Recap / Outlander S 2 E 4 La Dame Blanche

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Recap of Outlander
Season 2, Episode 4:

La Dame Blanche

Claire and Jamie host a dinner in an attempt to undermine Charles Stuart. While returning from l'Hopital des Anges Claire, Murtagh and Mary are attacked by masked men, resulting in Mary being raped. The aftermath of it complicates the gathering.

Tropes:

• Abuse Mistake: To the dinner guest it appears that Alex is attempting to sexually assault Mary, but he's actually been watching over her as she recovered from a rape hours earlier and in her confusion she thought she was in danger. She fled and he's trying to catch her before she bursts into a high society dinner that would reveal her assault to everyone, ruining her reputation.
• Attempted Rape: Claire just escapes being raped when the group of masked men attacks her, Mary and Murtagh. Unfortunately Mary isn't so lucky.
• Batman Gambit: Jamie and Claire gamble that Prince Charles and the Duke of Sandringham will have a personality clash that will cause the Duke to withdraw his financial support. When they learn the Prince has an unborn child he's unaware of, it seems even more likely that the Prince will act out in front of his would-be supporters. However, Jamie and Claire couldn't account for Mary's reaction to painkillers causing a hullabaloo that gets most of the dinner guests arrested and pushes the Prince into an alliance with Cmte St Germain.
• Comically Missing the Point: Jamie genuinely doesn't seem to understand why Claire is upset about him having love marks on his inner thighs from another woman. Instead he's making jokes about sixty-nine and how aggressive the girl was.
• Defiled Forever: Jamie warns Claire not to let anyone know of Mary's rape, or she'll never be married.
• Escalating Brawl: Mary's drug-induced hysteria leads to Alex wrestling her to the ground to keep her from running into the dinner party in her night gown with bruises showing that she's been assaulted. Her screams bring Jamie and Claire to her aid, but the situation is misinterpreted drawing in Mary's uncle, her fiancee, and Murtagh as the combatants either try to defend Mary's honor or keep Alex from being maimed unjustly. Adding fuel to the fire, St Germain calls the police who arrest everyone.

• Gentleman Thief: Les Disciples are a group of aristocrats who dress up in masks and go out into the night to prey on innocent victims. To cement themselves as scoundrels, they specifically look to rape virgins.
• Good Girls Avoid Abortion: Louise and Claire discuss ways to terminate Louise's unplanned pregnancy but eventually decide that the best course of action is to convince Louise's husband that the baby is his.

• Gossip Evolution: Jamie started a mild rumor that Claire had discernment powers and was not one to mess with. After making its way around the pubs and through town, Les Disciples believe that Claire is a powerful witch who has the ability to damn the souls of unrighteous men to hell with a single look.
• Help Mistaken for Attack: Alex is merely trying to keep Mary from accidentally revealing that she's been assaulted, but when she starts screaming in confusion, her rescuers assume that Alex is her attacker and he is arrested for her rape.
• Heroic Safe Mode: Jamie admits he's been in this mode since they arrived in France. He felt like the inner fortress of his soul had been blown apart and until finding out that Randall was still alive, he had no idea how he'd ever be able to put himself back together again, so he focused on how best to protect his family and friends.
• I Can Explain: Jamie invokes this trope when he's trying to calm down Claire's anger over the love bites on his thighs. Of course, he does a terrible job and even he realizes it.
• Imperiled in Pregnancy: Claire becomes seriously ill by an apparent poisoning attempt. She and Jamie are both initially terrified that it might harm their unborn child. They suspect the Comte, making interactions with him all the more distasteful.
• Innocence Lost: Jamie gives a very passionate speech about how traumatic Black Jack's assault was to his psyche and how his newly-developed sexual dysfunction has been making recovery harder. It's deepened by the fact that Jamie has very limited sexual experience and Randall intentionally perverted and contaminated the acts that Jamie enjoyed doing with his wife.
• Ironic Echo: Claire and Louise discuss the difficulties of raising a child with a man who is not the biological father of that child. It is the same conversation Claire has with Frank and Frank has with Reverend Wakefield in the episode "Through the Glass, Darkly."
• Last-Minute Baby Naming: Jamie and Claire have not discussed a name for their unborn child. When in asked, Claire says she's partial to Lambert for a boy, after her uncle. Jamie prefers Dalhousie, although it's unclear if that is consider a girl's name or a boy's name.
• Mineral MacGuffin: Master Raymond gives Claire a necklace with a stone that is supposed to turn colors in the presence of poison.
• Names to Run Away from Really Fast: In-universe, La Dame Blanche. Jamie started a rumor that Claire is a white witch who can look into the souls of men and condemn them to hell if she finds wickedness in their hearts. It saves Claire from being assaulted.

• Not Helping Your Case: Jamie's attempts to explain why he has returned from the brothel with bite marks on his thighs gets worse with every sentence he says.
• One Drink Will Kill the Baby: Averted. Claire is regularly shown drinking while pregnant. Despite warning Jenny that her baby would be born drunk if she drank during labor, Claire doesn't know that drinking during pregnancy could cause physical and mental impairments in a baby, as Fetal Alcohol Syndrome would not be discovered and recognized by the scientific and medical community until the early 1970s. Nevertheless, her tampered drink did still present quite a danger to her unborn child.
• Perfect Poison: Subverted. St. Germain believed that he was fatally poisoning Claire, but he'd actually been sold a concoction that would make the intended victim very sick, but was very survivable.
• Rape as Drama: Mary is graphically-shown being raped by one of the masked attackers.
• The Reveal: Louise is having an affair with Prince Charles Stewart.
• Revealing Injury: Claire realizes that Prince Charles is Louise's secret lover when he arrives at the Frasers' home with a monkey bite. Earlier, Louise had told Claire that her pet monkey bites everyone but her.
• Smart People Play Chess: Jamie and Monsieur Duverney enjoy playing lenghthy, competitive chess matches. As the Minister of Finance, Monsieur Duverney is presumably quite bright and it's established that Jamie beats him at chess nearly every time.
• Tension-Cutting Laughter: Claire expects Jamie to be angry or traumatized by the news that Black Jack Randall is still alive. Instead he's positively giddy as this means that he will have the opportunity to get revenge and be the one to kill Randall. Claire can't help but smile in relief as Jamie grins almost maniacally.
• The Time Traveller's Dilemma: Claire recognizes that Mary and Alex actually love each other and also believes Mary is too soft-hearted to survive marriage with Black Jack Randall. However, Alex and Mary getting together may mean that Frank is never conceived so Claire feels obligated to intervene to keep the couple apart, ensuring her own husband's future birth.
• Virgin Tension: Les Disciples make forcibly taking a woman's virginity the prerequisite for entry into their organization. Once Mary is violated, her engagement is broken, there is a big scandal as to whether she will ever be able to marry, and she is locked in her room as though the whole event was her fault.
• You Need to Get Laid: The majority of the tension between Jamie and Claire is due to the fact that they are not currently having sex. Throughout the series, Claire has referred to sex as a bridge of connection to her husbands. When they're physically on the outs, that's a verra bad thing.