I'm moving some of my higher-quality posts over from Reddit. This post was originally made on /r/wot, and as there doesn't appear to be a dedicated Wheel of Time or fantasy magazine yet, I am posting here.
FULL SERIES SPOILERS AHEAD
TRIGGER WARNING: This post analyses a rather infamous arc that centers on male rape.
The original text of the post starts here:
Mat's arc with Tylin sparks a lot of discussion, and I notice a fair number of comments wishing the books took her actions more seriously, or taking the character's amused reactions as the book itself signaling this should be funny and rightly finding that disconcerting. I want to take some time to post an analysis of this arc and show that you are meant to find her actions and the lackluster reactions of the other characters disturbing at best, and sickening at worst.
There were a lot of great comments in this thread about how this arc was meant to mirror and comment on media from the 80's and 90's where rape of women is played for laughs. Jordan really liked to take tropes like this and reverse the roles to make a point or make people examine why they felt uneasy. I won't retread those points here, but think that thread is worth checking out.
I had the same initial reaction, but the more I think about it, the more I like the way it's handled.
One other thing to keep in mind with Jordan's writing is that he was absolutely steadfast in maintaining the unreliable narrator and letting things play out the way they would in real life without the book itself moralizing about right and wrong. All moralizing is done by the characters, and often we are meant to realize that what the characters are presenting as "right" is wrong. This is especially obvious in matters of fact when we know something a character is saying with 100% confidence is 100% wrong, but Jordan often does the same thing with moral lessons as well, where something a character is presenting as morally right is meant to be taken as morally wrong.
Jordan wrote his story the way he felt it would actually unfold, and left it up to you, the reader, to apply your own moral lens without being told by the book how to feel. Character's moral sensibilities are strictly bound by their culture, upbringing, and personality. No character ever breaks the fourth wall and applies our moral sensibilities to a situation for the sake of teaching a lesson to the audience.
That means a couple things for this arc:
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The prose itself never casts Tylin as a rapist, since none of our protagonists see it that way. Mat is a man so they find Tylin's "pursuit" of him amusing, the way Jordan believes they actually would given their culture.
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Mat does not have the language to describe or process what is happening to him. We clearly see he knows on some level it's wrong but his inner monologue is his normal, brash, humorous, self. Mat lies to himself about a lot of things and this is no exception.
However, there are a couple things that I think clearly demonstrate that RJ saw her actions as wrong.
First: Mat's inner dialog is really hard to read, he's constantly oscillating between confusion, despair, and cracking jokes. It's so clear he doesn't have the ability to process what is happening to him, and this makes his sections gut-wrenching. I think it's why so many people have a visceral reaction to the arc. A sample:
“It isn’t natural,” he burst out, yanking the pipestem from between his teeth. “I’m the one who’s supposed to do the chasing!” [Tylin's] astonished eyes surely mirrored his own. Had Tylin been a tavern maid who smiled the right way, he might have tried his luck—well, if the tavern maid lacked a son who liked poking holes in people—but he was the one who chased. He had just never thought of it that way before. He had never had the need to, before.
Tylin began laughing, shaking her head and wiping at her eyes with her fingers. “Oh, pigeon. I do keep forgetting. You are in Ebou Dar, now. I left a little present for you in the sitting room.” She patted his foot through the sheet. “Eat well today. You are going to need your strength.”
Mat put a hand over his eyes and tried very hard not to weep. When he uncovered them, she was gone.
...
There was also a red silk purse holding twenty gold crowns and a note that smelled of flowers.
I would have bought you an earring, piglet, but I noticed your ear is not pierced. Have it done, and buy yourself something nice.
He nearly wept again. He gave women presents. The world was standing on its head! Piglet? Oh, Light! After a minute, he did take the mask; she owed him that much, for his coat alone.
The crying is what really drives it home. If this was meant to truly be played for laughs Mat would not have such a painful inner monologue. Instead, Jordan is creating a dissonance between the humorous tone the other characters approach this arc with and Mat's inner emotional distress. It feels like Jordan asking us to consider the inner life of characters in other media that are the butt of rape jokes. Should we really be laughing at them? Or are we the palace maids to those characters' Mat?
There's also some points to make around Mat trying to figure out why he feels this way and reaching for reasons like "I'm the one who chases" rather than "she raped me" being a really great illustration of victims who can't even articulate why something was a violation in the aftermath of a traumatic experience and the gaslighting that happens to them, but let's move on to another character who laughs at the victim.
Second: when Mat tells Elayne what's happening, Elayne laughs at him initially, but then Mat, in a moment of selflessness, offers her the foxhead medallion to protect her from the Gohlam. She pauses, reassesses him, and:
I. . . .” That faint blush returned to her cheeks. “I am sorry I laughed at you.” She cleared her throat, looking away. “Sometimes I forget my duty to my subjects. You are a worthy subject, Matrim Cauthon. I will see that Nynaeve understands the right of . . . of you and Tylin. Perhaps we can help.”
“No,” he spluttered. “I mean, yes. I mean. . . . That is. . . . Oh, kiss a flaming goat if I know what I mean. I almost wish you didn’t know the truth.
...
Aloud, she said, “I understand.” Sounding just as if she did. “Come along, now, Mat. We can’t waste time standing in one spot.” Gaping, he watched her lift skirts and cloak to make her way along the landing. She understood? She understood, and not one acid little comment, not one cutting remark?
This moment is narrated through Mat's eyes, so we don't know exactly what Elayne is thinking, but we DO know that Elayne is often depicted as having the highest EQ / empathy in the series. She plays peacemaker between her friends, cares for animals, and is the glue that holds her, Min and Aviendha together as friends rather than rivals through the tight bonds she consciously forms with both. She makes friends easily and is fiercely protective of them.
She also has zero issues with calling Mat on his bullshit.
So it's telling that she seems to recognize that this is affecting Mat deeply, and respect that even if she doesn't understand it. She may not go as far as realizing what is actually happening, and it may take her a moment to get there, but we can infer from her that she recognizes on some level that Mat is in real distress over it, and reacts to that, even offering to help him resolve it. This moment really stood out to me on my first read through.
There's a bunch of other things to dissect here, especially around the way victim-blaming and slut-shaming is interwoven into this scene (Elayne implies Mat was asking for it and got a taste of his own medicine, even though Mat is never shown flirting with someone who does not show interest), but let's move on to the next point.
Third: Tylin is killed by the Gholam.
Now, this may not seem like a point in the book's favor. Tylin's death seems to be played as a tragedy. When a character is killed for karmic reasons, most books wink at the reader a little, with some line of narration or dialog emphasizing that they got what was coming to them.
This is not the case with Tylin. Robert Jordan writes Mat's reaction authentically, and Mat has come to care for his abuser, as often happens in the real world. Her death is "played" as tragedy because that's how our narrator feels about it.
Mat did not realize his knees had given way until he found himself sitting on the floor with his head buzzing. He could hear her voice. You’ll get your head cut off yet if you’re not careful, piglet, and I wouldn’t like that. Setalle leaned forward on the narrow bed to press a hand against his cheek in commiseration.
...
[Tuon] was watching him, a neutral expression on her face. “Did you care for Tylin so deeply?” she said in a cautious voice.
“Yes. No. Burn me, I liked her!” Turning away, he scrubbed fingers through his hair, pushing the cap off. He had never been so glad to get away from a woman in his life, but this…! “And I left her tied up and gagged so she couldn’t even call for help, easy prey for the gholam,” he said bitterly. “It was looking for me. Don’t shake your head. Thom. You know it as well as I do.”
But I contend that this death is one of Karmic justice. The Gholam only finds Tylin because it is looking for Mat, and his scent is all over her room as a result of her actions, so her immoral actions directly lead to her death
Further, she is killed by the Gholam while tied up and helpless, a perfect mirror of the situations she forces on Mat with her pink ribbons. Mat even remarks that she never would have stood a chance and couldn't call for help, which has symmetry with the absolute political and social power Tylin had over him. We even have scenes earlier on when he realizes the whole palace is complicit in serving him up to Tylin and there's no one he can turn to for help.
Such symmetry between death and actions is typical of characters being punished for their transgressions, but Jordan's style is not to moralize about it directly. Instead he presents to us the character's authentic reactions and thoughts. The symbolism and meaning is there for us to pick up on, but the unreliable narrator lenses it as a senseless killing of an innocent woman.
Jordan wants to make us uncomfortable, but he's not interested in handing us the answer to why on a silver platter. It's up to us to use our own reasoning and morals to suss that out.
TLDR: Jordan doesn't moralize himself in the books. He expects you to feel the outrage and uneasiness yourself, then connect the dots. Tylin's killing bears all the hallmarks of Karmic justice, so while our characters don't take what she is doing to Mat seriously, I think we are clearly meant to conclude it is wrong.
In many ways Jordan used this arc to examine Rape Culture before "Rape Culture" was a mainstream discussion.