This post contains MAJOR SPOILERS
for BtVS Season 6, for book 5 of ASOIAF, and for S5, E6 of Game of Thrones.
I chose the post title for the
obvious reason that I’m going to discuss the attempted rape scene in the
episode Seeing Red and the actual
rape of Sansa Stark – she of the red hair – in the GoT episode Unbowed, Unbent,
Unbroken. The hyphen splits the word "redux" because I can't resist a pun and "ux", in Latin, is a common abbreviation for "uxor", meaning "wife". As I discussed in my post on Seeing
Red, that episode was extraordinarily controversial, and the rape of Sansa
Stark has generated a similar level of controversy. I’ve spent a good deal of
time trying to read the various reactions to Sansa’s rape and to formulate some
ideas of my own, but my thoughts here will necessarily be incomplete because
the consequences of the rape have yet to play out.
I’ll begin with a point that
seems to distract some viewers, namely whether it’s proper to call Sansa’s
experience “rape”. The argument against doing so is that the sex took place
after her wedding, and the law/culture of the fictional universe (and the
actual Middle Ages) would therefore not consider this rape. This strikes me as
technically accurate but too narrowly focused. Yes, at that time and until
fairly recently, a husband could not legally rape his wife. But the fact that
the legal system wouldn’t hear a charge, doesn’t mean people living in those
times would have approved any and all abuses by the husbands. Ramsay’s behavior
towards Sansa was unusually cruel even by the standards of the show, because he
forced Theon to watch and was then very rough to her. Since in my view the
people of that fictional world would have disapproved of his actions, though
they might not use the word “rape”, I have no trouble calling it that and I’m
going to use the term throughout. Bear in mind, though, that the specific term
is not crucial to my argument; if it bothers you that much, just mentally
substitute the word “abuse”.
The bigger dispute I saw on line
was whether the rape was gratuitous. At the point I’m writing this I think that
conclusion is premature, though it could be proved true depending on what
happens in the remaining episodes. My judgment is that “gratuitous” – which I understand
to mean “without purpose except to shock the audience” – will prove to be the
wrong term. In the books, the treatment of Jeyne Poole, whose story has become
Sansa’s in the show, served to motivate Theon’s attempted redemption (“attempted”
because his story isn’t over yet). I think it’s likely that the rape of Sansa
will have at least this effect on Theon.
If that turns out to be the only
impact of the rape, I’ll be extremely critical. In my view, it’s dubious, to
say the least, to use the abuse of a female character as the motivation for a
man’s redemption arc. It’s not that this doesn’t happen in the real world – it might
very well – but (a) it’s an old trope in literature (see the rape of Lucretia); and (b) it
subordinates the female role to that of the male’s. The latter is less of a problem
in the books, where Theon is a much more significant character than Jeyne Poole,
though I still found it problematic. But switching from Jeyne to Sansa, in turn
a much more important character than Theon, changes the dynamics of the
situation entirely. While it's hard to justify using the rape of any female character to further a man's arc, there’s no justification at all, in my view, for using the brutal
rape of a more important female character for the sole purpose of motivating a
less important male one.
This brings me to Seeing Red. Spike’s attempted rape of
Buffy was introduced in the episode for the express purpose of motivating his
decision to reclaim his soul. If you review my post, I had lots of criticisms
of the scene, but not that one. I don’t think Seeing Red deserves that particular criticism because it resolved
when Buffy exercised her own determination, agency and strength to stop the
assault. So while the attempt did motivate Spike, it also reinforced Buffy’s
superior character.
It’s possible, of course, that
the rape in UUU will further Sansa’s
own arc in an important way. I’m skeptical that the show will pull this off
successfully; certainly nothing of what we saw in that scene demonstrated any
particular strength by Sansa, not even the strength that sometimes comes from
yielding. The trope that “being raped makes you stronger” is both factually
dubious and pretty much a cliché at this point. In my view, it’s not much
better than a purely gratuitous rape, as long as there was some other way to demonstrate
the woman’s character development. I think there was an alternative in this
case, which I’ll offer below.
I saw some arguments on line that
there had to be a rape because nothing else would have been consistent with
Ramsay’s well-established character. Without debating the details of that
assumption, it rests on the further assumption of the immediate wedding we saw
in the show. As book readers will recall, the wedding of Ramsay and Jeyne Poole
(a fake Arya Stark) included the invitation to all the Northern Lords to
attend. The book doesn’t explain the reasons why the Boltons would do this, but
it’s fairly easy to identify the most important: Fake Arya was supposed to
carry the Stark heritage and legitimize the Bolton claim to Winterfell. The
Boltons needed witnesses to the validity of the marriage in order to assert
that claim. Getting all those Lords to Winterfell takes time.
Now, let’s suppose that instead
of the rushed wedding we saw with Sansa, she had convinced the Boltons to
postpone the wedding until the Northern Lords could see for themselves that she
was voluntarily committing herself to the Bolton cause. Her case for the delay
would be much stronger than that for the actual delay we saw in the books: Fake
Arya was given to the Boltons by the crown, conforming to Medieval notions of wardship,
whereas Sansa came to Winterfell via Littlefinger, who had no right to control
her marriage; Sansa had previously married Tyrion, so everyone, including
especially the Boltons, would need assurance that her marriage to Ramsay wasn’t
bigamous and therefore incapable of conveying the Stark claim; the Boltons have
a, um, reputation in the North and the other Lords would need to see that Sansa’s
commitment was free and voluntary in order to accept the Boltons as successors
to the Starks.
I think this sequence is both
more consistent with the books and gives Sansa agency in the whole process. But
there are more benefits. Sansa could use the delay to exercise her burgeoning
talent and pit Myranda against Ramsay and Ramsay against Roose. She could rally
her supporters in the North, including Brienne and perhaps even Stannis. This
could probably be written plausibly to make any marriage unnecessary, but if it
were, Sansa could agree to it in order to motivate a rebellion against the
Boltons.
Well, we all like our own ideas
best, but I think my story line grants agency to Sansa, coheres better with the
books, and eliminates the problematic aspects of the rape.
