Before I launch into the third book, I thought a nice breather to stop and look at an element of the novels thus far would be both interesting, and a good palate cleanser. I spoke recently with a friend of mine who is also working her way through the books for the first time about some of our thoughts, and we got around to talking about some of the gender issues in the novels. Now, really, feminists need not apply. There's zero debate over the fact that this is a male dominated world, and that cruelty to women is both casual and explicit. Some of that I attribute to the fact that this is more of a medieval setting, and the status of women reflects that. It does seem pretty harsh though at times. I think in a way, it serves to flesh out a wide variance in the behavior of both men and women. Look at all the characters we value and those we don't: Almost without fail, we're made to dislike almost every character who is cruel to women. Likewise, we're made to like almost all the characters who are kind and more liberal in their treatment of women (which makes Jaime Lannister an interesting gray area). And then there are the actual women. My friend protested that Martin just can't write women, and I'll admit, they come across as far more flawed and at times uneven than I might like, but I'm not sure how fair the criticism is as a whole. If you look at the main female characters of the novel; Cersei, Sansa, Arya, Dany and Catelyn, you get five characters wholly unlike each other in personality, dreams, temperament and actions. I think the criticism might be that they are weak or weepy, but I question that as well.
Say what you will about how evil Cersei is, but she's no pushover. She's cunning like Tyrion, and fiercely protective of her family (or at least, the parts of it she cares about). Her only emotional weakness comes for her lover, and her son. Are we at a point where women have to be portrayed as unfeeling parents in order to deliver the message of strength? I think of all the women in the novels, she's the most masculine. She says as much when she was growing up as Jaime's other half, and couldn't understand why he got armor and was allowed to run off to fight while she had to stay behind as a women, as chattel, as a negotiating piece for royal bloodlines. She rejects the status of women, the status forced upon her. She contrives to deny her husband a blood heir, and in the end kills him off. In part because she wants power, but also in part because he's a symbol of her shackles of womanhood, and she rejects them. Like I said, say what you will about how evil she is, but she's not a damsel in distress, and she's not weak.
Sansa is the vision of the out-of-touch maiden in distress. She has not yet, but she has the greatest potential for growth in the novels into something more. There might yet be a big payoff there. Is there any character in the novel, at this point, that you want to see mature and grow into something better as much as Sansa? She's a ball of potential waiting to be molded, and I think her status as the personification of the weak, stupid, useless woman is only there to give us contrast for the change that is to come. Plus she serves as a mirror to reflect how not weak many other female characters are in contrast.
Of course I'm talking about Arya. She's not weak, or really that weepy, any more so than a ten year old should be. And I fear she's headed down a pretty dark path that normally in a book like this might be reserved for a man. I feel like she's designed for us to identify with her more, and care about her more, than most of the other women. But at the same time, I don't even think we have as much insight into her internal thoughts as we do about Cersei. I get Cersei. I don't really get what makes Arya tick yet, but there's something going on in there that could be really interesting to explore. In some ways she's a young Cersei by rejecting the feminine labels applied to her, but without the ruthlessness of a Lannister.
Daenerys. I don't know what to do with her yet. Child bride, widowed young, pregnant, mother, child lost, now the mythical Mother of Dragons, she's become myth and legend before she even had a chance to become a person. Tortured and cowed in her youth by her brother, now very much comfortable with the reins of command. She's had to mature very quickly, but while I feel like we have a good idea of what she was, I don't feel like we have a good idea of what she is. So I can't really comment on how she fits into the female sphere, as for the moment, she's pretty blah. I suspect that's only because her part comes later, but Martin needed to string us along, making her lack of a real fleshed out character a product more of storytelling problems than of Martin's actual disinterest in her.
Catelyn is a little more difficult to parse out. She seems to go in waves from strong to weak, but all of it's justified. She started out as a strong Tully in the barren north, very much on the cusp of fully identifying as a Stark woman. When Bran falls she collapses, but she sucks it up, she braves the wild, takes prisoners, puts herself in dangerous situations bravely, for her family. She only begins to crumble later when her husband dies, she thinks her sons are dead, she thinks both her daughters captured, her home in flames, and her father dying. That's everything but the kitchen sink, and the kitchen sink's name is Robb, but he's soundly rejected her counsel and sent her away a half dozen times. If she rose above all that, so quickly, and was the vision of a brave women, I'd reject it. Why? Her mirror, for the moment, is Davos. When he's on the island thinking about having lost all his sons, he's a broken man. This isn't a feeling that's restricted by gender, it's a feeling that comes with humanity. If Catelyn were to immediately transcend it, I'd call her humanity into question, as I would any character of any gender. Sometimes women aren't being stereotypically weak because they are women, but because they're human.
I think the problem is that Martin wasn't writing ideal women, any more than he was writing ideal men. I think it's incredibly strange that we've fallen into a pattern of putting women into binaries: strong/weak, feminine/masculine, hard/emotional, etc. The feminist lens seems to break women down this way, and I don't think it's fair to the characters, because women are just as complex as men, and sometimes more so, especially in these novels where the cares and concerns of men and women are so clearly placed into separate spheres. It's the rush to judge women as either weak or strong that causes this I think. But these are incredibly complex women, who are sometimes strong, and sometimes weak, sometimes emotional, and sometimes hard. And really, they're no different from any of the men in that respect. Also we have to remember that this a long series, and if any one character at any one time seems to be in a tailspin, there's no reason to think they'll stay that way. One thing that Martin doesn't do (for the most part) is give us static characters. They're all constantly evolving and reacting.
Anyway, up next is my first post on A Storm of Swords. Feel free to comment about your thoughts on the women. I'm wondering how much of our reactions to the women are defined by our own personalities, and our own preconceived notions. Where I find a character strong, someone else might say weak, and I think the reasons why are going to say a while more about us as readers and people than they will about the characters themselves.
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