Briar Bond, Journal Entry 11 - The Heroine's Journey

 In my last post, I expressed my disappointment in the constrictions Campbell's Hero's Journey places around women. This led me to want to explore that idea deeper by choosing a female character as the subject for my term paper. My research led me to exactly what I was looking for, a direct response to Campbell's theory.

Maureen Murdock was a student of Campbell's. She developed the Heroine's Journey as a response to his Hero's Journey in the 1980s. Her theory was originally published in the form of a self-help book published in 1990, but the concepts can be applied to literature as well.

The Heroine's journey differs from the Hero's Journey in one major way, it is almost entirely internal. The Heroine's Journey is one of self discovery, leading the heroine towards confidence and autonomy and a strengthened sense of identity. She does so by breaking away from her feminine qualities, exploring her masculine ones, then finding a balance between them.

It was very gratifying to me that not only had many others had this disappointment in Campbell's theory, but that an established response with substantial support already existed. I feel like this should have featured more in our course because the idea of the internal journey really more closely follows Murdock's structure than it does Campbell's.

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