Noah Berlatsky explains that illicit passions aren’t less enjoyable because they’re illicit. Quite the contrary.
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Outlander is a fantasy about cheating on your husband. And it’s not especially subtle, either.
Both Diana Gabaldon’s 1991 novel and the recent Starz Television series — slated to return next April—tell the story of Claire Randall, a nurse who has just been reunited with her husband Frank, an Oxford history professor, following the end of World War II. They go on a delayed honeymoon to Scotland, and Claire falls backwards through time to the 1700s. There she meets the swashbuckling, kilt-wearing, not-an-Oxford-history-professor-thank-you-very-much hero Jamie (played on television by the radioactively delectable Sam Heughan).
Exiled from her own time, events conspire (oh, those darn events) to thrust Jamie and Claire into matrimony and then into the inevitable subsequent matrimonial acts.
“Thus inescapably pinioned,” Claire laments in the novel, “I squelched up the path to my wedding.” Further squelching will ensue.
As Claire’s words indicate, the guilt of infidelity is discussed explicitly and directly. But it’s also more indirectly, and even bizarrely, symbolized. The first person Claire meets when she falls back into the past is Frank’s ancestor, Captain Jonathan “Black Jack” Randall. Randall looks exactly like Frank (and in the television series is played by the same actor, Tobias Menzies).
But where Frank is a studious, thoughtful, kindly scholar, Jack Randall is a vicious blackguard; he abuses Claire and (in the television version at least) tries to rape her almost as soon as he sees her. Moreover, Jack is presented as impotent and sexually deviant; he tries to rape Jamie’s sister in the novel but is unable to do so because, it is suggested, women don’t interest him. He is instead aroused by homosexual sadism — Jamie is the main object of his lust, not Claire.
If the novel presents infidelity as a guilty pleasure, then it also takes some pains to circuitously justify it. Claire’s husband, Frank, looks exactly like his ancestor Jack — a brutal, vicious man physically unable to satisfy Claire. The novel, through its doubling, seems to suggest that good Frank may also be evil Jack; the book both regrets the loss of Frank and celebrates the escape from him.
In doing so, Outlander seems deliberately to be about itself — which is to say, it is about the act of escaping that dowdy, evil husband, and finding a better partner through the magical, time-traveling power of a historical romance. The television show, for its part, offers the same pleasure, with a twist. The series returns, periodically, to check in on Frank and his desperate search for his wife. Where the novel allows the reader to enter the fantasy once and for all, the television show mirrors its own episodic form, so the viewer leaves Frank for greener kilts, then goes back to him, then leaves him: infidelity on the weekly installment plan.
The Glorious Guilty Pleasure Of Romantic Fiction
Outlander suggests that reading (or watching) romance is a guilty, pleasurable escape from an unfulfilling marriage. In this way, it echoes Janice Radway’s famous 1984 book Reading the Romance. In her anthropological study of romance readers, Radway argued that women found in romance the kind of caring, intimate, mothering relationships that their husbands failed to provide. Romances, Radway argued, were compensatory; they were appealing because they imagined nurturing, maternal, masculine, exciting, loving men of the sort who were not readily available to women under patriarchy.
But if Outlander seems in some ways to confirm Radway’s view of romance, it also undermines it. Claire is, after all, not exactly the reader — the book isn’t about a modern day woman falling into the past, but about a woman in the past falling further into the past. It’s historical fiction within historical fiction; a fantasy in a fantasy. Claire’s husband, Frank, is the kind of nurturing man that Radway seems to tout as ideal —but the novel rejects that fantasy and instead chooses Jaime, who is a good bit more brutal (there is an infamous spanking scene, which the television show has not yet reached).
The patriarchal mores of Scotland are part of its charm; Claire gets to both defy them and submit to them, in a kind of stimulating cultural (and with the spanking, actual) BDSM. The novel, then, is not so much about providing a fantasy alternative to reality, than it is about luxuriating in multiple possible fantasies. Outlander’s readers may want to escape from reality, but that escape seems less about compensating for the dreary bonds of patriarchy and more about compensating for the dreary truth that everybody, male or female, only gets one life—except in fiction, where you can imagine more times, more places . . . and more polyamory.
Outlander also raises some interesting questions about identification. Critics generally assume that female readers of romance will identify with the female heroine. No doubt that’s true to some extent — but inOutlander, it’s also true that Claire’s illicit desire for Jamie is mirrored by Jack Randall’s illicit desire for Jamie. The romance novel enacts, in its sadistic sexual finale, its own Jack/Jamie slash fan-fiction. The reader gets to imagine infidelity, but she (or he) also gets to imagine herself (or himself) as a sexual predator, the unfettered patriarch inflicting sexual violence on a desirable male body. Of course, Jack is a villain, and his passions are seen as wrong — but then, Claire’s betrayal of her marriage vows is also seen as wrong and a source of guilt. Illicit passions aren’t less enjoyable because they’re illicit. Quite the contrary.
Romance is often presented — by Radway and others — as limiting or staid; as an escape into a familiar, cozy, infantile fantasy. For Gabaldon, though (and I think for many other romance writers and readers) romance is adventure, possibility, excitement. The Outlander of the title is not just Claire, but the reader (or viewer), who is estranged from her everyday routine not so she can be comforted, but so she (or for that matter he) can try on different genders, different loves, different lives.
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This article originally appeared on Ravishly.
Photo credit: Wikimedia Commons
I completely agree with the article and i am shocked that infidelity, yes that’s what it is , INFIDELITY, is being justified and touted by women as a great love. I am deeply worried about a person or persons that could identify with an obvious self-serving, completely annoying, sex-starved protagonist. As women, are our needs for fantasies so severe that we would resort to actually thinking the series of events in this book are actually worthwhile? Are the fans so Twilight-esque that they can’t pull back and see this book for what it is? Crass, indulgent, adulterous crap without the… Read more »
Hey all! GMP Exec Editor here, and the author, Noah, has been trying to comment here but has run up against a glitch in our system. Here is his reply to you guys. Thanks for reading. – Hey all; thanks for commenting. There seem to be a number of confusions here I’d like to address quickly. First, I like Outlander. I have in fact read the book; I saw the TV show; I enjoyed them both. This piece is not an attack on either. It’s a discussion of why they’re enjoyable, and how they work. Second, Outlander is often included… Read more »
These guys are just trying to inflame all the outlander fans so they can get their 15 minutes of fame.
SPOILER ALERT*** What cracks me up is that this guy doesn’t even mention what Claire goes through when she is forced to go back to the 1940’s. He doesn’t mention how honest she was with her feelings toward Frank when she goes back lonely, scared, and pregnant. He doesn’t mention how she struggled with Frank’s infedelity through the years that she thought Jamie gone. He obviously read the book after making a completely biased opinion of the show. Try reading the whole series, then you might understand!
First, Outlander isn’t pure romance novel; it’s romantic but there are too many other significant parts for it to be considered just romance. Second, seriously? The whole novel, not to mention series, and all you got was she’s cheating on her husband 200 years in the future? Please buy a clue, get the books from the library (sorry Diana; don’t want him to think we’re pushing book sales while he gets his info straight), actually READ THEM!!!, and rewrite this article because it is way off base! Gracious, did you even NOTICE the historical details?!?!
Dear Noah, It seems you did not quite understand your topic, i’m afraid. Outlander is not a romance, it’s about a 40 years long healthy marriage. It’s not about illicit passion, Jamie and Claire after all didn’t even so much as kiss before the wedding ceremony.. A woman without any male relatives in the 18th century was without any rights or protection. Claire did not have a husband alive, and was about to be under an equal opportunity sadistic figure of authority’s power (You got BJR wrong, he did not rape Jenny , not because she was a woman but… Read more »
Your piece is evidence you did not read the books. Period. The only logical truth you present is that Outlander is fiction. Outlander is not a story of infidelity. SMH. When one falls through stones and ends up 200 years in the past, the current husband hasn’t been born yet, LOL. Diana Gabaldon has created a story of a couple who has been married for 40 years. What on earth can possibly be wrong with that. Is it fantasy to be in a 40 year loving relationship? I think not. Read a book before you critique it.
Also, Outlander is NOT a Romance. If you want romance, read a harlequin book.
Funny article! After 40 years of marriage and very much in love, I actually found Outlander to be a celebration song to a real long standing loving relationship. No “romance” novels deal with married love and passion along decades (and not other fiction that I know either, by the way). What “cheating” are you talking about?? There is conflict, for sure, and hard decisions are made but you can’t say there’s cheating when both men are 200 years apart. That’s called SciFi for your information, which surely needs some openmindness from the reader. Reading the Outlander series teaches a lot… Read more »
You don’t get it. If marriage extends only until the couple are parted by death, then if one partner travels to a time when the other partner is not alive, HOW IS THAT CHEATING? If she had traveled 200 years into the future, and Frank was long dead, would she be an adulteress? No. By the same logic, when she (fictionally) traveled to a time before Frank was alive, I don’t think it can be categorized as adultery. Her first husband was not alive, so there can be no adultery.
This article implies that reading this book for the fantasy and just enjoyment is not a worthwhile goal. If, by any weird chance I was sent back in time to a place and people I did not know, I would look for warmth and comfort. Claire wrestle with the problem of being faithful to Frank, yet not knowing if she will ever return to be with him. They were not married for long, before the war came and the two were separated and who knows if the marriage would have lasted after the stress and horror they both endured. I… Read more »
What are u talking about? (Article)
You make yourself look a complete fool. Obviously you haven’t read not one of the books, or you would know that outlander is not in fact, a book about cheating. Come on? Are you serious? Maybe you just needed some sort of attention to your opinion based “writing”?… of articles. And, honestly that’s just sad. Better luck next time.
In the novel, Claire and Frank have just reunited after years apart during the war. They are trying to renew a nonexistent marriage. Furthermore, Frank is a one-dimensional, supporting character in the books. So Frank’s nature as described in your review is coming directly from the television adaptation where they are trying to play up the love triangle. It doesn’t really exist in the books. You should read the book before critiquing unless you are strictly commenting on the television adaptation. My husband of 16 years is about to finish the most recent novel released. He enjoys the books, admires… Read more »
Well, technically speaking, Claire never commits adultery or bigamy with Frank and Jamie. Frank has not been born when she marries Jamie in 1743. When she returns to 1948, Jamie was long dead. She waits until Frank IS dead before she goes back to the 1700s. Just saying. I don’t think rape counts as adultery in the scheme of the world. There is only one single instance with Claire that could be consider adultery-and it isn’t anything anyone would “fantasize” about.
I just have to ask – did you actually *read* the first book? Because so much of your article is factually wrong (saying nothing of the tone, inferences, or implications – just basic This Happened and then This Happened type stuff), that it’s hard to know where to start parsing.
It is rare to see someone so completely miss the point of these books, the relationships within the books, and the readers relationship to the books that this article was almost entertaining. Perhaps you should only review TV shows and not great big novels (whatever the genre) because clearly attention span is not your thing. That the relationship of Claire/Jaime and Jaime/Black Jack Randall are a “mirror” I almost spit out my coffee. Ha! Good one.
Obviously had to write something with a ‘new angle’ and obviously did not read the books or watched the show. The last category I would put Outlander is romance, unless you want to categorize all human interaction as romance. Grow up and report on the amazing talents this production has assembled, more to the point the talent of both Caitriona Balfe and Sam Heughan whose performance is amazing.
Clearly she doesnt get it. This isnt a book about infidelity. Its about finding a love that survives time. Over 200 years. They know each other in every way and they love each other through it all. That is the definition of love and marriage. Outlander is not a story about infedility but just the opposite. Its the love that all people look for.
Mr. Berlatsky, I think I know what your problem is. I think you’re jealous that Outlander gets more female attention than you do. I’m not married, I’m divorced, but I’d read these books even if I were married to the “perfect man” and I’d do it all without ANY intentions of being unfaithful to my husband. I’ve never been unfaithful to any man I’ve had a relationship with and that includes my ex-husband. “Guilty Pleasure”? Outlander isn’t a 5 lb slab of dark chocolate. “Infantile”? I seriously doubt that you more than scanned the first chapter of the first Outlander… Read more »
Oh that made me laugh this morning. Ive read the books 3 times just because i love the story so much. May i suggest you do the same, but in your case just because what you wrote shows that you did not understand the story at all. Or perhaps you never really read the books….
Ummmm….. Maybe you should try again to read the series from start to finish and then come back and revisit the article you’ve just written.
What twaddle, this is what happens when you overthink and look for hidden meanings that aren’t there. The series especially shows a very sympathetic image of Frank and even Claire who are in a situation not of their own making. Has this reviewer even read the books?
After spending the last year reading this series, I find this article appalling. I would never compare it to a cheap romance novel. Sure, there is romance involved, but it is rich in history, war, loyalty, loss, love, betrayal, and relationships. I am surprised you have a job! This article reminds me of a book report written by a teen that read the book sleeve, skimmed a few pages and spewed a subpar report for a grade. Next time you write a “review” I would suggest you read the series.
How can someone cheat on a man who hasn’t yet been born? Seems to me—and the other commenters posting—that you’re really stretching to make a ‘point’ which is, in reality, more indicative of your own subconscious yearnings than what’s actually in this book.
Clair could’ve touched the stone at any time and been transported back to her own time where her true husband (Frank) would be alive… but instead, she chose to stick around and give her heart to another man, which is disloyal and unfaithful, if you’re even honest about it.
Seriously?!?! I hate when people jump on the Outlander bandwagon to criticize – ESPECIALLY when the comments are so poorly researched and/or interpreted from the source material. Sit down and read the da#% book and then write a review!
WOW, Did you really read the book? Because your analysis is so off base of what the story is about. Did someone cheat on you and now it slants the way you interpret a story like this? Totally missed the essence of Outlander with this review!