"Women who don't want children are terrible people and ambitious queens are a unique type of horrible." -The Erins, completely ignoring or even excusing paternal neglect and abuse.
We first see Lizardstripe in Yellowfang's Secret as a general background warrior. She's just doing her job, hunting, patrolling, etc. At one point, she tells a mean joke to Foxheart and they mock Yellowfang like some other members of ShadowClan.
But we really get our INTRODUCTION to Lizardstripe with an exchange between her and Hollyflower, where she asks if Holly is happy that her kits are older now, establishing that Lizardstripe fears being trapped in the nursery.
She is bringing this up because she is pregnant. Lizardstripe is looking for a chance to reveal this, but also for comfort with how she is feeling. This character is pregnant and does not want to be.
But Yellowfang's Secret posits a profoundly misogynistic idea, about to be said first by Hollyflower, and then again, later, by Sagewhisker, that children are a woman's calling.
They are explicitly setting up the fact that Lizardstripe does not want children as something being wrong with her, a flaw as a person.
It is not just the responsibility of a parent, but the duty of every queen, to produce children. That is what is written on this page. Sagewhisker repeats this later, when Lizardstripe is lashing out while being forced to raise the children she does not want.
Here's a peek ahead to Sagewhisker's words of 'wisdom'
It's TOO BAD that Lizardstripe is in a terrible position she never wanted to be in which makes her actively uncomfortable. Tough coconuts. Nothing Can Be Done. She should just get over it and be happy lol.
But anyway, back to the Hollyflower/Lizardstripe exchange.
Lizardstripe points out the double standard here, which will not be properly addressed by this book, or any other book in the entire series.
Hollyflower immediately shoots this down. She is dismissing Lizardstripe's feelings here, and continues to. We NEVER see Mudclaw taking care of his children or stepping in when his mate is obviously upset, nor is he expected to.
I'm going to post the entire exchange here, just so you can drink in how much Hollyflower is downplaying or even outright ignoring Lizardstripe's feelings of dread.
Lizardstripe is a person who desperately doesn't want to be in this situation,
But it is supposed to be SHOCKING that she does not want children. Hollyflower cannot believe that Lizardstripe is being honest about her feelings, and is trying to comfort her based on the idea that it's just nervousness.
Because, how could it even be so that a woman would not want children? This entire exchange is based on the assumption of this narrative that mothers are supposed to be primarily responsible for the children, it is good and right and their natural state.
In fact, Yellowfang desperately wanting to be with the kits she's being forced to abandon is meant to be a contrast of how powerful this idea is supposed to be.
Yellowfang wants kids = Good. Lizardstripe doesn't want kids = Bad.
Even when Yellowfang is thinking about how she wants to share the *~experience~* of being a first-time mother and confide in her about her worries, it's missing the point completely that Lizardstripe doesn't want to BE a parent.
This text completely reduces Lizardstripe to a mother who sucks. It has no interest in her deeper life, or the idea she could have a valid emotional reason for not wanting children, or real resentment towards being forced to take care of babies for 6 months while her husband lives life as usual.
And no one cares. No one helps. No one can even fathom the very idea that a woman doesn't want kids.
But that's not enough. Next, they slap the trait of "ambition" onto this character, having never displayed it before, because that explicitly makes her a less trustworthy person to raise Brokenkit. This book was written after TNP, remember, the arc where Brambleclaw throws a tantrum for 6 books about how ambition shouldn't be a bad thing.
Ambition is only bad if you're a woman who should be happily taking care of babies I guess.
(Timeskip to Brokenkit being given to Lizardstripe;)
Raggedpelt: "This is an HONOR you bitch. You should be grateful that you're getting this opportunity to be responsible for more children. There's no other queens here so you don't really have a choice anyway but fuck you."
Yellowfang: "What kind of life will this child have, being exposed to ambitious women :( ?"
(im not actually that mad with yellowfang, she's really doing nothing wrong in this whole book besides be miserable, but this wording is so terrible I have to laugh at it or I will explode instead. someone wrote this)
Later Lizardstripe glowers and puffs when she gets praise after her kits come out of the nursery for the first time, though. So what they're trying to set up is that she is just a selfish bitch who only cares about her own status, without "real" pride in her kits.
We see THREE situations after the kits are born where Lizardstripe is doing something bad towards them;
The previous situation, when Brokenkit is being foisted on her, where she's lashing out, shouting about how she doesn't want to raise everyone's unwanted children
Shortly after, where Sagewhisker prevents Yellowfang from interacting with Lizardstripe in the nursery, but reports she isn't happy about being forced to feed another child.
This next one, which is a secondhand account from Brokenkit;
After Broken's adopted littermates start bullying him and Yellowfang prevents them from all getting into a physical fight, we get this;
So, actually, we don't even have direct evidence that Lizardstripe is setting the kits against each other. We only know for sure that she is frustrated that Brokenkit is drinking her milk. Sagewhisker has completely prevented Yellowfang from spending time with Lizardstripe to see the truth for herself or influence this.
Lizardstripe didn't want kids and doesn't like breastfeeding 4 of them at once. EEEEVIL WOMAN!
So, it's possible that she punishes Brokenkit differently from the other three. It's likely that the four of them are aware they are not wanted. But Brokenkit didn't even learn this from Lizardstripe, he heard her talking to Amberleaf.
So you're meant to infer all of this from what the writer DID set up earlier in the Holly/Lizard convo and the Brokenkit Handoff scene; That Lizardstripe does not want to be a mother.
THAT is what the author chose to use to establish that Lizardstripe is abusive.
Women not wanting kids = bad.
Duty of a queen = to produce children
Mudclaw, the father = nowhere in sight; unaddressed.
Ambition in women = sign of abuse
After her kittens are apprenticed, Lizardstripe returns to the warrior's den with "a sigh of relief." The last time we see her in Yellowfang's Secret is Chapter 31, in a book with 40 chapters total. She growls at Yellow that she's busy talking to Raggedstar, and is eventually sent to bedrest with marigold treatment for a rat bite.
That "ambition" never comes back, because they only gave it to her as shorthand for selfishness. Ambition in women is Bad, they should just be happy to raise babies, apparently.
I think the way they wrote this character, what they chose to focus on to establish that she's a bad person, and everything they added in Yellowfang's Secret is deeply misogynistic. Lizardstripe isn't shown to be bad because she is cruel; Lizardstripe is shown to be bad because she resents motherhood.
And that's very frustrating.
