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We Love the Women Fandom Hates: Catelyn Stark (Day 2: So What's the Problem with Catelyn Stark?)
We Love the Women Fandom Hates week continues today with day 2, In Which We Address A Pretty Large And Uncomfortable-Looking Elephant In The Room: so why does fandom hate Catelyn so much?
Spoilers as always for the books. Longer than the other days' posts, probably.
So What's the Problem with Catelyn Stark?
What, Why, and What That Means
Catelyn's not a popular character with fandom readers. That much is uncomfortably clear. TV fandom's had a different reaction, particularly since only the storyline of A Game of Thrones has come out on screen and it's A Clash of Kings and A Storm of Swords that really gained Cat fandom's ire, but this may also be because of some of the changes from book to screen. The Game of Thrones Cat as portrayed by Michelle Fairley is an older, quieter, more stoic and even-keeled woman -- due to the general aging up of the cast, and characterization changes for Ned also -- as opposed to the proud, well-mannered, and somewhat unreachable highborn beauty of thirty-five-or-so that Martin introduces as a POV character in A Song of Ice and Fire. This means that book fandom's hatred for Cat now stands in semi-contrast to TV fandom's, frankly, general disinterest in Cat. Not very reassuring on whole.
But why does book fandom hate her so much, anyway? She's a major POV character, it's hard to argue that her chapters aren't a happenin' place for plot advancement: she's the linchpin of House Stark's plot, arguably the leader of House Stark itself when her husband's embroiled in intrigue as the Hand of the King, and then something of a regent for her young son Robb when he declares war as the King in the North. Until her death and removal as a POV character at the end of A Storm of Swords, she's the only adult Stark who has a POV. People rightfully complain that some characters (Bran) don't ever seem to do anything (Bran) in their chapters (Bran), but Cat's not one of them. In terms of dislikeability, Cat's certainly an unkinder person than you might find on, say, a mainstream TNT drama as a protagonist, but compared to the ASoIaF cast she's frankly heroic -- she stacks next to major characters like Sandor Clegane, a defeated and broken man who plays child-murdering thug to evil masters, Stannis Baratheon, a merciless self-righteous self-appointed dispenser of cold justice, and Jaime Lannister, I'm not even going to try to summarize. All of these characters have their many redeeming features and humanizing stories -- and while they've got haters of their own, they're also all far less unpopular than Catelyn Stark.
The fact is, not all fandom is would-be-acafen willing to disguise its prejudices in cagey language and the quiet avoidance of female characters. A lot of ASoIaF fandom, especially before it went more mainstream, has been blunt, forthright, and shameless about its hatred for Cat, in sexist terms and otherwise. The same few phrases crop up on DeviantArt memes where people draw their least favorite characters. The same few insults get slung in the mess of vitriol on fan forums. So I'm going to take on the two most common accusations thrown at Cat Stark, and why I think they're so rampant.
1. "She's a bitch."
Of course. Frankly, it's almost like a black-humored champagne bottle for a fandom's maiden voyage once a major female characters gets casually called a bitch by fans: you know you're a real fandom now. Cat's no exception: this come up a lot. "She's a bitch." "She's really unlikeable." "She's so mean to people." "She doesn't like anyone." "She's a screaming harpy." "She's a crazy bitch." It's a repetitive misogynistic refrain, but we all know it's misogynistic -- the question is, why does it happen? What, in the eyes of a biased-against-women reading demographic, did she do so dreadfully wrong?
There are glaring places to start -- for one, one way to win a readership's ire is to mistreat characters they like better. Cat is not only unloving to Jon Snow, she also abducts and forces Tyrion Lannister to stand trial for a crime he didn't commit in what winds up being a harrowing experience at the Eyrie. But male characters show each other animosity all the time; many sympathetic male characters stubbornly refuse to see eye-to-eye in ASoIaF. With Tyrion, Cat has every reason to believe that he's guilty of attacking Bran, and brings him to the Eyrie to be imprisoned because as far as she knows her sister is on her side: once she realizes that Lysa's behavior is irrational and out of line, she doesn't support it, but it's beyond her power to stop. The mistake she makes with him is destructive, but it's not malicious, and she treats him no more cruelly than anyone else in Westeros does transporting a prisoner. Jon is a morally murkier case, as he's a child under her charge and her emotional distance from him and resentment impact him a fair bit. He's one of the main demonstrations of her more grudge-holding nature (until Lady Stoneheart, at any rate) and her feelings on him are a clear product of her own humiliation and repressed resentment of Ned: still, she takes care of him, she raises him with her kids, and she's cold rather than unkind save one outburst shortly after Jaime Lannister tries to kill Bran. It's a character flaw on her part, but stems clearly from her social position and the embarrassment of raising her husband's bastard in her own house, and primarily affects Jon emotionally.
She's got other flaws, of course, and makes other mistakes. She's self-righteous and sometimes arrogant in her opinions, can be judgmental and doubtful of other people, meddlesome to her family, classist and snobbish as any noble lady. She mothers and sometimes tries too hard to shelter or decide for Robb, and does the same for Edmure and Lysa in their own ways. She's awkward and emotionally reserved with Ned (and he with her), unwilling to quite back down or admit mistakes even when she knows she's made them. But she still functions as one of the most capable and level-headed POV characters the books have and her flaws are not much more spectacular than anyone else's in ASoIaF. They seem like they'd be enough to inspire apathy or mild aversion, not hate.
2. "She's whiny."
It's sort of funny to see Common Criticism of Female Character #1 paired with what should be its opposite, Common Criticism of Female Character #2, but then again, it's not, really. In fact, it's quite common. If the She's A Bitch theory asserts that she's too unkind to live up to standards, the She's Whiny one argues that she's too weak to.
This is a stranger criticism for Catelyn Stark, who pretty much never voices her feelings or misgivings to outside parties, even biting back most of them when speaking with her own husband Ned. It's hard to pick out instances in the books where she actually does anything that qualifies as whining out loud. She just doesn't have enough confidants. She sees herself as the pillar of her family, so she can hardly lean on them. And she has barely any non-family friends -- there's Petyr, whose motives she can never entirely trust and who she doesn't see for much of the books anyway, and Brienne of Tarth, who looks up to her. Save the brief and hostile company of Jaime and Tyrion Lannister, separately, she just doesn't get to interact with a lot of peers. It's not just that Cat's not a whining sort of person. She doesn't get the opportunity.
More validly, people call her out for being overly brooding, self-pitying, or gloomy in her viewpoint narration. This might be true, and is kind of subjective, since no one can actually declare what the limit for character gloominess is before it becomes annoying. She's got reason to be unhappy and worried, but then again, so does everyone in Westeros. What isn't so iffy is that readers who call Cat whiny can tolerate a hell of a lot more 'whining' from male characters' thoughts than they can from female ones. These are the books that feature Jon Snow, after all, who's almost as busy gazing at his own sad navel as Batman is, and Bran Stark, who spends many a chapter gloomily dwelling on his paralysis, among others. But Jon isn't the subject of the kind of widespread personal contempt for his emo ways the way Cat is, though it's hard to argue that he's one of the most over-the-toply pessimistic of the POV characters -- Cat broods and is bitter about her history and the position of her family, worries about Robb, and rarely finds things to be cheerful about. But it's not overpowering, or at least, it's not as overpowering as several others'. The difference being: Cat's a woman.
There's also a contingent that thought her reaction to the Freys' betrayal and witnessing the murder of her son in front of her was "hysterical" or "melodramatic," but given that this is positing that there's any such thing as a "too hysterical" reaction for a mom to have watching her teenaged kid be slaughtered in front of her, I'm not even going to dignify it with a rebuttal.
So why do these accusations come up, anyway?
My theory is that Cat Stark fails to fit the most common archetypes that people often find 'acceptable' in idealized fantasy-genre women: the Strong Woman, and the Virtuous Woman. The Strong Woman is not just outwardly assertive, but brash and outspoken and progressive, forward-thinking, ambitious, something of a reader stand-in where they might imagine they'd be so "asskicking" if they were born a woman in a sexist historical society. The Virtuous Woman is more of a perfect martyr, what TV Tropes might call a Staff Chick, kind, passive, loving, accepting, vulnerable, full of either gaiety or sorrow as it may be but in either case it's pretty. In both cases female characters who are young, and more importantly, single and without kids, wind up getting a better rap from fans: that classifies them as potential "love interests" for something (as if married women with children can't be), and given so many readers and writers see a romantic plotline as the be-all and end-all of a female character's existence, in this mindset a married woman essentially "already had her plot." They're more likely to shuffle her off into the hinterlands of characters they don't expect to be cool, and as a result, don't find her cool. Cat's neither a character most modern people could comfortably imagine themselves as, nor one who lives up to any Virgin Mary ideals of femininity and motherhood -- she's not a perfect mother, which is a grave sin in a world that demands all mothers be perfect mothers. She's scorned by so many because she isn't doing the "jobs" they expect from a female character.
It's clear there are plenty of reasons Cat might rub you wrong as a character, or you might not enjoy reading her chapters. But I think the reason she earns such widespread fandom hatred is that she fails to be an ideal woman in one way or another. It's one thing to dislike a character because you think they were poorly handled or not terribly sympathetic; it's another to do so because they're not living up to an impossible standard you've set them because it's what you've come to expect from characters of their type. Everyone thinks they're doing the former; few people have the perspective to realize when they're doing the latter. My hope this week is to lend some perspective.
Spoilers as always for the books. Longer than the other days' posts, probably.
So What's the Problem with Catelyn Stark?
What, Why, and What That Means
Catelyn's not a popular character with fandom readers. That much is uncomfortably clear. TV fandom's had a different reaction, particularly since only the storyline of A Game of Thrones has come out on screen and it's A Clash of Kings and A Storm of Swords that really gained Cat fandom's ire, but this may also be because of some of the changes from book to screen. The Game of Thrones Cat as portrayed by Michelle Fairley is an older, quieter, more stoic and even-keeled woman -- due to the general aging up of the cast, and characterization changes for Ned also -- as opposed to the proud, well-mannered, and somewhat unreachable highborn beauty of thirty-five-or-so that Martin introduces as a POV character in A Song of Ice and Fire. This means that book fandom's hatred for Cat now stands in semi-contrast to TV fandom's, frankly, general disinterest in Cat. Not very reassuring on whole.
But why does book fandom hate her so much, anyway? She's a major POV character, it's hard to argue that her chapters aren't a happenin' place for plot advancement: she's the linchpin of House Stark's plot, arguably the leader of House Stark itself when her husband's embroiled in intrigue as the Hand of the King, and then something of a regent for her young son Robb when he declares war as the King in the North. Until her death and removal as a POV character at the end of A Storm of Swords, she's the only adult Stark who has a POV. People rightfully complain that some characters (Bran) don't ever seem to do anything (Bran) in their chapters (Bran), but Cat's not one of them. In terms of dislikeability, Cat's certainly an unkinder person than you might find on, say, a mainstream TNT drama as a protagonist, but compared to the ASoIaF cast she's frankly heroic -- she stacks next to major characters like Sandor Clegane, a defeated and broken man who plays child-murdering thug to evil masters, Stannis Baratheon, a merciless self-righteous self-appointed dispenser of cold justice, and Jaime Lannister, I'm not even going to try to summarize. All of these characters have their many redeeming features and humanizing stories -- and while they've got haters of their own, they're also all far less unpopular than Catelyn Stark.
The fact is, not all fandom is would-be-acafen willing to disguise its prejudices in cagey language and the quiet avoidance of female characters. A lot of ASoIaF fandom, especially before it went more mainstream, has been blunt, forthright, and shameless about its hatred for Cat, in sexist terms and otherwise. The same few phrases crop up on DeviantArt memes where people draw their least favorite characters. The same few insults get slung in the mess of vitriol on fan forums. So I'm going to take on the two most common accusations thrown at Cat Stark, and why I think they're so rampant.
1. "She's a bitch."
Of course. Frankly, it's almost like a black-humored champagne bottle for a fandom's maiden voyage once a major female characters gets casually called a bitch by fans: you know you're a real fandom now. Cat's no exception: this come up a lot. "She's a bitch." "She's really unlikeable." "She's so mean to people." "She doesn't like anyone." "She's a screaming harpy." "She's a crazy bitch." It's a repetitive misogynistic refrain, but we all know it's misogynistic -- the question is, why does it happen? What, in the eyes of a biased-against-women reading demographic, did she do so dreadfully wrong?
There are glaring places to start -- for one, one way to win a readership's ire is to mistreat characters they like better. Cat is not only unloving to Jon Snow, she also abducts and forces Tyrion Lannister to stand trial for a crime he didn't commit in what winds up being a harrowing experience at the Eyrie. But male characters show each other animosity all the time; many sympathetic male characters stubbornly refuse to see eye-to-eye in ASoIaF. With Tyrion, Cat has every reason to believe that he's guilty of attacking Bran, and brings him to the Eyrie to be imprisoned because as far as she knows her sister is on her side: once she realizes that Lysa's behavior is irrational and out of line, she doesn't support it, but it's beyond her power to stop. The mistake she makes with him is destructive, but it's not malicious, and she treats him no more cruelly than anyone else in Westeros does transporting a prisoner. Jon is a morally murkier case, as he's a child under her charge and her emotional distance from him and resentment impact him a fair bit. He's one of the main demonstrations of her more grudge-holding nature (until Lady Stoneheart, at any rate) and her feelings on him are a clear product of her own humiliation and repressed resentment of Ned: still, she takes care of him, she raises him with her kids, and she's cold rather than unkind save one outburst shortly after Jaime Lannister tries to kill Bran. It's a character flaw on her part, but stems clearly from her social position and the embarrassment of raising her husband's bastard in her own house, and primarily affects Jon emotionally.
She's got other flaws, of course, and makes other mistakes. She's self-righteous and sometimes arrogant in her opinions, can be judgmental and doubtful of other people, meddlesome to her family, classist and snobbish as any noble lady. She mothers and sometimes tries too hard to shelter or decide for Robb, and does the same for Edmure and Lysa in their own ways. She's awkward and emotionally reserved with Ned (and he with her), unwilling to quite back down or admit mistakes even when she knows she's made them. But she still functions as one of the most capable and level-headed POV characters the books have and her flaws are not much more spectacular than anyone else's in ASoIaF. They seem like they'd be enough to inspire apathy or mild aversion, not hate.
2. "She's whiny."
It's sort of funny to see Common Criticism of Female Character #1 paired with what should be its opposite, Common Criticism of Female Character #2, but then again, it's not, really. In fact, it's quite common. If the She's A Bitch theory asserts that she's too unkind to live up to standards, the She's Whiny one argues that she's too weak to.
This is a stranger criticism for Catelyn Stark, who pretty much never voices her feelings or misgivings to outside parties, even biting back most of them when speaking with her own husband Ned. It's hard to pick out instances in the books where she actually does anything that qualifies as whining out loud. She just doesn't have enough confidants. She sees herself as the pillar of her family, so she can hardly lean on them. And she has barely any non-family friends -- there's Petyr, whose motives she can never entirely trust and who she doesn't see for much of the books anyway, and Brienne of Tarth, who looks up to her. Save the brief and hostile company of Jaime and Tyrion Lannister, separately, she just doesn't get to interact with a lot of peers. It's not just that Cat's not a whining sort of person. She doesn't get the opportunity.
More validly, people call her out for being overly brooding, self-pitying, or gloomy in her viewpoint narration. This might be true, and is kind of subjective, since no one can actually declare what the limit for character gloominess is before it becomes annoying. She's got reason to be unhappy and worried, but then again, so does everyone in Westeros. What isn't so iffy is that readers who call Cat whiny can tolerate a hell of a lot more 'whining' from male characters' thoughts than they can from female ones. These are the books that feature Jon Snow, after all, who's almost as busy gazing at his own sad navel as Batman is, and Bran Stark, who spends many a chapter gloomily dwelling on his paralysis, among others. But Jon isn't the subject of the kind of widespread personal contempt for his emo ways the way Cat is, though it's hard to argue that he's one of the most over-the-toply pessimistic of the POV characters -- Cat broods and is bitter about her history and the position of her family, worries about Robb, and rarely finds things to be cheerful about. But it's not overpowering, or at least, it's not as overpowering as several others'. The difference being: Cat's a woman.
There's also a contingent that thought her reaction to the Freys' betrayal and witnessing the murder of her son in front of her was "hysterical" or "melodramatic," but given that this is positing that there's any such thing as a "too hysterical" reaction for a mom to have watching her teenaged kid be slaughtered in front of her, I'm not even going to dignify it with a rebuttal.
So why do these accusations come up, anyway?
My theory is that Cat Stark fails to fit the most common archetypes that people often find 'acceptable' in idealized fantasy-genre women: the Strong Woman, and the Virtuous Woman. The Strong Woman is not just outwardly assertive, but brash and outspoken and progressive, forward-thinking, ambitious, something of a reader stand-in where they might imagine they'd be so "asskicking" if they were born a woman in a sexist historical society. The Virtuous Woman is more of a perfect martyr, what TV Tropes might call a Staff Chick, kind, passive, loving, accepting, vulnerable, full of either gaiety or sorrow as it may be but in either case it's pretty. In both cases female characters who are young, and more importantly, single and without kids, wind up getting a better rap from fans: that classifies them as potential "love interests" for something (as if married women with children can't be), and given so many readers and writers see a romantic plotline as the be-all and end-all of a female character's existence, in this mindset a married woman essentially "already had her plot." They're more likely to shuffle her off into the hinterlands of characters they don't expect to be cool, and as a result, don't find her cool. Cat's neither a character most modern people could comfortably imagine themselves as, nor one who lives up to any Virgin Mary ideals of femininity and motherhood -- she's not a perfect mother, which is a grave sin in a world that demands all mothers be perfect mothers. She's scorned by so many because she isn't doing the "jobs" they expect from a female character.
It's clear there are plenty of reasons Cat might rub you wrong as a character, or you might not enjoy reading her chapters. But I think the reason she earns such widespread fandom hatred is that she fails to be an ideal woman in one way or another. It's one thing to dislike a character because you think they were poorly handled or not terribly sympathetic; it's another to do so because they're not living up to an impossible standard you've set them because it's what you've come to expect from characters of their type. Everyone thinks they're doing the former; few people have the perspective to realize when they're doing the latter. My hope this week is to lend some perspective.
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