The following might be considered spoilerish, so be ye warned. Personally, I don’t think it is all that spoilerish because even though it comes late in the book, it’s not really connected to the main storyline – something that makes me even more annoyed because it just didn’t really need to be there at all and it could have been changed in one very small (but significant) way and it would have been okay.
On with the rant.
First off, I’m an Outlander fan. I love the series. It’s not perfect, but overall, I find the Outlander vortex sucks me in every time. I gave the last book, Written in My Own Heart’s Blood, a B+. I liked it very very much.
But.
There was one thing which bothered me when I was consuming the book. Claire operates on a very young slave girl (she’s around 13) with a gynaecological injury. The girl, Sophronia, was non-violently repeatedly raped (she’s so young and also a slave, it cannot be called seduction as consent here was so far absent it may have been on the moon) by her owner. She became pregnant. There was a problem during a long labour and the baby died. Sophronia was left with two fistulae – so both urine and fecal matter was escaping her body via her vagina (this is still an issue today, especially in poor communities where very young girls give birth without appropriate medical care, but that’s another story). Claire operates to repair the fistulae and while the girl is unconscious, she asks her owner (or perhaps, the owner’s wife would be more accurate?) if she should undertake what I guess was a tubal ligation. In other words, to sterilise Sophronia. SHE DOES NOT ASK SOPHRONIA. Yes, the girl is unconscious at the time it comes up in the story, but Claire could easily have asked Sophronia before the surgery. There is very little in the narrative about slavery in general. I think it basically takes a dim view of the practice but it is not a terribly overt stance. I was really disappointed that Claire would even think to ask someone other than Sophronia this question, that she would even consider doing it without first finding out the child’s wishes. If only she had asked Sophronia beforehand, the scene could have been very different, even somewhat empowering, but as it was, I read it as diminishing and patronising. I’ve seen Claire described as a bit of a Mary Sue who does the right thing all the time but in this case, she was wrong wrong wrong. I was satisfied with the outcome of the scene (thank you Rachel) but very bothered by Claire even asking the question (“I had to ask”. Um, no Claire, you didn’t. Or at least, you asked the wrong person.)
Thus endeth my rant.
Completely off topic, I read Outlander, liked it quite a bit but never went further, but I’ve been off and on on blogging the past few years, a lot more off than on, but I think this might be the first time I’ve dropped in. (shaking hand excitedly). Hello!! Nice to meet you.
@KristieJ: Hi KristieJ – I’ve been a visitor to your blog too. Welcome. 🙂
Kaetrin, not to excuse anything, and keeping in mind that I haven’t read the last three (or four?) books, I’m thinking that if the last time Claire spent any significant time in the present, it was the late 60s…well, those were not enlightened times when it came to women’s rights, were there?
@azteclady: I think women’s rights were a big issue in the 1960s. She went back to the past in about 1967/68 IIRC and both the civil rights movement and the women’s rights movement were big issues then. Also, as a doctor, Claire would have come across discrimination based on gender fairly regularly. In fact, she was faced with it in the book in 1778 and she didn’t react well to it. Claire is not the shy retiring type – she’s pugnacious and forward thinking – as much as I didn’t like it I also thought it was out of character for her.
I had no issue at all with Claire asking the question – her reasons for asking were entirely valid. My issue was to whom she asked the question. If she had’ve asked Sephronia, no problem. But asking the woman whose husband “owned” Sephronia was just wrong IMO.
Yes, after I sent the comment, I realized it didn’t make sense–the late 60s were heavy with human and women’s rights initiatives and concerns, and Claire had been forward-thinking since WWII, so it would have made a lot more sense for her to ask her freaking patient, rather than the owner–even if she had to use subterfuge to appease the owner (you know, ’cause I can’t think the owner would be forward-thinking).
@azteclady: Yes, quite. 🙂 Claire had a very unusual upbrining as well, travelling with her Uncle Lamb all over the place as she did so I feel like she was never really indoctrinated with a lot of the limits put on women as a child.