EW: "GRRM explains why there's violence against women..."

"EW spoke to author George R.R. Martin to get his perspective on the female characters’ storylines in his bestselling A Song of Ice and Fire novels. Keep in mind the HBO series is sometimes slammed for including scenes that Martin did not write (such as the recent rape of Sansa Stark, which happened to a minor character in Martin’s A Dance with Dragons), but likewise there are ways in which the show has made its female characters arguably more likeable (such as Sansa’s character in general), or gave them empowering new sequences (such as Brienne fighting The Hound). In general, the show and books operate from a similar creative perspective in terms of how they portray life in Westeros and Essos.



Martin begins with a familiar explanation—that his saga is based on his longtime fascination with medieval Europe—but he also includes a response to those who say that since Westeros isn’t a real place, that our own history should not be used as a basis for his story.



Here’s Martin:



“The books reflect a patriarchal society based on the Middle Ages. The Middle Ages were not a time of sexual egalitarianism. It was very classist, dividing people into three classes. And they had strong ideas about the roles of women. One of the charges against Joan of Arc that got her burned at the stake was that she wore men’s clothing—that was not a small thing. There were, of course, some strong and competent women. It still doesn’t change the nature of the society. And if you look at the books, my heroes and viewpoint characters are all misfits. They’re outliers. They don’t fit the roles society has for them. They’re ‘cripples, bastards, and broken things‘—a dwarf, a fat guy who can’t fight, a bastard, and women who don’t fit comfortably into the roles society has for them (though there are also those who do—like Sansa and Catelyn)."

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