Sexism in ASOIAF?

[Errant Bard]

Shae has plenty of personality...he just ignores it and stuffs her into his Tywin defying fantasy.

Tyrion is a misogynistic jerk who doesn't know how to have a normal relationship with anyone and isn't even aware of it himself, that's clear. The good thing is that his PoV manages to pull in the readers too, after all a lot of people do argue that being strangled was the victim's fault, in Shae's case. They hardly say being beheaded was Ned's fault.

(this goes back to my problem with a lot of GRRMs idealized romances with dead/missing women - like Rhaegar/Lyanna, theres not enough character fleshed out for it to be convincing, since I know GRRM can do perfectly vivid, well rounded women and men both.)

Hey hey, there isn't any romance between Rhaegar and Lyanna, canonically. Of course the guy isn't going to flesh out how they loved each other, if he wants to keep it under wraps for the grand reveal (or if it simply wasn't a romance, despite what some people say, it is an option.)

He hits the mark with the depiction of how ridiculous idealization of the past is, in my humble opinion all this aggrandizing and romanticization of the past is done in a ludicrously exaggerated fashion for this purpose.

[Liadin]

I wonder if he would have brought her to court if Tywin hadn't specifically commanded him not to. I never really got why he insisted; there's a well-respected and prestigious brothel ( :rofl: ) ... in King's Landing. Tywin only forbid him Shae; if he had wanted to comply, he could have gone to Chataya's instead. Your explanation makes a lot of sense, because quite frankly I don't see why Shae was so important that he would risk his career and possibly her life.

Don't you think Tywin actually intended to keep him from seeing any whores, though? I can't imagine why he'd object to Shae specifically (unless he was worried about having her actually living in the Tower of the Hand) while not caring if Tyrion spent every night at Chataya's. This seems to me an example of Tyrion stretching the exact words to their limit, where really Tywin would have objected to any whore, especially if Tyrion was monogamous with her.

He hits the mark with the depiction of how ridiculous idealization of the past is, in my humble opinion all this aggrandizing and romanticization of the past is done in a ludicrously exaggerated fashion for this purpose.

:agree: I think Rhaegar is extremely idealized too, the difference being that we've actually met one person who had concrete reasons for not liking Rhaegar, which hasn't happened with Lyanna.

[Datepalm]

Hey hey, there isn't any romance between Rhaegar and Lyanna, canonically. Of course the guy isn't going to flesh out how they loved each other, if he wants to keep it under wraps for the grand reveal (or if it simply wasn't a romance, despite what some people say, it is an option.)

Not to rehash this*, but I think the twu wuw Rhaegar/Lyanna romance is very deliberately set up and is just about the obvious reading. The language, the imagery, the tropes...I think it would take an unusually pedantic and un-romantic reader to not notice that theres very much the possibility of romance there...I think thats the red herring and that there wasn't actually a romance at all, and thats the big reveal.

He hits the mark with the depiction of how ridiculous idealization of the past is, in my humble opinion all this aggrandizing and romanticization of the past is done in a ludicrously exaggerated fashion for this purpose.

well said, and very true, but at the same time I do think the GRRM likes these huge, dramatic, romantic (in every sense of the word) setpieces. He just likes subverting them too.

Koolkat - I think Tywin didn't want Tyrion setting up any kind of household that included a whore. Hed be fine with him visiting brothels - his problem was, as you said, percisely that monogamous mistress/whore.

*Who am I kidding, I love to rehash this.

[Errant Bard]

I think the twu wuw Rhaegar/Lyanna romance is very deliberately set up and is just about the obvious reading. The language, the imagery, the tropes...I think it would take an unusually pedantic and un-romantic reader to not notice that theres very much the possibility of romance there...I think thats the red herring and that there wasn't actually a romance at all, and thats the big reveal.

But hinting at a possibility doesn't make it canon, does it? By nature, hints are bit antithetic to a fully fleshed characterization. If you really flesh out, that's not a hint anymore. That's why Lyanna/Rhaegar isn't fleshed out, no matter if there is something to flesh or not.

And by the way, I agree with you, I kinda expect a big reveal following the hints but with a grand twist. Not willing to exclude any possibility though, GRRM isn't that devious, and looking at Dunk and Egg, he's a big romantic, too.

Still, the princess eloping with her true love who happens to be the magical prince of the realm, with both of them inhumanly beautiful, intelligent, gifted, moral and more or less perfect, and that perfectly overlapping with the need to give birth to a prophecied saviour... that's degustingly sickly sweet, and jarring in the middle of all the cynic worldbuilding of Westeros. But I guess that might be one of the tropes included in ASOIAF (it's really formulaic, at a certain level, after all)

How many happy couples are there in Westeros, anyway?

[Datepalm]

But hinting at a possibility doesn't make it canon, does it? By nature, hints are bit antithetic to a fully fleshed characterization. If you really flesh out, that's not a hint anymore. That's why Lyanna/Rhaegar isn't fleshed out, no matter if there is something to flesh or not.

And by the way, I agree with you, I kinda expect a big reveal following the hints but with a grand twist. Not willing to exclude any possibility though, GRRM isn't that devious, and looking at Dunk and Egg, he's a big romantic, too.

Totally - his writing a story where there are 800 foot tall 243 meter walls (i've never looked it up before. I have no sense of how much 800 feet is. Wow, the wall is tall.) and 6000 year old castles, and where history will hinge on one mans revenge and wars are fought for one womans love. (thats cool. Thats why I read fantasy, for heavens sake) but he does also mess around with it in ways i'm finding I have difficulty describing. You know what I mean. ;)

With R/L - Its not fleshed out at all, but thats the point - if it was we wouldn't be able to have any of these speculations at all, but the way I see it, theres a million giant, glowing, pink neon arrows with "True Love Here" ...pointing at an empty spot.

[Liadin]

All right, now that I've thought about things a bit more, I feel compelled to add as a disclaimer:

More women in a book doesn't necessarily make it better, even in feminist eyes. GRRM does far better on gender issues than the likes of Robert Jordan, even though I'd believe you if you told me that RJ's named cast was 2/3 female. I included lots of dead brothers in my count and then criticized the overwhelming masculinity of the major families, but that doesn't mean I think the story would have been at all improved if Tywin, Doran, Balon, etc., had dead sisters rather than dead brothers. In fact, such a decision would have had quite unfortunate implications, and given that most living siblings are male, GRRM was wise to make most dead siblings male too.

Just wanted to make sure nobody gets the wrong idea....

[mormont]

Not to rehash this*, but I think the twu wuw Rhaegar/Lyanna romance is very deliberately set up and is just about the obvious reading. The language, the imagery, the tropes...I think it would take an unusually pedantic and un-romantic reader to not notice that theres very much the possibility of romance there...I think thats the red herring and that there wasn't actually a romance at all, and thats the big reveal.

well said, and very true, but at the same time I do think the GRRM likes these huge, dramatic, romantic (in every sense of the word) setpieces. He just likes subverting them too.

I think it's necessary to read more of GRRM's non-ASOIAF writing to get a broader sense of this. If you read stories like 'Dying Of The Light', 'A Song For Lya' (most relevantly), 'This Tower Of Ashes', and others, there's a lot of idealised, huge, dramatic romances in there. At least, they are idealised, dramatic romances to the male partner, to the point where he is unable to accept the death of the relationship, often with tragic consequences. Tyrion and Tysha fits this to some extent, though Robert and Lyanna is an even better fit. Who knows: maybe Rhaegar and Lyanna will fit too. ;) But the main point I was aiming to make is that GRRM does indeed like these huge, dramatic, romantic setpieces: but he has spent much of his career writing stories about how men in particular delude themselves with them, until they collide unpleasantly with reality. I don't know if that's 'subverting' them so much as it is recognising that they're dangerous, attractive dreams.

(I think this does relate to the topic title as well, because there's a sense in most of these that the danger comes from the male partners treating their women as a romantic ideal instead of relating to them as independent individuals. There are certainly echoes of that in many of the relationships in ASOIAF.)

Damn, now I am all fired up to go reread some of those... :)

Koolkat - I think Tywin didn't want Tyrion setting up any kind of household that included a whore. Hed be fine with him visiting brothels - his problem was, as you said, percisely that monogamous mistress/whore.

But at the same time, that's precisely what Tyrion wanted. I never got the sense from him that he visited brothels for the same reasons Robert did, for example: I always assumed he was looking for what he got from Shae, an exclusive arrangement that could stand in for the things he really craved, not just sexual release.

[Datepalm]

But at the same time, that's precisely what Tyrion wanted. I never got the sense from him that hvisited brothels for the same reasons Robert did, for example: I always assumed he was looking for what he got from Shae, an exclusive arrangement that could stand in for the things he really craved, not just sexual release.

Its also his standard operating procedure - he tells Shae right away he expects exclusivity, domesticity and relative longevity from the relashionship.

I really need to get my hands on those GRRM short stories.

[Mad Monkey]

Don't you think Tywin actually intended to keep him from seeing any whores, though? I can't imagine why he'd object to Shae specifically (unless he was worried about having her actually living in the Tower of the Hand) while not caring if Tyrion spent every night at Chataya's.

That's definitely true, but what Tywin said to Tyrion was "I forbid you to take the whore to court." We know what he meant, and Tyrion probably realizes it, but if Tyrion had wanted to comply with any part of Tywin's request (the letter or the intent) he could have just as easily gone to the Street of Silk, where he could at least be discreet and conceal the affair. Instead, he chose not only to use the prostitute that his father knows he has, he chose to hire an accomplice that he knows he can't trust. If he didn't want to annoy Tywin, he did a really good job of making sure that there was no possible way that Tywin couldn't take offense to it.

I think Rhaegar is extremely idealized too, the difference being that we've actually met one person who had concrete reasons for not liking Rhaegar

You mean the man who beat him to death with a warhammer? :D

[Alexia]

Don't you think Tywin actually intended to keep him from seeing any whores, though? I can't imagine why he'd object to Shae specifically (unless he was worried about having her actually living in the Tower of the Hand) while not caring if Tyrion spent every night at Chataya's. This seems to me an example of Tyrion stretching the exact words to their limit, where really Tywin would have objected to any whore, especially if Tyrion was monogamous with her.

But he didn't object to Shae or any whore specifically (until the fiasco with the threats against Tommen). He objected to the idea of taking a whore to court...which, when you think about it, isn't a particularly unreasonable objection. And I am pretty sure that had it not been for that ban, Shae would have been installed in the Tower of the Hand, which would have been deliciously scandalous by Westerosi standards and quite an embarrassment for House Lannister.

I don't think Tywin cared so much about Tyrion keeping a whore. I think he was probably somewhat annoyed that he chose a common camp follower rather than a slightly higher class prostitute or a highborn mistress. I also think he feels Tyrion flaunts his whoring way too much (i.e., keeping Shae in his tent).

[Rakka]

Exactly my point. (there are some other professions open to young women; ie. laundress, seamstress, waitress, but not many, and some of these would actually be moonlighting as prostitutes as well)

Spinning and weaving, although you'd probably be hard pressed to make a decent living with either of those unless you were very skilled. Nevertheless, the protest against Spinning Jenny wasn't founded just on general dislike of developing technology - spinning was an important source of income for many women. And they have plenty of insanely expensive, slow to make cloths that require insane amounts of work hours to make. I remember reading that a modern weaver on a period loom producing something like an inch of velvet in a day.

[Ser_not_appearing_yet]

These sexism threads just get sillier and sillier.

Honestly people, adding up the number of male and female highborn children? Really?

Some folks really need to understand a certain writing concept. Its called plot convenience, and it explains pretty much all the issues in this thread.

[Datepalm]

Spinning and weaving, although you'd probably be hard pressed to make a decent living with either of those unless you were very skilled.

Service too - maids, cooks, etc - the red keep, and presumably those merchants houses, the citadel, etc, seem filled with them. Though Pycelle was also screwing his maid, so...

SNAY - a. no one is forcing you to read this stuff, you know? b. we've gone over and over the point that 'plot' is a choice, and the convenieces that is demands are product of that choice, and its part of a wider trend, so criticism isn't necessarily directd at this particular plot per se...etc, etc, etc...and point a. again.

[mormont]

These sexism threads just get sillier and sillier.

Honestly people, adding up the number of male and female highborn children? Really?

Some folks really need to understand a certain writing concept. Its called plot convenience, and it explains pretty much all the issues in this thread.

Some folks find it interesting to discuss why it is that certain things work out to be convenient for the plot.

[Liadin]

One of the problems you see with a lot of fiction--from kiddie cartoons to serious literature--is that far too often, plots require very few females. This has been called the "Smurfette Principle", and to quote from TV Tropes:

For any series not aimed solely at females, odds are high that only one female will be in the regular cast.

The Smurfette Principle is the tendency for works of fiction to have only one female amongst an ensemble of male characters (this female is the Token Girl), in spite of the fact that more than half of the human race is female. Unless a show is purposefully aimed at a female viewing audience, the main characters will tend to be disproportionately male. (Female viewers tend to say "ANGRY ANGRY" when seeing these. Sometimes.)

In many series, men will have various different personalities, but women will always be The Chick. Thus, by the Law Of Conservation Of Detail, you only need one.

Martin's work doesn't follow the Smurfette Principle, at least not the way the examples below the article do: there are several important female characters among the POVs. But the argument could be made that the SP does apply to individual stories, going back to the discussion about isolated women amongst groups of men that we had before. And I think the SP definitely applies to most of the families: the most common family in ASOIAF includes 2-3 sons and one daughter.

Which is why, in the 21 different nuclear families I counted, we have 14 different groups of brothers, but only 3 groups of sisters (and of those three, Cat/Lysa and Sansa/Arya have quite negative relationships, and Mace's two sisters are so irrelevant that I didn't realize they existed until I was going through the appendix). Which can't help but send the message that brotherly relationships are worth being examined and celebrated while sisterly relationships aren't.

Edit: Just to compare the overall positivity of the brotherly relationships, of the 14 we get:

3 good (both generations of Starks, and the Tyrell boys)

5 complicated (Jaime/Tyrion, Doran/Oberyn, the Greyjoys—some of them loved each other, some hated each other—Tywin and his brothers, and Hoster/Brynden)

3 bad (Joffrey/Tommen, Theon and his brothers, Robert and his brothers)

3 that we don’t know about (Quentyn/Tristane, Rhaegar/Viserys, Jon Arryn and his brother)

That’s quite a bit more variation, and more positivity, than we get with the sisters.

[Stalker]

RE: The discussion of happy prostitutes and which gender this is meant to appeal to: Am I meant to take the "some women buy books featuring happy whores" as "yes, this does constitute wish-fulfillment fantasy for real women"? Because I buy GRRM's books, just not for the prostitution. And I still think the happy whore is a predominantly male fantasy.

When it comes to fantasy literature, or for that matter, media in general it seems to be a female one. I'm aware many 'customers' of prostitutes likes to delude themselves over the nature of the relationship, but I doubt they want to dwell on the subject.

As examples I could mention that Jacqueline Carey's Kushiel books are the only fantasy books that I know of that have a happy whore as the protagonist. As for mainstream media, Pretty Woman was a major commercial success, and not thanks to the male viewers.

Also, back when we were talking about sisters, I started thinking about how the Great Houses seem much more likely to have male children than female; I finally did the numbers and it turns out that a Great House in ASOIAF has a 73.5% chance of any child born to it being male.

The details, for those who are curious:

I have to agree wit Alexia here. I've noticed the trend, but arbitrary statistics like that are effectively random.

[Liadin]

I have to agree wit Alexia here. I've noticed the trend, but arbitrary statistics like that are effectively random.

If you read the thread, you'll notice that Alexia thought it would not be meaningful in real life, not that it's irrelevant in examining what characters an author chooses to include in a work of fiction. You're on your own there.

When it comes to fantasy literature, or for that matter, media in general it seems to be a female one. I'm aware many 'customers' of prostitutes likes to delude themselves over the nature of the relationship, but I doubt they want to dwell on the subject.

As examples I could mention that Jacqueline Carey's Kushiel books are the only fantasy books that I know of that have a happy whore as the protagonist. As for mainstream media, Pretty Woman was a major commercial success, and not thanks to the male viewers.

I doubt many women find prostitution especially romantic either. Plus, you're conflating issues with Carey I think--reading erotica or semi-erotica is one thing; romanticizing prostituion in its non-erotic context is something else.

[mormont]

Which is why, in the 21 different nuclear families I counted, we have 14 different groups of brothers, but only 3 groups of sisters (and of those three, Cat/Lysa and Sansa/Arya have quite negative relationships, and Mace's two sisters are so irrelevant that I didn't realize they existed until I was going through the appendix). Which can't help but send the message that brotherly relationships are worth being examined and celebrated while sisterly relationships aren't.

The numbers are interesting, but the latter suggestion just makes little sense, unless you're claiming that only positive sibling relationships are worth being examined. I think most of us would say the opposite: the relationship between Arya and Sansa is much more interesting (and probably has more time spent on it) than the relationship between Jon and Robb, for example. It's not altogether negative, either. The relationship between Cat and Lysa is negative, but has much more time spent on it than the relationship between Ned and Ben, and is ultimately more important to the story.

Sisterly relationships that are celebrated and positive tend to be minor, I'll grant you. And the preponderance of brothers over sisters is a problem.

[Datepalm]

Sisterly relationships that are celebrated and positive tend to be minor, I'll grant you. And the preponderance of brothers over sisters is a problem.

The issue, for me anyway, isnt so much positive or negative relashionships, but their general importance, drama, gravitas and place in the story. Theres a few good ones - Lysa and Cat, Cat and Brienne, Sansa and Arya, Sansa and Cercei....and....er...as compared to more important and interesting male relashionships than you can count. It goes back to the sense that even when women emerge as real characters, they're still mostly only interesting in relation to the men around them.

[Liadin]

The numbers are interesting, but the latter suggestion just makes little sense, unless you're claiming that only positive sibling relationships are worth being examined. I think most of us would say the opposite: the relationship between Arya and Sansa is much more interesting (and probably has more time spent on it) than the relationship between Jon and Robb, for example. It's not altogether negative, either. The relationship between Cat and Lysa is negative, but has much more time spent on it than the relationship between Ned and Ben, and is ultimately more important to the story.

Sisterly relationships that are celebrated and positive tend to be minor, I'll grant you. And the preponderance of brothers over sisters is a problem.

That's a fair point: a lot of time is spent on Sansa and Arya, so Martin must have found them worth examining. And there's some time spent on Catelyn and Lysa as well. But then we see a lot of brotherly relationships that do get page time and are relevant: Jaime and Tyrion, the Baratheon brothers, Tywin and Kevan, Hoster and Brynden, the older generation of Greyjoy brothers.... and that's not counting foster brothers like Robert and Ned; there's no female equivalent there either. So while it's not true that Martin thinks sisters are totally uninteresting and not worth including, it seems safe to say that they're less so than brothers here.

You're right that the brotherly relationships that are celebrated tend to get very little page time, at least with the characters being together.... but Jon and Robb's relationship comes up a lot and informs their actions (particularly Jon's), which is another thing you don't see with sisters.

Although, I'll add that while the numbers show the disparity (and I obviously find compiling them amusing), it's the lack of meaningful, positive female-female relationships that bothers me more than the preponderance of male offspring in noble houses. If there was a positive, plot relevant sisterly relationship or two, or if we didn't get things like Arya's relationships with boys seen in a positive light while Sansa's relations with girls are seen in a negative one, we probably wouldn't be having this discussion. Although Datepalm has a good point too, that there are enough women in the book that they might engage each other more.