“Girl, child, little bird”: Self-protection and boundaries built into Sandor’s names for Sansa
I think it’s terribly important that Sandor Clegane never calls Sansa Stark either Sansa or Lady Stark. He calls her child, girl or the little bird. Later, with Arya, there’s a lot of sister and pretty sister.
Why? He’s deliberately distancing himself with his choice of words, even as little bird offends her at first (”that’s unkind”) but over time becomes a de facto private endearment between lovers. He also uses it as part of his antagonistic flirtation with her, and her sers and my lords serve the same purpose in the opposite direction.
But generally speaking, the language he uses when addressing her or referring to her, is I believe, deliberately orchestrated to remind himself (and others, but above all himself) that she is not a woman. He must constantly remind himself that she’s 12 years old and not even blooded and a child prisoner in invisible chains and in mortal danger every second and not a candidate to be the lady to his knight in a song.
The only times his language even approaches the words “lady” or “woman,” he has to check himself immediately or he falls down a well of wishing she could be his.
The Hound knows better than any SanSan anti that she is too young for him. And yet she is tall for her age and incredibly beautiful and they have that unspoken affinity, and so…
“He wants you to smile and smell sweet and be his lady love,” the Hound rasped. “He wants to hear you recite all your pretty little words the way the septa taught you. He wants you to love him…and fear him”
He calls her a lady here, but he’s hiding behind one of his double meanings. Textually he’s telling her what Joffrey would have of her. But what he’s describing doesn’t sound like Joff at all, and the Hound knows Joffrey backward and forward.
Subtextually, this is the Hound confessing a terrible secret: he thinks of her that way. I think this shames and troubles him deeply. Especially at early days, he doesn’t want to confront the complexity of his feelings for her or the possible ramifications if he ever acted on them, so sure, he’s talking about Joffrey Waters here.
“A flagon of sour red, dark as blood, all a man needs. Or a woman.” He laughed, shook his head. “Drunk as a dog, damn me.”
Don’t you dare think of her as a woman to your man.
He shakes his head to clear away the thought.
He reminds himself that those thoughts are those of a filthy animal governed only by base urges, and that he should be damned for entertaining them even in secret, much less broaching them to the girl herself with clever double entendres.
“A pretty girl, I hear,” said the Tickler. “Honey sweet.” He smacked his lips and smiled. “And courteous,” the Hound agreed. “A proper little lady. Not like her bloody sister.”
This is may be (maybe?!) the only time we hear the Hound talking about Sansa to anyone besides Arya. And hell if he’s not doing the same thing with the language here, but in reverse. The Tickler calls her a “pretty girl” and Sandor basically corrects him and upgrades her to “proper little lady” with the unspoken implication being “she’s a proper little lady far too good for the likes of scum such as you or me.” Basically, he wants everyone’s thoughts about Sansa Stark to be G-rated and clean.
And the Tickler’s thoughts, as interpreted through Sandor’s mind, are not clean enough.
In Sansa’s first chapter in A Storm of Swords, we are treated to these lyrics, screamed at all-caps top volume, lyrics that of course refer to cunnilingus: "OH, SWEET SHE WAS, AND PURE, AND FAIR! THE MAID WITH HONEY IN HER HAIR!“
And then toward the very end of the book, we get a creep describing Sansa to Sandor as “honey sweet” and then…smacking his lips.
This is not at all inadvertent on George’s part. Not. At. All. (And this appears in altered form in the TV series as Polliver’s sexual threats against Arya, who while not obviously an object of Sandor’s sexual desire is very much under his protection just the same.)
And of course, Sandor’s all, “How dare you suggest performing such wanton acts on my precious wife/BFF/ward/OK the nomenclature is confused I admit, but if anyone is going to do that to her it’s not going to be you for sure and I personally think it should be me but let’s put a pin in that for the time being OK, because right now I’m going to kill you for even thinking it much less saying it out loud in hearing of the gods.”
According to Sandor, Sandor is not allowed to think about her as a woman because women do things that girls do not and Sandor is a defender of virtue whether he wants to admit it or not. But also he’s extremely unhappy at the thought of anyone else doing those things to/with her.
Furthermore: I know it’s dangerous to cross-pollinate show and book, but if you look at how Sandor refers to Sansa in the show this is carried over almost exactly, except that…he calls her lady for the first and only time when he’s alone with her in her room after he deserts. “The lady’s starting to panic.” She’s a woman. He kinda sorta definitely wants her to be his woman. And yet…
