Redemption - Only for Guys?

[brashcandy]

But it was not her choice to be brought back, no one asked her... Doesn't redemption require a personal choice?

Maybe we should define redemption first? :) Not a native speaker, so the finer aspects of the word might escape me...

:) It may not have been her personal choice to be brought back, but she certainly doesn't seem to be resisting it; instead she's quite eager to seek her revenge. And no, redemption doesn't require a personal choice. We can be redeemed through incidents that are thrust upon us, and come to our redemption after the fact so to speak. Redemption cannot be defined in its strict sense, I believe, when coming to female characters outside of Cersei. There is a need for a more expansive definition.

[Hamster of Doom]

Interesting observation, NotSoSilentSister. However, I would agree that few of the female characters are in quite the same situation of "redeemability" as their male counterparts. And that is arguably due to the fact that few women in Westeros have quite the same opportunities for being evil as men. Only under exceptional circumstances do female protagonists get the chance to go round killing folks, e.g. when Cersei becomes Regent, or when Cat acquires zombiedom and her merry band of murderers.

[eyeheartsansa]

we are in the middle of the series.. I expect much more redemption to happen towards the end.

I'm especially looking forward to Arya's resolution, seeing how she works through her issues.

[Yellow Dog]

I do think though, that unlike the other male characters who rely on females as "morality pets" as you put it, GRRM has instead gone the route of having his female characters negotiate their own path to redemption. Sansa chose not to go with the Hound, Cersei was deserted by all her male relatives and has to depend on virtual zombie, Catelyn became Lady Stoneheart, Arya has gone to train with Faceless Men,

the last image we have of Dany is her standing next to her own dragons, having gone through her own personal hell in the wilderness. She tried to depend on Hizdahr, and we see how that went.

and Melisandre can see into her own future.

So, whilst the male characters have to retreat to a safe zone of the patriarchal "damsel in distress" mode, the female characters are shown instead to break with tradition, break with societal norms and find a source of strength and need within themselves to embark on a redemption/rebirth/revenge as it suits them. So, in hindsight, GRRM has actually freed his female characters to be independent and self-sufficient. Thanks George ;)

Much as I hate both Cersei and Sansa, I like this explanation very much. I've always hated the Big Daddy Rescue theme in any context, and "morality pets" aren't much more appealing.

Yes, that the women must rescue themselves works, and even makes me hate Sansa and Cersei slightly less.

[The Greatmatt]

Redemption - only for guys?

Interesting thread, and I love the term "morality pet".

I do think though that your perspective is a bit skewed. You're basically saying "Why is it all the male villains get redeemed, but the female villains don't?"

The problem I have with that is that I don't think it's at all reasonable to look at Cersei as the most unredeemed villain in the piece. Her own son Joffrey was worse and never got redemption, Gregor never got redemption, and I seriously doubt Ramsey will get redemption. Walder won't get redemption. Theon didn't even really get redemption - he got tortured and broken on a level Cersei can't even imagine at this point, and his lone "redeeming act" was something he was quite literally pushed into.

I'd say Cersei only sticks out as getting "not nice" treatment from GRRM because 1) Her brother/lover Jaime is now getting much kinder treatment despite his child-killing act, and 2) She has now proven so ungodly inept at the only things she cares about.

For the former, it's certainly interesting, but would women really feel any better if Cersei & Jaime were reversed? At this point we now that basically there whole life Cersei has been the dominant one. If instead Jaime were the more dominant one and Cersei the one getting more redemption, well then this would be a total cliche story about yet another woman weaker than her man. People really want that?

Regarding Cersei' ineptitude though, I'm more sympathetic. When it comes to big time brains in Westeros, up to this point it's really been a sausage-fest. This isn't to say there haven't been very smart women though, they've just had cameo appearances: Queen of Thorns, Gemma Lannister, Sarella Sand.

My "happiest possible" ending to the series will definitely involve women being smart.

Dany, obviously, there's really no good way for her to end the series without her gaining some definite wisdom.

Sansa with her mentoring by Littlefinger seems poised to possibly because a new Queen of Thorns.

Arya's worth a mention here, although she's not going to be in the Queen of Thorns realm. I'm hoping she does some really amazing things.

And then I really hope we see more of Sarella. At the very least, I expect we'll get some enjoyment watching more of the Dorne girls at work.

[Yellow Dog]

The Sand Snakes spit on your filthy redemption. :laugh:

[Tyroshi Sellsword]

The problem with Cersei is that she has shown zero capacity for self-reflection. Everything is perceived as an attack. Everyone is out to get her. No criticism of her is valid, every selfish act is justified because she is entitled to have what she has and more. Everyone she loves and who loved her is either dead, hates her now, or is a child who doesn't know any better. Without the ability to think critically about her own behavior and why many people have valid gripes with her, she is never going to change.

Spoiler for ADWD re: trial by combat

The creation of Robert Strong is the ultimate proof of her unrepentant nature. She is going to rig a trial by combat by creating a giant, evil zombie golem. It's pretty crazy when you think about it. In my fantasies, Jaime is the one who has to fight Robert Strong, and Cersei's redemption comes when she offers to plead guilty rather than allowing Robert Strong to kill her brother. But it probably won't go down that way.

Can you imagine the reception a Brienne would get with Cersei? She cannot deal with ugliness. She thinks it is a sign of evil, and she fears it (witness her treatment of Tyrion). If, somehow, Cersei was to feel some actual remorse, it would have to break through many layers of narcissism that keep everyone, including ultimately Jaime, out of her inner life. I hope to see it happen, but I'm not optimistic.

As for Sansa, Arya, Catelyn, and Dany... they don't need redemption. People seem to forget that Sansa, Arya, and Dany are all CHILDREN who have undergone horrifying losses that would warp the personality of any child. Sansa and Arya have almost utterly lost their identities in order to survive the destruction of their families, and both of them watched their parents die. I give them a lot of leeway, narratively, and just hope they can find themselves again and root in what is good about the Stark identity.

Catelyn I have never liked, not only b/c she is cruel to Jon, but I think her decision to leave Winterfell was a very bad one and set off a chain of events that were ruinous. But she has more than paid for that. Lady Stoneheart is not really Catelyn anymore.

Dany: wow, the hate for her is virulent and borders on misogynistic IMO. She is acting like a teenaged girl, right down to the entitlement issues and inappropriate crush on a sleazy older man. Let's not forget her upbringing. She never met either of her parents, her only surviving family member was a psycho who used her and sold her. Her first husband (a murdering, raping warlord) loved her and died horribly due to her bad judgment (made when she was 13 years old!) and her second husband tried to kill her. Can we give the kid a break?

[Alexia]

Can you imagine the reception a Brienne would get with Cersei? She cannot deal with ugliness. She thinks it is a sign of evil, and she fears it (witness her treatment of Tyrion).

Oh really? Because she put the hideously disfigured Hound in charge of protecting her son and is not at all afraid of him. Even after learning of Saltpans, her reaction is to think what a pity it is that he went rabid because she would love to have him to teach Tommen swordfighting.

It simply is not true that she cannot deal with ugliness. She wouldn't deal well with Brienne because Brienne is unfeminine and breaks gender roles, and she would be displeased with Jaime leaving her for Brienne because...ouch. And her treatment of Tyrion is more about her mother's death in childbirth with him, and later on she feared him because he gave her ample reason to do so (even threatening little Tommen in a terrible way). And now she is out for his blood because he murdered her father and she genuinely believes he murdered her son and that he will murder her.

Cersei's got a lot of flaws, but an inability to deal with ugliness isn't really one of them.

[Tyroshi Sellsword]

Oh really? Because she put the hideously disfigured Hound in charge of protecting her son and is not at all afraid of him. Even after learning of Saltpans, her reaction is to think what a pity it is that he went rabid because she would love to have him to teach Tommen swordfighting.

Do you think she could truly embrace the Hound as a vehicle for personal redemption? Would she allow an extremely ugly man to become her closest confidante? I highly doubt it. There are plenty of ugly men that Cersei interacts with professionally. That does not mean she has a place for them in her inner life. Jaime gets the closest because he is most like her, but as soon as he is less than perfect, less like her... things go south fast. She is incapable of intimacy in general, but can you imagine her having any real intimacy with someone who was ugly? I can't.

And her treatment of Tyrion is more about her mother's death in childbirth with him, and later on she feared him because he gave her ample reason to do so (even threatening little Tommen in a terrible way). And now she is out for his blood because he murdered her father and she genuinely believes he murdered her son and that he will murder her.

Is an adult person with a capacity for higher thought really unable to see the idiocy of blaming a baby for "killing" his mother in childbirth? It seems like a pretext Cersei uses to justify her loathing for her ugly, deformed brother. Does that seem like adequate justification for treating a sibling with cruelty and scorn? She has been nothing but miserable to Tyrion, and his subsequent cruelty towards her was the result of it. Thought question: if Tyrion had been the death of his mother in childbirth, but came out golden, beautiful, and Lannister-like, do you think she would have held it against him with such lifelong virulence?

Cersei's got a lot of flaws, but an inability to deal with ugliness isn't really one of them.

Yeah, I disagree. Maybe what it really is is an inability to give a damn about *anyone* who is not just like her, which used to include Jaime, Tywin, and Joffrey, but now is just... her. She has never seemed as close to Tommen or Myrcella as Joffrey, and I am just betting she has major issues with Myrcella now that she's maimed. We'll see.

[NotSoSilentSister]

As I have noted above, GRRM seems to have women achieve their redemption by shunning male assistance/interaction

shunning male assistance/interaction is certainly empowering for these characters. that's an interesting character development but not exactly the kind of character development I wanted to talk about. It works for characters like 's dany and sansa, whose main crimes in the reader's eye seem to be their ineffectiveness - so when they finally get shit done on their own that might be considered as some sort of redemption by this reader. It doesn't work for cersei whose shunning of tyrion's, kevan's and jaime's assistence has obviously not contributed to any sense of redemption in most readers' opinion, and rightly so, I think. because cersei has comitted some actual crimes and that makes it a completly different kind of story.

Perhaps Sansa will redeem her complicity in Lysa's death, by saving Sweetrobin. Maybe Arya will end up saving a life, instead of taking one.

That's what I wanted to talk about. I think these would be very satisfying directions for the characters. My idea for this thread was to speculate about these kind of developments.

Surely the problem isn't preferential treatment of one gender, simply a dearth of female characters? There are heaps and heaps of unredeemed male characters, albeit most of them more minor characters. The Boltons, most of the Freys, Euron Greyjoy, Darkstar, Qyburn, Gregor - characters that are not only unredeemed but almost certainly well beyond redemption.

It's fine to have female villains. It's fine to have irredeeemable villains. So of course it's also perfectly okay to have irredeemable female villains. But when I never come across any redeemable female villain in popular fiction, I start to wonder. It might be confirmation bias, but you have to admit, they are very rare. (bond villain girls who end up getting laid by bond in the end don't count. that's fanservice, not character development ). redeeming cersei would be downright innovative; unfortunately it doesn't look like it's going to happen and I think it's a bit of a wasted opportunity.

[NotSoSilentSister]

You're basically saying "Why is it all the male villains get redeemed, but the female villains don't?"

again i'd like to point out that that's not what I'm saying at all.

it's more along the lines of "why are villains who get redeemed so rarely female?"

and you really have to explain how redemption is only for less dominant characters and makes you weaker because that doesn't fit my idea of redemption at all. seems to me like the more dominant you are the more redemeption you might need (because the more likely you are to just walk all over people) and searching atonment can never be a sign of weakness.

[Tyroshi Sellsword]

I think Cersei having to make a difficult choice between her own self-interest and the interest of someone she claims to love, like Jaime or Tommen, might bring about her redemption. In the spoiler box in post #27, I mentioned a way it could happen. Or she might have to cede power and walk away from the throne to save Tommen's or Myrcella's life. That will be the ultimate proof of her narcissism: can she choose someone else's life over her own?

[Alexia]

I think Cersei having to make a difficult choice between her own self-interest and the interest of someone she claims to love, like Jaime or Tommen, might bring about her redemption. In the spoiler box in post #27, I mentioned a way it could happen. Or she might have to cede power and walk away from the throne to save Tommen's or Myrcella's life. That will be the ultimate proof of her narcissism: can she choose someone else's life over her own?

Isn't that what she did in

The Great Nude Parade? Every other thought she had during the whole event was about how she was doing it for Tommen, and it certainly wasn't in her own interests.

[Tyroshi Sellsword]

Isn't that what she did in

The Great Nude Parade? Every other thought she had during the whole event was about how she was doing it for Tommen, and it certainly wasn't in her own interests.

It's annoying that this whole convo is going to have to be in spoiler boxes, but...

She did it because she was tortured. She showed no inclination to do it until they sleep deprived the hell out of her Gitmo-style. I didn't see the Walk of Shame as a selfless act at all. It was capitulation to a power greater than her own. Why would she have to "do it for Tommen"? He's the king.

[Alexia]

Yeah, spoiler boxes suck.

She wasn't tortured into it though (that whole event annoys the hell out of me, but whatever). As soon as she confessed (which she was tortured into doing), they stopped sleep-depriving her and started giving her better food and more comfortable quarters, and access to the outside world. She made the decision to do it *after* the torture had ended, not during. And while I agree that there is no reason she should have had to do it for Tommen (one reason of many I hate the way it got shoehorned in) her perception throughout the event was definitely that she was doing it for Tommen.

[Été]

It's annoying that this whole convo is going to have to be in spoiler boxes, but...

She did it because she was tortured. She showed no inclination to do it until they sleep deprived the hell out of her Gitmo-style. I didn't see the Walk of Shame as a selfless act at all. It was capitulation to a power greater than her own. Why would she have to "do it for Tommen"? He's the king.

She doesn't trust the Tyrells with him, and she figures he must want his mother.

[Auska]

again i'd like to point out that that's not what I'm saying at all.

it's more along the lines of "why are villains who get redeemed so rarely female?"

Perhaps you ought to specify why you consider that these characters need redemption (and what constitutes redemption)? The only two that in my mind actually need redemption, as other have said, are Cersei and Melisandre.

And Melisandre was already “redeemed” by her POV in ADWD

[Lady of Long Lake]

In the list of:

Cersei/Melisandre/Catelyn/Dany/Sansa/Arya

I feel that Arya does not need to redeem herself. Gosh, she's an 8-10 year old girl just trying to stay alive and keep a roof over her head. Of that group of women, she is the only one that I would say is not self absorbed or self centered. Arya's deeds are done out of self preservation or out of moral retribution.

The one death she chooses to cause by her own hands..well, the legal penalty for breaking that oath is death. In her mind, she knows she was justified.

[Brienne the Beauty]

And Melisandre was already “redeemed” by her POV in ADWD

Right, though I'm not so sure she's redeemed yet. When we see into Melisandre's POV, she's so much more sympathetic and redeemable than she seems from the outside. She proves it's not really the case that the female villains are all irredeemable.

A lot of the female characters that people are thinking of as irredeemable are only irredeemable because they are good guys, or at least as close to good guys as this series gets. There is nothing to redeem. Sansa, Dany, Cat... they are the "white hats" of the series. Cat has gone all out for vengeance, but so has

Lord Manderly

, and everyone likes him. It seems a meme in ASOIAF fandom to hate all the women who aren't Arya, but this doesn't make them villains. People hate them because they perceive them as annoying or stupid.

[brashcandy]

shunning male assistance/interaction is certainly empowering for these characters. that's an interesting character development but not exactly the kind of character development I wanted to talk about. It works for characters like 's dany and sansa, whose main crimes in the reader's eye seem to be their ineffectiveness - so when they finally get shit done on their own that might be considered as some sort of redemption by this reader. It doesn't work for cersei whose shunning of tyrion's, kevan's and jaime's assistence has obviously not contributed to any sense of redemption in most readers' opinion, and rightly so, I think. because cersei has comitted some actual crimes and that makes it a completly different kind of story.

Im sorry that it's not the kind of character development you wanted to talk about, but I think you need to consider that often a thread raises questions that cannot be limited to the precise ideas that the OP wanted to elicit.

I still don't think you quite understand what I'm saying. It's not some cliched idea of female empowerment. I'm stating that in the case of female villains, or more largely females who have been misunderstood by readers or within the narrative, they do not require morality pets. So far, GRRM has shown them arriving at their own redemption through their own means.

Obviously, one cannot specify what will happen because all the novels have not been written yet, but in the case of someone like Cersei, we may never find her "Brienne". If she follows the pattern GRRM has shown so far, her redemption may be sparked by some internal awakening. If not, then maybe yes she is unredeemable. (Although I do not think so).

IMO, what happens is that females begin a process of redemption that leads them or may lead them to do something honorable/worthy. They are literally "reborn". Their redemption involves casting away old thoughts, habits, etc. In the case of males, their redemption is sparked by these so called "morality pets". They come to an awakening via these female characters. What I'm saying is saying is that the "villainous" female characters come to an awakening through a rebirth. This begins the process of their redemption. They do not seek to rely on men, but rather, if possible, seem to make a forcible break from them, or are separated in the course of the narrative. I would argue that in Sansa's case the Hound begins her awakening, but her redemption arc really belongs with her. She must determine how she will both atone and avenge.

Obviously there is room for both. I'm sure we will see some females having morality pets, but as of this time in GRRM's writing, he has not shown them.