“Heroes” vs “Heroines”: A Tale of Linguistics and Juicy Academic Gossip

Let me tell you some spicy goss I’ve dug up in my research.

If you’ve been with this blog for a while, you might remember my abridged guide to The Hero’s Journey, Joseph Campbell’s mythological theory of the Universal Narrative that is repeated as a pattern throughout the literature and folklore of the ancient world and deeply informs our current pop culture. You may also remember me tilting my head a little and pondering here and there that hey, this book kind of works on the assumption that the titular Hero is a dude most of the time. I am, it turns out, not the only reader who picked up on this. In 1981, scholar and therapist Maureen Murdock asked Campbell if there was a feminine equivalent to the decidedly masculine-tinted Hero’s Journey, and Campbell replied that…

“Women don’t need to make the Journey. In the whole of mythological tradition woman is there. All she has to do is realize that she’s the place people are trying to get to.”

Murdock, I can only imagine, kind of went:

…and in 1990 published her own book called The Heroine’s Journey.

The Hero’s Journey, Abridged and with Gifs (Part Three)

I realise that last time I totally forgot about the Atonement with the Father chapter, for which I apologise. But, well, the title is fairly self-explanatory—there’s a father figure, there’s some conflict, be it low-key emotional like him not supporting your dream to be an inventor, or something more epic like getting mad about that time you drove his sun god chariot and set everything on fire. You resolve it somehow. Freud is probably there.

Now, your archetypal Hero has left home, been through a hell of a time, and now it’s time to return, completing the cycle, and filling in the last leg of their adventure…

The Magic Flight

So you have The Ultimate Boon, and it’s time to come home. If Your Hero was destined for greatness and their quest was supported by, say, the gods, their journey home to renew and help the ordinary world will be smooth and wonderful. A neat example of this is Disney’s Moana—once Moana has restored the heart of Te Fiti and thus restored balance and life to the sea, Te Fiti rewards her by magic-ing her a new boat and sending her on her way. (As well as drawing heavily from mythology, Moana is very cool in that she has quite a traditional heroic arc, in that she is a warrior king who crosses into the world of the supernatural, has all sorts of adventures with monsters and trickster gods, then returns to her people wiser and stronger to govern them—which is also a traditionally male heroic arc, but I’m already writing a whole post gushing about how nifty it is that that’s been gender-flipped, so for now I digress).

The Hero’s Journey, Abridged and with Gifs (Part One)

A while back, a dude named Joseph Campbell wrote a book called The Hero with a Thousand Faces where he presented the idea that most myths, legends, folk tales and stories are all inherently dealing with the same themes and telling the same tale. He drew this up in a map of The Hero’s Journey, which has been adopted as a nigh-essential tool for story mapping and writing ever since, and details the archetypes that run through a lot of powerful stories from all around the world. It ties nicely into the screenwriting Three Act Structure, which is also a really useful tool for writing stories and character arcs effectively, so they’re both worth studying if you’re interested in knowing what, by tried and true practice going back many thousands of years, seems to make a good story. This archetypal map is the foundation for my thesis, so this post is mostly me trying to get my head around my research, but this stuff is fascinating and a really useful writing tool, so I’m sticking it here for anyone who needs a quick-and-dirty guide.

Campbell divides The Hero’s Journey into three parts: separation, where “the hero ventures forth from the world of common day into a region of supernatural wonder”, initiation, where “fabulous forces are encountered and a decisive victory is won”, and return, where “the hero comes back from this mysterious adventure with the power to bestow boons on his fellow man.” It’s all strongly tied into rites of passage, coming of age narratives, and a whole lot of Freudian stuff, because this was written in 1949 when people at large still thought Freud was a good idea. I think Campbell has an Oedipus Complex Complex because he brings it up so damned often.

In any case, here are the (first few) elements of the Hero’s Journey as Campbell outlines them, which are easy to recognise in both modern and ancient media:

Is Destiny Dead?

You all know the story—a world-innocent but slightly bored peasant boy gets swept into an adventure to save his people. How’s he going to do it? He’s just an everyman, after all, the most relatable archetype out there, that of the well-meaning but gormless youth. However he might protest, however, he really has little to no say in it—he has to go on the adventure and defeat this evil, because destiny dictates he’s the only one who can.

What am I talking about here? Star Wars? The Arthurian legends? Buffy the Vampire Slayer? It doesn’t matter. The idea of the fated hero is older than print, present in everything from Greek theatre to modern sitcoms. But the question that I pose to you is thus: is the concept a bit worn out?

After all, the thing about destiny is that you know what’s going to happen. As if the definition wasn’t enough, we have the added bonus that a lot of these plots march along a certain previously laid-out path, that of The Hero’s Journey. Joseph Campbell was the first to nut this out in his book The Hero with a Thousand Faces and if you follow your nose you’ll see it guiding adventurers all across the spectrum of literature.

It starts with our ordinary hero, our relatable everydude, in their ordinary home town, somewhat dissatisfied with their predictable life. Suddenly, in crashes some sort of bizarre happenstance that ignites the plot. Maybe a mysterious girl falls from the sky, or maybe they find a hidden treasure, or maybe some sort of mystical, pun-making wizard appears and calls them to adventure.

The Hero can’t just rush off into the story, however—for whatever reason, be it their loyalty to home or their honour or their wobbly knees, they must refuse the call. In spite of this, they’re going to get roped into the fray anyway, like in the aforementioned and formula-perfect Star Wars, where Obi Wan points out that Luke’s really got nothing better to do than come with him and face the adventure he was born for since his house and family are now on fire.

Does destiny really say I have to carry your Muppet ass around?