RORY: I’m sick of this. I’m sick of everyone treating me like I’m some kind of mindless idiot being led around by a guy … Everyone in my life, including you, is refusing to believe that I was just as responsible for what happened that night as Jess was.
Rory has always been treated as some sort of perfect girl that all adults love to an almost insane degree. She’s “the sweetest kid in the world“, she’s the Gilmore family’s “great white hope“, she’s the princess of Stars Hollow, daughter of the queen bee.
Now she expresses her resentment at being forced into this stifling role, because it means that she can never be granted agency or bear any consequences for her actions. If she gets into a car accident, then it isn’t Rory’s fault – she’s been led astray by “that boy”. Rory is smart enough to see that it means nobody is actually treating her as a person, that her thoughts and actions don’t matter to them – what matters to them is the imaginary Rory they have in their heads of the perfect girl.
Rory explains to Lorelai that she agreed to go for ice cream with Jess, she let him drive the car, she asked him to keep driving instead of going straight back to the diner. She was having fun with Jess, she enjoyed driving with him until the accident occurred, and she knows that she bears at least some of the responsibility for what happened.
Unfortunately, nobody listens to her at all. Lorelai stills blames Jess. Her grandparents still blame Lorelai and Dean. It’s Rory’s tragedy that she is never brought to account for her mistakes and errors, even when she demands it, and eventually this will have big consequences when she becomes an adult.
The Annotated Gilmore Girls 