"They are children, Sansa thought. They are silly little girls, even Elinor. They've never seen a battle, they've never seen a man die, they know nothing. Their dreams were full of songs and stories, the way hers had been before Joffrey cut her fathers head off. Sansa pitied them. Sansa envied them."
"There are no heroes... in life, the monsters win."
Sansa Stark is one of my very favorite characters in Game of Thrones. I never understand why she receives so much hate on the internet and why people think she is weak. Yes, she is weak at first but her transition from an innocent girl to a woman who is playing the game of thrones is an amazing one and proof that she is one of the strongest characters in the series.
Sansa, in stark contrast with her younger sister Arya, is very feminine. She is considered stupid, shallow, vain, disposable and almost deserving of the abuses she suffers. General consensus is that she does nothing and will die soon. And while George Martin has absolutely no qualms with killing of his main characters, the fact that Sansa is still alive proves that she is integral to the plot line and representative of the Stark house that is dying out. She is a young girl, trained in courtesy and domestic arts, gaining political awareness and fighting for her own survival before many other characters in the series. She has an uncanny way with words and her rebellion is more subversive than Arya's. Arya is in a place where she can be verbally and physically rebellious in the open, but Sansa does not have the same affordances. She has the potential, I believe, to become the most powerful player of "The Game of Thrones" in Westeros.
Sansa, as the eldest daughter of Ned Stark, was brought up in the strict confinements of being a lady: a loyal subject to the crown, a dutiful wife and mother. Being a lot more subdued than Arya, Sansa accepts her fate and begins to take pleasure is all the activities she is made to do. At the age of 11, Sansa already excels at all that is expected of her. That is definitely a sign of her intellect and capabilities. The dichotomy of feminine Sansa and her tomboy little sister, Arya, coupled with the modern tendency to celebrate a misunderstanding of feminism and heroines in the form of "strong women" only, causes readers and viewers to assume Sansa is somehow in the wrong. They view her through the misconception of "femininity=weakness" because she is soft spoken. In reality, Sansa has been dealt with one of the worst hands in the land and she is intelligent enough to make the best of it all. In all honesty, if Arya was made to live under the Lannister's nose in their society and rules, she would cave and be killed in a very short time.
Sansa's training has taught her to do many things but it has also taught her that brutality and violence are an accepted part of her society and an integral part of the lives of the men, that she will one day marry and serve. Her resilience can be seen in the very first few scenes of the series where she watches a man dies without losing composure at the jousting even. However, she is not cold and still finds a way to empathize and humanize the dreadful situation that other people laugh at. In fact, Sansa is one of the only two symbols of empathy, compassion and being humane in the series, the other being Tyrion.
Her ability to judge people correctly are exemplified by Petyr Baelish and Queen Cersei. Both of them, although treating people fairly, raise doubt in Sansa's mind. She stifles her intuition however, and plays along with the decorum with which she has to behave. Her conflicts with Arya and her dire wolf and her reluctance in seeing Joffrey for who he is seem like efforts to hold onto a happy picture even when she knows everything is going wrong. Sansa is but a child. Her experiences and the way she handles things teach her the first important lesson: In Westeros, the truth isn't what matters. Money and power can manipulate everyone and to never trust anyone. In this moment, her deftness with courtesy and presentation begin to meld with the necessity to play-act for preservation.
As the series progresses, Sansa is ever more abused, but she grows smarter. She takes in information for every source possible- from Joffrey, Tyrion, Sandor Clegane to even the Tyrells and Ser Dontos- and turns it into a life lesson well learnt, ever wiser and ever aware. Sansa clings to her anger, plays her part as a piece for the moment, but does not forget who she truly is, what was done to her and what she stands for. Sansa's arc will show her bloom into not just a piece everybody moves around but someone who is playing the game herself. Her passive action is not out of weakness or stupidity but it is her only option and she is making the very best of it. She is caught on the line between survival and destruction, identity and dissociation, self- care and necessary self- denial. Sansa was a sheltered child from a happy family thrown into emotional and political turmoil where murder, rape and betrayal is an everyday thing. And despite her grief, her guilt and her longing, she has carried on, "...to porcelain, to ivory, to steel". She is a resilient stark, just like a resilient wolf, at home in winter and peril. Her courtesy and way with words is not only armor, but also her strongest weapon, if given the realization and the opportunity. Sansa is an integral part of the politics and everyone in Westeros and 21st century concedes to that. Not only will she live through the barbaric and oppressive nature of this society, she will be better than it.
Sansa is almost synonymous with resilience.
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