Diana Gabaldon and the Chamber of Racism

For those of you who haven't read any of Diana Gabaldon's work, here's a (comparatively light) summary of the racism, sexism, and homophobia she exhibits in her work. The seventh book is exempted from this because I haven't read it much.

The premise is all right - Claire Randall, a former field nurse in World War II, is on vacation with her husband Frank Randall in the Scottish Highlands. He wants to talk to a local reverend about a famous ancestor of his, Jonathan "Black Jack" Randall, who coincides nicely with Frank's history mania and was in Scotland at the time of the 1745 Rising.

It gets even more "interesting" when Claire steps through a stone circle and ends up two hundred years back in time. (The stone circle is utilized, backwards and forwards, multiple times.)

Let's start with the racism issue. Claire's eighteenth-century husband, Jamie, their daughter Brianna, and Brianna's son Jeremiah all have flaming red hair, bright blue eyes, and "ivory" skin unmarred with freckles. Shall we discuss how genetically unlikely that is? Claire is a brunette with brown eyes. Jamie's own father had black hair, and one of his mother's brothers is described as dark. Brianna's husband is black-haired with olive skin. Dominant genes happen, people, no matter how much we'd like to believe that the wonderfully symbolic recessives will always win out.

In the third book, Claire's best friend at the hospital where she works (after going forward in time to escape Culloden, giving birth, and receiving her medical degree) is Joe Abernathy, a male doctor who says he learned to speak properly from Walter Cronkite. Frank complains about Joe's son, saying that he doesn't want their daughter "fucking a black man," and claims that Joe's only saving grace is that he's educated. Neither Claire nor the text makes any rebuttal to this. In the distant past, when she goes back a second time, Claire BUYS HIS ANCESTOR. This from a woman who claims she never wants to own slaves?

That same educated black man, a doctor, brings in bones at one point for Claire to "analyze," half-jokingly claiming that she will know what killed the bones' owner. The intern who carries in the bones thinks the murdered woman was black, but Joe says the woman was white and shoots him down, saying that "you can think blacks and whites are the same under the skin, but it ain't scientifically so." Ho-ly shit. I have a feeling Gabaldon wasn't just referring to bones when she wrote that line, even though Joe goes on to refer to femur-to-tibia ratios and so forth. Apparently, her characters of color have to be self-hating, too.

In the third book, Jamie and Claire are accompanied on their journey to Jamaica by a short, "ball-shaped" Chinese man who speaks broken English and is apparently so lascivious that he tries to have sex with European women's feet and turned down an opportunity to become a courtier (in China) because he couldn't stand the idea of not having sex. Jamie calls him "Mr. Willoughby" and he never objects. He writes poetry, but most of it consists of very graphic tributes to the ideal "Woman" and her body. He also, of course, is well-versed in acupuncture, just like all Chinese people. *sarcasm*

In the later books, most of the characters of color are as follows: a "shifty", power-hungry black slave/butler who handles his glaucoma-stricken, elderly mistress's (Jamie's aunt Jocasta) financial affairs; a half-black daughter of Jocasta's deceased husband who later seduces Jocasta's fourth husband (this is portrayed as "noble," as he had been unmanned before then); an obese, black female "abortionist" (yes, this is how she is referred to) who reminds Claire of a "Congolese fertility symbol" and apparently will have sex with any man at all; and a gang of "mulatto" thieves' accomplices who don't have the brains to realize Claire is duping them. There is also a gory lynching scene in which a slave who cut off an overbearing overseer's ear (the overseer later dies from tetanus) is speared through the belly on a giant hook. Claire gives him poison to spare him a biased trial. This is also described in detail.

The Native American characters deserve another category because a good portion of the latter four books is spent focusing on them. There are very few in-between categories; most are portrayed as either habitual drunks or "mystical" shamans, with the odd seductress thrown in. At one point in the sixth book, during a trading mission to a Cherokee village, Jamie wakes up to find that several nubile young women have climbed all over him in order to ravish his amazing white flesh. *rolls eyes* Diana, the man's penis is not that wonderful.

Basically, almost all of the characters who are neither English, Scottish, nor French are treated as either inferior or incredibly stupid (ex. the German woman Claire meets on a ship whose sole purpose is to croon to goats, or the crazy Hispanic pastor in the Caribbean who goes around talking to a coconut). Jewish ghettoization and anti-Semitism, which would have been rampant at the time, are mentioned ONCE. And the catalyst is a Rothschild ancestor - nice way to imply things about Jewish people and money.

In terms of homophobia, in the first book, Jamie is tortured way beyond S&M levels by the evil, bisexual antagonist who also (*eyeroll*) wants him (and happens to be Frank's ancestor, Black Jack); Jamie offers up his body in exchange for Jack letting his wife go free. Jack cripples the ring finger of Jamie's non-dominant hand (*cough* wank *cough*), and graphic details of Jamie being made to suck Jack's blood-smeared penis (and it's his blood, too) are written about, among other things. Jack later torments Claire by claiming that he has known Jamie in a way Claire never will, and has reached a level of intimacy they will never achieve.

Also in the first book, one of the visitors to Jamie's ancestral castle is a duke who has tried to "bugger" him in the past (more evidence of Jamie's Amazingly Appealing Ass, henceforth referred to as JAAA). News to homophobes: YOUR GENITALS AND ASSES AIN'T THAT SPECIAL. From the way Gabaldon writes, you would think that young heterosexual tail would make all those filthy gays within a fifty-mile radius drop their pants. Another newsflash: IF YOU THINK WE'RE GOING TO HELL, YOU'RE NOT OUR TYPE ANYWAY.

In the second book, Jamie tells Jack (-Off) that the only time he's allowed to use his name is when Jamie is about to kill him. He later kills Jack in the battle of Culloden, leaving Jack lying across his body. Subtle. Claire constantly refers to Jack as a "bloody filthy pervert"; Jack's eighth-great-nephew, Frank (so not an ancestor after all) later finds out he is sterile, leaving Brianna, the spitting image of Claire's second husband, the only offspring he can claim. So, no competition there.

When Jamie is imprisoned after Culloden, his jailer is an effeminate gay man (John Grey) who (naturally! *eyeroll*) wants him, and supposedly has him whipped for not sleeping with him. When Jamie's illegitimate son grows up, John (who married the child's mother's sister; his mother is dead) is his caretaker, and the child loves him like a father. Claire suggests that that John is only attached to the son because he looks like his father, i.e. he is attracted to a twelve-year-old. Jamie, before he leaves the boy at age six, offers up JAAA to John Grey in exchange for taking care of him (as if the only motivation gay people have for being kind is getting some!). John, thankfully, refuses.

Gabaldon does do John a kindness by fleshing him out in his own series of books, but the way she treats him in the first series is unforgivable. Even the way the characters treat him is horrible. Brianna shows up in the past, pregnant and unsure of the father (she was deflowered by her lover and then raped). She threatens to publicly out John Grey if he doesn't marry her and give her that security, saying that "they put pederasts in the pillory here." Geez, nice seventies enlightenment, lovey. She later breaks their engagement when her dreamboy shows up.

In the sixth book, Claire is imprisoned for performing a cesarean on a young pregnant woman she finds murdered in her garden. Her cellmate is a widow, Sadie Ferguson, whom Claire suspects of faking a husband for purposes of freedom and who tries to have sex with Claire the very first night. *sigh* 

Now, sexism. Hoo boy, the sexism. After her initial trip, Claire makes one or two halfhearted attempts to escape back into the twentieth century, after one of which she is caught by Jack, rescued, and beaten so hard by Jamie that she can hardly sit down the next day. This is treated as "normal," and although she makes him swear never to do it again, she willingly lets him back into her bed and even SAYS SHE WAS WRONG. This sounds like Stockholm Syndrome, and seems hardly better than what Jack Randall does. At least he allows his victim to continue hating him!

Almost all of the female characters, at some point, end up in a bind that requires a loud, dramatic, Scottish rescue by their husbands and/or significant others. Examples? Claire's multiple captures and rescues by Jack and Jamie, respectively. Brianna's multiple captures and rape. Jamie's daughter-in-law, Marsali, being kicked in the stomach while pregnant. Claire's capture and gang-rape by a group of morons who want Jamie's whiskey. May I ask what the bloody hell is up with Gabaldon's obsession with rape? Going through it does not automatically  make you a better person! It leaves you scarred.

Among Claire's multiple breaches of the Prime Directive (and apparently Brianna, who was an engineering student while the show was running, never watched or learned from a single episode of Star Trek? Jeez.) is her introduction of penicillin to the world more than a century and a half before its true inception. She proceeds to jab anyone whom she thinks is at risk for STIs. Before she manages to brew it up, she worries about it.

However, her son-in-law, Fergus, is a French native who "spent much of his early life...and not a little of his later life" in brothels. She "hopes" that he'll stop visiting brothels now that he's married (and his WIFE IS PREGNANT, no less) but dismisses the habit because "Fergus [is] a Frenchman born and bred, after all." Do you see nothing wrong with that? Not only could he endanger himself, but his wife and any children she bears. Syphilis-ridden children are described in detail in the books, yet Claire seems to forget this when the culprit is a father and not a mother.

Another character who makes multiple appearances is Geillis, a self-proclaimed witch who gets fat with age (and I'm not even going to discuss Gabaldon's obvious sizeism here; we can't all be a size two, yet she disparages the overweight multiple times) and is, by all accounts, batshit insane. She acts as a succubus, raping and killing young teenage boys for the "gems" they supposedly carry in their bellies. Yikes. To refer back to racism, she supposedly learns many of her later tricks from the black Jamaican slaves with whom she surrounds herself, and Jamie and Claire even participate in an impromptu voodoo ceremony. Why they would even be let in, I don't know.

One last thing before my fingers give out: both Jamie and Claire find themselves in danger multiple times, as do Brianna and Roger. When they're invariably rescued, if Jamie or Roger scolds, it's seen as necessary and even salubrious. If Claire or Brianna scolds, it's nagging and needs to be stopped. Oy. That's the icing on the cake, right there.