Okay, I create this thread as we are on the cliffhanger between the first and second halves of season one.
Complain and dissect away…
Okay. Hedda Rosa just complained that the relationship between Jamie and Claire isn’t being developed, and I totally agree.
I got all excited when Jamie had the dominant/determined moment during the wedding night, just before they did it for the first time. I saw that as a softball entry into the “Jamie was born in 1721 and doesn’t take no for an answer” aspect of their relationship.
I was wrong. I know this now, because they skipped the quick screw that happened after the skirmish with the Grants. In the book, he wants to get his rocks off but Claire has reservations because there are other men all around them. Jamie basically says “them’s some tough cookies” and screws her anyway.
Which makes me nervous about the upcoming belting scene, and the “blunt object” punishment that comes after it, on their first night back at Leoch. Claire consents to that one, but not to the brutality of it, and the next morning she outright says “no” and Jamie does her anyway.
Sooo basically… I am worried that they will skip the belting. Or the beating with a blunt object. Both of which are early indicators that no, Jamie is not a Disney prince.
Agreed. If these scenes are left out, a major indicator of one of the elements of the Jamie-Claire relationship will be missing.
Now, they don’t have to show every single smack and thwack (though given the amount of bloodshed on the show, getting coy with marital violence would feel precious), but for the story arc to work, the viewers have to see in no uncertain terms that Jamie is a 17th-century guy, and Claire is *able *to do much of what she does *because *of him.
Those particular scenes also show where Claire begins to be accepted by the men in the group. They don’t mention the belting, but they do arrange to make stops so she can rest her tush, and IIRC they help her out in various ways.
(That may be poorly expressed. Let me revisit after dinner.)
I’m pretty sure that there will be a belting scene (or perhaps a slightly softened equivalent) early in the second part of the season. It seems like it was being set up in the “Promise me you’ll stay put” scene. In interviews, Ron Moore has made some nonspecific comments about “tackling difficult material,” which I interpreted as referring to that scene, but I suppose he could also be teasing upcoming scenes with Jamie and Black Jack.
If they do The Belting, I’m really curious to see how it is handled. I’ve admired Moore’s touch with the changes so far.
I really respect the author and also acknowledge that the characters are hers to do with as she pleases. That said, the belting bit and aftermath always bother me every time I read. I know Claire is pragmatic, but I feel as though she’s angry at Jamie merely because she’s physically sore afterward, even before he tries to explain himself to her.
It’s hard for me to imagine or empathize being struck by a significant other, but I don’t believe I would be able to engage with someone who had done that, on any level, conversational, let alone physical, afterward.
In their conversation immediately afterward, I never got the sense that Jamie understood how unacceptable his behavior was, because Claire seemed (to me) to be acting angry rather than genuinely hurt. As far as he was concerned, he was willing to promise not to do it again because he wanted to get some that night. That just doesn’t sit well with me.
Regarding the episode (and changes to the book), I thought Frank and Claire almost meeting at the stones was well done (if a bit Jane Eyre). It was heartbreaking, and it sets up Jamie’s eventual penance a little bit more strongly.
“You were trying to get back. Back to the stones. And Frank. . .And I beat you for it. . .”
Woo hoo!
Ok first a question - are we 100% open spoilers for the whole book series? Or just book one?
I’m confident there will the The Belting, because word on the street is that it was one of 3 scenes actresses had to do with Sam during testing.
I am down for spoilers through the whole series… even though I am perpetually stuck at 38% of MOBY. I just could not give a flying fuck about Lord John or the American Revolution, sorry y’all.
About Jamie belting Claire: I know that this is a divisive scene, for readers. I personally never had a problem with it. I saw Diana Gabaldon speak this summer, and she pointed out that if Jamie hadn’t belted her, Dougal would have. She was going to get beaten one way or another. Better the devil ye ken than the devil ye don’t, I suppose? Anyway, as Jamie’s wife, Claire is literally his property. And he freely admits that he enjoys beating her–and freely admits that he’s promising not to do it again only because she got so angry. So yes, he is making the promise just so he can get laid again later.
shrugs I’ve never had a problem accepting that about the character, or believing that Jamie can love her nevertheless. The key point, for me, is that he was calm, and did it out of duty. Not anger.
I second this.
I agree with your reading and I do buy the initial belting as something, well, historically reasonable. It’s their reactions afterward that are (for me) a bit of a. . .mood killer.
Anyway, I’m curious to see how that particular grenade is handled onscreen.
Well, I’ll be “that guy” and say I hated the belting scene and especially the aftermath, and it basically made me unable to enjoy the love story from then on because I was side-eyeing Gabaldon’s idea of gender politics so hard.
I just borrowed the book from a coworker yesterday to see if reading it at 36 will be a different experience than reading it in my teens. I’m also curious to see if picturing Caitriona Balfe’s Claire (whom I like) will improve my opinion of book-Claire.
I guess we shouldn’t forget that Diana Gabaldon is a devout Catholic, who will get off a long-haul flight from Arizona to Scotland, and head straight to mass. It probably does inform her ideas about gender politics, corporal punishment, and redemption.
On a second reading, I get Barret Bondon’s subtler point. Not the fact of the spanking, but Jamie’s non-apologetic apology for it. Got it. I have to admit that the fact he admits to enjoying the spanking kind of confused me. But I got past it.
Dare I bring up the incident from book 3 in which the spoiled rich girl compels him to her bed, then yells “get it out!”, and he says “no”?
Confession: I am picking at the character of Jamie Fraser and of what people think about him because I’m constantly comparing him to the male lead in my own series of books, who is darned different.
I’m interested in the incidents above because, as far as I can see, they’re the only ones that save Jamie Fraser from being a Mary Sue. Other than those, he always does exactly the right thing. Very often circumstance gets him in trouble for doing what he does, but I can’t think of other situations that Claire, or the readers, object to. And see, the belting incident lost gallows fodder to the series.
To have the audience adore a male lead, does he need to be that close to perfect?
Just speaking for me, I’m usually on the villain’s side in a piece and am thus used to overlooking a multitude of sins, but when a character is in the role of hero protagonist, the one flaw I can’t overlook is being gross toward women. So where Jamie stopped being so dreamy was not the point at which he belted Claire, which was his unpleasant duty, but at the point when he enjoyed it and made light of her pain. My reaction to that was, “WTF, author? I can’t just go on loving the guy like that’s not a big deal!”
And just in general, I really dislike any story in which the protagonist is excused for his/her tough decisions or flaws by their circumstances. I want to see people make mistakes and then own them. Otherwise, it’s a cop-out.
[QUOTE=Abigail Adams]
Well, there you have me, Jamie. . .you are pigheaded.
[/QUOTE]
Lord. See? In book 8, not only does most of the story go to the perpetually boring Sir John and William Ransom, but when she does bring Jamie into it, she feels she has to spice it up with historical figure after historical figure. And I am snoring.
It is hard to remember what I thought about the belting originally, because I first read book 1 so very long ago. That said, having just reread it, I noticed that Diana then goes on over the rest of book one and book 2, to revisit the concept of Brian beating Jamie - and Ian - and contextualizing it as an act of fatherly love.
Now, whether we can agree with Brian that corporal punishment can be done out of love and a desire to genuinely help the victim (oh, see my bias showing there), if we are looking at the in-world mores, it holds up. Jamie as a character was raised on the idea that beating is good for the soul, and that it is a public act that sends a message to any nearby interested parties. Brian beat Jamie publicly so that his people at Lallybroch would see their future Laird being beaten and take a message from it and know that he’s learning the meaning of justice. Jamie beats Claire for the same reasons of justice and because of the message it would send to his men - reasons that for who he is as a man of his time make sense and are legitimate to him.
And for that reason I can roll with it.
And every single time Jamie beats anybody after Claire has that talk with him, he then turns around and has that person beat him back. In the scene where he beats ten-year-old Fergus, he seems genuinely unhappy about having to do it. We are supposed to see Claire’s influence, I suppose.
Back again with a question that has always bugged me, and I’m wondering what you guys think.
Laoghaire. In the very original timeline, where Claire hadn’t gone back through the stones, because she hadn’t been born yet - does Jamie marry Laoghaire and have a miserable life? Or was she always just a dalliance?
Does this question get addressed anywhere in the books?
Alternative timelines are never, iirc, addressed. I think there are too many variables to guess what Jamie would have done.
When Claire showed up, he was returning to Leoch, to the cold comfort of his Mackenzie uncles. One point that is made in the book is that, by marrying a sassenach, he has permanently excluded himself from any consideration as future clan leader. Which is good for his health. Now, Laoghaire is a Mackenzie, so marrying her would have been a political mistake. His uncles would have taken it as a threat. Jamie is canny enough to have seen that.
So I seriously doubt he would have married her. She was a dalliance. And, also iirc, he dallied at that particular time because he was hot for Claire. So even the dalliance might not have happened, if she hadn’t appeared.
He wouldn’t have married Laoghaire because her family wouldn’t have allowed it. He had a price on his head, and as such had no home and no income. No respectable family would have welcomed him into their family.
One of the main reasons he wanted to clear his name is so he could return to Lallybroch and claim his birthright.
I just finished Book 8. I nosed around online to see when Book 9 might reasonably be expected. While nothing definite has been said, seems like it could be four or five years.
I guess April doesn’t seem all that far off, comparatively.
I don’t think Jamie would’ve married Laoghaire, or slept with her. A kiss, maybe, but as Alex the head stableman said, Laoghaire was a girl and always would be, and Claire was a woman. Janie might have gone more for someone like his mother, when he was free to marry.
StG