Barsoomian rule against killing members of the opposite sex

The Barsoomian rule against killing members of the opposite sex forbids men from killing women and women from killing men, even in a society where violence, combat, and earned status shape public life. Its protection is sharply limited: it bars lethal action across gender lines but does not prevent threats, captivity, or cruelty, a contradiction John Carter discovers when he tries to defend Dejah Thoris from Sarkoja.

Scope and Limits

The rule becomes explicit after John Carter warns Sarkoja that further cruelty toward Dejah Thoris will bring a fatal response. Sarkoja does not withdraw out of fear that he will carry out the threat. John Carter later learns that men do not kill women on Mars, nor women men, so his warning cannot be enforced in the way he intended. Sarkoja departs with hostility and continues to pose a danger to the captive.

The incident distinguishes protection from safety. Dejah Thoris is spared the particular danger implied by Carter’s threat, but she remains in custody and vulnerable to Sarkoja’s attentions. The rule therefore restricts who may kill whom without securing freedom from coercion or mistreatment. Carter’s effort to intervene is further complicated by his incomplete understanding of the customs governing the people around him.

A Rule Within a Violent Order

The prohibition sits alongside customs that reward combat and make force a basis for status. After Carter kills a warrior, he receives the trappings and position associated with that man; he comes to understand that this recognition makes him a Martian chieftain and helps explain the freedom he enjoys in the audience chamber. Approval can also be publicly expressed through laughter and applause, which Carter initially fails to recognize as praise. In this social order, martial achievement earns standing, while the gendered prohibition marks one limit on lethal violence.

Other episodes show that the rule does not amount to a general rejection of force. Carter adopts a different method in handling his thoats: he argues that kindness makes them more dependable and therefore improves his effectiveness as a warrior. In a separate confrontation, his anger does not free him to choose any response he likes; when an opponent stands ready with a drawn sword, Carter understands that he must meet him in fair combat with the opponent’s chosen weapon or a lesser one. These practices place gendered restraint within a broader landscape of violence governed by particular conventions, rather than replacing that landscape with a universal ban.

Political Meaning and Narrative Function

The rule’s limits matter most in the contrast between its formal protection and the actual vulnerability of women in the story. Carter invokes the possibility of killing Sarkoja to defend Dejah Thoris, but his warning misunderstands the boundary that governs such an act. The restriction does not make Sarkoja harmless, nor does it itself release Dejah Thoris from custody. Instead, Carter must recognize that intervention is shaped by customs he has not yet learned.

The same society treats combat as a source of political legitimacy. Carter later challenges the Tharks’ judgment of their jeddak, arguing that their leader did not fight alongside them and presenting Tars Tarkas as a brave warrior and a more deserving ruler. The episode links martial reputation to authority, while the rule against cross-gender killing stands as a specific exception to a culture otherwise organized around contest and force. Together, these customs show that Barsoomian justice is neither a simple embrace of violence nor a comprehensive shield against it: protection depends on the boundary a particular rule actually sets.