor to the Nation. Octavian and his mother are flogged after she refuses to become a nobleman's concubine. That's a very different scene genre-wise, told first person, and quietly devastating, rather than gory. Octavian Nothing is brutal in juxtaposing the classical/legal/scientific discourses of the 18th century with the human suffering in the "new creation" of the Roman/British empire. Octavian being flogged:

"They came behind me. I would not grimace; I would not flinch; indeed, I would show nothing — considering, as the Stoic Phrygian slave, crippled by his master's blows, hath writ: 'Beyond the last inner tunic of my frail body, no one has authority over me. If I love too much this pitiful flesh, I have sold myself as a slave, for I have shown through pain what can be used to master me.' So say I now, resolve standing tall in seclusion; but then, the rod cut; and, weakened by agony's chains, ambushed by astonishment, I could not forbear exclamations of torment."

That is a great book. Anyone who is interested in historical fiction should check out Octavian Nothing. Don't be scared off by the YA marketing (though I suppose anyone reading this is probably not much of a lit snob).

Back to Outlander:

"Jamie met Randall's eye straight on then, and said, 'No, but I'm afraid I'll freeze stiff before ye're done talking.'"

"Randall's face was—intent, I suppose ye'd say— and sort o'lighted up, like when a man is lookin' at a lass he's soft on, if ye know what I mean. 'Twas as though he were doin' somethin' much worse to Jamie than just skinning him alive."

I have not read very much of the online commentary about the TV show. But I have seen enough in passing to know that one of the livelier threads of discussion has been about Black Jack Randall's sexuality and the trope of the Depraved Homosexual. While Black Jack is an off-the-charts sadist who seems willing to rape Claire if he can, this description makes it clear that his interest in Jamie is much more intense. There may be many reasons for that, including the need to "break" a victim. Claire, for all her spunk, is practical enough to sacrifice honor in turn for getting out of bad situations alive, whereas Jamie is not. At least not here.

I know there are fans out there who argue that Black Jack is not, in fact, the poster boy for the Depraved Homosexual trope, using evidence that has not yet been introduced at this point in the novel. So I will remain open to those arguments. But as of what I know now, this reads as pretty close to the archetype of the evil gay villain. Yes, there may be mitigating factors in later chapters or books. But Black Jack's characterization here is one of the things that reminds me how old this book is. Twenty-five years ago, it was common for fiction aimed at a heterosexual audience to link queerness with evil in a casual way (it still is, though there are a lot more voices calling out the straightforward trope when it appears). I'm not throwing the book across the room or anything (in part because it is an audiobook that lives on my phone). But the Evil Queer Villain does not sit well with me. It's sort of like watching a Shirley Temple movie where she's friends with Bill "Bojangles" Robinson — the dancing is wonderful and they're the stars of their own film, but you can't just ignore the visual language and racist history of the minstrel show that they are reproducing. 

The characters of Jamie Whatshisname and Black Jack Randall thus encapsulated, Dougal finally tells Claire the Big News: that Black Jack has formally ordered Dougal to deliver Claire to Fort William for questioning. Which, given what we have recently heard and seen, portends hideous, extended torture.

This is followed by some convoluted discussion of Scottish law, the upshot being that Claire, as an Englishwoman, is subject to orders from Black Jack. If, however, she were to become a Scot, he could not compel the MacKenzies to give her up.

Which leads to Big News #2:

"Ye must marry a Scot. Young Jamie."

This may be the first time I have been sad that I saw the TV show first. Sad this was spoiled for me. I'm not 100% clear on the actual legality of this plan, but it is devilishly satisfying. See, she's not committing adultery! She haaaaaaaaaas to marry the super hot young guy she's been mooning over for ten chapters. After all, the choice is marry him and have tons of amazing sex or don't marry him and be slowly tortured to death by your husband's doppelganger. So it's not really her fault, you see. 

On the one hand, I am glad that Claire is safe. And going to get laid. On the other, the fact that her safety requires a near-complete removal of her agency is worrisome. Not just to me — she's not very happy about that herself. But I think there are two strands that need to be teased apart here. One is what is happening in the story and the other is the story that the author is choosing to tell. In the story, Claire is angry because Dougal is ordering her to marry Jamie and neither she nor Jamie seems to have much say in the matter. She's being forced and she (rightfully) hates it.

The other is the negation of Claire's agency by the author. Is there an explanation for this other than an effort to make the story more palatable to the reader? The reader is on Claire's side. If Claire were to just forget Frank and run off with Jamie (which she seems to want to do), that's a different sort of story. I'm all for Claire running away from the mid-twentieth-century hell of the educated faculty wife. Run, Claire, run! But Diana Gabaldon does not go that way. Instead, she concocts a far-fetched situation in which Claire gets to fuck Jamie without having a choice about it. And thus, she is not responsible for her actions. I'd rather see her make that choice on her own.

Of note: Dougal believes Claire that she isn't a spy because the water in the saint's pool will kill anyone who drinks it and then tells a lie. Ok then.

Claire protests that she won't marry anyone, but this is about as effective as her escape attempts up to this point. She yells. Dougal ignores her. She seethes with impotent rage.

"But . . . but I can't marry anyone!" I burst out.

Dougal's eyes were suddenly sharp. "Why not, lass? Do ye have a husband living still?"

"No. It's just . . . it's ridiculous! Such things don't happen!"

"Dougal had relaxed when I said "No."

Come to think of it, runaway bride is actually a fairly plausible explanation for Claire's presence in Scotland. Much more convincing than "I'm traveling from Oxford to France by way of Inverness."

Viewed in cold blood, the idea had some merit from my side as well.

Sure. Very useful guy, that Jamie.

I'm a little disappointed that Claire's fury/indignation/panic doesn't hit harder here. I think it would be much more effective if her inner monologue had remembered that Frank existed for the past 100 pages. Not that she is just thinking about Frank — obviously she would not want to be forced into marriage against her will even if she were single. But Claire does not seem desperate to get back to 1945. I don't blame her — there is some Revolutionary Road bullshit waiting for her back on the other end. The question for me is, is she angry because she really does want to get back to Frank? Or is she angry because she is fed up with Dougal's attitude toward consent (i.e. he couldn't care less)?

Dougal comes into Claire's room with Ned and Rupert, bringing the marriage contract for her to sign. New word for me: "equerry," a senior attendant, often responsible for a high-ranking person's horses.

Claire makes her objections plain, then pivots, pointing out that Jamie has not consented to the marriage either. Dougal, good early-modern patriarch that he is, is not concerned:

"Jamie's a soldier; he'll do as he's told. So will you." 

Despite Dougal's attitude toward consent of any sort, he humors Claire by calling Jamie in for a chat. He seems to have accepted his orders with equanimity, appearing neither pleased nor angry. He even explains why he is not a great catch for an 18th-century girl (and, as importantly, an 18th-century father), namely, he is a penniless outlaw.

I flapped my hand, dismissing the matter of outlawry as a minor consideration, compared to the whole monstrous idea.

Well, at least the culture clash is mutual.

And then, of course, this:

"Does it bother you that I'm not a virgin?"

He hesitated a moment before answering.

"Well, no," he said slowly, "so long as it doesna bother you that I am."

He grinned at my drop-jawed expression, and backed toward the door.

"Reckon one of us should know what they're doing," he said.

Plausible? Maybe. Entertaining? The joke relies on our sexist assumption that a powerful man is sexual experienced/insatiable. But I'm excited enough to see Claire in the role of sexual educator that I am not too fussed.

Claire responds to all of this by getting completely shitfaced. When fight and flight both fail, what else is left?

Body Count:

Jamie: 3 + assorted redcoats