an unsolicited ramble about Jon Snow
So in my Jon/Ygritte post a few days ago I said I was going to hold off on doing my whole thing about Jon and bastardry, and then in comments I started inadvertently doing my whole thing about Jon and bastardry anyway, so I thought I'd write at least some of it out.
I don’t have books or DVDs available to me right now and I haven’t reread/rewatched the story in either medium, and so I can’t quite do the chapter-and-verse kind of character analysis I’d like to put behind this, but still, I love the way that Jon’s POV functions as an exploration of…I don’t know how best to say this, but…intra-familial invisible difference, I guess? Jon spent his formative years as the odd one out, being the only member of his family unit who was part of a discrete and marginalized social group, one which cannot be seen by the naked eye but which no less permeates his identity. Jon has a chip on his shoulder and a shame complex a mile wide. He clings closely to his concepts of honor and integrity as if he can somehow earn social acknowledgement through being ~good enough, morally and practically. He consciously chafes at the unfairness of his social station, even though he’s clearly internalized a great deal of it. He has a more expansive and critical view than most of his social system and is therefore more open to learning from and acclimating to others, but this comes at the expense of his ability to feel truly secure in group membership even if he chases that security to the end of the world. I know the fannish consensus is to write him off as the conventional young hero archetype, but tbh he rings as true to me as anyone in the series, including fan favorites like Sansa and the Lannisters.
(I, er. May relate in a lot of ways.)
But there is some worldbuilding stuff which has stuck, and which is really interesting to me. I’m not sure how much Martin intended to explore certain sociological dynamics through Jon’s illegitimacy. And certainly, the psychology of invisible difference is there with Jon. But there are some specifics of the social system that defines him which it really amazes me that people don’t get?
…..OH, I SEE.
I’m not saying it’s quite as simple as “bastard = gay,” not least because of how glad I am that there are canonically GLBQ characters in this ‘verse. What I am saying is that once you look past the swords-and-sorcerers worldbuilding details, many (all?) of the sociological functions and mechanisms of Westerosi shunning of bastards are functionally indistinguishable from sociological functions and mechanisms of modern Western (particularly USian) homophobia.
Illegitimacy is an established aspect of Westerosi society and a real world concept; however, I do not think that bastardry in the ASOIAF ‘verse should be received by the reader as a reflection of illegitimacy qua illegitimacy as it exists in the real world. Rather, we should receive it as a challenge to certain implicit biases and social fictions which occur in our own understandings of real world phenomena. This entry was originally posted at http://pocochina.dreamwidth.org/324119.html. Leave a comment here, or there using OpenID.
I don’t have books or DVDs available to me right now and I haven’t reread/rewatched the story in either medium, and so I can’t quite do the chapter-and-verse kind of character analysis I’d like to put behind this, but still, I love the way that Jon’s POV functions as an exploration of…I don’t know how best to say this, but…intra-familial invisible difference, I guess? Jon spent his formative years as the odd one out, being the only member of his family unit who was part of a discrete and marginalized social group, one which cannot be seen by the naked eye but which no less permeates his identity. Jon has a chip on his shoulder and a shame complex a mile wide. He clings closely to his concepts of honor and integrity as if he can somehow earn social acknowledgement through being ~good enough, morally and practically. He consciously chafes at the unfairness of his social station, even though he’s clearly internalized a great deal of it. He has a more expansive and critical view than most of his social system and is therefore more open to learning from and acclimating to others, but this comes at the expense of his ability to feel truly secure in group membership even if he chases that security to the end of the world. I know the fannish consensus is to write him off as the conventional young hero archetype, but tbh he rings as true to me as anyone in the series, including fan favorites like Sansa and the Lannisters.
(I, er. May relate in a lot of ways.)
But there is some worldbuilding stuff which has stuck, and which is really interesting to me. I’m not sure how much Martin intended to explore certain sociological dynamics through Jon’s illegitimacy. And certainly, the psychology of invisible difference is there with Jon. But there are some specifics of the social system that defines him which it really amazes me that people don’t get?
- Bastard status does legally deprive an individual of certain rights and privileges which are accorded to similarly-situated “trueborn” individuals, but it affects the social status and psychological development even (and perhaps especially) of bastards who have no reasonable expectation that they’d ever be able to exercise those rights and privileges themselves.
- Bastards are marked as distinctly Other in order to uphold a certain social/religious fiction which serves a system that depends on an unrealistic degree of control over human sexuality. Bastards are reviled through/because of an association with unconstrained sexuality, “natural” in polite company and “baseborn” colloquially.
- Their perceived position of influence is used to silence criticisms of the social systems which disadvantage them relative to their “trueborn” peers, since they are still seen as having more than they are entitled to (because they have it so good how dare they ~complain), even though the question of whether or not they are entitled to something which similarly-situated people may take for granted is in and of itself illustrative of their second-class status. Of course, bastards who lack the social status which is imputed to them are really up shit creek, vulnerable to the perils of aristocratic intrigue without any of its protections, as we see with Gendry the fugitive - and, more to the point, his numerous murdered brothers and sisters.
- That perceived position of influence which is cited as proof of the irrelevance of discrimination against bastards is simultaneously used to justify the discrimination against bastards. They’re too powerful. They’ll take over. They’re deceptive, untrue, they can’t be trusted. They’re not us. They’re not normal. They’ll destabilize the family and the country. They are dangerous. They must be stopped.
- This socially-ingrained fear of the Other as a threat to family and honor, combined with the fact that bastards are almost necessarily born to families which are mostly made up of “trueborn” members of society, leads to complex entanglement of personal and political within formative intimate family units, as we see with Catelyn’s resentment of Jon. In turn, bastards may or may not harbor Daemon Blackfyre’s destabilizing resentment toward Westerosi society, but they seem more likely than their “trueborn” peers to question or transgress other social norms, for example, Jon Snow’s responsiveness to the wildlings’ philosophy or Obara Sand’s rejection of conventional femininity.
- Dorne, which creates its independent regional identity in part by holding itself out as more sophisticated and enlightened than the rest of Westeros on matters of gender and sexuality, is known for its socially blasé attitudes about bastardry, although illegitimacy as a marked social category still exists in Dornish law and society. Currently, the best-known Dornish bastards are the Sand Snakes, a group of women also notable for their accomplishments outside of traditional Westerosi feminine roles. Wrt their position as Westerosi women this is kind of cool, but it’s worth pointing out that because they are women they pose a lower risk to the whole inheritance system, since they’re much less likely than Dornish male bastards to fracture their lines of inheritance with bastards of their own, and they pose virtually no threat to the centralized system of inheritance. The increased flexibility in their gender and bastard status benefits them personally, but it does little to engage with the legitimacy system as a whole.
…..OH, I SEE.
I’m not saying it’s quite as simple as “bastard = gay,” not least because of how glad I am that there are canonically GLBQ characters in this ‘verse. What I am saying is that once you look past the swords-and-sorcerers worldbuilding details, many (all?) of the sociological functions and mechanisms of Westerosi shunning of bastards are functionally indistinguishable from sociological functions and mechanisms of modern Western (particularly USian) homophobia.
Illegitimacy is an established aspect of Westerosi society and a real world concept; however, I do not think that bastardry in the ASOIAF ‘verse should be received by the reader as a reflection of illegitimacy qua illegitimacy as it exists in the real world. Rather, we should receive it as a challenge to certain implicit biases and social fictions which occur in our own understandings of real world phenomena. This entry was originally posted at http://pocochina.dreamwidth.org/324119.html. Leave a comment here, or there using OpenID.