Something very exceptional makes Outlander completely different from any other series so far. There’s no wonder that Season 1 reached, back in 2014-2015, the best audience score ever by a Starz series: although defined as a “popular” series, it goes beyond these limitations and presents to the general public a non-stereotypical story about women.
In Outlander women are strong. Fierce. The lead female character, Claire, happens to survive thanks to her professional skills (in the field of medicine), proudly and equally handles her relationships with men (even those who, like Dougal MacKenzie, try to dominate her), and builds with both her husbands respect-based relationships. It’s in her training and skills, basically, that can be found the key to her strength: by what she’s able to do she builds her reliability and reputation, earning respect from other people. The other female characters are strong, too. Take Jenny Fraser Murray, Jamie’s sister, for instance. Just a few days after delivering a child, she leaves with Claire on a dangerous horseback mission to trace Jamie who has been just arrested by the Redcoats. No meek housewife at all! That’s also the moment of the breast milk scene, something almost unheard of on screen: breastfeeding – and the physical inconveniences women who just gave birth have to face when they’re separated from their newborn for too long – are not at all things that cinema and TV give attention to. Never before had breast milk been the center of such a vivid, realistic scene. Kudos to Gabaldon for telling it so well in the book, but even more – praise to Moore for having the audacity to keep it in the TV adaptation!
Then, there’s sex. Sex is never gratuitous in Outlander. It’s a statement, a specific message: sex is equal, here. Both men and women desire. Both men and women can lead, play the seduction game, teach one another. In the first novel of the saga, Claire and Jamie’s love story is based on a clear premise. She’s five years older than him; she’s skilled, already had a husband before; he’s a virgin with no experience. So she’s in charge. The wedding night is a masterpiece, both in the book and the TV adaptation: it presents a sequence of egalitarian sex scenes – sexy, sometimes even funny – in which man and woman are on the same level. Claire looks at Jamie, asks him to undress, then Jamie does the same. She reaches climax, and he’s astonished, discovering that even a woman “can”. Then it’s his turn to enjoy himself. She goes down on him, his very first fellatio, during their first wedding night. He wakes her with a super-sexy cunnilingus, barely three episodes later (a few chapters later in the book). The TV series takes a further step on this path, making Claire’s character even more sexually emancipated than the book, and adding in the very first episode of Season 1 some scenes – the oral sex in Castle Leoch with Frank, above all – to demonstrate this emancipation: Claire has no taboos, she genuinely enjoys sex. This specific key feature is weakened in Season 2, though, by slimming down Claire and Jamie's sexual relationship: Jamie's PTSD is extended to most of the Parisian period – unlike the book, in which he recovers and they have great sex at the Abbey – which is a slightly disappointing but sensible change, as we'll see in a few lines; in the second half of the season, moreover, we basically do not see their intimacy and Claire's desire. Sadly, we must point out and admit that Season 3 went completely off the path. The screenwriters changed so much of Claire’s sexuality – as Diana Gabaldon had described it in Voyager and the following books, through scattered flashbacks – that the character’s behavior is barely recognizable. They turned Claire into a nun, cutting out her physical relationship with her husband Frank in the twenty years apart from Jamie. That’s really a shame, a prudish choice, probably made to match the preference of the particular audience segment that is “jealous” of Claire’s life with Frank as Gabaldon created it in the book: a normal, mostly happy marriage, with ups and downs, but certainly a true marriage. Well then, for those who don’t like Claire to be asexual between thirty and fifty years of age, luckily the books are always there! Next issue: rape. This topic too is overturned. The victim of the main situation of sexual assault – Wentworth prison – is not the “usual” woman, but a man – none other than the lead character! The screenwriters even take a step beyond the book, giving to Jamie – during the first quarter of Season 2 – severe post-traumatic stress disorder after being raped and tortured by Black Jack Randall, which prevents him from sexually approaching his wife, freezing him and making him vulnerable: a situation which, in 99.9% of cases, TV series and even movies place women, not men. Even more significant is the progression of the saga: from Voyager and Season 3 the female lead character, Claire, is fifty years old (and counting). And she’s still perfectly able to make Jamie’s brain – and body – go insane. Once again, a screen taboo gets demolished – that a middle-aged, gray-haired woman shouldn’t be beautiful and attractive, feel and provoke desire, have a fulfilling and enjoyable sex life. Not only men can be charming and desirable in their fifties and later, after all! For all this and more Outlander is a TV series outside the box, resolutely gender-equality-oriented. © insideoutlander [English version proofread by Kath at www.gofoolproof.com] More articles in English? Please press here!
