Did Cat treat Jon Snow like a dog - or not?

[Lyanna Stark]

I would guess he's talking about love as the action, not the feeling.

It is perfectly possible to show love to those you have negative feelings about.

Love as action? You mean...like lying about what you really feel? That again brings up what I posted about above: that Cat has some obligation to love Jon. She doesn't. I stand by my view that it's a sexist opinion to assume women need to love children simply because children ought to be loved. Woman != loves to mother children.

[Lummel]

By not having self interest as your primary motivation in life. A concept which Martin appears to find utterly alien.

What about the Elder Brother, Septon Meribald, Brienne, Davos, The Reeds...off the top of my head they all put the interests of others before their own in some cases at the risk of their own lives.

So don't despair Free Northman, I think there are some people you might consider to be actually good :) .

[Ran]

"Actively making sure" -- like, what, trips Jon as he's walking by on his way to take his seat at the table?

No.

"Actively making sure" like reminding Ned that it'd be unseemly to have a bastard seated at the high table where Cersei was sitting?

Yes. Because, you know, protocol.

But note that normally Jon does sit with the rest of the family.

[Free Northman]

What about the Elder Brother, Septon Meribald, Brienne, Davos, The Reeds...off the top of my head they all put the interests of others before their own in some cases at the risk of their own lives.

So don't despair Free Northman, I think there are some people you might consider to be actually good :) .

True. But Catelyn's not one of them.

[Qhorin Halfhand and Yoren]

Between loving Jon (or loving him as a mother) and showing him that he does not belong here and continually trying to convince your husband to send his son, that is loved by the other children, away from his family (I doubt the Stark children would be pleased if Jon was send away), I think there is room for multiple different reactions and behaviors.

However it is somewhat understandable why Catelyn feels the way she does and even reacts the way she does. It doesn't mean we can't find fault with it. And Catelyn having some faults doesn't mean it makes her a bad person or deserving of hate.

[Jayce]

Let me add that there seems to be a strange belief that the absence of being nice to someone means you must be mean to him.

No. I can walk by a stranger -- even someone I happened to share, say, a classroom with -- and not go out of my way to say hi or acknowledge them. You know, we're going about our business, don't really know him, etc. I'm not being nice... but I'm not being mean, either.

I don't think Catelyn was nice to Jon. I don't think she was mean to Jon, either. She also didn't go out of her way to coddle and coo over the children of the scullions and men-at-arms, I expect. She wasn't Beth Cassel's mother figure, despite her being motherless and all. That's not her being mean to them, either.

Despite what some people thought my early post implied I agree more with this, but (sorry!) Jon is not a stranger, he is living in her house, half-sibling to her kids, growing up with them. He is not some stranger in the street, that she may have once met or not.

Not being nice can be taken as being mean, Cat certainly does not go out of her way to be mean to him, but by not being nice it obviously hurt Jon (maybe because of the reasons Lyanna Stark raises above?).

However putting what she may or may not of been aside for a moment lets get back to Lynanna Stark's first question:

That wasn't the question though, but how she chose to interact with Jon. Was it reasonable? If not, why not?

[Ran]

Yes she is. She goes out of her way to help Brienne, first and foremost, at potential danger to herself. She could have snuck out of there, instead she went to Robar and pleaded with him, risking Robar deciding she was involved or that someone would come by and think the same.

[David Selig]

I find that in the interest of finding a convincing motivation for every character, authors often ignore the concept of "selflessness" as if it is a fable that doesn't exist in the real world.

Victarrion must have a motivation for going to Dany, hence the wife that Euron made him kill is created in his backstory.

Tyrion must have a motivation that drives his actions, hence Tysha is created.

Lysa must have a motivation for her craziness and evil nature, hence the Tansy story is created.

Similarly, Catelyn must have a motivation for hating Jon, hence the whole bastard interaction is created.

This approach creates the danger that all characters are simply robotic automatons that react to events that happened earlier in their lives.

Instead, people have free will. And it remains a choice how you act towards others. And by believing in goodness, you make a concsious effort to make the "good" choice in each instance, rather than the selfish one. But this is not a cool or contemporary thought. It is not popular in modern fiction, it seems.

Hence everyone is a grey character, who can only possibly be understood once you understand their motivation.

I reject this.

Catelyn might have had reason to disapprove of Eddard's actions, but she retained the free will to treat Jon in a loving manner, if only she possessed the quality of empathy - one which she repeatedly proves not to have, as depicted in the scene where Karstark grieves over his sons.

So my point is simply this: Catelyn could act in the cold way she did towards Jon, and feel justified in doing so. Or she could have been a bigger person, and embraced him. That would have required the choice of good over evil.

But since many on this board don't believe in that concept, all we are left with are grey characters driven by their past experiences in mindless reactionary fashion.

You've build one heck of a strawman here. I don't recall anyone ever saying "Catelyn could not have been nicer to Jon" and I've participated in many of those threads. Of course she could.

What we are saying it that just because someone doesn't go out of his way to act selflessly doesn't make him/her a bad person. Jon is not her child, so she had no obligation to take care of him. Pretty simple.

[Lummel]

There's a difference between not greeting someone from school and actively making sure they know they don't belong at your table or whatever.

It's not Catelyn's job to be the Virgin Mary and radiate maternal love throughout the North. Her family words "Family, Duty, Honour". Jon is not family. He's a risk to her family, it's her duty to ensure he does not threaten their inheritance.

Keeping your bastards at home - particularly bastards with non-noble mothers is not top table behaviour north of Dorne. (ETA and coming to think of it we only see it from the Father's POV in Dorne, had Oberyn had a noblewoman as his wife we might have got a different picture).

Yes that is hard and tough on the child, but then Westeros is hard, tough, and in many ways an unjust society.

[eyeheartsansa]

Love as action? You mean...like lying about what you really feel? That again brings up what I posted about above: that Cat has some obligation to love Jon. She doesn't. I stand by my view that it's a sexist opinion to assume women need to love children simply because children ought to be loved. Woman != loves to mother children.

I never thought of this as a gender issue. It's more that everyone, especially children, should be treated decently and with respect.

[FuzzyJAM]

Love as action? You mean...like lying about what you really feel? That again brings up what I posted about above: that Cat has some obligation to love Jon. She doesn't. I stand by my view that it's a sexist opinion to assume women need to love children simply because children ought to be loved. Woman != loves to mother children.

You misunderstand. I'm talking about this kind of love (and I'm going to quote the Bible despite not being a Christian because it's one of my favourite pieces ever written):

If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. If I give all I possess to the poor and surrender my body to the flames, but have not love, I gain nothing.

Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.

Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away. For we know in part and we prophesy in part, but when perfection comes, the imperfect disappears. When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put childish ways behind me. Now we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.

And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.

That's love as an action, and that's something everyone should aspire to.

[Qhorin Halfhand and Yoren]

I never thought of this as a gender issue. It's more that everyone, especially children, should be treated decently and with respect.

Agreed. However, even I can't but suspect about some of the hatred directed at Catelyn. Seems over the top in relation to her actions, or in comparison to other characters. But that doesn't mean because some might be illogical about Catelyn that we should not recognize her faults.

[Lummel]

I never thought of this as a gender issue. It's more that everyone, especially children, should be treated decently and with respect.

...That's love as an action, and that's something everyone should aspire to.

I think there's a difference here, I mean if you live in a country with a royal family and an aristocracy then you can see this, for those people family is a business. Your bloodline and behaviour are your capital. The stuff the rest of us lowlife commoners associate with the word family like love and spending time together are (optional) extras.

[eyeheartsansa]

Agreed. However, even I can't but suspect about some of the hatred directed at Catelyn. Seems over the top in relation to her actions, or in comparison to other characters. But that doesn't mean because some might be illogical about Catelyn that we should not recognize her faults.

Certainly. I'd also add that it's entirely possible to be cold/emotionally distant/resentful towards someone and still treat them respectfully. We don't expect Cat to fuss over Jon and pin his artwork/report cards to the refrigerator like she would for her other kids. At Chrstmas he would have gotten an orange in his stocking when Robb or Bran would have received ipods. (Then Ned would have secretly given him something cool, outside of Cat's knowledge/consent.) Sad, but understandable.

She was still out of line when she snapped at him.

[Lyanna Stark]

Fuzzyjam,

That is love as a religious ideal, and Cat is not the virgin Mary of the North, as Lummel has stated. She has no obligation to automatically love Jon Snow.

[Ser Hippie]

There are plenty of parents who are distant and cold towards their children even when they aren't a living, breathing representation of their spouse's infidelity (and possible greater love for someone else).- Westerosi families and familial structure are not like modern ones. Dads taking their kids out to play catch and soccer moms are not the norm; noble children often times are parented by other people - Septa Mordane and Maester Luwin, among the Starks.

"It should have been you" simply gets too much play - she was pretty clearly not in the right mental state (i.e. sitting by Bran for days and days on end without taking care of herself). No, Catelyn wasn't a loving mother to Jon but she didn't really do anything actively bad towards him either; recall that it's Ned who makes it "Winterfell or nothing" in GOT, when he had other options. The real 'villain', if you want to call him that, is Ned for putting two good people in a terrible position.

Or, put another way. I think Catelyn could have played the loving mother but I think it would have been wholly out of character (both because of the emotional pain and the realities of bastards and their position in society) and unrealistically foisting modern sensibilities into the relationship.

[FuzzyJAM]

I think there's a difference here, I mean if you live in a country with a royal family and an aristocracy then you can see this, for those people family is a business. Your bloodline and behaviour are your capital. The stuff the rest of us lowlife commoners associate with the word family like love and spending time together are (optional) extras.

Yeah, that's a fair point. I still stand by my "social norms do not justify wrong behaviour" line, but I absolutely agree that there are many strong reasons for why Cat acted as she did and don't hold it against her to any large degree.

Fuzzyjam,

That is love as a religious ideal, and Cat is not the virgin Mary of the North, as Lummel has stated. She has no obligation to automatically love Jon Snow.

It doesn't have to be anything to do with religion. It fits nicely with some humanist thoughts, although I don't think humanist philosophers have expressed it so nicely.

Anyway, we simply come to a fundamental difference of opinion here: I hold all people to a standard of showing love to others, regardless of personal feelings about them. You don't. I don't think there's much more to it than that.

[eyeheartsansa]

Fuzzyjam,

That is love as a religious ideal, and Cat is not the virgin Mary of the North, as Lummel has stated. She has no obligation to automatically love Jon Snow.

Interesting that you bring up religion, as Cat is fairly devout and is always praying to the Mother to protect her children. If she went to a Septon for advice on how to treat Jon, I wonder what he would say? I honestly don't know.

[OnionAhaiReborn]

Am I the only one who thinks Cat had very good reasons to be upset that Jon was around? It's seen as a huge slight for a husband to raise his bastards with his normal children. It's normally only muppets like Walder Frey who does this, so Cat had good reason to feel rather put upon by it, especially considering that she and Ned had a very happy marriage apart from that and that Ned did respect her in every other way.

...

Even though Cat chose being cold and distancing herself from Jon instead of causing all the issues she had every right to, people still insist she should have mothered Jon, despite it being against her entire upbringing and the traditions of Westeros to do so. Cat should then have been more selfless and forgiving, which would surely make her a better archetype for a demure mother and a far more traditional, tractable female character, but hardly an interesting character. Conflict creates tension and Cat's coldness towards Jon adds flavours of grey to her character and she avoids being the stereotypical good, altruistic, demure mother.

It seems to me you're trying to have it both ways here. And this is my problem with a lot of Catelyn defenses. Which are you saying: Is Catelyn a grey character who you like in spite of her relationship with Jon (we can debate the manner of the relationship but we know for certain a couple of instances where Catelyn was not very nice)? Or are you saying Catelyn was justified in her treatment of Jon and that this is not a mark against her character at all, there is nothing to forgive?

I think Catelyn is a grey character- and light grey at that. I think the scene by Bran's bedside, happening as early as it does in the books, is establishing something about Cat's character. I can understand her motivations, but I don't approve of her actions. I don't think she is evil or cruel or terrible, but she isn't nice to Jon. Hence, light grey.

What I object to are the arguments in her defense that rely on approving of her treatment of Jon. Jon was a bastard and a threat to her children, Jon's presence was an insult to her, she had no obligation to him. No, I don't agree that these are 'very good reasons,' just regular reasons. But if I did agree with her reasons, if I did think she was justified, well, I wouldn't think she was very grey. You're saying people can't accept Cat's greyness, but I feel like you're the one denying it.

[FuzzyJAM]

Interesting that you bring up religion, as Cat is fairly devout and is always praying to the Mother to protect her children.

To be fair, for all we know the Seven could espouse a doctrine of murdering all bastard children.

:lol: