I’m confused, outside of the famous scene in Brian’s room when did she do this? Overall she kind of just ignored the kid who she had nothing to do with and was a daily reminder of her husband’s supposed cheating (not that that makes it fair for jon)
I said that deliberately ignoring a child living in your household is abuse. You ask me when she did this but then you actually say – agreeing with me – that she ignored him and treated him like a representation of her husband’s infidelity (which is not how you should treat a child). You answered your own question.
But since you asked, Catelyn doesn’t just ignore Jon. She goes out of his way to make him feel unwelcome, a child who lives in her home and has nowhere else to go. This isn’t “unfair”, it’s abuse. We can see the emotional trauma that this caused in Jon by examining his POV. We can also see that this isn’t just confined to one incident by looking at the scene in Bran’s bedchamber:
Lady Stark was there beside his bed.
She had been there, day and night, for close on a fortnight. Not for a
moment had she left Bran’s side. She had her meals brought to her there,
and chamber pots as well, and a small hard bed to sleep on, though it
was said she had scarcely slept at all. She fed him herself, the honey
and water and herb mixture that sustained life. Not once did she leave
the room. So Jon had stayed away.But now there was no more time.
At first Jon is afraid of even going into the room where Catelyn is, but he desperately wants to see his brother because he loves Bran. Jon knows, though, that something bad will happen if he goes into that room with Cat.
He stood in the door for a
moment, afraid to speak, afraid to come closer. The window was open.
Below, a wolf howled. Ghost heard and lifted his head.Lady Stark
looked over. For a moment she did not seem to recognize him. Finally
she blinked. “What are you doing here?” she asked in a voice strangely
flat and emotionless.“I came to see Bran,” Jon said. “To say good-bye.”
If this was a one time circumstance Jon’s behavior wouldn’t be that of a child who is afraid of an adult because he knows what she might do or say to him. Not saying Cat ever hit Jon or anything like that but emotional abuse through making a child feel that they are not welcome in their own home is abuse.
Something cold moved in her eyes. “I told you to leave,” she said. “We don’t want you here.”
Once that would have sent him running. Once that might even have made
him cry. Now it only made him angry. He would be a Sworn Brother of the
Night’s Watch soon, and face worse dangers than Catelyn Tully Stark. “He’s my brother,” he said.“Shall I call the guards?”
You know what is also abuse? Denying a child a relationship with his other siblings. Cat tries to keep Jon from seeing Bran, his brother who he cares deeply for and whom he agonizes over after Bran’s fall. I understand that Catelyn is in pain, here, too, but what she does here is very like what abusive parents do, she tries to keep Jon from having a relationship with Bran, “We don’t want you here”. She’s not just expressing her dislike of Jon, she is telling Jon that Bran doesn’t want him either, which is false because Bran loves Jon and would have wanted him there. It’s also wrong of Cat to deny Bran Jon’s affection. The reason that Cat lashes out at Jon here is not just about Jon or Bran, it’s that she hates that this child she hates has a relationship with the child she loves.
She also threatens to call the guards on him, but you know what really gives the lie to the claim that this was a one-time thing? Jon’s thoughts about it. Once, that would have sent him running. Once that might even have made him cry. Implying not-so-subtly that Catelyn Tully Stark and the figure of her in Jon’s life has made Jon do both of these things in the past, or made him feel like doing those things. He tries to tell himself that he’s older now, that Bran is his brother and that he has a right to be there, and that he would face worse dangers soon. Worse dangers. Implying that Catelyn is a “danger” in his eyes. This is how Cat’s actions made this fourteen year old boy feel.
“I wanted him to stay here with me,” Lady Stark said softly.
Jon
watched her, wary. She was not even looking at him. She was talking to
him, but for a part of her, it was as though he were not even in the
room.He’s on edge this whole time, “wary” of Catelyn the way a child is wary of an adult who seems to be acting okay but whose behavior could become scary at any moment. And then:
He was at the door when she called out to him. “Jon,” she said. He should have kept going, but she had never called him by his name before. He turned to find her looking at his face, as if she were seeing it for the first time.
“Yes?” he said.
“It should have been you,” she told him.
It was a long walk down to the yard.
“She had never called him by his name before”. Refusing to use a child’s name is a form of abuse, it’s deliberate dehumanization, and Jon’s awareness of this says a lot about their relationship. Jon thinks that he should have kept going, but her use of his name made him stop. Is it because it was so unusual for her to call him by his name? Is it because he thinks that this is a sign that she’s seeing him as a person for the first time, as Jon describes this look she gives him, as if she is seeing his face for the first time? Did he hope for something from her, affection, acknowledgment, something?
Then there’s that famous line, which isn’t as much of an outlier as fandom and GRRM says it is because it does not come out of nowhere, it comes out of years of Cat’s aggression towards Jon and the circumstances that normalize that aggression because Jon is a bastard.
Robb and Bran and Rickon were his father’s sons, and he loved them
still, yet Jon knew that he had never truly been one of them. Catelyn Stark had seen to that.One of the lasting effects here is that Catelyn’s actions affect not only Jon’s sense of self, but his relationship with his siblings. Even after he is no longer under Cat’s roof, he feels like he cannot be a real part of his family specifically because of Catelyn and his awareness of how she felt about him.
By now she’d be eleven, Jon thought. Still a child. “I have no sister. Only brothers. Only you.” Lady Catelyn
would have rejoiced to hear those words, he knew. That did not make
them easier to say. His fingers closed around the parchment.Catelyn takes other specific actions to make it clear to Jon that he is not one of his family and he is to be treated as less.
Deliberately ignoring a child living in your household and making it known that they aren’t welcome there is abuse.
“Don’t you usually eat at table with your brothers?”
“Most times,” Jon answered in a flat voice. “But tonight Lady Stark thought it might give insult to the royal family to seat a bastard among them.”
I mean, you could say this is standard protocol as far as bastards are concerned but it is still abusive and traumatizing for a child to be told that they are not a real part of their family and their existence is an insult.
Really, please. Stop trying to downplay this or insist it’s not abuse. I love Cat as a character but she abused Jon, and that’s more than “unfair”.
This is why I always disliked Cat so much. Such a shitty mother.
Cat owed Jon nothing. Unbelievable that Ned, whose fault this entire thing is, gets Daddy of the Uear Award by every fan by Catelyn was meeeaaaan to Jon once and she’s Worst Mother Ever TM for a cruel line GRRM himself said was done out of grief.
She’s. Not. His. Fricking. Mommy. Get over it. And of course, her devotion to her actual children (up to saving Bran’s life, being Robb’s adviser and trying to save his life, fighting to save both girls even by letting their best hostage go) gets totally and conveniently ignored by you judgmental people.
(And of course, the fandom is very uncomfortable with discussing Jon’s own abusive acts, but he’s cool anyway. )
First of all, when did I say that Ned was the father of the year or that Cat was the worst mother ever? I already took to task the person above who said that. When did I ignore Cat’s love for her children or excuse Jon Snow of anything?
But, yes, Cat absolutely did owe Jon. She owed him what any adult owes to a child which is NOT TO ABUSE THEM, and as an adult in a position of authority in the household Jon was living in she absolutely owed him that.
I know what GRRM said, but I don’t agree. Blaming a child for something that is not their fault and imposing that blame onto them IS ABUSE, it absolutely is and I don’t fucking care if she is his mom or not. It’s abuse. I wrote a really long post up above explaining why it’s abuse and you responded with mockery and made some ridiculous assumptions about me. Cat’s also a victim of her situation but she still abused Jon.
I also explained above why “she was mean just the one time” is wrong, because even before she says anything Jon is anticipating it, he’s constantly wary of her and watching her to see how she will act. This is how a child acts when they are with an adult who has acted abusively toward them. Jon is fourteen years old in this scene, Cat’s home is his home, she is his father’s wife, his siblings’ mother, so even though she is not his mom she is an adult in a prominent authority role in his life whether she wants to be or not, and she has a responsibility towards him by virtue of that fact. But even if she had no relationship to Jon whatsoever, YES, adults do owe it to children to not act shitty towards them, whether that child is theirs or not, sorry.
So here’s my two cents.
My parents were – if this can even be considered a thing – accidentally emotionally abusive to me during my childhood. They were incredibly strict (especially in regards to grades), held me and my brothers to extreme standards of behavior and self-abnegation, and (particularly my mother) had a tendency to pop off at me at the slightest infraction. Certain ways of being spoken to are still triggers for me, I apologize compulsively, and my parents have been known to show up in my nightmares.
They didn’t do it on purpose. It was a function of the way they were raised and not knowing how to deal with an autistic child – their methods hit me a lot harder than they did my neurotypical brothers. They have also since, after a few years, apologized and mended their ways.
But I know what it feels like to be so cowed by your own parents that you’re scared of your shadow. I know what it feels like to metaphorically walk on your tiptoes because you’re afraid of being screamed at or worse. And that is how Catelyn made Jon feel – on purpose.
I think Catelyn is essentially a good person who, due to the patriarchal standards of her environment, blamed the son instead of the father. However, whatever GRRM says, the signs and symptoms that Jon remembers in his POVs don’t lie. If I can claim abuse under circumstances less draconian than his relationship with Catelyn, then so can he.
Death By Catchphrase 