I apologise in advance, because this review is going to be so full of spoilers. I am so shocked with this I can’t even come up with words to explain this. The hypocrisy of it all is just threatening to suffocate me. And I need some help to decide whether I should go on.
Just a little context: a bit over 10 years ago, my mother lent me this book to read, but as I am not a big fan of translations if I can avoid them, it has been sitting in my bookshelf back home ever since. Then, about a year ago, I watched the first couple of episodes on Amazon Prime Video and thought it looked really interesting, but as these things go, life got in the way.
Fast forward to last week, when Audible was having a Diana Gabaldon sale, which each book going for under 5 quid a pop. I figured it was my chance – and bought all 8 books. And promptly started reading.
There were so many things I loved about this book.
It has an incredibly interesting starting point for its plot. The writing is really good – I tend to get bored with historical fiction really easily and I did not feel even slightly annoyed with it in this book. It takes place in Scotland, where I just went on vacation, so as she described the Scottish Highlands all I had to do was close my eyes and be transported there.
An added bonus was the narration, which in my opinion was just superb. I am not originally from the UK, so I cannot attest as to whether the accents were good or not, but they sounded great to me, and I could easily tell which character the narrator was reading simply from the accent and tone of her voice at any given time. Plus, accents are sexy and I enjoy audiobooks that play around with them.
Then, there were some that I felt like were just not my cup of tea, but I could accept.
For example, the description of Jamie did not sound appealing at all to me. He most definitely didn’t look like Sam Heughan from what I read, more like Hagrid and Arthur Weasley’s lovechild. Which as I said – does not make me hot, but to each their own.
Also, the sheer mysoginy of it all really threw me for a loop for a while there, but I decided to strike it up to 18th century realities, and breath through it. I mean, I cannot fathom a world where I would allow some guy to beat me and then simply let him screw me the next day because he shared stories about himself. And then fuck me raw and do it again the the next day despite my protests and not consider it rape. I mean when I heard the phrase “He would be gentle, but he would not be denied.”, I just shuddered and wanted to scream at the author/characters that gentle or not, not being denied is the definition of rape. That is just not okay.
But this was the reality of 18th century society. Rape and assault are just a small part of the everyday reality for those women and even if I was uncomfortable with the way the author was romanticizing it all, I would just have to accept it and try to ignore those parts. After all, I spent 40 quid on these 8 books and I wanted to enjoy them.
But then, came the parts I started having a bit too much trouble compartimentalizing, even considering this is just literature.
First came the victim blaming our so-called “hero” inflicted on his sister without even bothering to get his facts straight. I mean, he couldn’t go home because his sister “consented” to being raped to save his life? And lets say she had actually been raped and gotten pregnant. Her keeping the child and naming him after her brother was somehow offensive to him? It made her a whore? How? And what blame would the child carry for the circumstances of its conception, had that actually been the case? That seriously pissed me off.
And I won’t even get started on the fact that it wasn’t enough for Captain Randall to be a horrible person. No. The one fact that was supposed to move him from the horrible category into evil was the fact he was gay? Totally unnecessary and positioned this book possibly as the most homofobic book I have ever read.
And then, the pièce de résistance. Jamie gets raped. Violently and lovingly. And all of sudden, rape becomes a big deal. Cue the big pity party. Cue the moment when it is suddenly understandable for a guy to kill himself because he was raped, while it is perfectly normal for women to be raped on a regular basis and still be expected to love their husbands. Cue the guy starving himself and making a big deal of the fact he wants to die, and receiving last rites from the monks.
While I am not trying to say that male rape is unimportant by any means, what I cannot stomach is the different treatments given to a man and a woman put into the same situation. Because I can guarantee you that if the one who had gotten raped was a woman, Jamie would still feel like he was the one wronged. Oh, wait, no “if” necessary: that did happen.
I will again refrain from touching the clusterfuck that was the scene where Claire pretends to be Randall trying to rape Jamie again and he gets a hard-on trying to fight her off. I just had no idea what was going on there.
A little over 2 hours to the end and I just feel like throttling the author and actually started the review before I actually ended the book. I have never done that before. That is how mad I was.
Anyway, this just means I am confused. If I had read this book 10 years ago, before I was really aware of myself, my opinions, and the injustices of the world around me, I might have loved this. It is well written, it was beautifully narrated, and I couldn’t take my headphone off for the best part of 4 days. I wanted to know what would happen next. But there were some parts that were just unnacceptable to me. I tried, but I just couldn’t deal with the hypocrisy.
So I need some help here: I spent quite a bit of money on this and I don’t want it to go to waste, but I don’t know if I can stomach much more of the mysoginy and homophobia.
Some please tell me whether I should continue on with the rest of the series. Does it get any worse?
I haven’t had any desire to read this series, and you just confirmed it for me!
The sad part is that the book itself is really well written – I almost wish I could turn off my brain sometimes. ☹️
Three things:
1. The scenes which you had a problem with are all the common ones people usually do. I’ve read all but the last book, and I’ve decided that Gabaldon as an author has a really hard time distinguishing between the mores of the time period (to which she is fanatically devoted) and condoning those things as an author. In her mind, she is being realistic in depicting sexual violence and misogyny historically. It continues to be a problem through the rest of the series, and if you continue, you have to accept that the characters’ behavior isn’t necessarily condoned, but viewed by her as a “realistic outcome” in the circumstances of her story and in their specific historical context.
2. Those scenes are handled MUCH better in the show. The way the beating scene in particular is framed, as well as the rape (which is brutal, but the weird sex healing is gone). The show is far more adept at handling the historical attitudes and still appeasing our modern sensibilities. At least, in my opinion.
3. The conflicts between Jamie and Claire regarding misogyny are addressed going forward. Claire sets boundaries for Jamie, and they learn how to be a couple. But things do still get a little wonky from time to time, regarding weirdness. The first book is the most egregious, though.
I’d keep going through at least book three, if I were you. The later books are a bit of a slog at times, so you really have to love the characters and world to keep going.
Thanks, that is really helpful. :)
And I get what you are saying about it being realistic for the time period, but I agree with you on the fact that she does not do a good job of distinguishing between things. She could maintain the historical accuracy without having Claire (who is not part of that historical period) accept these things as the norm.
I will definitely continue watching the TV show, because I do enjoy it, but I’m still undecided on the books.
It might be interesting to see Claire try and teach Jamie what is acceptable and what is not, and them working on a compromise, but at this point I don’t trust the author to know where to draw the line.
But I really appreciate your view on it. Thanks again! :)
I strongly agree with all of these points, and particularly want to echo #1. Modern readers tend to experience discomfort with those types of scenes, because we obviously have a much lower tolerance for rape and misogyny than people did at the time. It doesn’t help that Gabaldon includes a lot of this type of material, but I do think that since — as you said — you don’t go for a lot of historical fiction, it may be especially jarring. Unfortunately, the fact is that a twentieth-century woman like Claire wouldn’t have been thought to “know her place” in Jamie’s time, so while the beating scene in particular is a dealbreaker for many, it simply would not have been realistic for the men Claire encounters to be uniquely enlightened when it comes to gender equality. For all that this is a historical fantasy, what with the time travel elements, it’s not a fictional world that Gabaldon has created. She’s staying faithful to historical social mores, and while it’s fine if that’s not to your taste, I’m not sure “hypocritical” is the right word for it… it’s just the way it was.
All of that said, I am in full agreement about the use of the evil gay trope. Gabaldon does have a couple of blind spots and that is one of them.
Oh, that’s the other thing I forgot to mention! I feel like just from reading this book, it seems like she might be using the evil gay trope, but it’s clear from her later books that she isn’t homophobic. She’s said in interviews that Black Jack is a bad guy with bad urges who just happens to be gay, so make of that what you will.
I don’t fully know if I buy it? It’s definitely not that I think Gabaldon is a homophobe, but sometimes people unconsciously fall into using tropes that are damaging nonetheless. She may have made up for it with the Lord John books and respectfully developing his character, but as it stands on the record BJR is a pretty classic evil gay, imo. I would feel a lot better about it if she didn’t make excuses for it (“he just HAPPENS to be gay” is a basic BINGO rationalization) and instead acknowledged it and pointed to later work that demonstrates better representations of LGBTQ characters.
Oh, the beating punishment scene was not a deal breaker for me at all. That was the one I completely accepted as part of the period which was just not my cup of tea.
The hypocritical part in my view came from the fact that if rape is just a sad symptom of life in the ‘1700s, which we should all accept as historical accuracy, how come it becomes such a big deal when it is done to Jamie that you need to have almost 3 hours devoted to dealing with the aftermath of it at the end? That is why I chose the word hypocrite. Either rape is a big deal, or it isn’t. You can’t pick and choose just because of who is getting raped unless you, as an author, believe women should be better at accepting rape than men.
To be fair, if Claire were raped, and especially in so prolonged and melodramatic a way, I’m sure Gabaldon would have spent just as much time being weird about it as she did with Jamie.
I also think that it’s an unfair reality that it’s much rarer for a man to experience rape, and maybe not even talking numbers there, just the cultural perception of manliness in relation to sexual violence. There wasn’t, still isn’t really, a cultural framework for men to rely on in dealing with rape when it’s perpetrated against them, rather than the other way around. A case could probably be made that Jamie would never have feared rape or had any mechanisms to cope with it, living in such a patriarchal society where rape was something only women were meant to deal with.
Fair enough.
You had me at “being weird about it”. ?
I hated these books. They’re tediously overlong. I hate Claire. I hate Jamie. I hate how Claire and Jamie resolve every conflict with sex. I read through the start of the fourth book of the series, hoping that I would catch on to whatever makes them popular. I finally had to throw in the towel on them.
I vote not bothering with the sequels. Wish I could get those hours back.
Haha, Thanks!
Maybe I should have gotten your opinion beforehand. It would have saved me 32 hours and a lot of anguish over what to do next. ?
I tried to read Outlander when the series came out and tapped out at 20 percent. I didn’t even write a DNF review about it because I was really not into getting into fights via GR with fans of the book/series. They get really ticked if anyone criticizes it. I just couldn’t get into it. Plus I find it weird how Gabaldon gets annoyed if she is equated with romance.
Just on that last point, I think Gabaldon and her books (which I love) do have a lot of internalized bullshit going on.
Yeah. I don’t get why she acts all offended that these are considered romance. I love romance books. They are a what, billionaire dollar industry right? So why act as if this is high brow fiction?
There’s a heck of a lot of (albeit not very sexy) sex going on there for it not to be considered romance…
you made it farther than I did, and I’ve read a lot of garbage. I just found it tedious
LOL. Yeah I just could not get into it and just gave up.
I have less than a handful of books on my DNF pile. I have a real hard time leaving things unfinished. :(
Life is too short to waste time on this series when there’s so many other better books out there. I know it’s popular to an almost mythological degree, but I just couldn’t even finish the first book.
Funny thing is, I had no idea there was this whole following behind it when I started reading it. Go figure.
You really phrased well what the problems with the book were. I read this a few years ago and I found it very disturbing in a lot of the rape/beating type of things that go on in Jamie and Claire’s relationship. Then I found it even more disturbing when I brought this up to people I know who love the book and they kept saying, “it was what happened at the time. It’s really very romantic.” If the book was written “at the time,” it wouldn’t bother me as much as knowing this a modern series.
That annoys me though. I read a lot of romance and I think calling out hey this woman is being raped by the hero that is problematic. I get that those were the times, but I as a reader can’t see past it and get all swoony when they finally get their HEA.
I get what you’re saying, and it’s not that I actually find Jamie beating Claire “romantic,” but I do think it’s a weird hard line to draw to imply that historical fiction written now shouldn’t include content that is not in line with contemporary sensibilities?
Like, I do not personally care if people don’t enjoy reading it and are thus turned off by the series. But in discussions around the book it seems like the line of thinking like “just because it was okay then doesn’t mean it’s okay to write about now” becomes a moralistic argument that the book is condoning or normalizing that kind of violence, and that readers/fans are therefore romanticizing violence. I’m the type of person who talks A LOT about misogyny in romance, so I don’t feel like this is a blind spot for me, but it rubs me the wrong way when the argument goes in that direction because it seems like it comes back to the same griping about women reading romance in general, and the concern that we are not going to be able to separate fantasy from reality in our actual relationships. I can read a book like Outlander and separate ingrained historical misogyny from the aspects of the relationship between the two that are actually really healthy and, yes, romantic. In fact, one of the things I personally find appealing about historical fiction/romance is how the characters carve out triumphs amid the adversity that was all too common at the time. Claire does reprimand Jamie for spanking her! And he does promise not to do it again, in a very sincere way, after listening to her point of view!
I say all of this not because I have any investment in changing anyone’s mind about whether they like Outlander or not, but I do think that historical fiction getting held to the standard where the characters should essentially behave according to our modern principles is unfair. I co-sign what narfna said above that Gabaldon’s overly-detailed style of writing can unfortunately come across as fetishizing when it comes to the scenes of violence, but I honestly feel that’s less because she is actually fetishizing violence and more just because overly detailed is how she writes everything. So, again, I get where people are coming from if they’re put off by it. But I think, because it is so popular, there is a particular backlash where fans are made out to be delusional because Jamie is not a hero, he’s an abuser! And I just find that supremely silly and insulting, because the histrionics completely ignore the historical context that is actually supremely important and, in fact, the whole point.
I think rape is wrong no matter the time period the romance book taking place.
Now if it’s a book and the hero/heroine or hero/hero or heroine/heroine are into role playing and that’s what the book is about have at it. But if it’s a scene with one partner forcing themselves on another one I can’t get into the book. I just can’t say well back then it was okay to beat and rape and cheat on your wife with a mistress and then get happy when the hero/heroine both admit they are in love.
Besides Outlander, Whitney, My Love had a lot of blowback on it for decades now due to the rape and beating scene that was included. I think that’s one reason what that particular book was reissued.
Thanks. I’ve been trying to piece it for myself why a book I would have otherwise rated as great bothered me so much. Writing these reviews for CBR is really helping me become more critical about the things I read.
If you do decide to be done with these Audible has a good return policy.
That is perhaps the best advice I got. Even if I end up not returning them, at least you just took the consumer guilt off the table. Thanks!
Hey – this is the Katie half of PattyKates. I adore these books, but can acknowledge that they are problematic in some aspects. I can tell you that my thought process about them has changed over the years, both because the way I look at things IRL has changed and because I’ve spent more time analyzing characters and their motivations since I started participating in CBR. I used to be content to just read a book and go where the author took me without reading too much into it. And, when I read it for the first time 20 years ago, what we now read as rape didn’t that way AT ALL.
The show has had the opportunity to address many of these problems while remaining pretty faithful to the spirit of the books – with the exception of the evil gay trope and evidently Mr. Willoughby. I hope you can at least continue to enjoy it.
Oh, and you’re right – Davina Porter (the narrator) is a marvel.
Side note: I’m sure you’ve figured this out already, but if you have these issues with the Outlander books, you should probably give the Game of Thrones books a hard pass as well.
Hey, Katie, I get where you’re coming from. Writing these reviews has made me extremely nitpicky when it comes to my reading now.
I really believe if I’d read this when my mom first offered me the books I would have loved them. Because 10 years ago I was a in my early 20s and bit more trusting and gullible or maybe just less cynical and aware. The times were different and I might not have read so much into it all. I don’t know.
To be honest, now that I’ve gotten all of this off my chest I feel like I might even be able to deal with it better – I might give the next book a try in a couple of months. And I’ll definitely continue watching the TV show.
On another note, I do watch Game of Thrones, and it all doesn’t affect me quite the same, possibily because all the characters are horrible people, regardless of gender or sexual orientation. And I just expect it at this point – all the horrible things happen, but it never comes across as it being okay. It is their reality, and it is aweful, but none of it is justified.
I gave up on the books a couple of years ago, but more because they bored me to death and I could never get past the first quarter of book one.
I don’t blame you. These books are okay if you switch off your brain entirely; they’re massively problematic if you don’t. I think I read the first four but only because I was pregnant and my brain only worked for, like, five minutes at a time.
The series is doing a slightly – but not much – better job at tackling all these issues, so I think I’ll stick to that instead.
Great review!