watermeloncholy:

I was a tomboy when I was a kid because I had an older brother and didn’t really understand that we weren’t the same. I was occasionally reprimanded (by my old school scarily religious grandmothers) for running around barefoot, climbing trees, getting dirty, blah blah blah, but I often got away with it. Of course, I still behaved like little girls were “supposed to” behave; I still liked dresses and dolls (along with soccer balls) and took ballet. I identify with tomboys like Arya and I love Arya, I really do. But whenever I see people upholding her as the measurement for which other female characters should be judged (which I feel happens mostly in the 1st book/1st season), bells go off in my head. 

I’ve seen people say that they didn’t like Daenerys until she started fighting back or didn’t like Sansa at first because she wasn’t defiant enough. I get that Arya’s super easy to like because she’s so defiant, unapologetic and just fierce right out of the gate, but she’s also in a different place (socially and developmentally) than Daenerys and Sansa. I feel like when you’re a little girl, even though you do have some societal pressures, people are willing to indulge the fact that you want to climb trees and hit things with sticks and “imitate” little boys—but then as you get older, all that pressure becomes more intense and people expect you to start behaving a certain way. 

Sansa was the first born female child, so I think her parents probably raised very traditionally and her brothers probably treated her like a lady. As the eldest girl, the one who would reach puberty first, she had to be prepared to be courted and then married into some noble house. She had different pressures and perhaps their family showed Arya more leniency because of this. Eventually Arya would have been expected to behave like a lady—you can see this when Ned’s having that conversation with her about being married to a rich lord and she tells him that that’s not her. Of course, Arya’s personality plays into how she moves within society and is such that she’ll never be exactly as Sansa, but my point about them being socialised differently and having different expectations placed on their shoulders still stands.

As for Daenerys, she had a similar role to play like Sansa, except her life had always been intense and fraught with danger due to living in exile, so she’s a little more worldly than Sansa at the beginning of AGOT. However, she was still in this place where she was being acted on and had very little control of her situation. Whenever she shows any defiance (ex. when Viserys blames her for not being born earlier to marry Rhaegar and she tells him that maybe he should have been born a girl), Viserys punishes her—so she learns to keep those feelings to herself. When she’s married to Drogo, she thinks about how scared she is, she thinks about dying, she thinks about how much pain she refuses to let other people see this because she has to pretend to be strong. Viserys is also the only person she has; he’s her brother and he technically protects her though he also uses her. She quickly begins to gain influence and power and that’s when she really begins to show Viserys that she isn’t weak and that she never has been. Like she says to Drogo’s bloodrider, she’s never been nothing—it’s just that previously, she never had the opportunity or power to be able to express that, to protect herself, and physically free herself from victimisation.  

Ultimately, I don’t think Arya’s strengths necessarily make her any less naive about the world than either of these girls (Arya’s still naive—she still has some childish notions about how the world works which I think is part of why she later has no qualms about killing so easily). I don’t think Arya’s qualities made her any more defiant or stronger than Daenerys or Sansa. Daenerys had to be strong in order to quietly suffer, to survive years of her brother’s abuse and then survive her marriage and survive being a pawn. Sansa simply didn’t have the luxury of behaving the way Arya did and getting away with it…and now she’s in a place where like Daenerys, she has to think about her survival above everything else.