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The Sansa storyline collapses the easy to digest and simplifying narratives we sometimes tell ourselves about trauma where we’re able to “undo it” or fully “heal from it” and completely return to the way of being we existed in before.
The Sansa storyline doesn’t put nostalgia above survivorhood, which is a tough pill to swallow in a society that constantly peddles nostalgia in the guise of progressive thinking!
Sansa is a mess, as one tends to be, but she also found new strength in surviving— and she recognizes her experience contributed to her present state, which is a deeply paradoxical one. Perhaps there’s no full “going back.” There is, however, moving forward.
When Sansa’s rapist tells her he’s a part of her forever? I felt that. I can’t erase my rapists’ past influence from my life. I can, however, strive to become fully autonomous in my present, and that includes accepting the ways I’ll never be the same.
This approach is not defeatism. It’s pragmatism rooted in acceptance. Yes, my rapist did a horrible thing that traumatized me. No, I am not just my trauma, but it is a part of me. And now I get to choose what I do with it. Nobody else.
What Sansa seems to be struggling with inside (and it’s not made text, which probably throws many people off!) is that she’s 1) in an early PTSD stage 2) in the middle of a war 3) has no understanding of healthy coping mechanisms past strategies for immediate survival
As long as the show doesn’t end up unintentionally confusing/glorifying that state of survivorhood for/as the only possible final stage of it, I think GoT handles Sansa’s story really well.
“I am different because what my abuser did changed me” is a really hard thing to process, so I empathize with anyone having a hard time with it. It’s taken me over two decades to even fully remember what happened to me. No judgment there.
People are mistaking Sansa's (at least partially PTSD-induced) survivalist stoicism during wartime for gratitude to her rapist and abusers. We can have a more nuanced discussion about what's happening in that scene.
In the scene with Hound where he calls her "a little bird," she says that without Littlefinger, Ramsay and all the rest, she would have stayed "a little bird" all her life. And it's here GoT points out something else: in this world, abuse is a norm, and it's widely overlooked.
Sansa perceives the abuse she survived as integral to her waking up to the reality of abuse existing in the world. Because the place where she begins in the story is one of deep ignorance & avoidance of her world's abusive dynamics.
Can you think of any other world or even a (gasp) real country where people routinely ignore and overlook human rights abuses but really love to get into it over fictional shows that end up mirroring their own world back to them? Oh my, bingo!
Sansa's worldview isn't "right" or "wrong" or neatly classifiable because she's dealing with the whole mess of survivorhood during wartime. She's risking swinging into the other end of the pendulum -- where, instead of all is a fairytale all the time, all is hell.
The show -- whether intentionally or not -- nods at this, including in the scene where Sansa has her rapist killed. This is how survivors can gradually edge closer to confusing reclaiming agency with enjoying revenge, confusing survivor mechanics for the only way the world works.
It's not that she has her rapist killed! Good riddance. It's that she chooses the most painful way to kill him, and seems to possibly enjoy it. That GoT leaves that a question mark is crucial-- and good, strong storytelling about the possibilities and terrors of survivorhood.
Is Sansa enjoying the gradual reclaiming of herself and her home? Making sure her rapist can never do that again to anyone? Or the fact that she made another being suffer the way they made her suffer? A combination of all those things?
The terror of the last part, combined with the possibility of her confusing her survivorhood for the only basic rule of the world at all times, hits at one part of what it's like to be a survivor. Maybe not for everyone-- but for some of us.
We're afraid the trauma will make us--or already made us--worse, or less, than we were before. Facing that fear is crucial for working with the trauma, so we don't end up confusing the entire world ahead of us for the seeming, overwhelming totality of the pain we experienced.
And the thing is, Sansa might have woken up to the brutality of the world she was in without experiencing the abuse directly! But she has no way of knowing that, so she's assuming it's how people have to be woken up. She's speaking from the pain she's barely got framework for.
None of that means she's anything less than a full human being. She's simply a human being who is learning how to cope. Maybe, if we stop imposing immediate and definitive judgment on characters, one day we'll also learn to not impose that same judgmental process on other humans.
