My Dear Lady Disdain

I think people react to the outrageous amounts of hate that Catelyn gets.  They get tired of her being boiled down to how she treats Jon.  A lot of female character fans get tired of female characters being judged primarily if not solely on how they behave to male characters.

I don’t think her coldness was right, nor do I think it’s wrong.  She was within her rights to remove herself from him.  She did not interfere with him bonding with her kids or his father, she did not withhold information about his mother from him, she did not keep him from being fed, or clothed, or instructed.  Maybe when you see people objecting to people faulting her for being cold, what you interpret as them saying it is right is actually them saying it is moral-value-neutral.

I don’t think I have seen Cat fans be dismissive of Jon’s feelings, but rather the idea that Jon’s feelings mean that Cat ought to have behaved differently.  That because Jon felt bad, Cat ought to have been a mother to him.  I don’t think anyone is at all dismissive of Jon until they realize that Cat is judged only by Jon.  I’m not much of a Jon fan at all but the closest I ever came to truly empathizing with him was “It should have been you.”  I think his resentment of Cat is perfectly normal and if it wasn’t there he’d be an intolerably nauseatingly perfect character.

But what I don’t get, or like, is the idea that just because Jon is upset, we must conclude that Cat is a bitch, or Cat is a child abuser, or Cat should have done something differently.  In the grand scheme of things, Cat could have done some things differently, sure, and it would’ve said good things about her if she had.

But the brunt of the angst re. Jon’s childhood really belongs on Ned’s shoulders, as the one with any power in this situation to change anything.  Which, fine, if you don’t want to hate Ned for it or whatever, that’s fine.  I certainly don’t hate Ned.

So, IDK what to tell you, anon, other than look at the entire argument head to tail and really think if people are saying that Cat ought to have been cold to Jon or that Cat is not obligated to be warm to Jon.  Those are different stances, and the nuance is worth grasping.