(Source: serjaime, via asliverofsilver)
“Fighting is better than this waiting. You don’t feel so helpless when you fight. You have a sword and a horse, sometimes an axe. When you’re armored it’s hard for anyone to hurt you.”
(via lettersonrosepetals)
Female Relationships in ASOIAF
YES! I absolutely DO have thoughts on this. THIS IS GOING TO BE LONG. BUT I REGRET ABSOLUTELY NOTHING. I love you for asking me about this, nonny! I’m making this rebloggable because idk. Maybe people will want to reblog this? I want to talk to people about this, so I hope they do!
Firstly, I want to say that I DO agree that the series fails when it comes to women interacting on the page, especially women interacting POSITIVELY on the page. Cat and Brienne have one of the few positive female relationships in the series. Cat and Brienne clearly respect each other and there is some affection there. Brienne is super loyal to Cat because she is one of the few people who take her and her ambition to be a knight seriously. I seriously love their relationship, but their relationship is ruined. All that positive female interaction turns to dust when Cat dies and becomes Lady Stoneheart, a twisted shadow of the person she was in life. Lady Stoneheart takes Brienne’s loyalty and uses it against Brienne and even hangs Brienne when Brienne doesn’t do what Stoneheart wants.
I think another positive female relationship is the one between Dany and her hand maidens (and Missandei). But even then, they are not relationships that are actually explored very well or given much nuance. I suppose there is also Arienne and the Sand Snakes, but we don’t spend much time with them actually interacting on the page.
This also bleeds into the familial relationships in the series. We don’t get much of mothers and daughters interacting. Mother and sons? Check. (Robb and Catelyn. Joffrey and Cersei.) Fathers and daughters? Check. (Asha and Balon. Doran and Arienne. Arya and Ned.) Fathers and sons? Check. (Tyrion and Tywin. Theon and Balon.) But mothers and daughters? Not much time is spent exploring their relationships and I think that is a pretty big oversight on GRRM’s part. Also a LOT more time is devoted to exploring the relationships of brothers (Greyjoy brothers. Tyrion and Jaime.) or brothers and sisters (Jaime and Cersei. Asha and Theon) than is given to sisters (Cat and Lysa, for example. Or Arya and Sansa.)
The lack of these female interactions and the fact that the female relationships seem to have less significance than relationships where at least one man is involved is troubling. I don’t think it was intentional on the part of GRRM, but I don’t think he made female relationships a priority either. I suppose there is also possibly something to be said about the way that a patriarchal society can cause women to need to fend for themselves and be isolated? And maybe that is something that the lack of female relationships is saying?
However, I DO think that the female characters interact in conversation with each other in terms of their narratives, even if they don’t meet on the page. There are so many parallels between the various women in the series that I feel like I could deconstruct it forever. But I’ll try to be brief.
I think that there is really interesting set up of the younger generation vs the older generation and how the women of the different generations reflect who the older women used to be and who the younger women might become. Let’s take Arya, Sansa, and Cersei, for instance. In the show, Tywin tells Arya that she reminds him of his daughter, and I think that is very true. Cersei and Arya both have that same boldness and that same desire to be free of the constraints that society puts on them because they are women. Cersei was much more like Arya as a child (running off and having adventures) than she was like Sansa. But in the same episode, Cersei and Sansa have a conversation about marriage. Cersei was trapped in an unhappy marriage with Robert and there is a parallel being drawn between her marriage with Robert and Sansa’s future marriage with Joffrey.
There are also parallel journeys for these women. For example, Catelyn and Cersei were both married off to strange men for purely political purposes and their two marriages show both possible outcomes of an arranged marriage. Catelyn ends up married to a good man and is happy in her marriage while Cersei is stuck with an abusive lout for a husband. So both women function as a “what might have been” for the other.
There are a ton of other examples of this. I mean, you could look at Asha and Dany as stories about women who want to rule or Asha and Arienne. Asha lacks the support of the men in her family, but Arienne has that support. You could look at Lyanna and Elia- not as rivals for Rhaegar’s affections, but as how they only really exist for us as readers in the memories of their men. Lynna in Robert and Ned’s and Elia in Doran and Oberyn’s. And both sides are determined to avenge them- Ned and Robert go to war for Lyanna while the Martells play the long game in getting justice for Elia. Like there is a LOT of fascinating stuff in there and I feel like I’m barely scratching the surface.
So you see, I think there’s this really interesting thing where the women DO interact with each other as contrasting and comparative characters and engage with each other’s stories even though they don’t meet on the page. But that doesn’t mean that I don’t want more women actually having relationships in the series itself. I do! I really hope that we get some positive female relationships in the last two books, but tbh, I’m not holding my breath.
Catelyn: You fought bravely today, Lady Brienne.
Brienne: I fought for my King. Soon I’ll fight for him on the battlefield - die for him if I must. And, if it please you: Brienne’s enough. I’m no Lady.
(via lord-baelish)
“And yet, when Renly cut away her torn cloak and fastened a rainbow in its place, Brienne of Tarth did not look unfortunate. Her smile lit up her face, and her voice was strong and proud as she said, ‘My life for yours, Your Grace. From this day on, I am your shield, I swear it by the old gods and the new.’” - A Clash of Kings, pg. 344
BRIENNE THE BEAUTYYY. I don’t think I’ll ever finish it but it got far enough.
