Arya Stark Month Day 15: Romantic Interests––Jon, Arya, and Death and the Maiden
Jon and Arya’s relationship has several motifs. One of the most important ones is that of death and the maiden, a trope that originated in European art and normally depicts a skeletal version of Death embracing a young maiden. For those interested in learning more about this motif, read this paper.
A popular and iconic manifestation of the Death and the Maiden trope in literature and mythology is the (controversial) relationship between Hades and Persephone. As others have explicated before, Jon and Arya’s relationship has echoes to Hades and Persephone.
To start with, Arya is a maiden related to nature, spring, and flowers:
And afterward, they insisted she dress herself in girl’s things, brown woolen stockings and a light linen shift, and over that a light green gown with acorns embroidered all over the bodice in brown thread, and more acorns bordering the hem. (Arya IV ASOS)
And how she smiled and how she laughed,
the maiden of the tree.
She spun away and said to him,
no featherbed for me.
I’ll wear a gown of golden leaves,
and bind my hair with grass,
But you can be my forest love,
and me your forest lass. (Arya IV ASOS)
Arya shrugged. “Hold still,” she snapped at Nymeria, “I’m not hurting you.” Then to Sansa she said, “When we were crossing the Neck, I counted thirty-six flowers I never saw before, and Mycah showed me a lizard-lion.” (Sansa I AGOT)
None of which stopped Arya, of course. One day she came back grinning her horsey grin, her hair all tangled and her clothes covered in mud, clutching a raggedy bunch of purple and green flowers for Father. Sansa kept hoping he would tell Arya to behave herself and act like the highborn lady she was supposed to be, but he never did, he only hugged her and thanked her for the flowers. That just made her worse. (Sansa I AGOT)
Sometimes she even climbed the trees and danced among the upper branches, her toes gripping the limbs as she moved back and forth, teetering a little less every day as her balance returned to her. (Arya IX ACOK)
Arya is explicitly referred to as a forest lass, the maiden of the tree. In short, she is a Persephone figure. She even journeys to The Underworld:
Worshipers came to the House of Black and White every day. Most came alone and sat alone; they lit candles at one altar or another, prayed beside the pool, and sometimes wept. A few drank from the black cup and went to sleep; more did not drink. There were no services, no songs, no paeans of praise to please the god. The temple was never full. From time to time, a worshiper would ask to see a priest, and the kindly man or the waif would take him down into the sanctum, but that did not happen often. (Arya II AFFC)
The dead were never hard to find. They came to the House of Black and White, prayed for an hour or a day or a year, drank sweet dark water from the pool, and stretched out on a stone bed behind one god or another. They closed their eyes, and slept, and never woke. “The gift of the Many-Faced God takes myriad forms,” the kindly man told her, “but here it is always gentle.” When they found a body he would say a prayer and make certain life had fled, and Arya would fetch the serving men, whose task it was to carry the dead down to the vaults. There acolytes would strip and wash the bodies. The dead men’s clothes and coins and valuables went into a bin for sorting. Their cold flesh would be taken to the lower sanctum where only the priests could go; what happened in there Arya was not allowed to know. (Arya II AFFC)
This is how the Underworld in Greek mythos is typically described:
The Greek Underworld was ill-defined as a place, although the approach to it often included a journey over water. The rivers of the realm are mentioned in Homer’s Odyssey (750–700 bc), but the poem otherwise presents Hades as a “murky darkness.” Centuries later, the comic playwright Aristophanes provided more color, describing wrongdoers lying in mud and dung, while initiates dance in myrtle groves (Frogs, 405 bc). But even at this date, there was little consensus about the Underworld’s geography. The philosopher Plato (about 428–347 bc) described four rivers in one account but omitted them from another. [source]
Arya pays a coin to journey across the water to reach Braavos, and the House of Black and White. The Kindly Man and the acolytes of THOBAW have clear parallels to those who serve Hades in the Underworld, the servants of death, as it were. The Joyless Realm of Ghosts, like THOBAW, is described as a silent, ascetic, and very still place, with rivers, and mourners who weep in misery.
She’s also already been a part of death and the maiden imagery by journeying to The House of Black and White:
“Let us see.” The priest lowered his cowl. Beneath he had no face; only a yellowed skull with a few scraps of skin still clinging to the cheeks, and a white worm wriggling from one empty eye socket. “Kiss me, child,” he croaked, in a voice as dry and husky as a death rattle.
Does he think to scare me? Arya kissed him where his nose should be and plucked the grave worm from his eye to eat it, but it melted like a shadow in her hand. (Arya I AFFC)
As I explained earlier, the quintessential artistic image of death and the maiden involves a Grim Reaper version of Death, perhaps a Skeleton clad in a black or hooded cloak, seizing or embracing a beautiful young maid. Arya giving a kiss to the Kindly Man, the “priest” in the House of Black and White, invokes the motif of death and the maiden directly, and also subverts it: she is not afraid of death and even tries to eat the worm from Death’s eye, a symbolic reclamation of power and life, which stands in direct contrast to the usual image of Death subduing or terrifying the maiden in art.
This is significant because Jon is connected to death. He is the Hades figure to Arya’s Persephone, the Death to Arya’s Maiden:
The flames crackled softly, and in their crackling she heard the whispered name Jon Snow. His long face floated before her, limned in tongues of red and orange, appearing and disappearing again, a shadow half-seen behind a fluttering curtain. Now he was a man, now a wolf, now a man again. But the skulls were here as well, the skulls were all around him. Melisandre had seen his danger before, had tried to warn the boy of it. Enemies all around him, daggers in the dark. He would not listen. (Melisande I ADWD)
It will be good to feel warm again, if only for a little while, he told himself while he hacked bare branches from the trunk of a dead tree. Ghost sat on his haunches watching, silent as ever. Will he howl for me when I’m dead, as Bran’s wolf howled when he fell? Jon wondered. Will Shaggydog howl, far off in Winterfell, and Grey Wind and Nymeria, wherever they might be? (Jon VIII ACOK)
Varamyr knew the truth of that. When he claimed the eagle that had been Orell’s, he could feel the other skinchanger raging at his presence. Orell had been slain by the turncloak crow Jon Snow, and his hate for his killer had been so strong that Varamyr found himself hating the beastling boy as well. He had known what Snow was the moment he saw that great white direwolf stalking silent at his side. One skinchanger can always sense another. Mance should have let me take the direwolf. There would be a second life worthy of a king. He could have done it, he did not doubt. The gift was strong in Snow, but the youth was untaught, still fighting his nature when he should have gloried in it. (Prologue ADWD)
Jon’s direwolf is aptly named Ghost, a silent white shadow stalking by his side, who howls for Jon when he dies. Varamyr Sixskins points out that Jon is actually quite a powerful warg and skinchanger whose true power hasn’t awakened yet, largely because Jon hasn’t allowed himself to tap into that side of him. He also explicitly states that living inside Ghost would be a second life worthy of a King, overt foreshadowing for both Jon’s reanimation and his coronation as King in the North. Melisandre has visions of Jon being betrayed and murdered by the men of the Night’s Watch, warnings that Jon does not heed until he truly is killed.
Compare this to how Hades is described:
Hades, son of Cronus and Rhea and husband of Persephone, is ‘Lord of the dead’ and king of the Underworld, the ‘house of Hades’ (Homer., Hesiod.), where he rules supreme and, exceptionally, administers justice (Aesch. SUPP. 228-31, Eum. 273-5). After Homer, Hades is not only the god of the dead, but also the god of death, even death personified. Hades refers normally to the person; in non-Attic literature, the word can also designate the Underworld. Cold, mouldering, and dingy, Hades is a mirthless place. The proverbial ‘road to Hades is 'the same for all. Aeacus, son of Zeus, keeps the keys to Hades; the same is said of Pluton, Anubis (love charms from Roman Egypt). The gates of Hades are guarded by 'the terrible hound’, Cerberus, who wags his tail for the new arrivals, but devours those attempting to leave (Hes. Thcog. 311 f., 767-73). Hades, too, was sometimes perceived as an eater of corpses. See image in collection: Fra Angelico’s The Last Judgment. Without burial, the dead cannot pass through Hades’ gates. Once inside, they are shrouded in 'the darkness of pernicious Hades. [source]
The Wall, like the Greek Underworld, is a “cold, mirthless” place. It is not a place that Jon is happy in. Like Hades is a King, Jon is foreshadowed to be a King. Just as Hades was relegated to the Underworld, with his brother Zeus ruling Olympus, so too is Jon relegated to the Wall, with his brother Robb becoming Lord of Winterfell and then King in the North. Being the sidelined brother dappled in shadow, King of an icy, gloomy place, is something Jon shares in common with Hades, in addition to Jon’s motif of death and being associated with death. Jon is also associated with shadows, as Melisandre views him as as half a shadow, a man and a wolf wreathed in flame.
What’s most notable about the motif of Death and the Maiden as it relates to Jon and Arya is that Jon dies specifically because he violates his vows to save “Arya” (who is actually Jeyne Poole, though Jon doesn’t know that):
Jon flexed the fingers of his sword hand. The Night’s Watch takes no part. He closed his fist and opened it again. What you propose is nothing less than treason. He thought of Robb, with snowflakes melting in his hair. Kill the boy and let the man be born. He thought of Bran, clambering up a tower wall, agile as a monkey. Of Rickon’s breathless laughter. Of Sansa, brushing out Lady’s coat and singing to herself. You know nothing, Jon Snow. He thought of Arya, her hair as tangled as a bird’s nest. I made him a warm cloak from the skins of the six whores who came with him to Winterfell … I want my bride back … I want my bride back … I want my bride back … (Jon XIII ADWD)
Bride stealing is a part of Jon’s arc:
I want my bride back. I want the false king’s queen. I want his daughter and his red witch. I want his wildling princess. I want his little prince, the wildling babe. And I want my Reek. Send them to me, bastard, and I will not trouble you or your black crows. Keep them from me, and I will cut out your bastard’s heart and eat it. (Jon XIII ADWD)
So many stars, he thought as he trudged up the slope through pines and firs and ash. Maester Luwin had taught him his stars as a boy in Winterfell; he had learned the names of the twelve houses of heaven and the rulers of each; he could find the seven wanderers sacred to the Faith; he was old friends with the Ice Dragon, the Shadowcat, the Moonmaid, and the Sword of the Morning. All those he shared with Ygritte, but not some of the others. We look up at the same stars, and see such different things. The King’s Crown was the Cradle, to hear her tell it; the Stallion was the Horned Lord; the red wanderer that septons preached was sacred to their Smith up here was called the Thief. And when the Thief was in the Moonmaid, that was a propitious time for a man to steal a woman, Ygritte insisted. “Like the night you stole me. The Thief was bright that night.”
“I never meant to steal you,” he said. “I never knew you were a girl until my knife was at your throat.” (Jon III ASOS)
Jon’s biological father, Rhaegar Targaryen, is said to have “stolen” Lyanna Stark:
Side by side the queen’s procession and Hizdahr zo Loraq’s made their slow way across Meereen, until finally the Temple of the Graces loomed up before them, its golden domes flashing in the sun. How beautiful, the queen tried to tell herself, but inside her was some foolish little girl who could not help but look about for Daario. If he loved you, he would come and carry you off at swordpoint, as Rhaegar carried off his northern girl, the girl in her insisted, but the queen knew that was folly. Even if her captain was mad enough to attempt it, the Brazen Beasts would cut him down before he got within a hundred yards of her. (Dany VII ADWD)
As per Wildling tradition, Jon is said to have “stolen” Ygritte. Jon compares Arya to Ygritte several times:
Jon could see fear and fire in her eyes. Blood ran down her white throat from where the point of his dirk had pricked her. One thrust and it’s done, he told himself. He was so close he could smell onion on her breath. She is no older than I am. Something about her made him think of Arya, though they looked nothing at all alike. “Will you yield?” he asked, giving the dirk a half turn. And if she doesn’t? (Jon VI, ACOK)
Ygritte watched and said nothing. She was older than he’d thought at first, Jon realized; maybe as old as twenty, but short for her age, bandy-legged, with a round face, small hands, and a pug nose. Her shaggy mop of red hair stuck out in all directions. She looked plump as she crouched there, but most of that was layers of fur and wool and leather. Underneath all that she could be as skinny as Arya. (Jon VI, ACOK)
Ygritte trotted beside Jon as he slowed his garron to a walk. She claimed to be three years older than him, though she stood half a foot shorter; however old she might be, the girl was a tough little thing. Stonesnake had called her a “spearwife” when they’d captured her in the Skirling Pass. She wasn’t wed and her weapon of choice was a short curved bow of horn and weirwood, but “spearwife” fit her all the same. She reminded him a little of his sister Arya, though Arya was younger and probably skinnier. It was hard to tell how plump or thin Ygritte might be, with all the furs and skins she wore. (Jon II, ASOS)
“If you kill a man, and never mean t’, he’s just as dead,” Ygritte said stubbornly. Jon had never met anyone so stubborn, except maybe for his little sister Arya. Is she still my sister? he wondered. Was she ever? (Jon III, ASOS)
In ADWD, Ramsay accuses Jon of stealing his bride. Before Jon dies, he thinks that [he] want[s] his bride back”, and is then killed. As Jon dies, he thinks, “stick them with the pointy end”, a lesson he taught Arya. “Stealing” brides, specifically “Arya”, and then dying, which is in essence a journey to the Underworld, makes Jon correlate neatly as the Hades to Arya’s Persephone, as Hades stole Persephone from her mother Demeter.
Interestingly, that tension between Hades and Demeter can be reflected in the tension between Jon and Catelyn. Catelyn is a Demeter figure:
“There’s a song,” he remembered. “'Jenny of Oldstones, with the flowers in her hair.’”
“We’re all just songs in the end. If we are lucky.” She had played at being Jenny that day, had even wound flowers in her hair. And Petyr had pretended to be her Prince of Dragonflies. Catelyn could not have been more than twelve, Petyr just a boy. (Cat V ASOS)
Lady Stoneheart, whose corpse was fished out of the Trident by Arya’s direwolf Nymeria, is tearing apart the Riverlands, as Demeter ravaged the lands when her daughter was taken from her. This configuration is also something Hades/Persephone have in common with Jon/Arya.
Arya is also Jon’s heart:
Jon saw no reason not to tell him. “Moat Cailin is taken. The flayed corpses of the ironmen have been nailed to posts along the kingsroad. Roose Bolton summons all leal lords to Barrowton, to affirm their loyalty to the Iron Throne and celebrate his son’s wedding to …” His heart seemed to stop for a moment. No, that is not possible. She died in King’s Landing, with Father.
Jon felt as stiff as a man of sixty years. Dark dreams, he thought, and guilt. His thoughts kept returning to Arya. There is no way I can help her. I put all kin aside when I said my words. If one of my men told me his sister was in peril, I would tell him that was no concern of his. Once a man had said the words his blood was black. Black as a bastard’s heart. He’d had Mikken make a sword for Arya once, a bravo’s blade, made small to fit her hand. Needle. He wondered if she still had it. Stick them with the pointy end, he’d told her, but if she tried to stick the Bastard, it could mean her life.
“The heart is all that matters. Do not despair, Lord Snow. Despair is a weapon of the enemy, whose name may not be spoken. Your sister is not lost to you.”
“I have no sister.” The words were knives. What do you know of my heart, priestess? What do you know of my sister?
-Jon VI ADWD
Ramsay threatens to cut out and eat Jon’s bastard heart, his same “black heart” that beats for Arya. He dies for Arya. Given that Jon “stole” Ygritte (who has several parallels with Arya as per Jon himself), and is accused of “stealing” “Arya” from Ramsay and then dies in his attempt to actually steal her back, it is not farfetched to conclude, given GRRM’s invocation of the rule of threes, that Jon, once resurrected, will truly steal the real Arya back. Given that Persephone is associated with spring and rebirth, and Arya is the Persephone figure, she will warm Jon’s “black bastard heart” and remind him of his true self, revitalizing his deadened heart. Arya’s subversion within the death and the maiden trope is linked to this:
“The Red God has his due, sweet girl, and only death may pay for life. This girl took three that were his. This girl must give three in their places. Speak the names, and a man will do the rest.” (Arya VII ACOK)
The dwarf woman studied her with dim red eyes. “I see you,” she whispered. “I see you, wolf child. Blood child. I thought it was the lord who smelled of death …” She began to sob, her little body shaking. “You are cruel to come to my hill, cruel. I gorged on grief at Summerhall, I need none of yours. Begone from here, dark heart. Begone!” (Arya VIII ASOS)
She splashed noisily through the shallows and threw herself into the deeper water, her legs churning. The current was strong but she was stronger. She swam, following her nose. The river smells were rich and wet, but those were not the smells that pulled her. She paddled after the sharp red whisper of cold blood, the sweet cloying stench of death. She chased them as she had often chased a red deer through the trees, and in the end she ran them down, and her jaw closed around a pale white arm. She shook it to make it move, but there was only death and blood in her mouth. By now she was tiring, and it was all she could do to pull the body back to shore. As she dragged it up the muddy bank, one of her little brothers came prowling, his tongue lolling from his mouth. She had to snarl to drive him off, or else he would have fed. Only then did she stop to shake the water from her fur. The white thing lay facedown in the mud, her dead flesh wrinkled and pale, cold blood trickling from her throat. Rise, she thought. Rise and eat and run with us. (Arya XIII ASOS)
He is a man of the Night’s Watch, she thought, as he sang about some stupid lady throwing herself off some stupid tower because her stupid prince was dead. The lady should go kill the ones who killed her prince. (Cat of the Canals AFFC)
In traditional Death and the Maiden iconography, Death is contrasted against the Maiden. This is where Arya subverts the trope: she is a Maiden associated with death, unafraid of it entirely. Her direwolf, Nymeria gets Cat’s corpse out of the water, which then leads to Cat’s reanimation (rebirth, as Persephone is associated with rebirth). Arya learns and properly utilizes and subverts the lesson that only death pays for life (by tricking Jaqen H’ghar), which is seen in Jon’s arc too, as his death will pave way for his second life as a King. The Ghost of High Heart explicitly smells death on her and calls her dark heart, which when we link to Jon having a black heart, further emphasizes the motif that Arya is Jon’s heart. The Ghost of High Heart also calls her blood child. Another point of subversion is that Arya says the lady whose prince dies should go kill the ones who killed her prince. Persephone brings spring and happiness to Hades. Yet perhaps the biggest point of subversion is that Arya, who is apprenticing in the House of Death itself, refuses to give up her identity to Death, always holding Arya in her heart, symbolized by her keeping Needle and killing Dareon from the Night’s Watch, enacting Northern justice. Thus, one can conclude that Arya will bring spring back to Jon, because like Persephone, she is a Maiden who is not afraid of Death (Hades himself) and does not shy away from death or its kiss and embrace, and is so associated with death that it leads to the reanimation of her mother, its scent lasts on her, and her Hades dies for her.
Perhaps the story GRRM is trying to tell with Jon and Arya is indeed this subversion of Hades and Persephone, of Death and the Maiden. The story of the Maiden who embraces rather than flees from Death, the story of Death who sets out to steal the Maiden and finds that she wants to be stolen, will fight and tear her way back to him; the story of the Maiden bringing hope and renaissance back to Death himself.
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