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We Love the Women Fandom Hates: Catelyn Stark (Day 5: Lady Stoneheart)
My God, it's full of spoilers. No, seriously, today really is, so if you have any intention of reading to A Storm of Swords skip right on by. (Thanks to ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
relia for the idea suggestion for today's essay!)
Lady Stoneheart
"Then we will kill them all."
If you haven't read Storm, turn back, O man, forswear thy foolish ways.
If you have, then you might know that Lady Stoneheart, or the undead Catelyn resurrected by Beric Dondarrion at the end of A Storm of Swords, is a bit of a controversial decision on Martin's part among fans. As well it would be: the Red Wedding is still possibly the most shocking and disheartening single event in the ASoIaF books to date, including Ned's infamous death at the end of Game. Within a handful of pages Cat goes from one of the main protagonist POVs in the series to being suddenly betrayed and murdered to rising again as a deathless, vengeful monster. It's arguable that "Lady Stoneheart," or so the Brotherhood Without Banners and those who spread rumors have dubbed undead Cat, barely counts as Cat at all -- raised three days after her murder at the hands of the Freys, she's mad with grief from witnessing Robb's murder seconds before her own and focused through death into a singleminded, indiscriminate minister of revenge. She doesn't much resemble Lady Catelyn any more, and not just in body.
Still, even if Cat's not quite Cat after her death and resurrection, her death, resurrection, and existence as a zombie do affect how she's perceived as a character. It's unclear how exactly Beric Dondarrion's resurrection powers work (magic rarely comes with a manual in Westeros), but it seems like her last thoughts and feelings in life have been funneled into her new undead shell. However, outwardly this can be construed as "zombie Catelyn is just Catelyn gone a bit angry and crazy but distilled down to her fundamental personality as a character"; there's no insinuation that this is the actual intent with Lady Stoneheart, as for all we know any character could be driven to become something like a Lady Stoneheart after experiencing a Red Wedding. It still contributes to the idea that Cat is a woman who becomes a crazy vengeful zombie-woman who's hysterically obsessed with retribution and her dead children, that is, a woman who could be susceptible to that kind of corruption: like we discussed earlier, not an idealized fantasy woman. Let's review.
Women and revenge are never a comfortable subject for fiction in the first place. While men and revenge are often glamorously rolled together with justice to some degree, whether it's Prince Hamlet or the Count of Monte Cristo or the Demon Barber of Fleet Street, all tragic and all a bit gothic and idolized, pursuing vengeance evidences grudge-holding, anger, vindictiveness, and violent tendencies, which are rarely glorified in fictional women. Vengefulness in men is powerful. Vengefulness in women is... uncomfortable. Any woman getting reincarnated as a Lady Stoneheart in ASoIaF would've cast a pall on her character overall, but if a dead Robb Stark had instead been transfigured into a grim and obsessed seeker of capital justice for himself and his family he might've stood a stronger chance of jumping a few points up in popular coolness esteem. Catelyn's not seen as a perversely badass figure, though: just a straight-up creepy monster, disturbing, a little pathetic, far fallen from her ladylike self. Of course, she's all of these things as Lady Stoneheart, but the difference in probable reception is striking. It's not doing Cat any favors in popular opinion, that's for sure -- if they thought she was a bitch before, lucky for them, now she's a vindictive harpy.
Cat's vendetta is focused on people who've wronged her family, specifically the Freys, Boltons, and Lannisters, and any who associate with them, without regard to specificity or whether the person in question was actually associated with any of their crimes. This obsession with family is definitely feminized in cultural terms; from ghost stories to sensational infanticide cases in the press, if hell hath no fury like a woman scorned, hell hath no madness like a woman deprived of her children. If she's already an imperfect mother, which she is, as just about nobody gets to be a perfect anything in ASoIaF, she's now an imperfect mother who compensates for her powerlessness to protect her children in life with a fixation on avenging them in death. It's a common horror trope and evokes disgust and pity in a reader, not usually admiration. The underlying cultural assumption is that a sufficiently strong or virtuous woman would be able to avoid succumbing to this kind of madness, or would have protected her family better in the first place. Of course, Cat was no more capable than the readers of predicting how petty and cruel Walder Frey would turn out to be, but when evaluating their overall opinion of Cat's moral fiber and levelheadedness is it unlikely that her descent into postmortem insanity might weigh in?
Furthermore, there's the matter again of picking on good characters. Lady Stoneheart is incredibly frustrating because of her blind inability or unwillingness to sort the wheat from the chaff and the innocent from the guilty. Brienne of Tarth, who swore an oath of fealty and to find and protect Cat's daughter not too long prior, is strung up and coerced into betraying Jaime Lannister because of her association with him. Given how sympathetic Brienne is, it's very hard not to be angry with undead Catelyn and her inability to see reason at this point. Similarly, her first introduction is when she orders the deaths of innocent men at the hands of the Brotherhood Without Banners thanks to their family associations. She's even more unreasonable than Lysa was and has all the braking power of a freight train at high speed. She's not meant to be reader-liked, just reader-feared, which is a problem when she's bundled with Catelyn's character in general.
Whether Lady Stoneheart was a wise or unproblematic narrative choice on the writer's part would be the subject of a different meta post. She's a shattering change in the storyline up to that point, though, and marks the end of Catelyn Stark's character as we know it. Then again, it doesn't, is the problem. Ending on a solely tragic, victimized note might've garnered Cat more sympathy; continuing onto a creepy vengeance storyline spurred by it undercuts that. That's unfair, but it happens, particularly when words like "hysterical" and "irrational" creep into descriptions of her final actions at the Red Wedding. Freaking out in despair as your teenaged son is slaughtered in front of you is hardly hysterical. Lady Stoneheart is probably about as rational as a murdered zombie is capable of being. But she's not Catelyn Stark.
relia for the idea suggestion for today's essay!)Lady Stoneheart
"Then we will kill them all."
If you haven't read Storm, turn back, O man, forswear thy foolish ways.
If you have, then you might know that Lady Stoneheart, or the undead Catelyn resurrected by Beric Dondarrion at the end of A Storm of Swords, is a bit of a controversial decision on Martin's part among fans. As well it would be: the Red Wedding is still possibly the most shocking and disheartening single event in the ASoIaF books to date, including Ned's infamous death at the end of Game. Within a handful of pages Cat goes from one of the main protagonist POVs in the series to being suddenly betrayed and murdered to rising again as a deathless, vengeful monster. It's arguable that "Lady Stoneheart," or so the Brotherhood Without Banners and those who spread rumors have dubbed undead Cat, barely counts as Cat at all -- raised three days after her murder at the hands of the Freys, she's mad with grief from witnessing Robb's murder seconds before her own and focused through death into a singleminded, indiscriminate minister of revenge. She doesn't much resemble Lady Catelyn any more, and not just in body.
Still, even if Cat's not quite Cat after her death and resurrection, her death, resurrection, and existence as a zombie do affect how she's perceived as a character. It's unclear how exactly Beric Dondarrion's resurrection powers work (magic rarely comes with a manual in Westeros), but it seems like her last thoughts and feelings in life have been funneled into her new undead shell. However, outwardly this can be construed as "zombie Catelyn is just Catelyn gone a bit angry and crazy but distilled down to her fundamental personality as a character"; there's no insinuation that this is the actual intent with Lady Stoneheart, as for all we know any character could be driven to become something like a Lady Stoneheart after experiencing a Red Wedding. It still contributes to the idea that Cat is a woman who becomes a crazy vengeful zombie-woman who's hysterically obsessed with retribution and her dead children, that is, a woman who could be susceptible to that kind of corruption: like we discussed earlier, not an idealized fantasy woman. Let's review.
Women and revenge are never a comfortable subject for fiction in the first place. While men and revenge are often glamorously rolled together with justice to some degree, whether it's Prince Hamlet or the Count of Monte Cristo or the Demon Barber of Fleet Street, all tragic and all a bit gothic and idolized, pursuing vengeance evidences grudge-holding, anger, vindictiveness, and violent tendencies, which are rarely glorified in fictional women. Vengefulness in men is powerful. Vengefulness in women is... uncomfortable. Any woman getting reincarnated as a Lady Stoneheart in ASoIaF would've cast a pall on her character overall, but if a dead Robb Stark had instead been transfigured into a grim and obsessed seeker of capital justice for himself and his family he might've stood a stronger chance of jumping a few points up in popular coolness esteem. Catelyn's not seen as a perversely badass figure, though: just a straight-up creepy monster, disturbing, a little pathetic, far fallen from her ladylike self. Of course, she's all of these things as Lady Stoneheart, but the difference in probable reception is striking. It's not doing Cat any favors in popular opinion, that's for sure -- if they thought she was a bitch before, lucky for them, now she's a vindictive harpy.
Cat's vendetta is focused on people who've wronged her family, specifically the Freys, Boltons, and Lannisters, and any who associate with them, without regard to specificity or whether the person in question was actually associated with any of their crimes. This obsession with family is definitely feminized in cultural terms; from ghost stories to sensational infanticide cases in the press, if hell hath no fury like a woman scorned, hell hath no madness like a woman deprived of her children. If she's already an imperfect mother, which she is, as just about nobody gets to be a perfect anything in ASoIaF, she's now an imperfect mother who compensates for her powerlessness to protect her children in life with a fixation on avenging them in death. It's a common horror trope and evokes disgust and pity in a reader, not usually admiration. The underlying cultural assumption is that a sufficiently strong or virtuous woman would be able to avoid succumbing to this kind of madness, or would have protected her family better in the first place. Of course, Cat was no more capable than the readers of predicting how petty and cruel Walder Frey would turn out to be, but when evaluating their overall opinion of Cat's moral fiber and levelheadedness is it unlikely that her descent into postmortem insanity might weigh in?
Furthermore, there's the matter again of picking on good characters. Lady Stoneheart is incredibly frustrating because of her blind inability or unwillingness to sort the wheat from the chaff and the innocent from the guilty. Brienne of Tarth, who swore an oath of fealty and to find and protect Cat's daughter not too long prior, is strung up and coerced into betraying Jaime Lannister because of her association with him. Given how sympathetic Brienne is, it's very hard not to be angry with undead Catelyn and her inability to see reason at this point. Similarly, her first introduction is when she orders the deaths of innocent men at the hands of the Brotherhood Without Banners thanks to their family associations. She's even more unreasonable than Lysa was and has all the braking power of a freight train at high speed. She's not meant to be reader-liked, just reader-feared, which is a problem when she's bundled with Catelyn's character in general.
Whether Lady Stoneheart was a wise or unproblematic narrative choice on the writer's part would be the subject of a different meta post. She's a shattering change in the storyline up to that point, though, and marks the end of Catelyn Stark's character as we know it. Then again, it doesn't, is the problem. Ending on a solely tragic, victimized note might've garnered Cat more sympathy; continuing onto a creepy vengeance storyline spurred by it undercuts that. That's unfair, but it happens, particularly when words like "hysterical" and "irrational" creep into descriptions of her final actions at the Red Wedding. Freaking out in despair as your teenaged son is slaughtered in front of you is hardly hysterical. Lady Stoneheart is probably about as rational as a murdered zombie is capable of being. But she's not Catelyn Stark.