(different anon from previous) if you're willing, id love to hear about the essay of how carson treats val 👀
i don't think anything about how i interpret their relationship is particularly insightful, but it very much represents a relationship between a traditional patriarch and his daughter whom he views as his property - the interesting part is that the way carson treats VAL actually compares to how her mother did, right down to reaping financial and social capital from the exploitation of her body (VAL mentions that volunteers' families received a financial reward from the government in exchange for their sacrifice, and that it might have contributed to her mother's decision not to protest her selling herself to the government if she could take advantage of a child she never wanted). like the traditional patriarch, and like her mother, carson allows VAL to be bought, sold, and abused. she is his property. she has no privacy from him - while the signal isn't always reliable, and she openly ignores him, he has her under constant monitoring via a radio earpiece. VAL claims she doesn't need to sleep, but who in the world would sleep comfortably with carson potentially listening in on your every move? he's proven himself quite happy to stay working late to check in on her. he finds her disrespect offensive, even when she simply states the truth. he takes malicious pleasure in throwing her failures back at her, and is so concerned by the possibility that she might outgrow his power over her that he plots to have her killed. VAL is forced into the role of Daughter (literally, in his words, the "loyal daughter of the nation"), which is also the role of Bride, Wife, Woman, and Property.
it's a classic case study in misogyny. she's carson's daughterwife, and he controls how her body is used. she owes him obedience. he isn't attracted to her, though, because she's been ruined in his eyes, tainted already by her reckless, selfish choices and the dozens of hands through which she's passed. and, well, she's just kind of a whiny self-righteous bitch, isn't she? he entertains himself by arranging a kind of grotesque parody of a marriage between her and shrue, where VAL provides them with children (and a 'real' wife to care for them) and, having done her duty, is then returned to service. because VAL isn't a person, she's a Thing, branded with marks of ownership like livestock, or like a slave (it's really a shame that TSV doesn't explore racial politics; for my part, i headcanon VAL as a white woman, and her anger - and the naivety it stems from - at how she was treated initially coming from a place of white nationalistic privelege - this kind of thing isn't supposed to happen to people like her; she's a volunteer, a symbol of national pride, a Good Girl who did everything right - before she adjusts her understanding of the world and the power structures that govern it as she comes to realise that the cruelty and violence inflicted on her isn't unique; she isn't entitled to special treatment based on her identity, which has been stripped from her entirely regardless).
to me, this all draws a strong parallel to how, in real life, abuse often comes from inside the family, from parents who view their children, especially their daughters, as property that they're entitled to exchange for power. parents who emotionally, physically, and sexually abuse their children by controlling their bodily autonomy, and especially the world's patriarchs, whose paternalistic style of governance includes viewing their subjects as, collectively, wasteful, ungrateful children. bodies. things. unwanted daughters.
