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Written in My Own Heart's Blood by Diana Gabaldon

Outlander’s season finale aired on Saturday, and it was disturbing, to say the least.

After leading up to a confrontation all season, Jamie is tortured and sexually assaulted at the hands of Black Jack Randall, and the show never once spares us from the excruciating details. It was difficult to watch, even for those of us who knew what was coming. And, trust me, fans of the book series have been dreading this scene since…well, since we discovered Outlander was going to be made into a television show.

In the book, the moment isn’t necessarily glossed over, but it’s not fully realized either. Instead, the horror lies in what isn’t said, leaving us to fill in the blanks when Jamie physically reacts to being touched, or the burning need he feels to cut Black Jack’s brand from his skin. We get flashes of what happened in that prison cell, but not an entire moment-by-moment scene.

And as a reader, I’m grateful for that. The beauty of reading has always resided in how your imagination plays into a story – and when a book leaves something vague, especially something as horrifying as sexual assault, our mind only produces what we think we can handle. Sometimes that buffer allows us to live in a little bubble, keeping the darkest thoughts at bay.

Television, of course, is an entirely different animal. We have no choice with TV; the images are there, laid out in front of us and bare. In the case of Jamie’s scene at Wentworth prison, the brutality is impossible to escape from. I’m both grateful for the way in which Outlander refused to cut-to-the-window with the scene, and a little upset that the moment has been forever actualized, living outside the pages and my own limited imagination.

But whether it’s sex or violence, the show doesn’t shy away from much. Claire and Jamie are so familiar with each other’s bodies that at times I feel like I’m intruding on their intimacy. The past is painted in sharp color, with children maimed and murdered, women subjugated and accused of witchcraft, and everyone covered in mud pretty much all the time.

Regardless, Jamie’s assault at Wentworth takes it to another level. It’s not the first sexual assault shown on television—hell, it’s not even the first in this series. But it’s one of the most disturbing to watch, mainly because the show refuses to gloss over the reality of rape—not just the details of the assault, but the psychological affects it has on its victims.

These days, rape on television has almost become standard practice. At times, it feels gratuitously added as a way to “shock” viewers. Just look at the much-talked about Sansa-assault from a recent Game of Thrones episode. The scene wasn’t even in the book, making viewers wonder if it was necessary, particularly because the moment focused more on Theon’s pain in watching the moment than Sansa’s in living it.

Other instances of rape seem like a disturbing way to give a strong female character a sympathetic backstory, like in the case of both Mellie Grant on Scandal, and Claire Underwood on House of Cards. Both powerful women, both, at times, reduced to being the victim. So what made Jamie’s rape different from these examples, and why is it such an important part of the story?

For one, it didn’t cut away. We didn’t watch it through another character’s eyes, nor did we hear about it in exposition. Jamie’s rape was messy, difficult, and disturbing—almost too realistic in its portrayal of a real assault. It wasn’t easy to watch, but it was necessary. Why should rape be used so freely as a narrative device, while still staying somewhat ethereal and mysterious? If a TV show decides to go down that road, then they better be prepared to show us the painful reality.

Secondly, Jamie’s experience didn’t end with his rape. Most of the episode was centered on trying to break through the pain and trauma he experienced afterwards. The assault broke him, in a way that wasn’t pretty or easily resolved. He had to fight to find the will to live again with Claire trying desperately to pull him from the darkness. Outlander may be the reigning TV king of soft lighting and soaring scores, but this was one instance where a moody montage wasn’t going to solve anything. Just like it didn’t shy away from the gory details of the scene, nor did it shy away from the lingering effects that rape has on a victim—male or female.

And, lastly, he wasn’t female. So often, rape is shown as a crime committed solely—and abundantly—against women. When used so freely on television as a plot device, it starts to lose meaning. We start to expect female characters to be assaulted at some point. It begins to feel commonplace. One of the more brutal parts of the Outlander scene wasn’t even the rape itself, but how hard it was for everyone to watch it happen to a man.

Would it have been easier to see Claire in Jamie’s spot? And wasn’t she basically there only a few episodes ago, when Black Jack tore her dress to the waist and pressed himself against her? But her assault scene didn’t receive nearly the same amount of attention that Jamie’s has. Of course, Jamie’s was more brutal and graphic. But still, it was shocking in part because we almost can’t conceive of something so horrible happening to a strong man—which might be the most upsetting part of all.

I won’t deny that a huge part of me was hoping the show wouldn’t go there, that it would choose to have Jamie and Claire fight their way free of Randall without approaching the issue of Jamie’s assault. But of course it had to. And even though it was a tough scene to get through, I’m glad that it did.

The bubble of my imagination might be broken forever, but for the first time in a very long time, I saw a rape scene get treated with the gravitas it deserved. Here’s hoping that other book adaptations, like Game of Thrones for instance, take a page out of Outlander and understand that their audience would rather see the truth of one moment than be shocked by an abundance of violence that exists without consequence or follow through.

Recommended Reading:

writteninblood

Written in My Own Heart’s Blood: A Novel (Outlander) by Diana Gabaldon (Bantam, June 2, 2015)

If you’ve been enjoying the classic Outlander books by Diana Gabaldon, you should be headed to the bookstore this week. The new novel, Written in My Own Heart’s Blood, continues the epic tale that began with an English ex-combat nurse who walks through a stone circle in the Scottish highlands in 1946, only to reemerge in 1743. It has captured the hearts and minds of millions as it manages to capture the human soul across multiple centuries.

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Written in My Own Heart's Blood by Diana Gabaldon
Genre: Fiction
Author: Diana Gabaldon
Publisher: National Geographic Books
ISBN: 9780385344430
Rachel Carter

Rachel Carter grew up surrounded by trees and snow and mountains. She graduated from the University of Vermont and Columbia University, where she received her MFA in nonfiction writing. She is the author of the So Close to You series with Harperteen. These days you can find her working on her next novel in the woods of Vermont.

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