sansa and arya are not the villains of each other’s stories, sansa and arya are a reminder that there are no winners in a world that hates women and girls on principle. sansa conforms to the patriarchy and they hate her. arya rebels against the patriarchy and they hate her. sansa embodies the ideal westerosi highborn woman, so she is labeled as “stupid” and too naive for the real world. arya refuses to perform westeros’s narrow definition of femininity, so she is labeled as “willful” and unfit for highborn society. sansa and arya perceive their own gender identities in relation to each other, identities that are built on not being like the other - sansa is “the good girl, the obedient girl” and arya is the “wicked” girl. on one hand, sansa gains a false sense of security from not being like arya, believing that following strict gender norms will keep her safe (it doesn’t), and even if she slips up and is “bad”…well she might hate herself for it, but at least she’s not as bad as arya! on the other hand, arya believes that anything “traditionally feminine” is reserved for girls like sansa and is off-limits for her, that she is inherently less than and wrong and ugly because she is not like sansa. both sisters have been raised to compete for approval, for the status of being “real” girls, they are not allowed to coexist because there is only one way to be a highborn woman in westeros. nobody wins, they both lose their wolves, they both lose their home, their family, each other. and what are they punished for? the crime of being little girls.
