Val is Jon’s true Queen. Part trois.

[Lord Varys]

On 5.8.2016 at 2:13 PM, Julia H. said:

As I see that this thread involves a debate on the status of women / misogyny in wildling society, let me throw in my two cents.

We have to differentiate between the wildlings as a collective term for the savages beyond the Wall (and in the Mountains of the Moon) and the nice-guy wildlings who call themselves the free folk which only make up a portion of the wildlings beyond the Wall.

The Thenns are wildlings, too, but they are not free folk. The same might go for the Hornfoot Men, the Ice-River clans, the Cave Dwellers, and other wildlings we have no yet met in detail. The idea that everybody beyond the Wall allows their women to fight is way to far-fetched with the little evidence we have so far.

On 5.8.2016 at 2:13 PM, Julia H. said:

If we compare wildling culture north of the Wall and the culture of the Seven Kingdoms south of the Wall, I don't think wildling women necessarily come out as being in a worse position than their southern counterparts with regard to their agency and independence (the difference in general living standards might be a different thing).

I think they do. Life beyond the Wall is a lot harder and much more based on in-fighting and conflict than the civilized life this side of the Wall. There are just isolated villages and clan chiefs suggesting that violent conflicts, hit-and-run attacks, robberies, etc. are quite common and essentially the basis on which some of the wildling tribes might actually thrive on (especially in winter).

There might still hunter-gather-like culture among some of the wildlings considering that most of the land is either covered by forests and mountains. We don't see any signs pointing to a lot of professional agriculture up there, making it exceedingly unlikely that the various villages and settlements and tribes have enough provisions for winter. And if they don't have provisions they will have to steal their food from their neighbors as they do when raid the Seven Kingdoms.

On 5.8.2016 at 2:13 PM, Julia H. said:

Beyond the Wall, stealing women is more or less the equivalent of the southern concept of marriage.

Not really. First, it is quite clear that the stealing part traditionally means you abduct, rape, and make a woman your sex and house slave. That's why it is called 'stealing' and not 'marriage'. We see how this type of thing is still practiced in all its glory among the clansmen from the Mountains of the Moon. Nobody doubts that stealing among them means to abduct women you chance upon the road or from one of the villages in the Riverlands or the Vale you raid, right?

The other part is that marriage in Westeros usually is arranged (at least among nobles) something the whole stealing thing among the wildlings is not. Granted, we don't know all that much about smallfolk marriages in Westeros but then, peasants who own stuff (like a farm and some land or an inn or mill, etc.) would most likely also try to marry their sons and daughters to somebody who owns something, too, rather than allow them to follow their hearts.

On 5.8.2016 at 2:13 PM, Julia H. said:

We see that consensual sexual relationships exist without or prior to stealing (as the case of Ygritte's first love illustrates) and we also see that there is rape without stealing (as per Varamyr, who forced women to sleep with him through his magical powers but never intended to keep them or to regard them as his wives).

What is the point of that argument? You can rape women and men with the intention of entering into a serious relationship or just for the fun of it. Vice versa, you also have consensual sex with or without the intention of staying together.

On 5.8.2016 at 2:13 PM, Julia H. said:

The idea of stealing apparently involves the intention of a long-term relationship, sharing a household (such as they have), acknowledging children born of the relationship.

The latter part is completely speculative. There is no hint that there is even such a concept as a bastard in the free folk society. Mance, for example, would be a bastard from the point of view of the Seven Kingdoms but he is never referred to as such by the wildlings.

The important point you are missing about the stealing part is that involves the violent taking of a woman from her home and her family, possibly against her will (if it is done during a raiding on either side of the Wall). Presumably the man stealing a woman can just rape her and then discard her or continue to live with her thereafter. But there is no hint that a woman who has been stolen against her will (or a woman who was stolen consensually but is eventually discarded by her 'stealer') has any rights or say whatsoever in that matter. Aside from the knife story Ygritte tells us, of course.

A salt wife (usually suffering from a similar fate as a stolen woman) supposedly has some rights considering that she is the secondary wife of her husband but there is no hint whatsoever that the wildlings treat the women they have stolen from some out-group all that well. They would be completely at the mercy of their husbands/stealers (just as salt wives effectively are).

On 5.8.2016 at 2:13 PM, Julia H. said:

We also find out that there are some taboos, i.e., rules governing the choice of partners - exogamy is the expected norm. Can stolen women be abandoned by their men later? No doubt they can be, but it does not mean that is the norm or the accepted behaviour. No society is immune against rule-breakers or criminals. The taboo of marrying your kin can also be violated, as we see with Craster, but we also see that such a man isolates himself from all wildling societies and is considered to be an outcast.

We don't know what accepted behavior among the wildlings is. Especially not among them as a collective. But the idea that treating your women gently is the norm if it is accepted that you actually abduct and rape women outside your own group does not sound right to me. A society in which this kind of thing is accepted makes it very clear that women are very inferior to men, effectively sex and house slaves. That doesn't mean you can't fall in love or love your mother or sister as a male wildling, of course. But it makes it very likely that you don't consider women your equal.

Unless, of course, they enter into the male sphere and become warriors in their own right. Although the average spear wife would always be inferior in rank and strength to the average male wildling warrior. Only exceptional women like Harma Dogshead rise to prominent positions among the wildlings.

On 5.8.2016 at 2:13 PM, Julia H. said:

When a woman is stolen, both the woman and her family are expected to fight. It is reasonable to assume that this fight has different levels. If the woman and the family approve of the man (or if the stealing is prearranged between the girl and the boy), the fight is probably less intense than in a situation where the woman does not want to be stolen, where the family members have serious objections against the suitor or where the suitor still has to "prove himself" as a man worthy of the woman, meaning he is strong enough to protect her, to feed her and to father strong, healthy children on her. Far from being unrealistically romantic, in the harsh circumstances of the North, the ability to survive and to keep the woman alive is of paramount importance when considering a future husband.

This only refers to the 'stealing' among the members of the in-group, i.e. among families living together in a village, a tribe, or a larger group united under a King-beyond-the-Wall.

The mistake is the idea that stealing equals marriage among the wildlings. In a sense that is true when things are nice and cozy but the wildling concept is stealing and not marriage. Stealing is a violent act at its core.

On 5.8.2016 at 2:13 PM, Julia H. said:

The "fake fight" - when the woman approves of the man - is supported  by Tormund's assertion to Jon about Ygritte:

" She’d hardly give you any fight at all, seems to me. The girl wants you in her, that’s plain enough to see.”

That need to put up a fight in any case may be paralleled by Tormund's negotiation with Jon in ADwD, where Tormund roars and calls Jon all sorts offensive names, even throws his drinking horn against him - and in the end, he accepts all Jon's terms, shakes his hand and has a totally amiable chat with him. All that shouting only serves to make sure the wildlings know that Tormund doesn't yield to Jon's terms easily. It is a nod to honour rather than a serious opposition (and Jon seems to understand it as such), not unlike a proud woman's fight even when she wants to be stolen.

Come on, now, the one thing is boasting and threatening during a political negotiation (that is also done down in the South among men where nobody ever steals a woman) the other is the stealing thing.

The fact that two people who want to be together cannot be properly be together unless the man steals the woman shows how twisted this society is. They only understand 'marriage' in the terms of a violent act that precedes it (if we assume stealing equals marriage as practiced south of the Wall - which we don't really know).

On 5.8.2016 at 2:13 PM, Julia H. said:

As for the situation where there is an objection to the man, here are Jon's words:

“Amongst the free folk, when a man desires a woman, he steals her, and thus proves his strength, his cunning, and his courage. The suitor risks a savage beating if he is caught by the woman’s kin, and worse than that if she herself finds him unworthy.”

All that shows that the woman's opinion is quite important.

Yeah, for the family of the woman, of course, if the woman's family gives a damn about her fate and happiness. Not so much from the point of view of the family of the man stealing the woman, right? If I was a wildling man my father presumably would encourage me to do everything in my power to take the woman I want to steal, right? Regardless whether the woman wants to be stolen I still can steal by force, killing her entire family in the process, right?

On 5.8.2016 at 2:13 PM, Julia H. said:

I don't think so. It is possible that a girl likes the boy, but the family members don't and they beat him up so that he flees. It is also possible that a woman doesn't have young / strong enough male family members to protect her and she is not strong enough to defend herself. However, common wisdom would probably say that in this case she should be happy to be chosen by a strong man, as she needs one to survive.

Well, in a society in which women are chattel and baby machines it is the best she can hope for. But one wonders whether death or not living at all might not be preferable to all that. I mean, there is a good chance that the majority of human women lived this kind of life for the 99% of our species existence (during the entire hunter-gatherer days) simply because men were stronger and could more or less do whatever the hell they wanted to (their) women. But that doesn't make the whole thing the right thing to do.

On 5.8.2016 at 2:13 PM, Julia H. said:

Yet, it is possible that the woman doesn't like the man in question or that she likes another one and can't choose him. Such things will probably happen. Not everybody will be equally happy and fortunate. There is a reason why wildling women are encouraged to learn to fight, and although not all of them become spearwives, that is certainly an option for them.

Well, that depends. We don't know how many spearwives there are no which wildling cultures support this concept. If you think about it then the whole procreation thing suits women rather badly for the role of a fighter, making it rather likely that only elite women (i.e. the daughters of powerful men) ever get in a position where they can learn how to fight. If you check Mance's armies we don't see all that many spearwives. The idea that 'it is an option' for a wildling woman to become a spearwife might be in truth as likely as the idea that a woman could become an abbess in the middle ages. It certainly was a possibility but the average woman never had any chance whatsoever to rise to such an exalted position.

On 5.8.2016 at 2:13 PM, Julia H. said:

Ultimately, a woman's ability to choose for herself is probably determined by the strength of her clan and by her own ability to protect herself. That must be more or less parallel to her personal status in society as such.

Status is much more fluent among the wildlings, though. A woman might be 'the Lady of her village' on one day and the slave of a man like the Weeper on the next.

On 5.8.2016 at 2:13 PM, Julia H. said:

Now let's see the situation south of the Wall.

Noble women aren't stolen but sold and bought. It is called marriage, but they are quite definitely the objects of trade between their fathers and future husbands, in worse cases between their liege lords and their future husbands. Noble girls are simply assets that their families use to buy land, alliance, influence, status. Officially, they have no say in their own future. Their only hope is a considerate father who is also in a position to choose a husband who meets both his and his daughter's expectations. Otherwise it is a question of pure luck. Some end up with loving and lovable husbands, like Ned. Others end up with someone like Robert or Walder Frey or worse. In extreme cases, a woman can even be as unfortunate as Lady Hornwood (with no protection against a greedy neighbour), who is forced to marry a criminal, and even if Ramsay's actions cause some outrage, no one debates the validity of the forced marriage.

That is completely true. The small fraction of what I'd call 'aristocratic wildlings women' or 'elite wildling women' which would include Harma, Ygritte, Val, and Chella can be better off insofar as an independent life is concerned. If she is able to fight of any men who want to steal her and happens to chance upon a guy she likes.

Yet a noblewoman in the Seven Kingdoms still should live a much better life on average considering a noble lady still enjoys a certain rank regardless how her husband treats her in the bedchamber. And on average there should be less marital rape among married noblemen than among wildlings considering that the people down south are more civilized.

On 5.8.2016 at 2:13 PM, Julia H. said:

Women of the small folk may or may not have a say in their own marriage (they, too, have fathers, and they are also the property of their families because they don't have rights of their own). But they have practically no protection against lords, lordlings or any armed men. (Just think of Tysha.) Not even a physically strong husband or brother can protect them against soldiers or nobles. During times of peace and stability they may be better protected (if the lord of the land keeps law and order), in more difficult times, they may fall prey to anyone. (Arya witnesses that in the Riverlands.)

Yeah, but that would be the same among the wildlings and their squabbles. And if some neighbor tries to bully or threaten you you can go to your local lord for justice as a peasant. Wildlings cannot do something like that. If the Weeper slew your entire family you can either despair and kill yourself or try to die fighting him. The average woman would not even have the latter option.

On 5.8.2016 at 2:13 PM, Julia H. said:

Women south of the Wall are not encouraged to learn to protect themselves (Brienne is regarded as a freak) because such an ability would interfere with the rights of the men around them. Ultimately, it is the political and military strength of the woman's family that decides her status in society, and that determines whether she will be anyone's prey or just her husband's property. In neither case does she have the right to choose her own future. There will be women who are still able to stand up for themselves to a certain extent due to their social status and / or strength of character. Others will be totally at the mercy of the male society around them, and no one will find it strange or wrong.

That is not completely true. A woman can join the orders of the Faith and is then technically protected from abusive men by her holy vows. The Lady Consort of a lord also has certain powers of her own in her own castle, and enjoys a lot of power via her sons and other children should she produce some. Sure, it is the her husband who decides how much power she can have but that's the same with the wildlings.

[Jon's Queen Consort]

I don't understand how the Free Folk culture has anything to do with what the OP discusses.  

[Lord Wraith]

On 8/10/2016 at 7:28 AM, Jon's Queen Consort said:

I don't understand how the Free Folk culture has anything to do with what the OP discusses.  

For one I do think that Val will end up with Jon.

Also I remember reading some theories that Val and Dalla had some connection to the Moonsingers. Do you have any thoughts on that?

[The Fattest Leech]

47 minutes ago, Lord Wraith said:

For one I do think that Val will end up with Jon.

Also I remember reading some theories that Val and Dalla had some connection to the Moonsingers. Do you have any thoughts on that?

I think the term moonsingers is specific to Essos. Val and Dalla are (were) traveling healers, which have different titles depending on where in the world they are. Woods witch or warrior witch would be most current in Westeros. Even so, the moonsingers have an actual temple in Braavos where the Free Folk are a nature/outside oriented belief system. 

 I think the thread I linked to sums it up best, but I have a few more in my signature line that may interest you? 

 

[Lord Wraith]

1 minute ago, The Fattest Leech said:

I think the term moonsingers is specific to Essos. Val and Dalla are (were) traveling healers, which have different titles depending on where in the world they are. Woods witch or warrior witch would be most current in Westeros. Even so, the moonsingers have an actual temple in Braavos where the Free Folk are a nature/outside oriented belief system. 

 I think the thread I linked to sums it up best, but I have a few more in my signature line that may interest you? 

 

Checking it out now. Also I can't see your signature for some reason, which is odd since I can see plenty of other peoples.

[bemused]

I'll jump in.

Since the publication of the world book, we know more about the Moonsingers, and there are some similarities, but I still think the two developed independently.. or if there's a connection, it's very far back in time. Maybe there were some bands of Jogos Nhai among the First men.. but by now the differences would be very great.. having adopted CotF gods, living in a very different climate, intermarrying with other First Men peoples.. Even in Braavos, they would now surely have differences from the original Jogos Nhai women. .. My bet is they're not a source so much as given as a parallel, as George does so often with his characters.(Look how often events in Dunk and Egg provide parallels for ASoIaF)

Here are a few quotes from TWoIaF...

Vayria's Children ... Seizing control of the fleet but realizing there was no place nearby to hide from the Freehold, the slaves instead elected to seek out some land far from Valyria and its subjects, and founded their own city in hiding. Legend says that the moonsingers prophesied that the fleet must travel far north to a forlorn corner of Essos—a place of mudflats and brackish water and fogs. There, the slaves first laid the foundation of their city.

The Free Cities: Braavos... Braavosi histories claim that a group of slave women from the distant lands of the Jogos Nhai prophesied where they would find shelter: in a distant lagoon behind a wall of pine-clad hills and sea stones, where the frequent fogs would help to hide the refugees from the eyes of dragonriders passing overhead. And so it proved. These women were priestesses, called moonsingers, and to this day the Temple of the Moonsingers is the greatest in Braavos.

The Bones and Beyond : The Plains of the Jogos Nhai... Unlike the Dothraki, whose khals lead huge khalasars across the grasslands, the Jogos Nhai travel in small bands, closely connected by blood. Each band is commanded by a jhat, or war chief, and a moonsinger, who combines the roles of priestess, healer, and judge. The jhat leads in war and battle and raid, whilst other matters are ruled by the band's moonsinger.

Dothraki khals make endless war on one another once beyond the sacred precincts of Vaes Dothrak, their holy city, but the gods of the Jogos Nhai forbid them to shed the blood of their own people (young men do ride out to steal goats, dogs, and zorses from other bands, whilst their sisters go forth to abduct husbands, but these are rituals hallowed by the gods of the plains, during which no blood may be shed). ...

....  The enmity between the nomads and the warrior women of the Bones runs deep and bitter to this very day, and over the centuries a dozen jhattars have led armies up the Steel Road. Thus far all these assaults have broken against the walls of Kayakayanaya, yet the moonsingers still sing of the glorious day to come when the Jogos Nhai shall prevail and spill over the mountains to claim the fertile lands beyond.

I think the jhat/moonsinger leadership team is similar to what we'll find with the wildlings, and it's very similar to the old Norse culture - which George always cited as his model for the religion of the old gods (I assume that means as practiced by men). But I also think there will be important twists and differences from both the Norse and the JN.. like the Jogos Nhai women stealing husbands.

@Lord Wraith... I don't know if what you've read is more recent, and so covers some of this stuff, but back when I read people saying Val was a moonsinger (well before TWoIaF) they were basing it purely on her speech seeming more educated. Thinking the wildlings were too crude, barbaric, or what have you to produce a Val ... they claimed Val must have come from Braavos......(burned my britches)

 

[Julia H.]

On 2016. 08. 09. at 1:00 AM, Lord Varys said:

We have to differentiate between the wildlings as a collective term for the savages beyond the Wall (and in the Mountains of the Moon) and the nice-guy wildlings who call themselves the free folk which only make up a portion of the wildlings beyond the Wall.

The Thenns are wildlings, too, but they are not free folk. The same might go for the Hornfoot Men, the Ice-River clans, the Cave Dwellers, and other wildlings we have no yet met in detail. The idea that everybody beyond the Wall allows their women to fight is way to far-fetched with the little evidence we have so far.

Let me say here that I'm not talking of the wildlings we know nothing about. I'm only talking about the wildling culture that we get to know from the books. Anything else would be fanfiction. If the wildling culture GRRM shows us belongs only to a small group of people, then they are the only wildling people we know. If if refers to the culture of all the people beyond the Wall - only GRRM can tell. I think we can only discuss what we know from the books. If the Cave Dwellers live in a totally different way, then we simply haven't learn't anything about their culture yet, and for all we know, they may live in matriarchy. Or not. I'm talking exclusively about what we see in the books. 

On 2016. 08. 09. at 1:00 AM, Lord Varys said:

I think they do. Life beyond the Wall is a lot harder and much more based on in-fighting and conflict than the civilized life this side of the Wall. There are just isolated villages and clan chiefs suggesting that violent conflicts, hit-and-run attacks, robberies, etc. are quite common and essentially the basis on which some of the wildling tribes might actually thrive on (especially in winter).

There might still hunter-gather-like culture among some of the wildlings considering that most of the land is either covered by forests and mountains. We don't see any signs pointing to a lot of professional agriculture up there, making it exceedingly unlikely that the various villages and settlements and tribes have enough provisions for winter. And if they don't have provisions they will have to steal their food from their neighbors as they do when raid the Seven Kingdoms.

Sure, economic conditions are much worse beyond the Wall, as I even mentioned in my previous post.

On 2016. 08. 09. at 1:00 AM, Lord Varys said:

Not really. First, it is quite clear that the stealing part traditionally means you abduct, rape, and make a woman your sex and house slave. That's why it is called 'stealing' and not 'marriage'. We see how this type of thing is still practiced in all its glory among the clansmen from the Mountains of the Moon. Nobody doubts that stealing among them means to abduct women you chance upon the road or from one of the villages in the Riverlands or the Vale you raid, right?

When the clansmen of the Vale steal women who belong to the feudal society of the Seven Kingdoms, they impose the customs of their own culture on people belonging to a different culture, who will obviously experience it as a trauma and an offense. The same is true when wildlings steal women from the other side of the Wall or when the Ironborn steal "greenlander" women. In the latter case, we know that even though they are called salt wives, their status is not that of a real wife - because they are outsiders. True marriage in the Ironborn culture is strictly endogamous, while the wildling norm is exogamy - they mustn't marry within the clan.  

On 2016. 08. 09. at 1:00 AM, Lord Varys said:

The other part is that marriage in Westeros usually is arranged (at least among nobles) something the whole stealing thing among the wildlings is not. Granted, we don't know all that much about smallfolk marriages in Westeros but then, peasants who own stuff (like a farm and some land or an inn or mill, etc.) would most likely also try to marry their sons and daughters to somebody who owns something, too, rather than allow them to follow their hearts.

On the one hand, "arranged" in Westeros does not mean that anyone asks the woman's consent. The arrangement is totally  between the girl's father / liege lord and the suitor. The girl is just told who to marry. There is no stealing because her father hands her over to her future husband. She still cannot decide for herself.

On the other hand, why do you think that the stealing can't be arranged? Look at this quote:

 "That Longspear stole me daughter. Munda, me little autumn apple. Took her right out o' my tent with all four o' her brothers about. Toregg slept through it, the great lout, and Torwynd . . . well, Torwynd the Tame, that says all that needs saying, don't it? The young ones gave the lad a fight, though."

"And Munda?" asked Jon.

"She's my own blood," said Tormund proudly. "She broke his lip for him and bit one ear half off, and I hear he's got so many scratches on his back he can't wear a cloak. She likes him well enough, though. And why not? He don't fight with no spear, you know. Never has. So where do you think he got that name? Har!"

Can you imagine this scene? Longspear steals into Tormund's tent at night (but Tormund apparently isn't there) to steal Tormund's daughter. There are four brothers there though, the strongest of whom sleeps through the whole event while the younger ones and Munda "fight" Longspear. Munda gives him scratches and other wounds but she "likes him well enough". The father isn't angry at all. It is quite clear that the stealing was arranged - Tormund was somewhere else, Toregg pretended to be asleep (in all the resulting noise, yes) while the younger ones had some fun and gave a nod to tradition and honour.  When Tormund mentions them again, he says:

"Munda." That brought Tormund's smile back. "Took that Longspear Ryk to husband, if you believe it.

Now that sounds as though Munda had her own part in the decision-making. 

Of course, not everyone is equally nice, and stealing may not always be just an element of folklore, but then in the Seven Kingdoms, not every man is nice and gallant either. Ramsay is also a husband of a sort.

On 2016. 08. 09. at 1:00 AM, Lord Varys said:

What is the point of that argument? You can rape women and men with the intention of entering into a serious relationship or just for the fun of it. Vice versa, you also have consensual sex with or without the intention of staying together.

The point is that stealing does not equal rape. There is a difference between the two concepts, as there is a difference between casual consensual sex and stealing, too. Therefore "stealing" means a third concept. 

On 2016. 08. 09. at 1:00 AM, Lord Varys said:

The latter part is completely speculative. There is no hint that there is even such a concept as a bastard in the free folk society. Mance, for example, would be a bastard from the point of view of the Seven Kingdoms but he is never referred to as such by the wildlings.

The important point you are missing about the stealing part is that involves the violent taking of a woman from her home and her family, possibly against her will (if it is done during a raiding on either side of the Wall). Presumably the man stealing a woman can just rape her and then discard her or continue to live with her thereafter. But there is no hint that a woman who has been stolen against her will (or a woman who was stolen consensually but is eventually discarded by her 'stealer') has any rights or say whatsoever in that matter. Aside from the knife story Ygritte tells us, of course.

Tormund shook his shaggy head. "What fools you kneelers be. Why did you steal the girl if you don't want her?"

This sounds exactly like a wiser, older man trying to talk some sense into a young man who is doing something unacceptable. 

Sure, a stolen woman can be discarded later, but then in the Seven Kingdoms a wife can be set aside on various pretexts - unless she is protected by a strong father or brother. 

I don't think stealing and leaving behind is the accepted norm among the wildlings any more than Ramsay's treatment of his wife is the norm in the Seven Kingdoms for the following reasons:

1) In the harsh circumstances of the Far North, a woman who is to give birth to a child is absolutely dependent on someone to protect and feed her as well as her soon-to-be born child. Men who regularly abandon the women they have had sex with will have their gene pools lost, while men who take wives and look after their families will make sure their genes survive. Evolution will favour family men, and the wildlings still exist. There will be delinquent behaviour, no doubt about it, but nothing suggests that there is more of that than in the Seven Kingdoms, where rape is frequent within and outside marriage. 

2) Jon Snow, who has lived among wildlings and seen how they live, takes boy hostages to make sure that the wildlings will keep their side of the bargain. This makes sense only if those boys have fathers who care about them, which suggests that the wildlings understand the concept of family.

3) We also see wildling fathers who are not different from fathers south of the Wall: Tormund, Mance, Kingsblood. How many wildlings do we see who have abandoned an already stolen woman?

On 2016. 08. 09. at 1:00 AM, Lord Varys said:

A salt wife (usually suffering from a similar fate as a stolen woman) supposedly has some rights considering that she is the secondary wife of her husband but there is no hint whatsoever that the wildlings treat the women they have stolen from some out-group all that well. They would be completely at the mercy of their husbands/stealers (just as salt wives effectively are).

Just as most wives all over Westeros are at the mercy of their husbands.

On 2016. 08. 09. at 1:00 AM, Lord Varys said:

We don't know what accepted behavior among the wildlings is. Especially not among them as a collective. But the idea that treating your women gently is the norm if it is accepted that you actually abduct and rape women outside your own group does not sound right to me. A society in which this kind of thing is accepted makes it very clear that women are very inferior to men, effectively sex and house slaves. That doesn't mean you can't fall in love or love your mother or sister as a male wildling, of course. But it makes it very likely that you don't consider women your equal.

Mance seems to treat Dalla with great respect and love. Tormund tells Longspear that he expects him to treat Munda well. Those are examples the author chose to give us.

Of course, they don't consider women their equal. Can you show me a single culture in the ASOIAF world where the women are considered to be the men's equal? They certainly are not in the Seven Kingdoms. As for abducting and raping women belonging to another group, well, what do soldiers on both continents do most of the time? It is not unique to the wildlings at all. Wildling women may at least fight back.

On 2016. 08. 09. at 1:00 AM, Lord Varys said:

Unless, of course, they enter into the male sphere and become warriors in their own right. Although the average spear wife would always be inferior in rank and strength to the average male wildling warrior. Only exceptional women like Harma Dogshead rise to prominent positions among the wildlings.

Ah, but why do you call it the "male sphere" when it's open to women as well? Doesn't that sound like good old southron prejudice? 

And, please, tell me how many women rise to prominent positions south of the Wall?

On 2016. 08. 09. at 1:00 AM, Lord Varys said:

This only refers to the 'stealing' among the members of the in-group, i.e. among families living together in a village, a tribe, or a larger group united under a King-beyond-the-Wall.

The mistake is the idea that stealing equals marriage among the wildlings. In a sense that is true when things are nice and cozy but the wildling concept is stealing and not marriage. Stealing is a violent act at its core.

How do you possibly know that the cosy and pre-arranged variety of stealing is not what is generally considered normal? And why would it only happen within a group? Ygritte tells Jon plainly that men are expected to take women from outside the village, outside the group:

"A true man steals a woman from afar, t' strengthen the clan. Women who bed brothers or fathers or clan kin offend the gods, and are cursed with weak and sickly children. Even monsters."

Here it is: The idea of stealing women (from a different clan) is strongly linked to the idea of childbirth and family. This clearly suggests that a man is expected to steal a woman in order to start a family and be responsible for it (he must take care to father healthy and strong children). We are shown that wildlings have families, that fathers love their children and take responsibility for them. 

Ygritte's first love (who was from a different clan) wanted to steal her after having a consensual affair with her, i.e., after they got to know each other a little. Nothing suggests that this was unusual. 

On 2016. 08. 09. at 1:00 AM, Lord Varys said:

Come on, now, the one thing is boasting and threatening during a political negotiation (that is also done down in the South among men where nobody ever steals a woman) the other is the stealing thing.

No, it is a valid parallel, two aspects of the same cultural phenomenon. You must resist even when you want to surrender in order to make yourself more valuable and valued. 

On 2016. 08. 09. at 1:00 AM, Lord Varys said:

The fact that two people who want to be together cannot be properly be together unless the man steals the woman shows how twisted this society is. They only understand 'marriage' in the terms of a violent act that precedes it (if we assume stealing equals marriage as practiced south of the Wall - which we don't really know).

Psychologists say the more we invest (emotionally) into a relationship, the more valuable it will be to us. Perhaps the men are made to pay "dearly" for their wives in order to make them value the women higher. 

On 2016. 08. 09. at 1:00 AM, Lord Varys said:

Yeah, for the family of the woman, of course, if the woman's family gives a damn about her fate and happiness. Not so much from the point of view of the family of the man stealing the woman, right? If I was a wildling man my father presumably would encourage me to do everything in my power to take the woman I want to steal, right? Regardless whether the woman wants to be stolen I still can steal by force, killing her entire family in the process, right?

How about the Seven Kingdoms? When a man can see an advantageous marriage possibility for his son, he will not care whether the girl wants to marry his son or not. Look at Tywin, who forced Sansa and Tyrion to marry (after having her brother and mother killed). Everyone realized that Sansa didn't want this marriage. Even Tyrion tried to protest. Tywin didn't care. The bridegroom's whole family didn't care a damn what the bride wanted and the father practically ordered his son to rape Sansa ASAP. Where is the big difference between the bad wildling way and the "civilized" southern way? 

On 2016. 08. 09. at 1:00 AM, Lord Varys said:

Well, in a society in which women are chattel and baby machines it is the best she can hope for. But one wonders whether death or not living at all might not be preferable to all that. I mean, there is a good chance that the majority of human women lived this kind of life for the 99% of our species existence (during the entire hunter-gatherer days) simply because men were stronger and could more or less do whatever the hell they wanted to (their) women. But that doesn't make the whole thing the right thing to do.

But at least it's not unique to the wildlings. No, not the right thing to do, but I think you misunderstood my last post. My point isn't how great wildling culture and society are, only that they are not so different from the rest of the continent with regard to a woman's right to make decisions for herself, with regard to their treatment of women. Women are chattel and baby machines all over the Seven Kingdoms. Not a good thing, but at the end of the day, wildling women are legally not worse off than their southern counterparts. There is no reason to suppose that misogyny is any stronger north of the Wall than south of it.  

On 2016. 08. 09. at 1:00 AM, Lord Varys said:

Well, that depends. We don't know how many spearwives there are no which wildling cultures support this concept. If you think about it then the whole procreation thing suits women rather badly for the role of a fighter, making it rather likely that only elite women (i.e. the daughters of powerful men) ever get in a position where they can learn how to fight. If you check Mance's armies we don't see all that many spearwives. The idea that 'it is an option' for a wildling woman to become a spearwife might be in truth as likely as the idea that a woman could become an abbess in the middle ages. It certainly was a possibility but the average woman never had any chance whatsoever to rise to such an exalted position.

Jon Snow fills a castle with the spearwives who are willing to fight for the Watch. Mance takes some to Winterfell. There must be more of them, and there must have been quite a few who fell in battle, too. Probably there are significantly more spearwives in ASOIAF than abbesses in the Middle Ages. 

On 2016. 08. 09. at 1:00 AM, Lord Varys said:

Status is much more fluent among the wildlings, though. A woman might be 'the Lady of her village' on one day and the slave of a man like the Weeper on the next.

Perhaps. But similar things can happen in the Seven Kingdoms as well. GRRM has already written five books about this idea. 

On 2016. 08. 09. at 1:00 AM, Lord Varys said:

That is completely true. The small fraction of what I'd call 'aristocratic wildlings women' or 'elite wildling women' which would include Harma, Ygritte, Val, and Chella can be better off insofar as an independent life is concerned. If she is able to fight of any men who want to steal her and happens to chance upon a guy she likes.

Yet a noblewoman in the Seven Kingdoms still should live a much better life on average considering a noble lady still enjoys a certain rank regardless how her husband treats her in the bedchamber. And on average there should be less marital rape among married noblemen than among wildlings considering that the people down south are more civilized.

I'm skeptical about this last statement. A typical nobleman will want to make sure that he has an heir and a spare, and it is considered to be a wife's duty to consent to sex whenever the husband feels like it. They do not call it rape, but consent is expected regardless of what the wife feels. Sure, some men are more considerate than others. But it must be so among the wildlings as well.

On 2016. 08. 09. at 1:00 AM, Lord Varys said:

Yeah, but that would be the same among the wildlings and their squabbles. And if some neighbor tries to bully or threaten you you can go to your local lord for justice as a peasant. Wildlings cannot do something like that. If the Weeper slew your entire family you can either despair and kill yourself or try to die fighting him. The average woman would not even have the latter option.

The bolded is my point precisely. There is just not such a big difference. They all live in the same world.

I agree that the legal system is more advanced in the Seven Kingdoms, but even there the law may or may not be enforced by the powers that be. The North under Ned Stark is said to have been very safe. Yet, the miller's wife didn't run to Winterfell to report Roose Bolton. In the Seven Kingdoms,if you are lucky, the lord of the land can and will protect you. If you are lucky among the wildlings, your family can and will protect you - or you can protect yourself. 

On 2016. 08. 09. at 1:00 AM, Lord Varys said:

That is not completely true. A woman can join the orders of the Faith and is then technically protected from abusive men by her holy vows. The Lady Consort of a lord also has certain powers of her own in her own castle, and enjoys a lot of power via her sons and other children should she produce some. Sure, it is the her husband who decides how much power she can have but that's the same with the wildlings.

There are equivalents of the Weeper in the Seven Kingdoms, who will not necessarily respect the holy vows. Do you think the Ironborn would respect a septa? Besides, becoming a septa or a Silent Sister requires a lot of sacrifice. To make that sacrifice just to avoid trouble (rather than because you feel it's your vocation) is not exactly a sigh that you can live your life the way you choose it. 

Yes, it's the same with wildlings. The same, not worse. A lord's wife or mother can feel protected but so can a woman of a strong wildling clan. There is no equality between men and women in either society though. Once again: social status determines how "independent" a woman can be, only social status depends on different things in the two societies. The "superiority" of men is taken for granted all over the continent and beyond. These societies are based on different economies, and that accounts for a lot of the difference that does exist, but they both are parts of the same world and age, and the basic parameters are more or less the same. 

[Lord Varys]

@Julia H.

I'm not discussing free folk vs. Seven Kingdoms even if it looked occasionally that way. I just find the whole stealing concept deplorable. Just because women are also treated badly in the Seven Kingdoms doesn't mean the wildling women are better off or equally bad off.

The very term of stealing means that women are movable chattel rather than living human beings. Only men can steal women and it seems when they are stolen they cannot go away. Tormund being a nice guy would only steal a woman he likes, of course, and sees no reason to steal a woman he doesn't want to keep. Ygon Oldfeather has an army of wives, though, it is not very likely he stole all of them because he loved them.

Arranged noble marriages affect men/boys as much as women, by the way. Fathers make matches both for their daughters and their sons. Lords do this kind of thing even for their younger siblings. We know that Brynden Tully did not want to marry, and it is pretty clear that Stannis would have never married Selyse Florent had he been allowed to follow his heart.

In the case of Munda and Ryk we actually don't know to what clans they belong. One assumes they are not directly related but the important things is that their families are allied/friends. In such a case stealing clearly becomes a funny game of sorts, but the core of the concept clearly is to violently abduct a women and kill all the men relatives. That's what the wildlings do when they raid the lands south of the Wall. And there is no reason not to believe they don't do something like that on their side of the Wall, either. Nobody is going to stop them, after all.

Arranged marriages might force you into a bad/loveless marriage but it usually does not permanently separate from your birth family nor are all your male relatives killed. Stealing can very likely mean that. The idea that a women in the North whose village is raided by the wildlings had a choice to reject the wildling who wants to steal her is insane.

8 hours ago, Julia H. said:

The point is that stealing does not equal rape. There is a difference between the two concepts, as there is a difference between casual consensual sex and stealing, too. Therefore "stealing" means a third concept.

Certainly not. Raping is a very specific crime and it has nothing to do with marriage concepts (like normal marriages or stealing). Nobody ever said marriage was the same as rape, either. From out point of view you can rape a woman in both a marriage and a 'stealing relationship' so rape is potentially part of both.

8 hours ago, Julia H. said:

Sure, a stolen woman can be discarded later, but then in the Seven Kingdoms a wife can be set aside on various pretexts - unless she is protected by a strong father or brother. 

Actually, annulments are very strong exceptions and nobody can protect a woman from that if her husband is a powerful man. But those are very rare events affecting only the highest nobility. Only kings and princes were able to set their wives aside in the story we know so far.

8 hours ago, Julia H. said:

I don't think stealing and leaving behind is the accepted norm among the wildlings any more than Ramsay's treatment of his wife is the norm in the Seven Kingdoms for the following reasons.

Well, I'd say Ramsay is an exception because not all men are as bad as Ramsay. But it is the norm in the Seven Kingdoms that husbands rule their wives and treat them as they please. Especially powerful men. But also peasants. Just look what happened to Merry Meg after Prince Viserys had returned her to her husband. The man beat her to death.

8 hours ago, Julia H. said:

1) In the harsh circumstances of the Far North, a woman who is to give birth to a child is absolutely dependent on someone to protect and feed her as well as her soon-to-be born child. Men who regularly abandon the women they have had sex with will have their gene pools lost, while men who take wives and look after their families will make sure their genes survive. Evolution will favour family men, and the wildlings still exist. There will be delinquent behaviour, no doubt about it, but nothing suggests that there is more of that than in the Seven Kingdoms, where rape is frequent within and outside marriage.

Polygamy solves that problem. Powerful wildlings have a lot of women and can thus afford to discard women they no longer like and keep the children she produced (if they so choose). Not to mention, you know, that as a man in such a culture you don't have to steal a woman if you don't want to or cannot afford to do it. You can just have fun and produce a lot of offspring you don't have to care for.

8 hours ago, Julia H. said:

2) Jon Snow, who has lived among wildlings and seen how they live, takes boy hostages to make sure that the wildlings will keep their side of the bargain. This makes sense only if those boys have fathers who care about them, which suggests that the wildlings understand the concept of family.

Come on, now, nobody ever doubted that. Routinely that should also include daughters and wives but they might not be as important.

8 hours ago, Julia H. said:

Just as most wives all over Westeros are at the mercy of their husbands.

That is not an argument.

8 hours ago, Julia H. said:

Of course, they don't consider women their equal. Can you show me a single culture in the ASOIAF world where the women are considered to be the men's equal? They certainly are not in the Seven Kingdoms. As for abducting and raping women belonging to another group, well, what do soldiers on both continents do most of the time? It is not unique to the wildlings at all. Wildling women may at least fight back.

The wildlings live in a state of constant unrest. In the Seven Kingdoms rape is actually a crime and only remains (largely) unpunished in war time. Which is the exception and the usual state of the society.

8 hours ago, Julia H. said:

And, please, tell me how many women rise to prominent positions south of the Wall?

That is not the point of the discussion.

8 hours ago, Julia H. said:

How do you possibly know that the cosy and pre-arranged variety of stealing is not what is generally considered normal? And why would it only happen within a group? Ygritte tells Jon plainly that men are expected to take women from outside the village, outside the group:

"A true man steals a woman from afar, t' strengthen the clan. Women who bed brothers or fathers or clan kin offend the gods, and are cursed with weak and sickly children. Even monsters."

Here it is: The idea of stealing women (from a different clan) is strongly linked to the idea of childbirth and family. This clearly suggests that a man is expected to steal a woman in order to start a family and be responsible for it (he must take care to father healthy and strong children). We are shown that wildlings have families, that fathers love their children and take responsibility for them. 

The idea is because Mance brought the groups together. He united the clans in a painstaking process spanning multiple years and already ruled over a good portion of the wildlings prior to that. In such a scenario you can interact in a friendly way with your more distant neighbors. The idea that a man can fall in love with a woman outside of the clan in a normal scenario makes little sense because life would most likely take place inside a clan or a village, and you would not interact intimately with outsiders on a regular basis.

8 hours ago, Julia H. said:

Ygritte's first love (who was from a different clan) wanted to steal her after having a consensual affair with her, i.e., after they got to know each other a little. Nothing suggests that this was unusual.

Ygritte was a spearwife who got around somewhat. Other women and men would not. Besides, she is not old enough to have had her affair in the days prior to Mance's rise to power.

8 hours ago, Julia H. said:

No, it is a valid parallel, two aspects of the same cultural phenomenon. You must resist even when you want to surrender in order to make yourself more valuable and valued.

But it is not your choice. Your family might kill your 'stealer' anyway or your relatives might be killed in the process.

8 hours ago, Julia H. said:

Psychologists say the more we invest (emotionally) into a relationship, the more valuable it will be to us. Perhaps the men are made to pay "dearly" for their wives in order to make them value the women higher.

Right. Because the loss of a healthy woman for a clan would be a good thing? It is good for your clan to steal women from other clans to strengthen your gene pool but other clans might not be willing to give their women up. Hence the stealing. Else there could be a market for women or women would be just driven away to find a husband in some other village or clan.

And I'm pretty sure it is just the ideal that you take an outsider woman. Weak men who don't get around all that much or aren't able to steal women would be stuck with their distant or closer kin.

8 hours ago, Julia H. said:

How about the Seven Kingdoms? When a man can see an advantageous marriage possibility for his son, he will not care whether the girl wants to marry his son or not. Look at Tywin, who forced Sansa and Tyrion to marry (after having her brother and mother killed). Everyone realized that Sansa didn't want this marriage. Even Tyrion tried to protest. Tywin didn't care. The bridegroom's whole family didn't care a damn what the bride wanted and the father practically ordered his son to rape Sansa ASAP. Where is the big difference between the bad wildling way and the "civilized" southern way?

Those were exceptional circumstances. And those things only affect a fraction of the people who are rewarded for this kind of thing by a lot of advantages - riches, wealth, power, longer lives, better health, etc.

The overwhelming majority of the smallfolk wouldn't be forced into marriages of such a type.

8 hours ago, Julia H. said:

Jon Snow fills a castle with the spearwives who are willing to fight for the Watch. Mance takes some to Winterfell. There must be more of them, and there must have been quite a few who fell in battle, too. Probably there are significantly more spearwives in ASOIAF than abbesses in the Middle Ages.

I guess your underestimating the amount of abbeys there were in the middle ages. However, Jon didn't fill a castle, he sent some women man a ruin. And we don't know whether they are all trained female warriors or whether some of them just went with the real spearwives because they did not want to be raped by the black brothers.

8 hours ago, Julia H. said:

I'm skeptical about this last statement. A typical nobleman will want to make sure that he has an heir and a spare, and it is considered to be a wife's duty to consent to sex whenever the husband feels like it. They do not call it rape, but consent is expected regardless of what the wife feels. Sure, some men are more considerate than others. But it must be so among the wildlings as well.

Well, the medieval concept of marriage (and the modern view of various religions) doesn't recognized 'marital rape' so women have to have sex with their husbands as often as they want to. That is their marital duty as wives. In fact, marriage in itself is nothing but an institution to legally have sex and produce children. The Catholic Church still urges infertile people not to marry because there is no point to it. Marriages have to produce children.

[Jon's Queen Consort]

What does the free folk culture and their view on feminism has to do with the op?

[Lord Varys]

34 minutes ago, Jon's Queen Consort said:

What does the free folk culture and their view on feminism has to do with the op?

It is relevant to the question whether Jon has stolen Val and if so what that means.

[Jon's Queen Consort]

3 minutes ago, Lord Varys said:

It is relevant to the question whether Jon has stolen Val and if so what that means.

Only the OP isn't about an analysis of Free Folk culture's views about if he stole her or not thus they are all off topic. 

[Julia H.]

On 2016. 08. 13. at 0:44 PM, Lord Varys said:

@Julia H.

I'm not discussing free folk vs. Seven Kingdoms even if it looked occasionally that way. I just find the whole stealing concept deplorable. Just because women are also treated badly in the Seven Kingdoms doesn't mean the wildling women are better off or equally bad off.

They can be equally bad off. Some women can protect themselves (or are protected) in both cultures. Others are not. Some women (like Dalla or Val) are treated with respect. Others are not. It's the same in the Seven Kingdoms. Even in the Seven Kingdoms there are places where women are better off than in other places (e.g., Dorne versus the Iron Islands). Even though we have examples of completely normal male - female relationships and a variety of women in different social positions, you keep on comparing the worst examples of the wildling culture to the best of the Seven Kingdoms. While you dismiss Ramsay as an exception, you think the the worst possible wildling men are the norm, when we see leaders who are completely sane.  

Quote

The very term of stealing means that women are movable chattel rather than living human beings. Only men can steal women and it seems when they are stolen they cannot go away. Tormund being a nice guy would only steal a woman he likes, of course, and sees no reason to steal a woman he doesn't want to keep. Ygon Oldfeather has an army of wives, though, it is not very likely he stole all of them because he loved them.

Well, marrying away your daughter for social / economic / political advantages pretty much means they are chattel, too, and feudal lords don't always marry for love either. As for women not being able to go away... According to Ygritte, they are allowed to protect themselves even against their husbands. If Ygritte is correct, not only men are allowed to steal women, but women are also allowed to kill abusive husbands. 

Quote

Arranged noble marriages affect men/boys as much as women, by the way. Fathers make matches both for their daughters and their sons. Lords do this kind of thing even for their younger siblings. We know that Brynden Tully did not want to marry, and it is pretty clear that Stannis would have never married Selyse Florent had he been allowed to follow his heart.

Sure, but we are talking of the women. To be fair, a grown up man can choose his own wife, while a grown-up (for example, widowed) woman will still have to marry according to some man's will. 

Quote

In the case of Munda and Ryk we actually don't know to what clans they belong. One assumes they are not directly related but the important things is that their families are allied/friends. In such a case stealing clearly becomes a funny game of sorts, but the core of the concept clearly is to violently abduct a women and kill all the men relatives. That's what the wildlings do when they raid the lands south of the Wall. And there is no reason not to believe they don't do something like that on their side of the Wall, either. Nobody is going to stop them, after all.

But how do we know that the Munda and Ryk type of stealing is not the normal variety North of the Wall? Regarding the stealing of women south of the Wall, I don't see how the Ironborn or Gregor's soldiers behave any better. Unfortunately, women of enemy groups or conquered groups are fair game to most people in this world, which is a totally despicable practice, but not at all unique to the wildlings. Only a certain type of men do that on both sides of the Wall though.

Quote

Arranged marriages might force you into a bad/loveless marriage but it usually does not permanently separate from your birth family nor are all your male relatives killed. Stealing can very likely mean that. The idea that a women in the North whose village is raided by the wildlings had a choice to reject the wildling who wants to steal her is insane.

The latter scenario can be compared to a war in the Seven Kingdoms, where very similar things happen. And there doesn't have to be a war even: When Theon made the captain's daughter his lover, the father was clearly displeased. Why do you think he didn't protest? Because he was afraid to say no to someone so much above him in social status. What is this if not a difference in strength? As another example, I don't think all the women Robert bedded were so happy about the affair - they just couldn't say no.

As for arranged marriages, I don't know - if you have to marry someone in order to guarantee peace between your families or because your husband's family wants to take possession of your family's estate after your brothers have been killed, it can't be much better. You know, no one seems to think that marrying Sansa off to a Lannister after the War of the Five Kings is something unheard of and exceptional. 

Arranged stealing doesn't require the killing of male relatives either. If the stealing of a woman always or usually resulted in the killing of the woman's family, parents would probably kill their baby girls right after birth to avoid unnecessary risks. But they don't do that. 

A stolen woman may end up married into the same nearby village as her sisters, by the way. Unless there is real war between clans, an attempt to steal a woman will probably result either in a commonplace fight between young males of the two villages or in a merry affair with a lot of bawdy folklore.

Quote

Actually, annulments are very strong exceptions and nobody can protect a woman from that if her husband is a powerful man. But those are very rare events affecting only the highest nobility. Only kings and princes were able to set their wives aside in the story we know so far.

So how do we know that wildling men aren't expected to stay with their wives the same way? Some of them may defy conventions and expectations, but for all we know, they may be the exception to the rule.

Quote

Well, I'd say Ramsay is an exception because not all men are as bad as Ramsay. But it is the norm in the Seven Kingdoms that husbands rule their wives and treat them as they please. Especially powerful men. But also peasants. Just look what happened to Merry Meg after Prince Viserys had returned her to her husband. The man beat her to death.

OK, I think the Weeper is probably an exceptional wildling, too.

I agree on the bolded. 

Quote

Polygamy solves that problem. Powerful wildlings have a lot of women and can thus afford to discard women they no longer like and keep the children she produced (if they so choose). Not to mention, you know, that as a man in such a culture you don't have to steal a woman if you don't want to or cannot afford to do it. You can just have fun and produce a lot of offspring you don't have to care for.

That is exactly what the lords in the Seven Kingdoms do. That's why we see so many bastards in the books.

Quote

Come on, now, nobody ever doubted that. Routinely that should also include daughters and wives but they might not be as important.

Of course, families include daughters and wives, Tormund even mentions that fathers love their daughters the same way. Jon Snow collected boy hostages because he didn't want to expose any girls to the perils of being a hostage. The hostage taking shows that families exist by proving that men usually (as a norm) care for their families and their children (supposing that leaders are still men). Supposedly, those men all stole their wives, and they still care about their families when their children are teenagers. Or not? Why wouldn't this be the norm?

Quote

The wildlings live in a state of constant unrest. In the Seven Kingdoms rape is actually a crime and only remains (largely) unpunished in war time. Which is the exception and the usual state of the society.

Wars are pretty frequent. Anyway, Ramsay wasn't conceived in war time. Theon didn't attack the captain to "steal" his daughter, and Robert bedded merrily just any woman he wanted, peace or not. 

Quote

That is not the point of the discussion.

Why not? You mentioned that wildling women will remain inferior to men even if they become warriors. That's nothing unique again.

Quote

The idea is because Mance brought the groups together. He united the clans in a painstaking process spanning multiple years and already ruled over a good portion of the wildlings prior to that. In such a scenario you can interact in a friendly way with your more distant neighbors. The idea that a man can fall in love with a woman outside of the clan in a normal scenario makes little sense because life would most likely take place inside a clan or a village, and you would not interact intimately with outsiders on a regular basis.

Ygritte was a spearwife who got around somewhat. Other women and men would not. Besides, she is not old enough to have had her affair in the days prior to Mance's rise to power.

Ygritte told Jon that she had met the boy at a feast and that he "had come trading with his brothers". Apparently, trading and feasts exist. Those are typical occasions even in real life traditional societies that can bring together people of different clans. It is reasonable to suppose that if you are expected to marry from a different clan, there will be occasions where you can meet other clans. Completely isolated populations will probably be endogamous.

Quote

But it is not your choice. Your family might kill your 'stealer' anyway or your relatives might be killed in the process.

As I said your choice depends on how well you can stand up for yourself or how well your clan can do it. Pretty much like in the Seven Kingdoms. Only there you ability to stand up for yourself is determined by your birth.

Quote

Right. Because the loss of a healthy woman for a clan would be a good thing? It is good for your clan to steal women from other clans to strengthen your gene pool but other clans might not be willing to give their women up. Hence the stealing. Else there could be a market for women or women would be just driven away to find a husband in some other village or clan.

No, I don't think the point is to steal stronger women than you have in your village. Ygritte very clearly explains that inbreeding will result in weak or sickly children. Exogamy (not only here but in real life as well) is based on the necessity to avoid inbreeding (incest) and the resulting genetic defects. Exogamy strengthens the clan by ensuring healthier offspring, not by stealing stronger women. 

By the way, it works both ways. A stolen woman's brothers probably have stolen or will steal their own wives as well. 

Quote

And I'm pretty sure it is just the ideal that you take an outsider woman. Weak men who don't get around all that much or aren't able to steal women would be stuck with their distant or closer kin.

In which case, their bloodline may get even weaker. A classic survival of the fittest scenario. 

Quote

Those were exceptional circumstances. And those things only affect a fraction of the people who are rewarded for this kind of thing by a lot of advantages - riches, wealth, power, longer lives, better health, etc.

The overwhelming majority of the smallfolk wouldn't be forced into marriages of such a type.

As i said above, no one in-universe seemed to think what happened to Sansa was outrageous, unjust or exceptionally cruel. 

No, the women of the smallfolk can "only" expect to be raped whenever a lord or a passing soldier "feels the need". It's just the other side of the same coin.

Quote

I guess your underestimating the amount of abbeys there were in the middle ages. However, Jon didn't fill a castle, he sent some women man a ruin. And we don't know whether they are all trained female warriors or whether some of them just went with the real spearwives because they did not want to be raped by the black brothers.

Perhaps. He was pretty sure though that they would be able to defend themselves, and he probably took at least a glance at them.

Quote

Well, the medieval concept of marriage (and the modern view of various religions) doesn't recognized 'marital rape' so women have to have sex with their husbands as often as they want to. That is their marital duty as wives. In fact, marriage in itself is nothing but an institution to legally have sex and produce children. The Catholic Church still urges infertile people not to marry because there is no point to it. Marriages have to produce children.

Well, perhaps wildling culture doesn't recognize rape either if the woman is properly stolen first. They also need to produce children. 

In both societies, marriage is an important affair. In the civilized Seven Kingdoms, marriages are negotiated because the families that are going to form an alliance assess each other's wealth and influence. In the wildling society, what matters is the personal strength, courage and cunning of the man to be married (and those of the woman may be important, too), therefore the prerequisite of marriage is a task which allows the man to show his strength, courage and cunning. I don't think the idea is to kill the woman's family. I think the idea is to show them that you are fit to be their daughter's husband.

Women can be and will obviously be victims in both societies if a fight breaks out between clans / kingdoms or when they are attacked by an aggressive group. Yet, both societies recognize the institution of families, and the cruel way of stealing (while killing the woman's family) is the equivalent of war time violence in the Seven Kingdoms rather than the normal way of establishing a family.  

[OuttaOldtown]

On August 12, 2016 at 9:16 PM, Julia H. said:

Mance seems to treat Dalla with great respect and love. Tormund tells Longspear that he expects him to treat Munda well. Those are examples the author chose to give us.

Of course, they don't consider women their equal. Can you show me a single culture in the ASOIAF world where the women are considered to be the men's equal? They certainly are not in the Seven Kingdoms. As for abducting and raping women belonging to another group, well, what do soldiers on both continents do most of the time? It is not unique to the wildlings at all. Wildling women may at least fight.

Consider this quote:

"If I sound the Horn of Winter, the Wall will fall. Or so the songs would have me believe. There are those among my people who want nothing more...”
“But once the Wall is fallen,” Dalla said, “what will stop the Others?” Mance gave her a fond smile. “It's a wise woman I've found. A true queen.”

I don't think this is what is expected from a queen or lady south of the wall, she interrupts him and he more than approves her doing this, going so far as complimenting her. I think your points are based on evolved thinking and are well founded, not sticking with how southerners and we the readers initially perceive wildlings....

[The Fattest Leech]

So why did Val return to the Wall dressed in fine white garb? Because he sent her on a proper mission and had faith (summoned) she would return.

• Francis Melville describes a spae-wife as a type of elf in The Book of Faeries.

No taller than a human finger, fairy spae wives are usually dressed in the clothes of a peasant. However, when properly summoned, the attire changes from common to magnificent: blue cloak with a gem-lined collar and black lambskin hood lined with catskin, calfskin boots, and catskin gloves. Like human spae wives, they can also predict the future, through runes, tea leaves and signs generated by natural phenomena, and are good healers. They are said to be descended from the erectors of the standing stones.

• A spákona or spækona “spá-woman”^[3] (with an Old English cognate, spæwīfe^[4] is a specialised vǫlva; a "seer, one who sees",

• A Dance with Dragons - Jon XI

  "Did you follow me as well?" Jon reached to shoo the bird away but ended up stroking its feathers. The raven cocked its eye at him. "Snow," it muttered, bobbing its head knowingly. Then Ghost emerged from between two trees, with Val beside him.
  They look as though they belong together. Val was clad all in white; white woolen breeches tucked into high boots of bleached white leather, white bearskin cloak pinned at the shoulder with a carved weirwood face, white tunic with bone fastenings. Her breath was white as well … but her eyes were blue, her long braid the color of dark honey, her cheeks flushed red from the cold. It had been a long while since Jon Snow had seen a sight so lovely.
  "Have you been trying to steal my wolf?" he asked her.

 

• The standing stones are described as very similar to the ring of nine weirwoods north of the wall where Jon took his NW vows.
  • Their size can vary considerably, but their shape is generally uneven and squared, often tapering towards the top.
  • Standing stones are usually difficult to date, but pottery, and/or pottery shards found underneath some in Atlantic Europe connects them with the Beaker people.
    • The Beaker people lived in the Bronze age and were once scattered all through Europe. (kinda like the CotF)
  • Finds from a vǫlva's grave in Köpingsvik, Öland. There is an 82 cm long wand of iron with bronze details and a unique model of a house on the top. There is also a pitcher from Persia or Central Asia, and a West European bronze bowl. Dressed in a bear pelt, she had received a ship burial with both human and animal sacrifice.
  • It is difficult to draw a line between the aristocratic lady and the wandering vǫlva, but Old Norse sources present the vǫlva as more professional and she went from estate to estate selling her spiritual services.^[9]

• A Game of Thrones - Jon VI

  Perhaps it was all in the knowing. They had ridden past the end of the world; somehow that changed everything. Every shadow seemed darker, every sound more ominous. The trees pressed close and shut out the light of the setting sun. A thin crust of snow cracked beneath the hooves of their horses, with a sound like breaking bones. When the wind set the leaves to rustling, it was like a chilly finger tracing a path up Jon's spine. The Wall was at their backs, and only the gods knew what lay ahead.
  The sun was sinking below the trees when they reached their destination, a small clearing in the deep of the wood where nine weirwoods grew in a rough circle. Jon drew in a breath, and he saw Sam Tarly staring. Even in the wolfswood, you never found more than two or three of the white trees growing together; a grove of nine was unheard of. The forest floor was carpeted with fallen leaves, bloodred on top, black rot beneath. The wide smooth trunks were bone pale, and nine faces stared inward. The dried sap that crusted in the eyes was red and hard as ruby. Bowen Marsh commanded them to leave their horses outside the circle. "This is a sacred place, we will not defile it."
  When they entered the grove, Samwell Tarly turned slowly looking at each face in turn. No two were quite alike. "They're watching us," he whispered. "The old gods."

[The Fattest Leech]

And who do readers trust most in this wonderful word of Planetos? Maester Aemon, that's who

I think Jon will be in good hands:

• A Feast for Crows - Samwell I

  "You broke the heart of the wildling princess, Slayer," said Pyp. Of late, Val had taken to watching them from the window of her chamber in the King's Tower. "She was looking for you."
  "She was not! Don't say that!" Sam had only spoken to Val twice, when Maester Aemon called upon her to make sure the babes were healthy. The princess was so pretty that he oft found himself stammering and blushing in her presence.

• A Dance with Dragons - Jon XI

  "The maesters say greyscale is not—"

  "The maesters may believe what they wish. Ask a woods witch if you would know the truth. The grey death sleeps, only to wake again. The child is not clean!"

[Lord Varys]

4 hours ago, Julia H. said:

They can be equally bad off. Some women can protect themselves (or are protected) in both cultures. Others are not. Some women (like Dalla or Val) are treated with respect. Others are not. It's the same in the Seven Kingdoms. Even in the Seven Kingdoms there are places where women are better off than in other places (e.g., Dorne versus the Iron Islands). Even though we have examples of completely normal male - female relationships and a variety of women in different social positions, you keep on comparing the worst examples of the wildling culture to the best of the Seven Kingdoms. While you dismiss Ramsay as an exception, you think the the worst possible wildling men are the norm, when we see leaders who are completely sane.

I'm not sure men like Tormund or Mance are completely sane. They are nice and friendly in their own way but there is a reason why the hell Mors Umber wanted Mance Rayder's skull for a drinking cup. The wildlings clearly raid and kill the Northmen living close to the Wall on a regular basis while the men of the Seven Kingdoms actually never have paid them back in kind. Nobody ever travels up to some wildling villages and does a lot of stealing and raping and killing up there.

Their lifestyle is aggressive and they killing and hurting innocent people on a regular basis. And just as in war in the Seven Kingdoms it is the women who are suffering. But unlike a real war between two kings raping and abducting women isn't exactly the point of the war. But a wildling raiding party usually sets out to steal some women. The Ironborn of old were similar in that regard.

4 hours ago, Julia H. said:

Well, marrying away your daughter for social / economic / political advantages pretty much means they are chattel, too, and feudal lords don't always marry for love either. As for women not being able to go away... According to Ygritte, they are allowed to protect themselves even against their husbands. If Ygritte is correct, not only men are allowed to steal women, but women are also allowed to kill abusive husbands.

Ygritte never tells us anything about that kind of behavior being allowed. She tells us that this is what a real spearwife/woman would do. But that doesn't mean that she is not going to killed herself thereafter unless she can get away before the friends and family of the man she has killed seize her. Keep in mind that a stolen woman comes as an outsider into a new family. She doesn't have any friends or kin in that village/clan. But the man who is abusing her on a regular basis has kin and might be loved by his neighbors and friends. If that's the case then the people catching such a woman red-handed would put her down, too.

That is, unless we assume wildlings don't consider murder a crime.

4 hours ago, Julia H. said:

Sure, but we are talking of the women. To be fair, a grown up man can choose his own wife, while a grown-up (for example, widowed) woman will still have to marry according to some man's will.

A grown-up man like Brynden Tully had no right to choose his own wife. That decision would be made by the head of his house, i.e. either his father, his brother, or his nephew, or cousin. That's how things work. Aegon the Unworthy and Daeron the Good also arranged the matches for their cousin Elaena (and Baelor the Blessed earlier on for you Prince Daeron).

Noblewomen actually can choose their second husbands themselves.. Lysa Arryn chose her second husband all by herself, and she was a Lady Dowager, not a Ruling Lady. Cersei also was in such a position. If you are a childless wife your position would be worse because then whoever inherits the estate of your husband might be able to make such a choice for you.

4 hours ago, Julia H. said:

But how do we know that the Munda and Ryk type of stealing is not the normal variety North of the Wall?

Because there would be no reason why the hell wildlings would have to raid villages and abduct women in the North if they would not also be doing the same kind of thing on their side of the Wall. There is actually a pretty good chance that many smallfolk girls would allow some wildling to steal them if this was just some funny flirting. If wildling culture was offering all that freedom to women then a lot of them would be drawn to it.

4 hours ago, Julia H. said:

Regarding the stealing of women south of the Wall, I don't see how the Ironborn or Gregor's soldiers behave any better. Unfortunately, women of enemy groups or conquered groups are fair game to most people in this world, which is a totally despicable practice, but not at all unique to the wildlings. Only a certain type of men do that on both sides of the Wall though.

It isn't the same. Wildlings abduct women on a regular basis. That is what stealing is. It may be done nicely or in Gregor-like fashion but it is wrong in all versions. Keep in mind, thought, that Gregor and other brutal soldiers do not routinely abduct women to make them their sex and house slaves for life. They just rape them a few times and then move on.

4 hours ago, Julia H. said:

The latter scenario can be compared to a war in the Seven Kingdoms, where very similar things happen. And there doesn't have to be a war even: When Theon made the captain's daughter his lover, the father was clearly displeased. Why do you think he didn't protest? Because he was afraid to say no to someone so much above him in social status. What is this if not a difference in strength? As another example, I don't think all the women Robert bedded were so happy about the affair - they just couldn't say no.

The Robert examples is just you claiming stuff. You have no proof about that. Barra's mother seemed to love fat Robert sincerely. Does this mean any woman Robert ever fucked was also in love with him? Not necessarily (Cersei definitely was not). But there is no hint anywhere that he ever forced himself on a woman against her will.

The cultural difference, of course, is that nobody in the Seven Kingdoms can just take your daughter or wife from you and make her your sex and house slave. That doesn't happen. Even Prince Aegon couldn't just take Merry Meg from her husband. He had 'to buy' her.

The other thing is that wildling culture usually sees 'strength' as physical strength and charisma whereas the Seven Kingdoms are actually ruled by medieval laws.

4 hours ago, Julia H. said:

As for arranged marriages, I don't know - if you have to marry someone in order to guarantee peace between your families or because your husband's family wants to take possession of your family's estate after your brothers have been killed, it can't be much better. You know, no one seems to think that marrying Sansa off to a Lannister after the War of the Five Kings is something unheard of and exceptional.

Sure it isn't, but so what? Wars aren't happening all the time nor do all peace treaty include arranged marriages. Most arranged marriages wouldn't be between two enemies.

4 hours ago, Julia H. said:

Arranged stealing doesn't require the killing of male relatives either. If the stealing of a woman always or usually resulted in the killing of the woman's family, parents would probably kill their baby girls right after birth to avoid unnecessary risks. But they don't do that.

I didn't say arranged stealing involved that. But true stealing does or can do. If you don't want to hand over your wife or daughters to some savages you fight. And if you fight you might be killed.

4 hours ago, Julia H. said:

A stolen woman may end up married into the same nearby village as her sisters, by the way. Unless there is real war between clans, an attempt to steal a woman will probably result either in a commonplace fight between young males of the two villages or in a merry affair with a lot of bawdy folklore.

Wouldn't villages that are befriended so closely not be part of the same clan? Or already be interrelated to such a degree that stealing a woman from such a place would be the same as stealing your own cousin? You can't have it both ways. Friendship and trade and other sorts of interaction leading to people knowing each other results in sex and children. The point of taking women from somewhere else is that you take them from people you have nothing to do with, basically. That's what the wildlings do when they raid a village in the Gifts or the Umber lands.

4 hours ago, Julia H. said:

So how do we know that wildling men aren't expected to stay with their wives the same way? Some of them may defy conventions and expectations, but for all we know, they may be the exception to the rule.

Why should we assume that out of the blue when stealing isn't even define or described to be the same as a marriage? 

4 hours ago, Julia H. said:

Of course, families include daughters and wives, Tormund even mentions that fathers love their daughters the same way. Jon Snow collected boy hostages because he didn't want to expose any girls to the perils of being a hostage. The hostage taking shows that families exist by proving that men usually (as a norm) care for their families and their children (supposing that leaders are still men). Supposedly, those men all stole their wives, and they still care about their families when their children are teenagers. Or not? Why wouldn't this be the norm?

I expect that is the norm that fathers care about the children they care about. Just as in our world. As a man you have much more leeway in recognizing a child as your own or caring that you have fathered a child. You are free to treat it as a human being or ignore it. Women have that choice to a much lesser degree (because they are have to give birth to the child and subsequently have either to abandon or reject it actively).

A wildling man could easily enough ignore the children he has fathered.

The real problem up there is the question why the hell the stolen women (especially those from the Gift or the North) should give a damn about the men who raped them and forced them to bear them children.

4 hours ago, Julia H. said:

Wars are pretty frequent. Anyway, Ramsay wasn't conceived in war time. Theon didn't attack the captain to "steal" his daughter, and Robert bedded merrily just any woman he wanted, peace or not.

Wars aren't pretty frequent. They aren't the norm. And they don't affect the entire continent. Some regions of Westeros haven't been touched by war for generations by the time the series begins. Not sure why you bring up Theon and the captain's daughter. They had an affair. So what?

4 hours ago, Julia H. said:

Why not? You mentioned that wildling women will remain inferior to men even if they become warriors. That's nothing unique again.

It shows that Ygritte's talk about the strength of woman in that society is just talk. You don't fare better up there than down south. In fact, you might fare even worse.

4 hours ago, Julia H. said:

Ygritte told Jon that she had met the boy at a feast and that he "had come trading with his brothers". Apparently, trading and feasts exist. Those are typical occasions even in real life traditional societies that can bring together people of different clans. It is reasonable to suppose that if you are expected to marry from a different clan, there will be occasions where you can meet other clans. Completely isolated populations will probably be endogamous.

Could be. I'm not saying the wildlings must war on each other continuously. But it should be as worse up there as it was back in the days of the Hundred Kingdoms down south. War would be the rule, not the exception. Especially when food was scarce.

4 hours ago, Julia H. said:

No, I don't think the point is to steal stronger women than you have in your village. Ygritte very clearly explains that inbreeding will result in weak or sickly children. Exogamy (not only here but in real life as well) is based on the necessity to avoid inbreeding (incest) and the resulting genetic defects. Exogamy strengthens the clan by ensuring healthier offspring, not by stealing stronger women.

The point wasn't to steal stronger women than you have but to take women you consider to be strong. You would not take old hags or ugly women and the like. But the point is that women are in general seen as a valuable resource which is why the men of their families and clans don't want to give them up. That is a sign that exogamy is just the idea, the thing you should do, not that it is always done. The village heroes would go off stealing women while the normal guys would stay at home playing at stealing when some fancy trader daughter comes by, or something like that. And the complete losers are stuck with the daughters of their neighbors etc.

4 hours ago, Julia H. said:

By the way, it works both ways. A stolen woman's brothers probably have stolen or will steal their own wives as well.

Sure, but that doesn't mean that they want their sister to be stolen, right? Men steal, women are stolen. And it is not good to be something that can be stolen.

4 hours ago, Julia H. said:

In which case, their bloodline may get even weaker. A classic survival of the fittest scenario.

If you buy Ygritte's story. Which is, of course, crap.

4 hours ago, Julia H. said:

No, the women of the smallfolk can "only" expect to be raped whenever a lord or a passing soldier "feels the need". It's just the other side of the same coin.

That doesn't happen on regular basis. In peacetimes women are not raped on the street nor is the average lord a guy like Roose Bolton. And keep in mind that the miller broke the law there by taking a wife without Roose's permission. That doesn't justify the rape, of course, but it shows that even Roose does not rape a woman without a reasonably good reason.

4 hours ago, Julia H. said:

Perhaps. He was pretty sure though that they would be able to defend themselves, and he probably took at least a glance at them.

Even so, they weren't many. Didn't Jon not send a score to one of the other castle he intended to reopen? Ten brothers and ten wildlings? If that's the case then I don't think there are more than a few dozen spearwives at their castle.

4 hours ago, Julia H. said:

Well, perhaps wildling culture doesn't recognize rape either if the woman is properly stolen first. They also need to produce children.

I'm not even sure wildlings consider rape a crime at all. Why should they? They respect strength, and if you are strong enough to overpower a defenseless woman there is no reason why you should not be allowed to fuck her or do with her whatever you want in such a society.

The whole fact that 'stealing' is a good thing in this relationship thing shows that being able to take something from a man or woman who is weaker than you are is a good and positive thing. Thus taking what you need from a person who doesn't have the strength to keep you away is good, too. Meaning that stealing and robbing and raiding and all that stuff cannot be seen as bad in wildling culture at all. You only deserve what you can defend.

[Jon's Queen Consort]

Another clue is Jon stealing Val as per Free Folk tradition. He *stole* her and gave her a giant to protect her. However;

Quote

Val was settled, Lord Snow. I have decided that she shall wed my good and leal knight, Ser Patrek of King's Mountain."

Quote

"Has Val been told, Your Grace?" asked Jon. "Amongst the free folk, when a man desires a woman, he steals her, and thus proves his strength, his cunning, and his courage. The suitor risks a savage beating if he is caught by the woman's kin, and worse than that if she herself finds him unworthy."

Ser Patrek said;

Quote

"No man has ever had to question my courage. No woman ever will." 

and we all know how the whole thing ended.

In the end the one that Jon named her protector ended up killing the man who claimed her. So Jon's champion, and Jon himself, was the winner against the man who wanted to take her.

[Jon's Queen Consort]

nvm

[Angus Thermopyle]

It would be wonderful if Val literally steals Jon's body. 

[kissdbyfire]

On 05/08/2016 at 8:13 AM, Julia H. said:

As I see that this thread involves a debate on the status of women / misogyny in wildling society, let me throw in my two cents.

If we compare wildling culture north of the Wall and the culture of the Seven Kingdoms south of the Wall, I don't think wildling women necessarily come out as being in a worse position than their southern counterparts with regard to their agency and independence (the difference in general living standards might be a different thing). 

 

On 05/08/2016 at 8:13 AM, Julia H. said:

But most of the women on both sides of the Wall can probably be envied by most women who are unfortunate enough to experience the Dothraki way.  

 

 

<snipped a lot of good stuff for length>

Great post, I agree. And if we look into the less "civilised" cultures on Planetos - and I refer specifically to those that have a part to play in the story, namely: the wildlings, the iron born and the dothraki, the wildling women are much better off than the other two, with the dothraki definitely taking the cake as the worst by a landslide.