When the time comes to approach other partners in season 3, both Claire and Jamie are inescapably dazed and lost. The tv adaptation chooses the metaphor of closed eyes. So when we see Jamie giving in to Mary MacNab's discreet avance in the cave, and Claire briefly finding again an intimate connection with Frank in Boston, they both close their eyes. The message is quite clear: despite the fact that Jamie's physically with Mary, he's thinking about Claire – and despite the fact that Claire is physically with Frank, she's thinking about Jamie.
The analogy's definitely evocative – but simplistic. As a matter of fact, keeping one's eyes open or closed while having sex doesn't have an absolute value. Of course you can close your eyes not to see who's in front of you, pretending to be somewhere else, with someone else. But you can also close your eyes because you're utterly comfortable with your partner, you trust him/her – that's where the expression “blind faith” comes from – and you feel safe. You don't fear anything, so you close your eyes and abandon yourself to your feelings. Similarly, of course you can keep your eyes open to establish a connection with the person you're having sex with: eye contact is definitely sexy, and looking at each other is quite a common erotic scenario (otherwise, there wouldn't be so many mirrors in bedrooms). But you can also keep your eyes open so as not to lose control, because you don't feel comfortable, or you fear your partner could do something incongruous.
Here's the tv series' misstep: taking for granted that closing one's eyes while having sex is always something negative.
The truth is – there is no ground rule about it. When two people make love, each one may close his/her eyes, or may keep them open, depending on fancy, situation, or unpredictable factors. It certainly is not a given, something done always in the same way, each time one has intercourse.
Even more oversimplified this analogy is relied on in the 18th century's events in season 3. Frank's tv version won't stand for Claire's lowered eyelids. He insists on visual contact while having sex, asking Claire to open her eyes. He even interrupts sex because she doesn't, blaming her for being “with him” (Jamie), reproaching her for not having had the habit of closing her eyes before – as if it was something changeless. This is a poor choice that betrays and dumbs down Frank's character. Frank is a self-confident man. He's a professor the best universities compete to hire (Oxford just after the war, then Harvard, then Cambridge...), a handsome man, always surrounded by admirers. He's twelve years older than Claire and their relationship has from the very beginning been defined by this detail: he's the experienced one, she's the novice. When they got married he obviously had more experience in the field of love and sex. And even when she comes back from her travels through time, it's Frank in command. He makes the decisions. He chooses to move to Boston with Claire. He manages the moving. He supports the family financially. Claire's return, pregnant with another man's baby, overtly bigamist, desperate for the loss of the other husband, is beyond argument a major blow to him, but book Frank does not hesitate. Complaining because she doesn't look at him while they're having sex, and ending, once and for all, intimacy with his wife out of jealousy toward a ghost... it's childish. Something book Frank would never have done. (And no, it's not because Frank looks like Black Jack. If tv authors would had wanted deliberately to give this interpretation, they would have inserted flashbacks or something else to make it clear. And actually they didn't. So no, Claire's not closing her eyes because she's shocked by her first husband's resemblance to her second husband's rapist. Just: no). Back to the metaphor, it's interesting how tv writers did develop a bond, in season 3's scenes set in the 18th century, between Jamie's night with Mary McNab (in episode # 2) and the one with Geneva (in episode # 4). In the cave, when Jamie bends toward Mary, dismayed, and kisses her, she realizes his eyes are closed. Lowering the top of her chemise slightly, she says “You can look at me if you’d like” – to turn on a little bit of desire between them. Jamie's overwhelmed by emotions: he's about to touch a woman for the first time in six years (nearly seven in the book's timeline), the very first one after Claire. He reassures her, telling her she's beautiful, and that he wasn't closing his eyes to avoid looking at her (“You're a bonnie lass. It's just something I always do”). It's a lie, of course; but a kind one, not to offend her, recalling Claire once again.
With Geneva it's the other way around: Jamie, shortly after having started to take off his clothes under her command (“You may disrobe”), realizes she's stealing glances at him. So he heaves a sigh and tells her more or less the same sentence, “You can watch me if you’d like”. (The line is also in Voyager).
While having sex with Geneva in the tv adaptation, Jamie doesn't close his eyes. Never until the very end: he does it, meaningfully, just when he reaches his climax, that one and only moment in which control gives way to pure sensation. When Jamie opens his eyes again, they're cold as ice.
If there ever was any need of the extra-long love scene in the reunion's episode it was to provide the ultimate proof that the closed-eyes-issue as a changeless habit is a stretch. In episode 6 we follow Claire and Jamie to the brothel and witness them while they start to get closer together again. Several time they have intercourse, at least three, with different feelings – from shyness and tenderness, to roughness (“Do it now and don’t be gentle” Claire asks Jamie, urging him to break his guardedness and come inside her for the first time after twenty years) and lust, and again slowly discovering the other. And while doing this, both Jamie and Claire sometimes keep their eyes open, looking at each other with utter intensity, and sometimes shut their eyes, without being any less intensely engaged in what they're doing. This is the most eloquent demonstration that "sex with your eyes closed = alienation" is an analogy that doesn't bear up under the impact of real life. (QED). © insideoutlander [English version proofread by Kath at www.gofoolproof.com] More articles in English? Please press here!
