The Outlandish Companion - Diana Gabaldon [210]
Granted, the circumstances were extremely pressing, and she had overwhelming reasons—emotional as well as physical—to do what she did, but it was betrayal, and the knowledge of it nags at her now and then through the two early books (remember her dreaming of Frank and the miniature portraits?). Her feelings of guilt and her loyalty to Frank are what cause her to press Jamie not to kill Jack Randall, in order to save Frank’s life.
Later, when she goes back, pregnant and emotionally shattered, it’s Frank who picks up the pieces and glues their life back together. He accepts Brianna fully as his own—which is not something that every man could do; he supports Claire in her decision to become a doctor, appreciating (even as he envies) her sense of destiny. This is pretty much the admirable behavior of an honorable man, and Claire both knows and appreciates it.
Now, in terms of their personal and sexual relationship… she abandoned him, and came back only by necessity, carrying the child of a man with whom she obviously remains in love. You figure this was easy for Frank to accept? He’s a man with a lot of compassion—but he’s very human. He makes repeated efforts at their marriage—and so does Claire—but the simmering rage at her betrayal is still there, underneath. Since he can’t or won’t admit the truth of her story, they can never discuss it fully, never resolve the situation; Jamie Fraser is always the ghost that haunts their marriage. Small wonder if Frank takes lovers now and then—as either revenge, or simply as refuge.
Okay. So this is a difficult, complex relationship. The difficulties and guilts don’t mean that there is nothing of value between them. The love they once had for each other is still there, augmented and supported by their united feelings for Brianna, diminished and eroded by the memory of their betrayals of each other—but still a pillar, standing like a desert rock, twisted and shaped by wind and rain.
If Claire were capable of simply walking away from this sort of history and feeling, abandoning a huge piece of her life and identity, just because she was now in a different place… well, she wouldn’t be capable of loving Jamie in the whole-hearted way that she does. She wouldn’t be a whole person.
As it is, she’s now relieved of the guilt of her flawed relationship with Frank, and free to treasure the memory of its good moments. Jamie, being the whole-hearted person he is, is aware of this, and wants her to know that he’s able to accept the knowledge of what she shared with another man—the one thing Frank couldn’t do. This has something to do with the nature of love and the concept of obligation as part of love. While Roger is contemplating the issue explicitly “Love? Obligation? How the hell could you have love without obligation?” he wondered), Jamie and Claire are living it implicitly.
For her to refuse Frank’s ring, and essentially reject all he was, to deny the value of thirty years of a complex but valuable relationship—well, that would be both dishonest and petty. And neither Claire nor Jamie is small in mind or heart.
Q: I’m confused by Frank’s letter at the end of Drums—the one Roger tells Jamie about. Did Frank know that Jamie survived, and keep the knowledge from Claire? That’s awful!
A: Well, maybe so and maybe no, as Jamie himself is given to saying. That is, it seems clear that at some point Frank did find out enough about Jamie to at least suspect a) that Claire’s story was true, and b) that Jamie had survived Culloden. However, we don’t know when Frank found this out, or how convinced he was.
Now look at it from Frank’s point of view (I know; readers just don’t want to even think about Frank, but there he is, nonetheless). You’re happily married, then your wife vanishes. You worry, obsess, search, grieve, finally become sort of reconciled… and then she comes back, pregnant by another man, and telling