The Heroine’s Journey: Redefining the Myth and Hero’s Journey from an Alternate Perspective

Abstract

The Hero with a Thousand Faces by Joseph Campbell first established the template of the hero’s journey in 1949. This structure was used to tell narrative stories of heroes embarking on transformative adventures. The journey was applied to previous mythologies as well as used to create new ones, especially in the Hollywood movie industry where an abbreviated version of Campbell’s book was widely distributed to studio executives. It was the backbone that blockbusters, such as Spartacus and Star Wars, were built off of. Despite Campbell’s model of the hero’s journey garnering great success, there was still an important aspect of the model that was missing: where do women fall in Campbell’s model? In the introduction of her book The Heroine with 1,001 Faces, Maria Tatar writes about Campbell’s idea of the role of women in his hero’s journey, “‘The woman’s the mother of the hero; she’s the goal of the hero’s achieving; she’s the protectress of the hero; she is this, she is that. What more do you want?’” The response to this is, what if a woman wanted to be a hero herself? This paper acknowledges the forgotten history of women’s roles in classic mythologies, as well as exploring female heroes throughout modern media on their own journeys. There will be consideration as to what a heroine’s journey might look like as well as how the representation and erasure of women in folklore and hero's stories affects the representation of women in modern media.