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So I'm doing my meta post on GRRM's Dying of the Light and I found a quote or few that helps me rephrase this women-and-GRRM questionthing I seem to keep dancing around:
Emphases mine. OKAY, so I think GRRM knows that there is a certain disregarding of women in the stories and traditions that he draws from, and I think I sense that within ASOIAF itself, so that is why I hesitate to say that he is simply ignorant. There are things he is ignorant of, but while those things are definitely problems (I doubt he thought long about the lesbian fanservice thing, for example), there are some things I feel he knows are problems, and incorporates into his story because they're problems, because that is the way stories have been always told and this enables some kind of indictment. The question is, does this intentionality equal satisfactory reading? If not, is it because the intentionality isn't clear enough, or because it doesn't do enough in terms of controlling the flow of the story? Or is it simply that saying "I'm sorry women have had it hard" will never be as pleasing as saying "Here, women, pull up a chair at the table and have some pie" (or as the case may be, "Here, women, take the gun with your name on it and make a go of it") ... ?
THERE, I think I said it! Hahah, even if you have nothing new to say about this now-tired topic, at least be glad for me that I found a satisfactory way to get my thinky thought out. :D
[DW | LJ]
and that's a big part of your problem, isn't it? On High Kavalaan it's not man and woman. No, it's man and man and maybe woman, but even then she's not so terribly important
She lay there, alive only by a quirk of fortune. Myrik Braith would not have cared had she died, nor would the others. Yet Garse would have granted the man who did this thing a clean and decent dying, would have given him the kiss of shared honor before taking his small life. I ... I care for Garse. Yet I could not let it be, t'Larien, not when Gwen lay so ... so still, and disregarded. I could not let it be.
These stories - these were the only accounts of ancient days that I was given to work with.
Maybe I couldn't kill anyone. But, you know, I feel as if I could sometimes. And right now, Dirk, I would very much like to have a gun.
Emphases mine. OKAY, so I think GRRM knows that there is a certain disregarding of women in the stories and traditions that he draws from, and I think I sense that within ASOIAF itself, so that is why I hesitate to say that he is simply ignorant. There are things he is ignorant of, but while those things are definitely problems (I doubt he thought long about the lesbian fanservice thing, for example), there are some things I feel he knows are problems, and incorporates into his story because they're problems, because that is the way stories have been always told and this enables some kind of indictment. The question is, does this intentionality equal satisfactory reading? If not, is it because the intentionality isn't clear enough, or because it doesn't do enough in terms of controlling the flow of the story? Or is it simply that saying "I'm sorry women have had it hard" will never be as pleasing as saying "Here, women, pull up a chair at the table and have some pie" (or as the case may be, "Here, women, take the gun with your name on it and make a go of it") ... ?
THERE, I think I said it! Hahah, even if you have nothing new to say about this now-tired topic, at least be glad for me that I found a satisfactory way to get my thinky thought out. :D
[DW | LJ]