‘Outlander’ season 2, episode 12 reaction: Rosie Day on Mary’s marriage
Tonight on Starz, “Outlander” aired its penultimate episode of season 2, and with that, brought us an incredibly sad sequence in which Mary Hawkins ended up losing someone she cared about dearly in Alex Randall; then, almost immediately afterwards she had to marry his brother Jonathan because of societal norms, and what would have happened to her in the event that she did not. After all, she and Alex were expecting a child out of wedlock, and this was a form of protection.
Mary had found some sort of happiness, and despite her efforts to claim it, it was gone. This is something that Rosie Day described further when talking about her character to the Wall Street Journal:
“[The] story of Mary is really tragic because I think between episodes 11 and 12 she might have had some happiness in going to live with Alex and doing something very out of the norm. You know, living out of wedlock with her lover, and she’s pregnant – that’s really different for the time. But then he dies, and because of the time, she’s got to marry somebody, just to look after her and the child. It’s sad, because you see a bit where you’re like, “Oh, yeah! Go Mary!” but then it all goes wrong! We have a joke on set, which is every time Mary turns up it’s because she needs saving by Claire. And it’s true! She is a kind of tragic figure. I mean, she’s so young – if that happened to a 15-year-old today, we’d all be completely shocked. But because it was that century, that was the norm.”
We certainly feel for Mary, especially with the uncertainty of what is going to be coming next in her life. She’s married someone who Claire assumes is going to die in a matter of days, but history can change. We haven’t read the books, so we’re not being cagey on what is happening to Black Jack one way or the other.
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