We Get It, Diana, Scotland Is Green

Outlander is not what I expected it to be, because I was expecting a novel, and I apparently should have been preparing myself to read a pornographic "Visit Scotland" brochure instead. Diana Gabaldon uses the scenery and local wildlife of Scotland to punctuate dialogue and action. Because without all the thrushes shooting through thickets how would we know that sex is about to happen?
It is not just the repetitive, and almost completely unnecessary scenery, that bothered me and made me seriously regret reading this book. I also take issue with Gabaldon's use of rape, sex, and the way in which she writes female characters.

 

There are five main women that I came across in the book, and they seem more like caricatures and stereotypes of women than actual people. Laoghaire the unpronounceable is a young pretty girl that pines after Jamie (our main male hero), doesn't have a lot going on upstairs, and is ridiculously petty. Geillis is a "witch" who manipulates men emotionally and is the epitome of the black widow. Mrs. Fitz is the castle's housekeeper and is a kindly, if two-dimensional, old woman. Everyone believes that Jamie's sister Jenny was raped as a punishment/bargaining chip in order to further weaken Jamie, showing yet again that in this text women are pawns to further plot and objects to be assaulted on a whim. This leaves us with our narrator Claire, a time traveler that is all at once withholding and jealous, and is pretty much in denial about her feeling towards Jamie the burly Highlander.
Also did I mention that Claire almost gets raped every hundred pages? Because she does, only to be saved damsel-in-distress style by Jamie.

Lana disagrees with women being treated like objects.

Perhaps it is unfair to say that Gabaldon only writes two-dimensional and bland women, because she also writes two-dimensional and bland men. All the while I am left with a brochure of Scotland, which is deviously disguised as a book, and a bad taste in my mouth.