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  ===Feminist critique===
  In her essay "Power and Feminism in Westeros," Caroline Spector describes Brienne as a woman who does not conform and who defies cultural expectations. Her character highlights the perception of women in Westeros in that her fellow warriors assume that her sexuality is "something to be coerced or taken, not something over which she has control... So, too, the consistent rejection Brienne endures for failing to offer the men around her a pleasing countenance." Spector also observes Brienne as a woman who has "taken for herself most of the attributes of male power," and thus provides a "stark lesson how women who dare to take male power for their own are judged and treated not only in Westeros but in all conventionally patriarchal societies." 