Outlander

“‘But most divided lines are broken—yours is forked.’ She looked up with a roguish smile. ‘Sure you’re not a bigamist, on the quiet, like?’”

Reverend Wakefield’s housekeeper Mrs. Graham reads Claire’s palm and predicts the major change in life circumstances and romantic interest that is about to happen. She tells Claire that usually this means a person will have two marriages, but in Claire’s case the forked lines are still connected. Mrs. Graham interprets the unexpected change in marital status implied by Claire’s palm, which foreshadow Claire’s second marriage to Jamie.

“‘I gave him my own name because it seemed more suitable, as he lives here, but I didn’t want him to forget where he came from.’ He made an apologetic grimace. ‘I’m afraid my own family is nothing to boast of, genealogically. Vicars and curates, with the occasional bookseller thrown in for variety, and only traceable back to 1862 or so. Rather poor record-keeping, you know,’ he said, wagging his head remorsefully over the lethargy of his ancestors.”

Revered Wakefield expands upon the book’s theme of the importance of family lineage by explaining why he has drawn his adopted son Roger’s family chart. Though Wakefield loves Roger as his son, Wakefield feels that it is important for Roger to grow up with the pride of understanding his family background.

“This man, I reminded myself, was law, jury, and judge to the people in his domain—and clearly accustomed to having things his way.”

Upon Colum asking Claire to be the castle’s physician, Claire realizes that Colum’s quiet power is a force she cannot refuse if she is to survive in the world of Scotland in 1743. This scene highlight’s Colum’s strength in the community and his determination to hold onto his power. The interaction also serves as a warning to Claire, highlighting her precarious position at Castle Leoch. Colum’s trepidation about trusting Claire due to her status as an Englishwoman accentuate the motif of national pride in Outlander and the tension between the English and the Scottish.

“I now realized that I did recall some things about the actual trip through the stone. Very minor things. I remembered a sensation of physical struggle, as though I were caught in a current of some kind. Yes, I had deliberately fought against it, whatever it was. There were images in the current, too, I thought. Not pictures, exactly, more like incomplete thoughts. Some were terrifying and I had fought away from them as I…well, as I ‘passed.’ Had I fought towards others? I had some consciousness of fighting toward a surface of some kind. Had I actually chosen to come to this particular time because it offered some sort of haven from that whirling maelstrom?”

In Chapter 7, after arriving at Castle Leoch and beginning to form a routine there, Claire begins to remember some details about her journey through time. In doing so, she realizes that she may have made a choice in traveling to the 18th century. This marks a turning point in the book’s plot as it foreshadows Claire’s later decision to abandon hope of returning to 1945 to continue loving Jamie in 1743.

“It was immensely satisfying to be able once again to relieve a pain, reset a join, repair damage. To take responsibility for the welfare of others made me feel less victimized by the whims of whatever impossible fate had brought me here, and I was grateful to Colum for suggesting it.” 

Claire reflects on her delight in being able to see patients as Castle Leoch’s physician. Building on the motif of medical assessment, this quote indicates Claire’s healing powers and accentuates some of her defining characteristics, such as helpfulness, pragmatism, and frankness, which are all necessary qualities of a medical expert. Claire’s pleasure in treating the Castle Leoch community also serves as a major plot point as it indicates one of the first times that Claire feels at home at Castle Leoch and in her life in 1743 in general. It also highlights Claire’s complicated relationship with Colum as both her captor and her protector.

“Involuntarily, I reached out, as though I might heal him with a touch and erase the marks with my fingers. He sighed deeply, but didn’t move as I traced the deep scars, one by one, as though to show him the extent of the damage he couldn’t see. I rested my hands at last lightly on his shoulder in silence, groping for words. He placed his own hand over mine, and squeezed lightly in acknowledgment of the things I couldn’t find to say.”

After Jamie shows Claire his scars from being beaten by Captain Randall, the pair share one of their first intimate moments, establishing the connection between emotional and physical intimacy in their relationship.

“I was an outlander, and an Englishwoman to boot, and while I thought I would be treated with some respect as am inhabitant of the castle, I had seen many of the villagers surreptitiously make the sign against evil as I passed. My intercession might easily make things worse for the boy.”

Claire outlines her precarity as an outsider and Englishwoman in Scotland of 1743, which is in the middle of the political tensions of the Jacobite uprising. Claire describes her apprehension in intervening in the punishment of a 12-year-old boy by nailing his ear to a pillory. Though firmly against corporal punishment, Claire weighs her power and her vulnerability as a person who is not Scottish by birth. She concludes that she would only be protected for her interference by her connection to Colum, a Scottish laird.

“Like any schoolchild, I had read Dickens. And earlier authors, as well, with their descriptions of the pitiless justice of these times, meted out to all illdoers, regardless of age or circumstance. But to read, from a cozy distance of one or two hundred years, accounts of child hangings and judicial mutilation, was a far different thing than to sit quietly pounding herbs a few feet above such an occurrence.” 

By witnessing the incident of the 12-year-old thief having his ear nailed to the pillory, Claire realizes the stark differences between her time in 1945 and the one she finds herself in, 1743. She reflects on her own complacency, now seeing that intervening in human atrocity is far more complicated than she might have thought in her judgments against the Germans who did nothing during the Holocaust. Weighing the risks of her interference, she understands the threat of physical harm that might befall those who choose to dissent.

“‘You’ve seen a cat play wi’ a wee mousie?’ Dougal asked. ‘Twas like that. Randall strolled round the lad, making one kind of remark and another, none of them what ye’d call pleasant. And Jamie stood there like an oak tree, sayin’ nothing and keeping his eyes fixed on the post, not looking at Randall at all. I could see the lad was hugging his elbows to try to stop the shivering, and ye could tell Randall saw it too.’” 

Dougal recounts to Claire the details of witnessing Randall beat Jamie several years prior. Dougal’s story of Jamie’s courage confirms bravery as one of Jamie’s defining characteristics to both Claire and the reader. Furthermore, Dougal’s recollection of Randall’s manipulation and cruelty toward Jamie solidifies the long-standing rivalry between the two men. It also touches on the theme of corporal punishment and calls into question its use as a tool of justice; Though Randall is acting lawfully, his motivations for beating Jamie are clearly personal. The story also introduces a pattern of domination and submission between Jamie and Randall, as Randall clearly enjoys dominating Jamie through physical, and, as the reader will find out later, sexual torture.

“His extreme gentleness was in no way tentative; rather it was a promise of power known and held in leash; a challenge and a provocation the more remarkable for its lack of demand. I am yours, it said. And if you will have me, then…I would, and my mouth opened beneath him, wholeheartedly accepting both promise and challenge without consulting me.”

Claire clarifies her emotional and sexual intimacy with Jamie, elaborating on the book’s theme of emotional connection through sexual engagement. Claire is attracted to Jamie not just for his touch but for the power and sentiment behind it. She interprets the power that Jamie’s sexuality conveys as a kind of vulnerability—a way that he gives himself to her, soul and body.

“‘Even when I’ve just left ye, I want you so much my chest feels tight and my fingers ache with wanting to touch ye again.’ He cupped my face in the dark, thumbs stroking the arcs of my eyebrows. ‘When I hold ye between my two hands and feel you quiver like that, waiting’ for me to take you…Lord, I want to pleasure you ‘til ye cry out under me and open yourself to me. And when I take my own pleasure from you, I feel as though I’ve given ye my soul along with my cock.’” 

Jamie elaborates on the theme of emotional intimacy through sexual touch by describing the effect of his erotic relationship with Claire. He admits to the way in which sexual closeness makes him feel a further connection to Claire on a spiritual as well as physical level.

“‘Enjoy it! Sassenach,’ he said, gasping, ‘you don’t know just how much I enjoyed it. You were so…God, you looked lovely. I was so angry, and you fought me so fierce. I hated to hurt you, but I wanted to do it at the same time…Jesus,’ he said, breaking off and wiping his nose, ‘yes. Yes, I did enjoy it.’”

Jamie describes how he enjoyed dominating Claire during her beating after she puts the MacKenzie men in danger of being pursued by the English. The sexual pleasure that Jamie derives from Claire’s pain illustrates the book’s motif of domination and subordination.

“‘There’s such a thing as justice, Claire. You’ve done wrong to them all, and you’ll have to suffer for it.’ He took a deep breath. ‘I’m your husband; it’s my duty to attend to it, and I mean to do it.’”

As Claire’s husband, Jamie believes that he has a right to physically hurt Claire as a form of justice. This quote introduces patriarchy as an element of corporal punishment.

“‘And late in bearing, when the child moves a lot, sometimes there’s a feeling like when you’ve your man inside ye, when he comes to ye deep and pours himself into you. Then, then when that throbbing starts deep inside ye along with him, it’s like that, but it’s much bigger; it ripples all through the walls of your womb and fills all of you…That’s what they want sometimes, ye know…They want to come back.’”

Touching on the motif of parenthood, Jenny describes the erotic components of being pregnant. She compares carrying a child to being penetrated by a man. She also maintains that men in part want to penetrate women in order to symbolically return to their mother’s womb.

“It’s a damn thin line between justice and brutality, Sassenach. I only hope I’ve come down on the right side of it.”

After seeing young Rabbie’s injuries at the hands of his father MacNab, Jamie recalibrates his belief system about the relationship between justice and corporal punishment. While he believes his father had been right to punish him physically as a child, Jamie believes that MacNab had taken corporal punishment too far by irrevocably harming the boy physically and psychologically with the severity of his beatings.

“I’ve been close to death a few times, Claire, but I’ve never really wanted to die. This time I did.”

Jamie describes the long-term effects of his sexual torture at the hands of Captain Randall. He explains that Randall did not just inflict sexual pain but emotional harm as well. This trauma in part damages the profound emotional connection he has with Claire, which is facilitated by their sexual union. For Jamie, though the mental and sexual bond that he shared with Captain Randall was the opposite of the one that he had with Claire, it was just as intense. Therefore, any touch from Claire reminds him of his encounter with Randall, driving Jamie to suicidal ideation.

“Your knowledge of the future is a tool, given to you as a shipwrecked castaway might find himself in possession of a knife or a fishing line. It is not immoral to use it, so long as you do so in accordance with the dictates of God’s law, to the best of your ability.”

Father Anselm comforts Claire’s guilt about the influence of her knowledge about the future by suggesting that she see it as a tool rather than a weapon. He implies that so long as she has good intentions, she will be using her gifts to the best of her ability.

“It was the beginning of 1744—the New Year was but two weeks past. And in 1745, Bonnie Prince Charlie would take ship from France to Scotland, the Young Pretender come to claim his father’s throne. With him would come disaster; war and slaughter, the rushing of the Highland clans, and with them, the buttery of all that Jamie—and I—held dear.”

Author Diana Gabaldon grounds the reader in the context of the Jacobite cause in Britain of the 18th century, therefore implying that Claire’s actions not only have personal stakes but historical ones as well. This quote touches upon the motif of national pride, pointing to the source of the Jacobite cause being the restoration of Scottish power within the British monarchy and governing systems.

“And he had died a childless bachelor. Of at least I thought so. The chart—that cursed chart!—had given the date of his marriage sometime in 1744. And the birth of his son, Frank’s five-time-great-grandfather, soon after. If Jack Randall was dead and childless, how would Frank be born?”

Claire reflects on Randall’s death in 1743 as a childless unwed man when he had been recorded as having died in 1745 with an heir in Frank’s historical documents. This quote touches upon the book’s theme of the importance of family lineage by implying the long-term consequences that Claire’s travel into the past might have on Frank’s bloodlines. This revelation also causes Claire to question the morality of her life in the past and the harm it might bring to her loved ones in 1945.

“‘Now,’ I said softly, ‘come to me. Now!’ He put his forehead hard against mine and yielded himself to me with a quivering sigh.”

Claire and Jamie have sex for the first time since Jamie is sexually tortured by Randall. In the wake of this torture, Jamie implores Claire to go back to 1945 as he cannot touch her without thinking of this traumatic incident. He maintains that he can no longer be her husband. This sexual encounter serves as a turning point for the couple, marking the possibility of a fresh start in their relationship.

“My life is yours. And it’s yours to decide what we shall do, where we go next. To France, to Italy, even back to Scotland. My heart has been yours since first I saw ye, and you’ve held my soul and body between your two hands here, and kept them safe. We shall go as ye say.”

By allowing Claire to decide where he and Claire take refuge, Jamie shows Claire that he trusts her and commits his life to her. This act ends the novel with a feeling of promise and possibility for the couple.

“Or when I come to you needing, and ye take me into you with a sigh and that quiet hum like a hive of bees in the sun, and ye carry me wi’ you into peace with a little moaning sound.”

Jamie expands on his emotional experience while making love to Claire, explaining that he feels as if her soul calls out to him when they have sex. He describes being inside of her as a kind of homecoming where he can experience peace.

“Resting against him, I felt boneless as a jellyfish. I didn’t know—or care—what sort of sounds I had been making, but I felt incapable of coherent speech. Until he began to move again, strong as a shark under the dark water.”

After attempting to contain her feelings for Jamie throughout the novel, while having sex in the hot springs at the abbey, Claire can no longer contain her emotions for him. She feels helplessly intoxicated by the level of sexual desire and physical intimacy that they share, so much so that she feels one with him, mind, body, and soul.