Outlander, Aunt Jocasta, and the importance of tackling blindness

When we wrote our Outlander season 4 character questions piece earlier today regarding Aunt Jocasta, we mentioned her blindness as an important part of the character. We also mentioned the importance of seeing the world from her vantage point — not necessarily in the literal sense, but rather how she moves about the world and functions within her environment. This is important from an understanding perspective, but to us it does go deeper than that. It’s also about serving a community of people out there who are not often represented in the entertainment world.

As a writer, you do want to relate stories and events often to your own personal experiences. Yet, at the same time you also don’t want to make things solely about yourself. Selfishness is a pretty feared trait, especially within a present-day culture when such behavior often runs rampant. You don’t want to be lumped in with that crowd.

Yet, after writing the Jocasta story a nagging thought started dancing around in our brain, a personal connection that we rarely ever discuss on CarterMatt or much of anywhere else. It’s relevant in this case, and hopefully this will offer up some more insight as to why this character matters to us. It’s an issue of personal blindness — thankfully not full blindness, but legal blindness. Specifically, barely being able to see out of one eye at all and having fairly limited vision in the other. There is the utmost gratitude on our part that it’s not something more, given that writing and publishing articles are not an issue at this point and most every day activities are not impacted all that seriously. There are only a few specific occasions, such as driving or reading a menu plastered on a wall somewhere, where being legally blind does comes down as a reminder. Yet, the fear of something worse is still often there; it’s something that is hard to share as an experience when there are so few people in this age range struggling with something similar.

Jocasta is in a different age range — beyond that, she’s also fictional. Yet, why this matters is to show a character functioning and full of life despite her setbacks. Seeing how she lives despite her limitations can be inspiring without a message being forced on anyone. As a matter of fact, it’s often better than when it is. Not everyone wants an obvious inspirational story. It’s better to have subtle reminders that this sort of diversity is out there.

In general, it’s important for diversity among the visually impaired to be present on television. There are a few shows out there, whether it be Covert Affairs, Becker, Godless, The Wire, or Star Trek: The Next Generation, that feature blind characters that are not just Mr. Magoo caricatures. Having another character, especially within a period piece in which any ailment would be aggrandized, is all the more critical.

While there are family bonds and other reasons to be excited about Aunt Jocasta on Outlander — especially for book readers — this is the part of the story that feels the most fascinating on this end. Hopefully, this gives you a better sense of where we are coming from when we talk about seeing this from Jocasta’s eyes.

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