womenlovefest day 1 2.0, meta, ASOIAF: three things Brienne of Tarth isn't,
I try my best to be just like I am, but everybody wants you to be just like them.
Maggie's Farm, Bob Dylan*
*this song couldn't fit less with ASOIAF generally, but those lines keep on screaming Brienne to me for some reason and it felt like a proper opening.
Or: hi and welcome to day one of Brienne appreciation for womenlovefest. My first day ended up being some very wordy meta that was probably so wordy because I've been thinking Brienne meta for a month and never wrote it down. Actually it got too long so I'm splitting it in two parts.
In my for now mostly lurking time around ASOIAF, the most bashing I’ve seen about Brienne mostly consists in the following arguments (from what I’ve seen): a) she’s boring and her POVs drag (probably shouldn’t be considered strictly bashing, but if you wish a character dead because their POVs are dragging I’d say it is), b) she’s too naïve to survive in a place like Westeros (and therefore unrealistic), c) she’s there just to be Jaime’s moral compass and the rest of her story is a waste of space, d) she’s there to appeal to feminist readers only (and therefore she’s useless). I haven’t seen anything about her having to just stay home and marry, but I’m sure it has to be somewhere. Considering that I hadn’t thought any of that while reading the books in a row this summer, I was kind of baffled by most of these. So I figured I could start addressing these (except her POVs dragging because I’m planning to do meta on that specifically).
Spoilers up to AFFC (mostly for her backstory - though there are some pretty huge ones - and for someone she meets - for the rest, strictly facts-related spoilers are up to ASOS).
1. Just Jaime’s moral compass (so her role in the story is basically over after ASOS): sorry but no. Saying that her only purpose in the plot was showing Jaime he could be a better person means doing her the biggest disservice you could. It’s as ridiculous as saying that wait, her only point was to be with Catelyn so that she could free Jaime.
I’m not saying that she didn’t influence him in honor-related matters, but I wouldn’t even agree with the moral compass definition - I think that whatever is going on between her and Jaime is a mix of hard-earned respect and reciprocal influence, it’s not just her showing him that he can be a good person or a better person than what Kingslayer suggests. For one she doesn’t stop calling him Kingslayer until he tells her about how exactly that bit went, but nonetheless she had pulled him out of his post-hand-loss suicidal mood a lot earlier than that - but I highly doubt she was anywhere near thinking she could influence him. On his part, he had started respecting her skills with a sword even before he lost his hand, and when he saves her from the bear pit, he’s thinking about not knowing what the hell he’s doing half of the time; it’s not that easy to pinpoint what exactly goes on between them and if he comes to think of her as his moral compass it’s not until they’ve gone through so much crap together that they ended up knowing each other a lot better than they had ever thought.
Brienne’s story started before she met Jaime, and I’d say that her interaction with Catelyn is not less important than her interaction with him (or with Renly, considering he was the reason she met Catelyn and was introduced in the story at all). While her story in AFFC was the result of her interaction with Jaime and he’s an integral part of her story as much as she’s an integral part of his, the point is that while she showed him that honor is worth a dime and that he can keep a vow once in a while, at the same time he was the one person trusting her/her skills for real (unless you think he sent her off with his priceless sword just to make fun of her, and if you do then we disagree). I see it as an even thing where she gave him something and he gave her something else back - it wasn’t just her being his shining light in the dark. Saying that nothing of import happened to her after is also not something I’d agree with - her POVs in AFFC are the only ones where we actually get to see the effects of the war on the common people, and I wouldn’t say that it’s nothing. Through her eyes we get to see a lot of supposedly minor characters also for the first time (IE Sam’s father, the people on the Quiet Isle) which will probably turn out to be fairly important later. The way I see it, it’s the kind of understated storytelling that turns out to be major in later books while giving you full insight on the POV character; it doesn’t mean that she’s wandering aimlessly until she connects back to the main plot at the end.
2. So naïve that it becomes borderline stupid: the fact that Brienne thinks that in the songs ladies are always beautiful and it’s always summer and knighthood is the Best Thing Ever, and that she doesn’t know what sarcasm means, doesn’t mean that she’s stupid or that she needs a reality check. I’m very intrigued by how the theme is dealt with Brienne and with Sansa (who has the exact same problem - she needs to learn that songs aren’t real), but the way I see it, they’re coming from two completely different places. Sansa needs a reality check because she thinks that life works like a song, but she comes from a place where her life was a song. She’s a highborn lady, she’s beautiful, she was raised far from the main court so she can afford to have a romanticized view of court life, she’s about to be married to what is a handsome prince to her; she has no reason to think that songs aren’t real until her prince puts her father’s head in front of her. Brienne doesn’t need a reality check because she already had it. Her world isn’t a song, but she wants to be in one anyway.
From AFFC:
I was not always wary. When I was a little girl I believed that all men were as noble as my father. Even the men who told her what a pretty girl she was, how tall and bright and clever, how graceful when she danced. It was her septa who had lifted the scales from her eyes. "You’ll find truth in your looking-glass, not on the tongues of men." It was a harsh lesson, one that left her weeping, but it had stood her in good stead.
Coming from personal experience: when you’re told something like this, you get enough of a reality check. Another thing that you get from reading her AFFC POVs: she wants so desperately to be a knight because swordfighting is the one thing that comes natural to her. She doesn’t feel out of place with a sword the way she feels out of place with a gown. She knows that her only chance to do something good in life is putting her skill to use and be a knight. She doesn’t have a chance of being the fair maiden in any of said songs, but she can be the knight, and that’s why she takes vows and oaths and knighthood so seriously. At least it means that if she dies she gets to live in those songs where everyone is beautiful and it’s always summer. Is it naïve? Surely. But I think she perfectly knows how the world works. It’s that she needs to think that somewhere it doesn’t work that way, and that makes her naïve, but it doesn’t make her any less smart.
Regarding that: she is. Brienne doesn’t have the Tyrion/Littlefinger/Tywin kind of smarts, but she knows what the hell she’s doing. She won Renly’s melee when there were a lot of skilled people fighting for him. In ASOS, Jaime was surprised at himself because he approved of her strategy. She never went into a fight just for the sake of proving that she’s awesome at using a sword. While most men she meets think she’s a joke, she’s more competent at what she does than all of them put together. Brienne isn’t wandering around Westeros because she thinks it’s a game. She wasn’t thinking it at the beginning and she isn’t thinking it now. If I know GRRM she’ll end up realizing that songs really suck tout-court without exceptions, and both me and her will cry bitter tears, but it doesn’t make her naivety a character fault. (In my head it’s kind of tragic, but that’s subjective.)
3. A feminist stereotype/a character put there to make feminists happy: I don’t see it. Is Brienne a strong woman? Surely. Does she compete with men on their field? Sure. Does she care about her gender? Yes, but she never makes it a question of men versus women. She never tries to pass for a man or to hide her gender. Brienne wants to be a knight regardless of her gender, but I can’t remember a moment in her POVs where she resented being a woman or where she put it in ‘shit if I only I was a man’ terms.
From AFFC.
He [my father] deserves a daughter who could sing to him and grace his hall and bear him grandsons. He deserves a son too, a strong and gallant son to bring honor to his name. But I’m the only child the gods saw him fit to keep, the freakish one, not fit to be a son or daughter.
With that she implies that she can’t be either but most of her problems come from the fact that she’s an ugly woman, not that she’s a woman tout-court. The problem is that she doesn’t fit - she never thinks I don’t fit because I’m a woman. She doesn’t try to behave like a man or to pretend to be anything that she isn’t. She’s a good knight and a bad lady, but not one who’s resentful for not being a man.
Out of anyone, I’d say that Cersei is one that has problems with being a woman and who has it figured out in her head and knows perfectly the way it goes. But Brienne is outside Cersei’s feminism - if a woman’s beauty is her only weapon then it doesn’t work because Brienne isn’t beautiful (and I think she’s the person who gets more rape threats in the entire lot from what I remember, or if she isn’t she’s up there - not really a case of using your beauty to get where you want). Would men accept her more willingly if she was a skilled fighter and a beauty at the same time? Worth pondering. I wouldn’t say for sure, but it’d have made her life easier even if to her it doesn’t really make a difference. It’s not a question of gender equality - she wants to be taken seriously for what she is. I don’t really think that she was made to fit a feminist stereotype. She’s there for her own story, which is also a pretty damn unique one; saying that she’s a stereotype is limited. And another disservice to her character. (If anything Asha should be more of a stereotype because she’s a lot more comfortable with herself than Brienne, but then again Ironborns are another entire thing and anyway I don't think that Asha is a stereotype.)
In the next meta episode tomorrow (er, later today for me): three things that, according to me, Brienne is and that are imo overlooked half of the time.