The heroine’s journey
I like writing stories about strong women. Most of my favourite characters in literature are strong women - Jo March, Elizabeth Bennet, Nancy Drew and Jane Eyre. It is their intelligence, fire and passion that hooks me. Even when they are misguided or must confront overwhelming odds, the reader knows they are smart enough to call on the resources at their disposal to pull themselves back from the brink to begin on a different or slightly altered path in order to achieve their purpose.
For many years students of literature and film have learnt about The Hero’s Journey. This was mythologist, Joseph Campbell’s life’s work. Essentially, it breaks down the hero’s journey into stages. In a very small nutshell it goes something like this: the hero embarks on a quest or adventure, he is victorious in a decisive battle then he comes home changed or transformed. Here is a slightly more thorough breakdown. Campbell’s is a straightforward theory that has been a neat model for screenwriters for years. George Lucas gives credit to Campbell for inspiring his original Star Wars trilogy. The Hero’s Journey structure grew to become the mainstay of literature and film.
The problem with Campbell’s theory is that it isn’t a one size fits all kind of monomyth. Campbell is even quoted as saying women do not need to embark on a journey, ‘all she has to do is realise that she’s the place people are trying to get to.’
I think most women would disagree.
Campbell based his study on classical myths, the heroes of which are male - the Golden Fleece, Prometheus, King Arthur and Dante’s Inferno to name but a few. Campbell’s theory excludes women entirely. They are left out in the cold, high and dry. In the Hero’s Journey, females are only seen as the ‘temptress’ - a sexy distraction from the hero’s ultimate quest. Even Hollywood films featuring strong female characters such as Wonder Woman and The Hunger Games still follow the basic structure of the male journey.
Strong women have been the protagonists of their own quests for centuries. However, Jane Eyre’s journey takes a different path to Edward Rochester’s and Nancy Drew (just like Buffy Summers) doesn’t solve her mysteries alone. She has the help of her friends.
Jungian psychotherapist Maureen Murdock noticed this discrepancy in the 90s and developed the Heroine’s Journey in response. A student of Campbell’s, Murdock proposed an archetypal pattern for a woman’s adventure or quest based on information gathered working with her female patients. The Heroine’s Journey is an inward or spiritual trip towards enlightenment and healing, Murdock explained, whereas its male counterpart is all about going ‘up and out’. A comprehensive break down of the stages can be found here.
Even though Campbell’s theory is often displayed visually as a cycle (see image below), I’ve always imagined it as more of an arc because it has been the linchpin of popular fiction and Hollywood’s three-act structure. What I like about Murdock’s model is that it is a cycle, recognising that women have battles (often the same battle) every day, emerging sometimes as victor, sometimes as vanquished, but on each occasion we come out a little wiser, slightly more enlightened. Each time Lizzie Bennet has an encounter with Darcy, she emerges knowing something more about the man as well as about herself. Every experience women go through, they move a step closer to enlightenment. Occasionally, they might take a few steps back.
A cyclical representation of the Hero’s Journey
A heroine’s journey reflects a woman’s real life today. When a woman has a problem that needs fixing, when conflict arises, they typically go to their friends and family - their network - in order to find a solution. What’s more, women playing the roles of mother, wife, girlfriend, lover, worker and friend have a series of different challenges and goals they must consider every day.
All my books have strong female characters, but during the process of writing the stories and sending the women on their journeys, I wasn’t following Murdock’s model. Quite simply, I give my heroines a goal and they do, exactly what I would do placed in a similar situation. However, now as I am writing this blog, I realise they all follow the same pattern - Murdock’s model. It just happened in the writing and, although I mainly write historical fiction, it is heartening to know that the journeys of females have not changed and still reflect the life of a contemporary women.
I came up for the idea for the blog after listening to Joanna Penn’s interview with Gail Carriger on the Creative Penn podcast.