ABSTRACT
A character’s sexual imagination often serves to demonstrate the strength, or weakness, of their grounds for such presumption. With this point in mind, Wolfgang Iser’s phenomenological model of reading becomes relevant to the discussion. Some of George R. R. Martin’s most vivid characters owe their impact to the hints about their overall personality raised by descriptions of their sexual behaviour. Martin uses sexual behaviour to set some of his characters up in similar positions, highlighting the crimes of others. Put simply, he uses sex as a way of encouraging readers to consider the way his characters interact with his world. Martin takes care to depict the Starks not just as a power bloc but as a family, parents raising children, characters designed to provoke knowing smiles from readers who enjoyed such upbringings themselves. Martin therefore offers sexual morality as an alternative spectrum on which to variegate his characters.
