My Dear Lady Disdain

Shmoop.com is a Sparknotes-like website whose aim is “To make learning and writing more fun and relevant for students in the digital age.”  Per their own description, “We’re educators and experts. We’re from Ph.D. and Masters programs at Stanford, Harvard, UC Berkeley (and other top universities). The vast majority of our writers have taught at the high school or college levels.”  Under their self-contained bestsellers section hey have a “new!” addition: ASOIAF’s first book, A Game of Thrones.

Linked is their analysis of Cat’s character. The book is big and the website is only in the business of briefing, so a lengthy dissection is not on the table. Still, even a short piece can be accurate and quality. Certainly in my own life, being brief and yet comprehensive has been not only preferable, but some degree of necessary (despite the fact that I am bad at it … but then nobody hires me to write websites with self-professed goals of informativeness).

It’s pretty run of the mill as far as conception of Cat’s character goes, but that’s exactly why I make note of it — this is the rap, egregiously definitively so, of the character.  Catelyn is introduced as “Mama Direwolf”, an innocuous moniker in itself and, if you keep in mind that most people approach ASOIAF from a plot-first, theme-fourth perspective, a fairly sensible one.  What isn’t either necessary or impressive is how Cat-as-mother is handle by the rest of the piece.

Catelyn Stark is like sitcom mom from the 1950s, like Leave it to Beaver or Father Knows Best: she means well, but she sometimes messes up (like when she captures Tyrion and then lets him get away).

This is a pretty, well, inane statement, putting aside the in-text issue of Cat’s arrest of Tyrion itself. There is nothing about a 1950’s sitcom mom stereotype that ever significantly spotlighted good intentions coupled with a tendency to fuck up. What prompts a person to write a statement like that? June Cleaver’s many faux-pas? Tell me if I’m wrong, please. But I don’t think I am. It’s an empty attempt to appear Knowledgable about female character types, I suppose, at best sincere and pitifully off.

There’s also the fact that medieval noblewomen are actually significantly different from 1950s housewife stereotypes.  But hey, why let a little thing like accuracy distract you from  catchy *cough* and witty *cough* generalizations that you are probably used to getting away with when talking about pop culture because, duh, moms aren’t exactly main character material or anything, so why bother when you’re not going to score with a demo?

In this way, Mrs. Stark is kind of like a female version of her husband, Eddard. There’s one big difference, though. Whereas Ned is a great dad even to other people’s kids (like Theon Greyjoy), Catelyn is very focused on her own kids – and not even on all of them, for that matter. For instance, when Bran is in a coma, Catelyn pretty much forgets her other children momentarily (15 Catelyn 3). And even when Sansa and Arya (and Eddard) may be in danger, she thinks only about protecting her son Robb by sending him home to Winterfell (56 Catelyn 8).

Probably the most irritating part of the analysis.  Theon’s recollection of his relationship with Ned goes (paraphrase): “Oh sure, Ned Stark had tried to be a father to him.  Sort of.  Now and then.  But LBR I wasn’t really impressed.”  If that counts as a “great dad”, you just know that the standards for praise-worthy fathering is a pretty low bar. 

Again, if I am wrong, tell me, but I don’t think I am: it’s hard to see this comparison being made without the Jon Snow issue.  Catelyn, of course, does not simply refuse to mother Jon because he is not hers, but because he is not hers and simultaneously is her husband’s, and since she is the only wife he’s ever had this means Jon is a product of Ned’s infidelity against her.  Theon Greyjoy is, of course, no such symbol of Cat’s infidelity.  Theon Greyjoy, additionally, is someone Ned chose to accept responsibility for, as a political necessity.  Jon Snow is someone Cat never was allowed to choose responsibility for, and by all appearances, was never even expected to by anyone. 

The comparison between the two parents is exacerbated because one of Ned’s themes in the book is that innocent children should not be killed as collateral damage.  This is, of course, a noble conviction.  But it has nothing to do with Ned’s parenting, vs Cat’s or on its own.  I would expect this same conviction from people who have no children, who have sworn off children, etc.  Certainly there is no special reward that is earned specifically from being a father who feels this way. 

Let us not also forget (though I’m sure many will, or claim that it’s not important merely because they were ignorant of the situation) that Cat’s story arc simply does not allow her to express any similar convictions; yet that does not make it logical to assume she does not have them (it’s actually really illogical).  In fact she is pretty horrified to learn that the young lord of Darry, a mere boy, was killed in the ensuing war.  Cat simply does not come across “other people’s children” very often in the book, and Jon Snow is more than just “somebody else’s child” but also a product of her husband’s infidelity.

To think this comparison is legitimate (it is not) is one thing; but to say it is the greatest difference between Ned and Catelyn Stark is quite another.  Probably far more relevant and interesting to the themes the website itself discusses is how Catelyn is more pragmatic and Ned is more idealistic, or how Catelyn is limited and shaped by gender limitations that don’t affect Ned.  Or perhaps how Ned is so much more immersed and haunted by his memories while Cat puts the past in the past to such an extent that more than one dudebro has accused her of willful self delusion.

And yet.  The fixation is on Cat’s self-centeredness as a mother.

This doesn’t mean that she loves some of her children more, it just means… well, okay, maybe she loves some of her children more.

One of the most mind-boggling aspect of how this fandom discusses motherhood is all the “evidence” they use to conclude that Cat is bad at thinking of and loving all her children.  Focusing on Bran when Bran is the one dying is weird and unusual and requires the explanation that Cat is a favoritist.  Recognizing that Robb is in danger and that she is only present to help him requires the conclusion that she is unaware that her other children are in danger because she hasn’t proven on the page that she has sufficiently suffered worry for the others and so it cannot possibly be.

It’s terribly unreasonable, and the worst part of this fandom is how people talk with such self-assuredness in spite of the poor thought process. It’s not quite smug, but only because you know that this is actually probably the limit of their intellectual grasp.  But that doesn’t make it less frustrating, because surely, people with Ph.D. and Masters programs at Stanford, Harvard, UC Berkeley, and other top universities, who have taught at the high school or college levels, are actually capable of better. 

See, it’s one thing when someone is at their intellectual limit; you can say that there is an imperative to make people feel bad about their intellectual limits because then it’ll motivate them to grow, but that’s not me. I actually have, as far as I can tell, a fairly average idea of what to expect from people: do your best. And it’s when I can see how smart some people in this fandom are that I get frustrated when they refuse to exercise that intelligence with this character because — well, why?  Because she’s Mom?  Because she doesn’t like Jon Snow?  Because she’s Mom but doesn’t like Jon Snow?

There’s this curious little parenthetical after announcing that Cat is from House Tully - “rival family alert!” Is House Tully supposed to be a rival family to House Stark? Hard to reconcile that with their narrative role as House Stark’s unwavering allies. Is it to refer to the armed hostilities between houses Tully and Lannister? That’s pretty low down on the profile of house animosities in the book, and there’s certainly nothing storied about it that sets it above and beyond the tensions between a lot of these houses. So maybe you can understand why all I am seeing here is a thoughtless reaction to the fact that House Tully is Not Jon Snow’s Family.

And so then we come to the elephant in the room.  Whoever wrote the AGOT feature states outright that Jon Snow is one of “our” favorites, which is a fine statement, but not really a professional inclusion.  Even that aside, though, it does kind of explain why, when I read their multiple assurances of, “Oh don’t get us wrong now we love Cat and all” it is hard to find any sincerity in it. 

And I think that’s one thing that I fail and I fail to understand in this fandom, why it’s more important to be emptily reassured than to seek out true understanding.  I’m not always the most suave person and I can deal with the ramifications of that; but I can’t help but also feel that there’s a fundamental weirdness in how people react to discussion of characters that has nothing to with curiosity or wanting to understand, but rather defensiveness of one’s officious assertions.  I don’t know what it is with this text, maybe because it seems like such a validating prize if one can claim to be the authoritative grasper of something so vast.  But it’d behoove people to actually do a close reading of the text first, before any throwing of weight is done.  If you do a close and intelligent reading of the text first, as far as I’m concerned you’re welcome to all the fandom fame and clout and whatever you want.

Painfully, shmoop tries to make it clear that they do — no really! believe them! they do! — like Cat.  Sometimes they are promising, like when they point out the unique perspective that Catelyn Tully, who later married a Stark, provides on the North.  Other times though:

You know what else Eddard couldn’t have done? Given birth to five kids. Doesn’t Catelyn Stark deserve some rest after that?

Yeah dudes, you, like, totally respect moms and stuff.  I get it.

Questions, comments, concerns, reblogs, replies, and rants are welcome, because I am ready and waiting and oh so willing for this debate.  Because I’ve had it.