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We Love the Women Fandom Hates: Catelyn Stark (Day 1: Cat Tully)
Hi there, all. You're reading this post because I made the perhaps ill-considered decision to sign up for We Love the Women Fandom Hates and commit to posting one thing every day for a week on the topic of Lady Catelyn Stark nee Tully, of A Song of Ice and Fire and Game of Thrones fame, a major protagonist in the A Song of Ice and Fire series who's probably also, of the protagonists, the most universally hated by fandom. Obviously, I think this is a problem. So before I go into today's mini-essay, I'll start off with kind of a mission statement for the week: what I hope to accomplish by writing about Cat Stark. This is going to be restricted to the books for the sake of scope and consistency, but a lot of this stuff also holds true of the Game of Thrones TV series.
I'm not here to convince anyone to love Cat. Realistically, not everyone will fall in love with every sympathetic character, especially in a series like ASoIaF when so many of them are flawed, prejudiced, frustrating humans. On the scale of POV characters, Cat is maybe a tier 2 in intended hierarchy of reader sympathy -- principled and intelligent, but judgmental and unforgiving. Cat's a character you're supposed to care about, grin when she kicks ass, worry when she's in trouble, grit your teeth when she's stubborn or short-sighted. She's not perfect. She's not meant to be perfect. You're not meant to agree with everything she does. And I wouldn't set out to try to get anyone to: go ahead and dislike Catelyn. It doesn't mean you're a bad person. It doesn't even mean you're a misogynist. But hating her for misogynistic reasons does -- and I hope I can convince at least a few people not to dislike her for the wrong reasons. I think A Song of Ice and Fire is all the better for having her as a character, but to be able to appreciate that you have to appreciate her part in the story as a complex individual.
All of these are going to contain spoilers for the books and TV series.
Cat Tully
Family, Duty, Honor
When fans talk about Cat, they often speak of Lady Stark, because that's the role she plays in the course of the ASoIaF storyline and that's what people call her. But Catelyn Tully was born to House Tully, whose house words are Family, Duty, Honor, and she's never forgotten it -- so much of who she is is shaped by the fact that she's not a Stark, not a Northman, and essentially someone who married a virtual stranger and married into a regional culture and lifestyle that was entirely foreign to her. A lot of readers judge her by Stark standards and Northern culture, but the fact is that's unfair: she's not a Stark, often reminded she's not a Stark and of the gap between herself and her husband. Ned's going to be the subject of a later post, as is Jon Snow, but I think it's important to remember what was thrust upon Catelyn Tully: the leadership of a great house of Westeros, not her own, among strangers. And by any account she rose to that occasion.
Catelyn grew up in the Riverlands with her siblings Lysa and Edmure as well as the rest of the Tully family (her father Hoster, her uncle Brynden the Blackfish, among others) and her childhood friend Petyr Baelish -- who we'll also be addressing later. House Tully is characterized by being hot-headed and impulsive as much as House Stark is by being chilly and judgmental, and both house cultures have come to inform Cat's personality: she's learned to operate outwardly as a Stark with the ethics and moral system of a Tully, for all that entails. She's had to. Even before then, though, she was saddled with being the "responsible" sibling next to unstable Lysa and impetuous Edmure -- both very immature in their own ways, so it's not surprising that she developed a certain amount of confidence in her own judgment, which some might say runs to arrogance. She's been playing parental or pseudo-parental roles practically her whole life: with Lysa and Edmure to look after, then her children, she's become used to taking charge by default -- because if she didn't, no one would, or so she had reason to fear.
Her childhood and adolescence weren't as troubled as many ASoIaF characters', but they weren't uneventful, either: her friend Petyr Baelish developed unrequited feelings for her and dueled her then-fiance Brandon Stark, who seriously injured him; her sister Lysa was forced to marry the much-older Jon Arryn due to an under-the-influence liaison with Petyr, who didn't return her feelings in turn; on top of all that, Brandon was soon killed by King Aerys and Cat's engagement was transferred to his younger brother and new Lord Stark, Eddard. Cat herself was trapped as a crucial bystander to all of this, and in some cases the cause: uncomfortably aware she was the object of rivalry and of resentment, but unable to do much of anything about it, as even if she'd chosen Petyr his station wouldn't have allowed them to marry and she could do basically bugger-all about what transpired with Brandon and Ned. She put a mature face on it, or tried to, and distanced herself emotionally to the best of her ability; however, her life had suffered overturn in just a few short years, and even more when her new husband came home from the war with a boy he claimed was his bastard -- cuckolding her, from her perspective, before they even lived together.
It's clear from her chapters in the books that Catelyn is a proud individual and one who clearly wants as much control and agency in her life as she can manage, but she had none in many of these events: aloofness and pragmatism were the last resort of her dignity. So going into her arranged marriage with Ned Stark, she was a young woman raised to be dutybound and honorbound and loyal, constantly pressured to act older than she was, determinedly unsentimental, and burying a young lifetime's worth of grief, resentment, and humiliation. Can you blame the resultant woman for having some issues? Many of her detractors demand that she show more compassion and emotional maturity than she does in the books, as if she's obliged to as an adult woman -- but many adult male characters are repressed and emotionally stunted as well. If her feelings don't flow as freely as people might want from the Virgin Mary, it's because they've been dammed up for a very long time.
It's important to remember that Catelyn Stark isn't some idealized mother figure that sprung from the ether to guide the Stark children and manage House Stark: she's a person who's subsumed herself into that role, but she has a past, she has a history, she has her own family, and they're all aspects of the flawed creation.
I'm not here to convince anyone to love Cat. Realistically, not everyone will fall in love with every sympathetic character, especially in a series like ASoIaF when so many of them are flawed, prejudiced, frustrating humans. On the scale of POV characters, Cat is maybe a tier 2 in intended hierarchy of reader sympathy -- principled and intelligent, but judgmental and unforgiving. Cat's a character you're supposed to care about, grin when she kicks ass, worry when she's in trouble, grit your teeth when she's stubborn or short-sighted. She's not perfect. She's not meant to be perfect. You're not meant to agree with everything she does. And I wouldn't set out to try to get anyone to: go ahead and dislike Catelyn. It doesn't mean you're a bad person. It doesn't even mean you're a misogynist. But hating her for misogynistic reasons does -- and I hope I can convince at least a few people not to dislike her for the wrong reasons. I think A Song of Ice and Fire is all the better for having her as a character, but to be able to appreciate that you have to appreciate her part in the story as a complex individual.
All of these are going to contain spoilers for the books and TV series.
Cat Tully
Family, Duty, Honor
When fans talk about Cat, they often speak of Lady Stark, because that's the role she plays in the course of the ASoIaF storyline and that's what people call her. But Catelyn Tully was born to House Tully, whose house words are Family, Duty, Honor, and she's never forgotten it -- so much of who she is is shaped by the fact that she's not a Stark, not a Northman, and essentially someone who married a virtual stranger and married into a regional culture and lifestyle that was entirely foreign to her. A lot of readers judge her by Stark standards and Northern culture, but the fact is that's unfair: she's not a Stark, often reminded she's not a Stark and of the gap between herself and her husband. Ned's going to be the subject of a later post, as is Jon Snow, but I think it's important to remember what was thrust upon Catelyn Tully: the leadership of a great house of Westeros, not her own, among strangers. And by any account she rose to that occasion.
Catelyn grew up in the Riverlands with her siblings Lysa and Edmure as well as the rest of the Tully family (her father Hoster, her uncle Brynden the Blackfish, among others) and her childhood friend Petyr Baelish -- who we'll also be addressing later. House Tully is characterized by being hot-headed and impulsive as much as House Stark is by being chilly and judgmental, and both house cultures have come to inform Cat's personality: she's learned to operate outwardly as a Stark with the ethics and moral system of a Tully, for all that entails. She's had to. Even before then, though, she was saddled with being the "responsible" sibling next to unstable Lysa and impetuous Edmure -- both very immature in their own ways, so it's not surprising that she developed a certain amount of confidence in her own judgment, which some might say runs to arrogance. She's been playing parental or pseudo-parental roles practically her whole life: with Lysa and Edmure to look after, then her children, she's become used to taking charge by default -- because if she didn't, no one would, or so she had reason to fear.
Her childhood and adolescence weren't as troubled as many ASoIaF characters', but they weren't uneventful, either: her friend Petyr Baelish developed unrequited feelings for her and dueled her then-fiance Brandon Stark, who seriously injured him; her sister Lysa was forced to marry the much-older Jon Arryn due to an under-the-influence liaison with Petyr, who didn't return her feelings in turn; on top of all that, Brandon was soon killed by King Aerys and Cat's engagement was transferred to his younger brother and new Lord Stark, Eddard. Cat herself was trapped as a crucial bystander to all of this, and in some cases the cause: uncomfortably aware she was the object of rivalry and of resentment, but unable to do much of anything about it, as even if she'd chosen Petyr his station wouldn't have allowed them to marry and she could do basically bugger-all about what transpired with Brandon and Ned. She put a mature face on it, or tried to, and distanced herself emotionally to the best of her ability; however, her life had suffered overturn in just a few short years, and even more when her new husband came home from the war with a boy he claimed was his bastard -- cuckolding her, from her perspective, before they even lived together.
It's clear from her chapters in the books that Catelyn is a proud individual and one who clearly wants as much control and agency in her life as she can manage, but she had none in many of these events: aloofness and pragmatism were the last resort of her dignity. So going into her arranged marriage with Ned Stark, she was a young woman raised to be dutybound and honorbound and loyal, constantly pressured to act older than she was, determinedly unsentimental, and burying a young lifetime's worth of grief, resentment, and humiliation. Can you blame the resultant woman for having some issues? Many of her detractors demand that she show more compassion and emotional maturity than she does in the books, as if she's obliged to as an adult woman -- but many adult male characters are repressed and emotionally stunted as well. If her feelings don't flow as freely as people might want from the Virgin Mary, it's because they've been dammed up for a very long time.
It's important to remember that Catelyn Stark isn't some idealized mother figure that sprung from the ether to guide the Stark children and manage House Stark: she's a person who's subsumed herself into that role, but she has a past, she has a history, she has her own family, and they're all aspects of the flawed creation.
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I love this observation! Great post, look forward to reading more this week!
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