A. What, precisely, is wrong with "fridging"? Revenge is one of the most primal motivations out there, along with love, and killing a loved one hits both those nerves. We know less about Rickard Stark, then Elia, for example. Is he 'fridged'? B. Who are we to say what Martin must put in his story so as not to 'fail' at writing? And why must he be judged on what others do (which is all that identifying tropes amounts to), or having deconstructed several tropes, be required to do so for all?
A. Fridging a character is not the same as writing a story about revenge. Fridging is killing off (or, less often, utterly incapacitating) one character, usually female, in order to motivate a second character, usually male. The fridged character is usually developed only well enough to tug on the heartstrings, or given a particularly gruesome/tragic death in order to achieve the same response.
There are times when a story might require a minor character to get killed off in order to motivate a more important character. The problem is that there is a staggeringly gendered pattern to this. It is far more often female characters - wives, girlfriends, daughters - who are disposed of in order to provide emotional impetus for others (again, usually male characters) to act.
Rickard Stark is gruesomely murdered. As a result, Ned Stark goes to war. But Rickard’s death is not the only or even the dominant factor in Ned’s character development and motivation over subsequent events - his loyalty to and love of Robert plays a significant part in his actions, his desire to rescue and protect Lyanna plays a significant factor, his commitment to his already-established principles plays a significant factor. We hardly know anything about Rickard, because his death is not the be-all end-all of Ned’s plot. Rickard’s death does not provide that ongoing personal motivation that is key to fridging.
Then contrast Elia Martell. She too is gruesomely murdered. As a result, her brothers spend fifteen years acting because of her death. Her death is the thing that involves them in the plot. But for all the importance of Oberyn and Doran, and the extent to which Elia’s death motivated them, Elia herself has no voice and no agency. Her narrative importance (thus far, which is what I hope will change) lies entirely in the men who loved her. And we hardly know anything about her, in spite of the fact that her death motivates the entire Dornish subplot.
This pattern is bad because it makes those female characters disposable sources of a male character’s angst - they’re treated as plot points rather than people. Objects of storytelling rather than subjects of storytelling. And it’s a pattern, across so many genres and forms of media, which is why GRRM’s work cannot be taken in isolation.
B. As for who we are to criticise GRRM…well, I don’t know about you, anon, but I’m a person on the internet who’s read his books. I’m perfectly comfortable saying that I think that GRRM playing into this tired, sexist trope would be a failure of storytelling, especially considering how ASoIaF combats other tired tropes. What’s his excuse for using this at face value when he’s deconstructed so many other shoddy aspects of fantasy storytelling?
But like I said before, I’m hoping that GRRM doesn’t leave Elia’s death at this apparent fridging. He can do better.
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