George R.R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire is a remarkable feminist epic.
Maisie Williams as Arya Stark at her “dancing lessons” in Season 1.
…nowhere is the unexpected subversive energy of A Song of Ice and Fire more in evidence than in its treatment of its female characters—the element that has provoked the strongest controversy in discussions of the HBO adaptation.2
Almost from the start, Martin weaves a bright feminist thread into his grand tapestry. It begins early on in the first book, when he introduces the two Stark daughters. The eldest, Sansa, is an auburn-haired beauty who loves reading courtly romances, does perfect needlework, and always dresses beautifully; in striking contrast to this conventional young woman is the “horsefaced” younger daughter, Arya, who hates petit point and would rather learn how to wield a sword. (Later on, she gets a sword that she sardonically names “Needle”: she too, as we will see, plays for keeps.) At one point early in the first novel Arya asks her father whether she can grow up to “be a king’s councilor and build castles”; he replies that she will “marry a king and rule his castle.” The canny girl viciously retorts, “No, that’s Sansa.”
Read The Women and the Thrones by Daniel Mendelsohn in the NYRB.
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October 22nd, 2013 at 12:36
Your Grace, if ever GRRMartin puts either Dany or Arya on the Iron Throne in the end of the books, then this is absolutely put Martin in the great feminist company, similar to comics greats Greg Rucka, Joss Whedon and Ed Brubaker (well, Martin is a comics geek like me, Your Grace).