Heroine Versus Hero: the Journey” Challenges the Supposition That Joseph Campbell’S Mythical Journey of the Hero Includes Both Men and Women

Abstract

“Heroine versus Hero: The Journey” challenges the supposition that Joseph Campbell’s mythical journey of the hero includes both men and women. Female myths and fairy tales, as well as their psychological interpretations, are described and analyzed to determine if the heroine has her own specific and distinct journey. Patriarchal and male bias of feminine tales, and the existence of tales outside these biases, are questioned.

Finally, the information acknowledged in this thesis is examined with respect to how it may be helpful to script writers and filmmakers when creating authentic stories about feminine heroines. Analysis of six female-driven films is included to determine whether the attributes found in the literature are also found in films.

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Denise Ross

Dr. Erik Palmer

Dr. Kristin Nagy-Catz

Dr. Brook Colley

Thesis Requirement for Master’s In Interdisciplinary Studies

Heroine versus Hero: The Journey

The story-maker . . . makes a Secondary World which your mind can enter. Inside it, what he relates is ‘true’: it accords with the laws of that world. You therefore believe it, while you are, as it were, inside. The moment disbelief arises, the spell is broken; the magic, or rather art, has failed. —JRR Tolkien, “On Fairy-stories”

In 1998, the AFI (American Film Institute) released its list of the top one hundred films of all time (“AFI’s 100 Greatest American Movies of All Time”). There were only seven films with a female protagonist. In 2007, the AFI updated the list, and once again, only seven of the one hundred films were stories about a female being told from the female’s perspective (“AFI’s 100 Greatest American Films of All Time”). Women represent fifty-one percent of the United States population, and not telling stories from their point of view means over half of the population’s perspective is not being shown

(“Quick Facts: United States”). There are many films that have strong female characters, or “leading ladies,” yet regardless of how strong the roles they play, their stories are being told from the male protagonist’s point of view. Having women’s perspectives recognized is as important on screen as it is off screen.

According to Anneke Smelik, author of And the Mirror Cracked, the demand for authentic female recognition in films is strong. She writes that “female spectators want to be able to identify with lifelike heroines without having to be annoyed by sexist clichés or transported by hyperbolical stereotypes” (Smelik 8).

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The dominant paradigm within which Hollywood studio films are written and produced has aligned with Joseph Campbell and his mythological journey of the hero.

From his book The Hero with a Thousand Faces, Campbell has inspired blockbuster films such as Star Wars and Indiana Jones. Does Campbell’s mythical journey include the heroine? Is there a journey that reflects her story exclusively? Can heroic stories about women be created from Campbell’s monomyth? Or does a female have to be at the head of an uprising or a war, such as depicted by Katniss Everdeen in Hunger

Games, Diana Prince in Wonder Woman, or Jyn in Rogue One, to be considered a heroine? Is there a journey that reflects a heroine without becoming a Disney princess in need of rescue by her Prince Charming?

This thesis aims to answer these questions by assessing and contrasting female- focused narratives with male-focused narratives that follow the heroic journey as

Campbell frames it.

Introduction

Women oppressed by hero myths see only two choices: Be the helpless princess sobbing for rescue, or be the knight, helmeted and closed off in a cubicle of steel, armored against the natural world, featureless behind a helmet. Only men or those who act like them . . . will succeed. —Valerie Estelle Frankel, From Girl to Goddess

Joseph Campbell (1904–1987), a professor, author, and lecturer in comparative mythology, wrote The Hero with a Thousand Faces in 1949. His premise: all cultures have hero stories that follow the same basic pattern. Campbell coined this universal pattern of the hero the “monomyth” (“About Joseph Campbell”). In the book, he describes a diversity of myths, stories, fairy tales, legends, and rituals to substantiate his argument.

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My inquiry focuses on the gender specifics of Campbell’s monomyth as described in The Hero with a Thousand Faces, hereafter called Hero. The first thesis question challenges the supposition that there is no difference between the heroic journeys of the female and the male. Female myths, literary fairy tales, and folklore are used to describe the metaphorical and psychological differences between masculine and feminine narrative.

The second thesis question addresses the influence of the Eurocentric and patriarchal biases of the female myths, fairy tales, and folklore described in the text. I also question if there are tales that guide women in their heroic journeys outside of these biases. Finally, the information acknowledged throughout this thesis is examined with respect to how it may be helpful to script writers and filmmakers when creating authentic stories about women and their perspectives.

Joseph Campbell’s premise in Hero is that the mythological journey of the hero is the same in all cultures. He realizes that there are differences among the many tales themselves, but he writes about the similarities between the tales regardless of cultural context (Campbell, Hero viii). I, too, realize that culture provides differences in tales of the heroine, but following Campbell’s framework, I looked for similar motifs within the various heroine’s stories. I am not arguing about cultural differences in tales and mythology but gender difference of Campbell’s monomyth. The masculine and patriarchal influence from numerous cultures on literary fairy tales and myths is examined to see if specific female motifs or similarities have been removed because of masculine bias, the patriarchal society, or religion, but not because of specific cultural

Ross 4 differences. This thesis focuses on the journey of the hero as Joseph Campbell frames it.

The inquiry does not give a specific definition to “masculine” and “feminine” because, as Carrie Paechter writes, the terms can only be defined “in relation to each other and to men and women” (254). Campbell uses a binary definition of the terms, and I will use the same in this thesis. However, I recognize there exists a more complex or nuanced understanding of gender. This inquiry does not suggest in any way that a female cannot take the psychological journey of the hero or that a male cannot relate to the undertakings of the heroine and her journey. In addition, this thesis does not cover

LGBTQ perspectives, although the numerous tales and mythologies of the LGBTQ community would provide a rich opportunity for inquiry. The various mythologies of the world have not left out this community. One does not have to dig very deep to find beautiful stories about lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer individuals and their acceptance in their various cultures.

Overview and Structure of Thesis

A feminine figure in a fairy tale with the whole story circling around it does not necessarily prove that the tale has to do with a woman’s psychology. —Marie-Louise von Franz, Problems with the Feminine in Fairy Tales

This thesis is theoretical in nature, so the primary sources to base the argument found herein are articles, books, and interviews. Section 1, “Campbell as Hero:

Biography, Hollywood, Critiques, and Definitions,” gives biographical information on

Campbell, academic critiques of his work, and definitions of key concepts used throughout the inquiry. Section 2, “Campbell’s Mythological Journey of the Hero,” focuses on the specifics of Campbell’s monomyth, examining whether the journey functions across genders. The influence of patriarchal bias on feminine tales and the

Ross 5 effects it has on film and scriptwriting is examined in Section 3, “The Gender of

Campbell’s Hero.” In Section 4, “Aims and Objectives: The Research,” a set of films diverse in style, genre, and age, and connected by the feminine theme, are examined.

Final thoughts are given in Section 5, “Conclusion: Are the Questions Answered?”

1. Campbell as Hero: Biography, Hollywood, Critiques, and Definitions

No one . . . did more to revive popular interest in myth than Joseph Campbell. He preached myth the way others preach religion. —Robert A. Segal, Joseph Campbell, An Introduction

The following paragraphs introduce the reader to Joseph Campbell and detail why his book The Hero with a Thousand Faces became important to filmmakers.

Critiques of Campbell are included to give a balanced look at his work; however, they focus only on what is relevant to the inquiry. The definition of myth and fairy tale by scholars in literature, structuralism, psychology, mythology, feminism, and fairy tales are provided to give Campbell’s use of the term “mythology” context.

Joseph Campbell: A Biography

Campbell embodied as well as espoused, the extroversive, life-affirming outlook that he found in all myths. —Robert A. Segal, Joseph Campbell: An Introduction

Joseph Campbell was born in White Plains, New York, in 1904 to an Irish-

Catholic family. As a young child, he was enthralled with Native American stories, and he quickly saw similarities between those stories and the various biblical stories he learned through the Catholic Church in which he was raised (Rensma 78; Segal 1987,

14). When he was a young man, his family took a trip to Europe. On the long ship ride back to America, he met the young messiah of the Theosophical Society, Jiddu

Krishnamurti. From the many conversations the two men had, Campbell began to see similarities between the religious stories of the East and West. This encounter sparked

Ross 6 in Campbell a lifelong interest in Indian philosophy and religion (“About Joseph

Campbell”).

Campbell went to Columbia University, where he received his BA in English

Literature. He continued on at Columbia for graduate course work in Medieval and

English Literature, with an emphasis in Arthurian Romanticism. Once again he saw the same literary motifs in these legends as he did in Native American and biblical stories and in Indian philosophy (Rensma 80–81; Segal 1987, 14; “About Joseph Campbell”).

Campbell wanted to continue his studies, and he was awarded a Proudfit

Traveling Scholarship to study abroad. He spent a year in Paris, where he was heavily exposed to modern art, literature, and philosophy. He spent the following year at the

University of Munich in Germany, where he discovered the works of psychologists Carl

Jung and Sigmund Freud and author Thomas Mann (“About Joseph Campbell”; Segal

1987, 15). Going back to the United States to focus on his doctorate, Campbell requested to switch his studies into the areas of modern art, Sanskrit, and Medieval

Literature, but Columbia denied the request. He then pulled out of his academic studies

(Cousineau and Brown 52–55). The decision not to obtain a PhD alienated him from the respect of the academic world for the rest of his life (Rensma 82). However, in 1934, he accepted a teaching position at the newly formed Sarah Lawrence College for women, which he held for thirty-eight years (Cousineau and Brown 52, 57). Campbell felt he had the academic freedom there that he needed to be successful, as Sarah Lawrence was a college, not a university (Segal 1987, 16).

It was during Campbell’s early years at Sarah Lawrence College that he became good friends with Indologist and historian Heinrich Zimmer. When Zimmer died

Ross 7 suddenly, Campbell was asked to complete and edit Zimmer’s life’s work (“About

Joseph Campbell”; Segal 1997, 17–18). The work on Zimmer’s papers gave Campbell the mystical approach that he used in all of his future interpretations and writings on myth. His friendship with Zimmer also gave him the opportunity to meet Dr. Carl Gustav

Jung. In 1953, Campbell and his wife traveled to Switzerland for a personal meeting with the Jungs at their castle, Bollingen Tower, on the banks of Lake Zurich in

Switzerland (Rensma 88).

During his tenure at Sarah Lawrence College, Campbell edited numerous texts and collaborated on many projects. His first solo endeavor was The Hero with a

Thousand Faces, which was born from the many lectures he gave to his female students. It took Campbell four years to write the book, which won him acclaim from the

National Institute of Arts and Letters (“About Joseph Campbell”). The Bollingen

Foundation published the book in 1949, but it was neither noticed much nor embraced by the academic world (Segal 1987, 10).

Campbell retired from Sarah Lawrence College in 1972 and went on the lecture circuit (Segal 1987, 21). He was interviewed many times, including the interviews he had with Bill Moyers on the popular PBS series The Power of Myth. According to Robert

Ellwood, one of Campbell’s academic critics, Campbell received “too much too soon and too easily” (154). He failed to grow in both academics and understanding in his later years. In his many interviews and lectures, he did “little but repeat the homilies that first won him the laurels of popular acclaim” (Ellwood 154). Campbell died suddenly from cancer at his home in Honolulu, Hawaii, in 1987 (Rensma 89–90; Segal 1987, 22).

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Campbell’s Connection to Hollywood and Film

Novels and movies. . . owe at least part of their popularity to the fact that they re-state transformations found in ancient tales and make them relevant to our lives today. —Joan Gould, Spinning Straw into Gold

Campbell’s main audience for Hero was outside academia (Segal 1987, 10). In the late 1950s and early 1960s, artists, writers, and spiritually minded people read the book incessantly. Hero “became the Bible of a generation” (Segal 1987, 21). The

Beatniks and hippies attached to his advice of “follow your bliss,” which became

Campbell’s renowned philosophy (“About Joseph Campbell”). In the late 1970s, George

Lucas brought Campbell’s work to Hollywood by admitting that Hero had a major impact on his writing of the Star Wars trilogy. Lucas and Campbell became friends, and at

Campbell’s eightieth birthday party, Lucas claimed he would still be writing the Star

Wars trilogy if it weren’t for Campbell’s book (Larsen 541–544). The success of Star

Wars and its relation to Hero led to many other directors and filmmakers using

Campbell’s monomyth to create action-oriented Hollywood blockbusters. Others who have acknowledged Campbell’s influence include Steven Spielberg, in his Indiana

Jones series, and George Miller, who created the Mad Max series (Rensma ix).

What catapulted Campbell’s fame, however, was the interview he did with Bill

Moyers in 1985 and 1986. In the spring of 1988, a three-part series of conversation between the two was broadcast on PBS; more than twenty-four hours of dialogue were cut to six hours (Segal 1987, 170; Rensma viii, 90). The interview was watched by more than 2.5 million people each night and was transcribed into the best-selling book The

Power of Myth, which sold over a million copies and stayed on the best-seller list for more than six months (Rensma 90). Campbell did not live to see the aired interviews, as he died shortly before the broadcast.

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Campbell’s posthumous rise to fame and Hollywood’s extensive use of the hero’s journey as described in Hero prompted the academic world to take a second look at the book. It is now studied primarily in film and screenwriting classes at many universities

(Rensma x). Robert A. Segal, a Sixth Century Chair in Religious Studies at the

University of Aberdeen, Scotland, has expressed concern that most of the current scholarly work about Campbell are doctorate and thesis literary papers that begin with the supposition that Campbell’s work is valid. There has been no scholarly inquiry into the validity of the concept of the monomyth itself (Segal 1987, ix).

Critiques of Campbell and His Works

Comparing the ideas of two thinkers always involves an act of interpretation. What we can compare are interpretations of the ideas. . . -not the ideas themselves. As we can never be a hundred percent sure that our interpretations of their ideas are accurate. —Ritske Rensma, The Innateness of Myth

The academic world of mythology did not take notice of Hero, nor of Campbell himself, when the book was published. As a result, there are few academic critiques of the book (Segal 1987, 10). While this thesis focuses on Campbell’s interpretation of the gender of the hero, a field in which there has been minimal academic pursuit, knowing and understanding other critiques of Campbell’s work supports the thesis. All of the following critiques are from the 1980s, when Campbell’s popularity was at its peak, or later.

Many have criticized Campbell for being anti-Semitic, according to Robert

Ellwood, Professor of World Religions at the University of Southern California for thirty years and currently Professor Emeritus (161). Ellwood examines Campbell’s politics in his book The Politics of Myth and writes that Campbell considered himself politically

Ross 10 conservative and an individualist. Being Irish, Campbell had a disdain for Britain because of what it had historically done to Ireland.

He had studied in Germany before the days of Hitler and could never bring himself to say anything negative about that country. He loved the cleanliness and order and so always had a soft spot in his heart for Germany. Ellwood thinks this could be one reason why Campbell has been called anti-Semitic. Campbell visited India in 1954, which tainted his love for that country’s myths and culture when he saw first-hand

India’s dirt, poverty, and caste system, which disgusted him (Ellwood 166). Regarding his own country, Campbell struggled with growing minority populations, feminism, and liberal social programs in the United States as he got older (Ellwood 133–166). Ellwood writes that even with Campbell’s love of the mythical hero, he could “not accept the

‘heroic’ actions of a Rosa Parks or a draft resister” (165–166). In the end, “Joseph

Campbell’s political thought can only be considered a collection of unassimilated fragments, some brilliant, some not thoroughly thought through, some frankly based on prejudice” (Ellwood 165).

Author and professor Mary Lefkowitz argues that Campbell tends to make the

“details of ancient narratives” conform to his pattern of the hero (American Scholar 431).

Campbell picks specific myths that fit into his description of the hero’s journey. Lefkowitz goes on to write that Campbell’s choice of myths is usually masculine, with the female being passive and there only to support the hero on his journey. Campbell’s description of the universal goddess comes from Christianity and resembles more “of a European housewife” whose main sexual role is to nurture, create life, and inspire men. In

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Lefkowitz’s view, the Greek goddesses were idolized because they were powerful

(American Scholar, 434).

Robert A. Segal is one of few who have had the interest in and taken the time to study a large majority of Campbell’s work from a scholarly point of view. He criticizes

Hero in the areas of function and origin of myth in his book Joseph Campbell: An

Introduction. Segal’s research shows that, between his various written works,

Campbell’s views changed on these topics. In Hero, Campbell wants to show the similarities between various myths because he thinks the differences are secondary.

Segal writes, “He takes for granted that all cultures and indeed all individuals possess hero myths. He does not try to prove this point” (27, 1997). Campbell wants to prove that all hero myths are the same throughout all cultures and that the appropriate approach to describe this is not only psychological but metaphysical, as well. He uses psychoanalysis and symbolism to interpret the myths he chooses but not a theory that he devised academically himself (Segal 1987, 3). Campbell quotes psychoanalytic thinkers, such as Sigmund Freud, CJ Jung, Géza Róheim, Wilhelm Stekel, Otto Rank, and Karl Abraham, depending on the myth or specific part of the journey he wants to explain. It is his perspective that psychoanalysts all had the same view and were all in one big movement (Rensma 103). In addition, Campbell does not give meaning, origin, or function to the actual pattern he coined the “monomyth” (Segal 1987, 1); the reader is merely expected to take it as valid. The term comes directly from the book Finnegan’s

Wake, by James Joyce, and the term “heroic cycle” comes from Leo Frobenius’s work on African history and mythology (Rensma 85–87). As Hero was not aimed at scholars,

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Campbell instead wrote the book from a literary perspective, using the notes he used for lectures at Sarah Lawrence College.

Although Campbell continually waffles on the function and origin of myth throughout his many works, he never veers from his idea that myths bring people together. His premise is that all people are the same at their core. He assumes there is a psychic unity of humanity (Segal 1987, 2; 1997, 193). If Campbell’s view is considered valid, it leads to the premise that men and women are similar at the core. This premise then leads to the supposition that men’s and women’s psychology is the same. If this argument is not deemed credible, then the idea that there must be two separate gender journeys—one for the masculine hero and one for the feminine heroine—must be considered. Campbell’s universal pattern, or monomyth, that he describes in Hero would have to be masculine. Segal concludes that all of Campbell’s heroes are adult males (1987, 14). Although Campbell uses female myths and fairy tales in his book, “his pattern presupposes exclusively male heroes” (Segal 1987, 54).

Several scholars and critics have acknowledged that the ideas of Joseph

Campbell and Carl Jung are connected (Rensma 1). The perception from scholars and non-scholars alike is that “Campbell’s ideas are not just influenced by Jung but are actually ‘Jungian’ in nature” (Rensma 1–2). The single scholarly work that focuses on

Campbell’s use and acceptance of Jungian theory is The Innateness of Myth: A New

Interpretation of Joseph Campbell’s Reception of C.G. Jung by Ritske Rensma, a professor of World Religions and Philosophy of Religion at University College Roosevelt in the Netherlands. To support his point that many think Campbell’s ideas are Jungian,

Rensma quotes the Macmillan Encyclopedia of Religion, which states that many

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“studies of religious myths have been created that utilize Jung’s psychology,” with the most well-known being Hero (qtd. in Rensma 1). Hollywood also connects the theories of Jung with those of Campbell, sometimes mistakenly. For example, the actor Will

Smith has stated that he connects with Joseph Campbell’s idea of the “collective unconscious” when in fact this is Jung’s theory (Rensma 2).

Carl Gustav Jung, born in Switzerland in 1875, was educated in medicine and specialized in psychiatry and psychotherapy at Zurich University (Stevens 1–17). His close friend and mentor for many years was Sigmund Freud, but they eventually split because of their differing opinions on many topics, with Jung going on his own (Stevens

18–25). For the rest of his life, Jung worked on and created theories concerning personal transformation and growth (Stevens 38). His numerous theories are what today are collectively known as Jungian psychology.

Jung’s most important contribution to psychology is his theory of the “collective unconscious.” He defines the term as “a part of the psyche . . . [that] is not a personal acquisition. While the personal unconscious is made up essentially of contents which have at one time been conscious, but which have disappeared from consciousness through having been forgotten or repressed, the contents of the collective unconscious have never been in consciousness, and, therefore, have never been individually acquired” (Jung 42). The collective unconscious is the sum of similar experiences that all of humanity has. Jung uses the term “archetypes” to describe these collective experiences when they are activated and come to the conscious realm. He writes that

“an expression of the archetypes can be through myth and fairy tales” (Jung 5).

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Jung’s theory on the anima and animus is also relevant to this thesis. It is described by Jungian psychiatrist Anthony Stevens as the archetypal system giving the individual the psychological ability to relate to the opposite sex: a portion of the male psyche has characteristics of the female, called the anima, and the female has her masculine side, called the animus (Stevens 71–72).

Rensma takes a critical in-depth look at Campbell’s works in relation to Jung’s previously described theories to decipher whether Campbell was indeed a Jungian.

Campbell waffled on his theories about the origination of myth, whereas Jung consistently thought that myths originate from the collective unconscious. When

Campbell wrote Hero, his theory about the origin of myth was much more metaphysical

(Rensma 187). Campbell writes in Hero that the “wise old ones” were the originators of myth (Hero vii). Rensma comes to the same conclusions as and agrees with Segal:

Campbell never had a philosophy of his own and did not analyze the myths themselves.

Instead, he used theories developed by others to substantiate his arguments (Rensma

106).

Rensma made the argument that Campbell’s core ideas changed over time and writes that Campbell’s career can be divided into three phases. The first phase was from 1943 to1959, which included the writing of Hero and the first volume of The Masks of God. During this time, Campbell gave equal importance to both Freud and Jung. The second phase was from 1959 to 1968. During this period, Campbell dismissed Jung’s ideas of archetypes completely. His third phase was from 1968 to his death in 1987.

This phase included the publication of the fourth volume of The Masks of God and most

Ross 15 of Campbell’s lecturing days. It was also the turning point for Campbell regarding Jung.

After 1968, Campbell “consistently associated Jung with all of his ideas” (Rensma 93).

Although critiques of Campbell are harsh at times, there are few, and they come primarily from the schools of mythology and religion. Campbell knew he did not have the support from the academic world in these disciplines. He “exhibited limited interest of the usual academic sort in his subject matter. He evinced little concern about mythic variants or philological issues, or even about the cultural or ritual context of his material”

(Ellwood 130). However, Campbell’s premise of the hero’s journey did receive strong support from Hollywood and numerous university film departments. One reason may be his literary writing style, or, as Ellwood writes, the fact that he has a romantic theory of myth that blends easily with filmmaking (130).

Definition of Myth and Fairy Tales

Both genres address the questions that continually preoccupy humankind, but whereas myth gives answers that are definite, those of fairy tales are suggestive. —Susan Sellers, Myth and Fairy Tale in Contemporary Women’s Fiction

One criticism of Campbell concerns his definition—or lack thereof—of the word

“myth.” Campbell writes in Hero that “the prime function of mythology and rite [is] to supply the symbols that carry the human spirit forward” (Hero 11). In The Power of

Myth, Campbell describes myth as being “clues to the spiritual potentialities of the human life” (5). He suggests that the “main motifs of myths are all the same, and they have always been the same” (Campbell, Power 22). According to Segal, when

Campbell was writing Hero, he was not concerned with function or origin of myth but with its meaning. Campbell uses the word broadly to encompass all stories, rituals, and beliefs (Segal 1997, 11). He does not differentiate between myth and literary fairy tale or legend and lore. Academics do find differences between the terms. Definitions of myth

Ross 16 by mythologists, feminists, literary scholars, and psychologists are given in the following paragraphs. They are similar in many respects and differ only by the lens of the writers’ professions. The definition of the term “fairy tale” by scholars of fairy tales, Jungian psychology, and literature is also examined.

French literary philosopher Roland Barthes and French anthropologist and ethnologist Claude Levi-Strauss both define mythology through the lens of the structuralist. Barthes simply writes that “myth is a type of speech”. “Myth is a system of communication, that it is a message” (Barthes 217). He makes clear that “mythology is defined by its form, not its content” (qtd. in Rose 131). He argues, “It is human history which converts reality into speech, and it alone rules the life and death of mythical language. Ancient or not, mythology can only have a historical foundation, for myth is a type of speech chosen by history” (Barthes 218). Barthes goes on to write, “Mythical speech is made of a material which has already been worked on so as to make it suitable for communication” (219). His theory is that there are no eternal myths, but there are ancient ones.

Claude Levi-Strauss also defines mythology through a structural lens. He agrees with Campbell that there are similarities between myths in different regions but disagrees with Barthes, in that myth “cannot simply be treated as language” (Levi-

Strauss, 430). Myth must be expressed because it is part of human speech; however, there is more to it, which Levi-Strauss describes linguistically. How the language is expressed is just as important as the language itself. “A myth is felt as a myth by any reader anywhere in the world. Its substance does not lie in its style, its original music, or its syntax, but in the story which it tells. Myth is language, functioning on an especially

Ross 17 high level where meaning succeeds practically at ‘taking off’ from the linguistic ground on which it keeps on rolling” (Levi-Strauss 430–431). Like Barthes, Levi-Strauss conceives myth as a more generalized linguistic phenomenon than are fairy tales,

Hollywood films, and other narrative forms that we typically frame as mythical.

Clinical psychiatrist, Jungian psychologist, and author Jean Shinoda Bolen describes myth through the lens of perception by writing that “myths evoke feeling and imagination and touch on themes that are part of the human collective inheritance. The

Greek Myths—and all the other fairy tales and myths that are still told after thousands of years—remain current and personally relevant because there is a ring of truth in them about shared human experience” (Shinoda Bolen 6).

Paula Gunn-Allen, feminist and author of The Sacred Hoop, describes myth in the context of usefulness as well as structure. She writes, “The mythic narrative as an articulation of thought or wisdom is not expressible in other forms; it must be seen as a necessary dimension of human expression, a dimension that is categorically unique.”

She goes on to say that “human beings need to belong to a tradition and equally need to know about the world in which they find themselves.” Gunn-Allen also makes the point that “myth is a story that relies preeminently on symbol for its articulation. It generally relates a series of events and uses supernatural, heroic figures as the agents of both the events and the symbols” (Gunn-Allen 103–105; emphasis mine).

Susan Sellers, a professor of English Literature at the University of St Andrews,

Scotland, and author of the book Myth and Fairy Tale in Contemporary Women’s

Fiction, looks through the lens of functionality when defining myth. Sellers writes that

“myths are stories which distill aspects of common experience in a concentrated and

Ross 18 therefore highly potent form” (8). She goes on to say that myth “[has a] knack of surviving all but the most sustained attacks [and] can challenge us to confront issues we would rather avoid, force us to examine our prejudices, or perceive things in a new way”

(Sellers, 8).

Marie-Louise von Franz, a Swedish Jungian psychologist with a PhD in philology, was a renowned scholar in fairy tale analysis and interpretation. von Franz sees no difference between myth and fairy tale; she recognizes that there are those who claim that myths are stories about gods and fairy tales are about ordinary people, but she quickly gives examples of fairy tales in which the children are the moon and the sun and have an immortal mother, which is in the realms of the gods (Problems 4). To von

Franz, the argument for the difference between myth and fairy tale does not stand.

However, she notes that myths are related to a national consciousness, whereas fairy tales travel and are related to figures of the unconscious (von Franz, Problems 6). To von Franz, the importance of all tales is the archetypal characters represented in the story. In her view, the fairy tale is the skeleton of a story, the bare bones of the human psyche (von Franz, Interpretation 25).

Frank Zipes, Professor Emeritus at the University of Minnesota and author of numerous books on fairy tales, writes that fairy tales are a written form of oral folktales.

With the invention of the printing press in the fifteenth century, many oral tales were put into written form for use by the literate European upper class (Zipes 10–11). Originally, none of these tales were created or written for the amusement of children (Zipes 23). In addition, most of these tales were written down by men, who changed the tales to those with a more patriarchal view (Zipes 22).

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In his essay On Fairy-stories, J.R.R. Tolkien classifies fairy tales as myth, reasoning that myth is dignified, whereas folktales are not. Myth has a right to power as opposed to a possession of power. Tolkien goes on to describe that fairy stories must be of the magical realm and that their origins can be related to a “Pot of Soup” or

“Cauldron of Story” that has always been boiling, with bits and pieces continually added

(43–45). Although Tolkien is somewhat ambiguous regarding a strict definition of the fairy tale itself, he writes that it is imperative that fairy tales “ignite a desire to succeed” in the reader (54).

In her book Spinning Straw into Gold, Joan Gould focuses on fairy tales from the female perspective only and so defines fairy tales as “female lore handed down from one generation to the next” (xix). These tales guide women as they make natural physical and psychological transformations throughout their lives (Gould xvi–xviii).

Gould’s definition is similar to that of Clarissa Pinkola Estés, author of Women Who Run with the Wolves. Pinkola Estés writes that fairy tales, myths, and stories provide understanding of women’s psyches, which have been banished by the patriarchal society (4).

Susan Sellers gives pages of various scholars’ definitions of the fairy tale, as she does when defining myth. After reflecting on them all, Sellers comes to the same conclusion as von Franz and others: there is no distinction between myth and fairy tale.

However, through her research, she has found that there is a tendency to “gender” fairy tales to the feminine and myth to the masculine. She agrees in theory with Zipes that there is a difference historically between myth and fairy tales. Sellers also agrees with

Tolkien that fairy tales are much like a “pot of soup” with bits and pieces that can be

Ross 20 taken here and there, with every author having their own version of the soup inside.

(Sellers 16).

It becomes obvious that there are many different definitions of myth and fairy tale dependent on the context in which it is used. Many psychologists define the terms by their usefulness or function. Historians and literary scholars may use a structuralist position; others, on how to perceive a term. The correct definition will be the one needed to make the argument one is attempting to make. For this inquiry, when discussing Campbell’s theories and ideas, his own broad definition of myth is used.

When arguing for the female’s journey, the term “fairy tale” is defined in keeping with von Franz’s perspective: the fairy tale is about the skeleton of the story, representing the bare bones of the female psyche, and myth is geared toward a larger or national consciousness. It must be emphasized that it is not the goal of this thesis to academically define either term.

2. Campbell’s Mythological Journey of the Hero

Traditional psychology is often spare or entirely silent about deeper issues important to women: the archetypal, the intuitive, the sexual and cyclical, the ages of women, a woman’s way, a woman’s knowing, her creative fire. —Clarissa Pinkola Estés, Women Who Run with the Wolves

The mythological journey of Campbell’s universal hero is broken into seventeen steps separated into three stages. The first stage is The Departure, which includes five steps: The Call to Adventure, Refusal of the Call, Supernatural Aid, Crossing the First

Threshold, and Belly of the Whale. The second stage is The Initiation, which includes six steps: The Road of Trials, Meeting with the Goddess, Woman as Temptress,

Atonement with the Father, Apotheosis, and the Ultimate Boon. The third and final stage of the journey is the Return of the Hero, which also includes six steps: Refusal of the

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Return, The Magic Flight, Rescue from Without, The Crossing of the Return Threshold,

Master of the Two Worlds, and finally, Freedom to Live (Campbell, Hero 49–243). Not all seventeen steps need to be taken by the hero, nor do they need to be completed in a specific order. However, each stage of Campbell’s universal journey is necessary for the hero to complete. The monomyth is a cycle of going and coming for the hero.

In the following review of Campbell’s universal monomyth, I explore the male/female dichotomy embedded in the scholarly conversation about narrative and myth. At times, the journeys of the heroine and the hero may seem similar, but what they each seek and the reasons for the quest itself are very different. By acknowledging these differences in the heroic journeys, the writer or filmmaker can enrich the stories they choose to tell, giving the audience epic stories and mesmerizing characters from not only the male’s perspective but from the female’s point of view, as well.

Departure (The Call to Adventure, Refusal of the Call, Supernatural Aid, Crossing the First Threshold, Belly of the Whale)

A woman has a profound capacity to be still, perhaps the most powerful act any human being can make. She is required to go back to a very still inner center every time something profound happens to her. This is a highly creative act . . . She is . . . receptive, not passive. —Robert A. Johnson, SHE: Understanding Feminine Psychology

In the first step of Campbell’s monomyth, destiny calls the hero into his adventure. Campbell uses Grimms’ fairy tale of the Frog Prince as an example of this destiny. This tale is about a frog retrieving a princess’s favorite golden ball from a deep, dark well; in exchange, she must promise to take care of him. She refuses the care at first, but once she concedes, he turns into a handsome prince. The loss of the heroine’s golden ball into the deep, dark well does not create a destiny for the princess to go out into the world to take an adventure, as the masculine hero would. This fairy tale is

Ross 22 symbolic of the heroine’s beginning stages of transformation from young maiden to woman (Gould xxiv). Campbell recognizes this transformative stage in Hero, but he trivializes the female’s transformative stage. In the heroic journey, a herald summons the call “to some high historical undertaking. Or it may mark the dawn of religious illumination,” or, as shown in the fairy tale of the princess, “it signified no more than the coming of adolescence” (Campbell, Hero 51; emphasis mine).

For the young heroine, the frog symbolizes the future she knows she will have to undertake, not the unknown, as Campbell writes in Hero (53). Karuna Glomb, MA in

Fairy Tales and Depth Psychology from Pacifica University, states that one of the cultural arguments questions whether the heroine falls in love with the beast/frog because she doesn’t have a choice. The story is told to help guide the young woman into her future in a patriarchal society (Glomb). This could be “a metaphor for female control and repression” (Glomb). Glomb goes on to explain that there is historical precedent for this because of arranged marriages and young women being forced to evolve into wives and mothers when they may not be ready.

Valerie Estelle Frankel, professor and author of the book From Girl to Goddess, writes that if transformation is not the trigger for the heroine’s adventure, then it is matters related to family—but not destiny, as with Campbell’s masculine hero. “The recurring theme [in the heroine’s journey] is a completed family, a goal which heroines risk life and health to achieve” (Frankel, Goddess 19).

Fairy tales began as female oral storytelling handed down generation to generation before they were ever in written form, so there are many more sisters that save brothers and daughters that rescue fathers than the reverse (Gould xix). In the

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Denmark fairy tale of The Wild Swans, Eliza weaves coats of stinging nettle and gives up her voice to save her brothers from the spell put on them by their evil stepmother. In the tale of Beauty and the Beast, Beauty feels the need to save her father from the

Beast. In the film The Hunger Games, Katniss Everdeen protects her younger sister by volunteering to take her sister’s place in the deadly games, thus beginning her adventure. A female will not take an adventure unless family is at stake or she is in a transformative part of her life. There is no call of destiny for the heroine as Campbell claims there is for the hero.

When the hero does not heed his call to destiny, the adventure is not taken, and throughout his life he may feel he has missed something. Campbell writes that refusing the call “is essentially a refusal to give up what one takes to be one’s own interest”

(Hero 60). He gives the example of the mythical Greek god Apollo in pursuit of the maiden Daphne. Campbell does not include that Apollo’s pursuit is with the intent to rape Daphne. Daphne flees in fear, and at the last moment, metamorphosizes into a laurel tree to stop her pursuer. Campbell focuses this tale not on Daphne and the female’s ability to transform “herself into whatever the moment demands,” but on the hero Apollo, who is now not able to pursue his adventure (Gould xxiv; Campbell, Hero

60–62). The heroine may be able to dismiss her journey to save family but is highly unlikely to do so because, as Frankel writes, “a completed family” is of utmost importance to the heroine and the main focus of many female tales. The devaluing of this female trait is a form of dominance in a patriarchal society (Frankel, Goddess 19–

20).

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With respect to transformation, the heroine simply cannot refuse her call. One cannot say no to menstruation and menopause and, once pregnant, a family. The old tales allow the maiden, mother, or crone the time necessary to make these transformations. One of the symbols for this temporary dismissal of her transformative journey is the metaphorical “deep sleep.” Campbell mentions sleep in Hero; however, his interpretation of it is much different from the female analysis by both Gould and

Frankel. Campbell writes that the heroine is “protected in her virginity, arrested in her daughter state” (Hero 62). Campbell takes his analysis concerning tales about sleeping heroines from both Jung and Freud. With the tale of “Little Briar Rose”, Campbell writes that Little Briar Rose sleeps for many years, until “there came a prince to wake her”

(Hero 63). However, in the tale of “The Sleeping Beauty in the Wood” by Charles

Perrault, written long before “Little Briar Rose”, the young heroine awakens on her own after a one-hundred-year spell is over. She looks up at a prince standing over her and tells him that he must have been waiting a long, long time for her (Perrault, “Sleeping

Beauty”). She wasn’t waiting to be rescued by a prince, he was waiting for her. Using female analysis of these types of tales, with “Sleeping Beauty” and “Snow White” being the most well-known, the metaphorical sleep allows the heroine the time she needs to go through the transformative time of adolescence. It allows her the time needed for her emotions to catch up with her body. When she has gone through her transformation, she wakes ready to take the necessary steps toward womanhood. She knows when the time is right for her. Subconsciously, she will wait until the right man (her metaphorical prince) presents himself.

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According to Campbell, the hero who has accepted his adventure must meet someone to give him support and help. At this stage of his journey, the hero meets numerous females as potential supporters, because in Campbell’s journey of the hero, women are “the benign protecting power of destiny” (Campbell, Hero 71). Women are the protectors of the hero’s destiny as well as the guiding force for his journey. Spider

Woman, Mother Nature, the Cosmic Mother, Ariadne and her thread—these females are present to support the male hero on his journey (Campbell, Hero 69–72). This is yet another example that Campbell’s interpretation of the hero is masculine. The hero also has weapons bestowed on him and male mentors who have supernatural powers.

These mentors may stay with him for all or part of the journey. King Arthur has Merlin as his magician, and Luke Skywalker has Obi-Wan Kenobi and then Yoda as his personal

Jedi trainers. As the hero approaches the first threshold, he is given the tools, usually in the form of weapons, to accomplish his feat. Young Prince Five-Weapons is clad with his powerful fists, a bow and arrows, a sword, a club, and a thunderbolt (Campbell,

Hero 85–89). King Arthur, clad in armor, has the sword Excalibur, while Luke of Star

Wars is given his father’s lightsaber.

Instead of being clad in armor and carrying a sword, as her masculine counterpart does, the heroine is clad with the feminine powers of “voice, craft, water, and wisdom” (Frankel, Goddess 46). The heroine has magic keys, rings, mirrors, combs, magic hoops, or the ability to weave and spin as she heads into her adventure.

Along the way, she is usually met by helpful animals, which represent her own intuition.

“Birds are spirit messengers, apprentice angels,” according to Gould in Spinning Straw into Gold (64).

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Most often, women accomplish their heroic journeys without committing any violence (Frankel, Goddess 51, 63–65). If a heroine does have a weapon, it is usually a long-distance type. Katniss Everdeen in The Hunger Games and Susan in The

Chronicles of Narnia have bows, and the original Wonder Woman has a lasso. In the

Pueblo tradition, Yellow Woman has many adventures. She uses her “courage to act in times of great peril, and her triumph is achieved by her sensuality, not through violence and destruction,” according to Leslie Marmon Silko, author of Yellow Woman and a

Beauty of the Spirit (72). The heroine’s use of long distance weapons or using no violence at all is a major difference between the journeys.

If Campbell’s journey were about both the male and the female, masculine helpers would support the heroine, but this is not the case in female tales. In stories about heroines, the support given to them is from other females, because the masculine has no advice to give concerning the feminine journeys of transformation and saving family. In the Hopi story of a young Payupki girl, Spider Grandmother gives the girl magic medicine to put on her legs so she can win the race against the boy from the bad-hearted male Tikuvi clan. When the young boy runner transforms into a dove,

Spider Grandmother tells a hawk to knock the dove down. The young heroine wins the race and brings honor to her family and female tribe (Frankel, Goddess 183–185). The story of “Cinderella” has a fairy godmother who creates needed ball gowns and glass slippers. The Vietnamese version of this tale, “Tam and Cam,” has the Goddess of

Mercy, who gives the little girl, Tam, a fish to care for and befriend. In the Russian tale of “Vasilisa,” the young maiden has a doll that her dying mother gave to her that can speak and give wise advice. All of these stories symbolize the hope given to a young

Ross 27 maiden by another female when the maiden’s psyche is overwhelmed by transformation

(Frankel, Goddess 33–37).

Cinderella stories depict the maiden growing into acceptance of herself, learning that she has value, and revealing her newfound sexuality. There are more than seven hundred Cinderella tales worldwide; the oldest, over one thousand years old, comes from China (Gould 59). As Gould writes, “This is not a story of a girl being rescued by a man” or about virtue being rewarded, but a story of a maiden falling in love with herself first and then allowing the other into her life (68). The latter happens the moment

Cinderella realizes that the slipper is there waiting to be stepped into. The maiden trapped in a tower or scrubbing floors in a castle must break free and take the journey into adulthood. Destiny does not call the heroine as it does the hero. Something much more potent, much stronger than destiny, draws the young heroine into her journey of life, love, transformation, and integration.

Not all aid given to the heroine is supportive and full of loving wisdom. The heroine also comes up against female mentors who are not so kind but still brimming with knowledge the young heroine will need in her journey. According to Glomb, the young heroine hasn’t been out and experienced the world yet. Metaphorically, “the world is a dark mysterious forest,” yet she can only accomplish her journey by “an encounter with the world, and so sometimes something has to push [her out into the world]” (Glomb). The wicked witch and evil stepmother are there to teach the young maiden independence, to push her into adulthood. These darker characters are metaphors for the psyche’s need to evolve. The heroine must take this journey of transformation, and if she resists, the fairy tale characters give her the push she needs.

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Other important mentor figures that the heroine has that Campbell’s hero does not is sisters. Campbell does not mention siblings at all in Hero, possibly because brothers are not part of nor important to the hero’s journey. The only set of tales where sisterhood is not found are the female Greek goddess myths. According to Christine

Downing, Professor Emeritus in Religious Studies at San Diego State University, a professor at the California School of Professional Psychology and at the C.G. Jung

Institute in Zurich, and author of Psyche’s Sisters: Reimagining the Meaning of

Sisterhood, goddesses are immortal, making them immune to the normal stages of life

(15–17). They do not need the sister bond to help navigate the intricacies of the numerous transformations that mortal women go through.

Fairy tales, however, are overflowing with the heroine’s need for sister mentorship. Downing suggests that these tales “connect us to an age-old wisdom, that they may preserve reminiscences of a mythological tradition older than the officially preserved one, reminders of a matrifocal culture” (22). According to Robert A. Johnson,

Jungian analyst and author of SHE: Understanding Feminine Psychology, sisters give women power (24–28). Gould agrees, writing that sisters represent women as a group, which is much more powerful than the individual heroine (172). Frankel is also in agreement, writing that the heroine needs the strength represented by her sisters to face the patriarchy (Goddess, 42). There are too many stories and tales that include the heroine’s sisters to think these females are irrelevant.

The heroine is usually the youngest and most beautiful of three sisters. In tales such as “Eros and Psyche” and the numerous versions of “Beauty and the Beast” stories, she is pushed by her jealous sisters to find out who her husband really is. In

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“Cinderella” stories, she has stepsisters who taunt her with their preparations for going to the ball, creating her desire to also go. “Bluebeard” tales have the older sisters warning the heroine not to marry. Sisters give the young maiden the push that is needed to grow up. From the psychological perspective, they are there to awaken consciousness in the heroine. They have the “knowing” that the young maiden lacks, which is why she is usually portrayed as the youngest. At times, they represent the dark side of the heroine or are the helpers needed to accomplish her journey (Downing 46).

Campbell’s book does not cover the importance of this subject, giving yet another clue that his hero is masculine.

In Campbell’s journey, destiny not only calls the hero but guides him as he goes forward on his adventure. The hero’s first obstacle is what Campbell describes as the

“First Threshold,” which is the entrance to the world of the unknown and possible danger. The next step for the hero is what Campbell defines as the “Belly of the Whale,” which is guarded by the first threshold. The metaphor of the hero finding himself in the belly of the whale has been used extensively in literature. It means the hero has been

“swallowed into the unknown” (Hero 90). This is the hero’s desire to be reborn. Once in the darkness, he must create light of some sort to “see” what is happening to him. The masculine fears the darkness, fears the female womb, which the whale (or other animal that swallows the hero) represents (Gould 93). Campbell also gives the analogy of the whale representing a temple or tomb into which the hero goes. He then “sees” differently when he emerges.

There are no tales in which a female finds herself in the “belly of a whale” or any other animal. According to Downing, this metaphor is significant only in men’s

Ross 30 psychology (44). The female’s sleep can represent her plunge into the unknown, but she is not reborn in the way Campbell describes it for her male counterpart. She is in the process of transformation; this takes darkness and sleep, which the heroine welcomes and during which time she keeps the lights off (Gould 92–93). In many tales, the heroine is seen heading for the forest, which is dark and mysterious, or plunging into or rising out of the dark and fluid sea (Glomb). These settings are symbolic of the feminine unconscious. They represent the needs and desires of the heroine, who does not realize they exist. (Frankel, Goddess 59). They are just out of reach of the conscious mind.

Initiation (The Road of Trials, Meeting with the Goddess, Woman as Temptress, Atonement with the Father, Apotheosis, The Ultimate Boon) Stories change, but symbols stay the same for thousands of years. —Joan Gould, Spinning Straw into Gold The initiation stage of the journey is where the action lies for the masculine hero.

Campbell writes that the Road of Trials “has produced a world literature of miraculous tests or ordeals” (Campbell, Hero 97). The hero is going out into the world and slaying dragons, while the female’s action is usually nonviolent yet just as powerful for her journey. Her tests include perseverance, patience, inner strength, and trust.

Campbell uses a portion of the tale of “Eros and Psyche” as the first example in his Road of Trials step, although he prefaces this tale by clarifying that the “roles are reversed” (Hero 97). This demonstrates that Campbell believed the female’s role is different from the hero’s; the female is reflecting the masculine and his needs. Campbell writes that it is the hero who tries “to win his bride” (Hero 97). Yet the heroine holds her own power of transformation and will do what is necessary for her to capture her prince when she is ready, as told in “Snow White,” “Cinderella,” “Sleeping Beauty,” and the

Ross 31 beginning of “Psyche and Eros.” This once again shows Campbell’s patriarchal bias and lack of knowledge about female tales and their corresponding psychology.

The trials that the heroine goes through are much different from that of the hero.

Sorting seeds, gathering wool, stitching a tapestry, sewing coats of stinging nettles, and finding water are all symbolically feminine. There is not a time, for example, when

Psyche is asked to slay a dragon, fight an ogre, or shoot Stormtroopers to achieve what she wants. There is nothing for the female to learn from those skills. The tasks of the heroine teach her to grow and be powerful when needed, usually in a nonviolent way.

Although many tasks that the heroine must accomplish may seem tedious and passive, such as the deep sleep, they give her a chance to either integrate her experiences or continue with her female transformation in life. The tasks may not be action-oriented, but they are powerful (Glomb).

In the tale of “Eros and Psyche,” the tasks Aphrodite demands of Psyche are

“one of the most profound psychological statements in literature” (Johnson 53).

Downing says that when analyzing these types of tales, men focus on the tasks, and

Campbell does focus on them. But Psyche’s growth does not begin with tasks. Her sisters are vital to her first push into transforming from maiden to wife to mother. The following synopsis of the tests that Psyche accomplishes and their symbolic meaning are by Johnson (54–72).

Aphrodite demands the sorting of seeds for Psyche’s first task, knowing Psyche cannot possibly do this. Ants come to her rescue, which symbolically represent her sisters coming to her aid (Downing 47). Johnson suggests that this task also symbolizes a woman’s need to differentiate in life, both externally and internally (54–55).

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The second task is the collecting of fleece. This time, reeds give Psyche their sage advice. They tell her to wait until evening and then collect only the small amount of fleece she needs to satisfy Aphrodite’s demands. They tell her not to collect the fleece from the aggressive rams themselves but rather from the branches and fencing, where the rams’ rubbing left the fleece earlier in the day. This act symbolizes that aggressive masculine power is not always useful and can in fact cause trouble. The lesson is to use the power needed, but keep it in proportion to what is necessary at any specific time.

For the third task, Psyche is asked to fill a crystal goblet with water from the heavily guarded River Styx, which starts at the tallest mountain top and drops down into the underworld before cycling up again. An eagle sent by Zeus helps Psyche by taking the vessel, flying into an unguarded area of the river, and getting the water for her. This is a metaphor for the female to always look at the big picture of life, take the knowledge, and have an eagle eye for what needs to be accomplished.

The fourth and final task required of Psyche is to go into the underworld, secure

Persephone’s Box of Beauty, and bring it back to Aphrodite. Feeling defeated before she starts, Psyche climbs a tower and is ready to throw herself off when the tower speaks to her. While Psyche alone must face Persephone, the tower gives her advice on and directions for entering and exiting the underground. After achieving her goal,

Psyche returns to the human world, where she opens the forbidden box—just as she had used the forbidden lamp and gazed upon Eros. She immediately collapses into a metaphorical deep sleep. This triggers Eros, who flies to her, pricks her with his arrow of love, and awakens her. Psyche completes her journey by giving the box to Aphrodite

Ross 33 while Eros convinces Zeus that he and Psyche must marry. Zeus agrees to this; he also makes Psyche immortal. Their child is born a female, and they name her Pleasure.

There are many different interpretations of what this fourth and final task symbolizes for the heroine. The usual male interpretation is women’s obsession with beauty, vanity, and the danger of narcissism. Johnson’s analysis is that the box holds the feminine “secret mystery . . . the essence of that feminine quality that must remain a mystery, certainly to men” (71). Psyche takes it for herself and becomes unconscious and thus unable to complete her spiritual journey. Only true love—the prick from Eros’s arrow—can awaken her and allow her to complete her journey (Johnson 67–72). Von

Franz’s interpretation begins with the symbolism of the ointment inside the Box of

Beauty itself. She writes that in Egyptian times, creamy ointments were used to anoint statues of the gods. The ointments were metaphors for life or a psychic substance that the gods needed. In Christianity, von Franz writes, holy oil is used to anoint the Holy

Ghost unto followers so they may receive the “ultimate spiritual devotion” (Apuleius

130–131). It makes sense that the ointment would belong to an immortal goddess and not a human girl. Downing’s perspective is that the box symbolizes “the beauty to which

Persephone, but not Aphrodite, has access . . . the beauty that comes with an intimate inner knowledge of death—the ultimate beauty of the psyche” (48).

Both Downing and von Franz do not think the ending of “Eros and Psyche” rings true. Downing writes that immortality for Psyche brings her back to where she was at the beginning of the story, “exalted above all women” (48). Von Franz writes that the ending was created for the story to fit in with the rest of the tales included in

Metamorphosis, or The Golden Ass (Apuleius 137).

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Campbell uses the Sumerian myth of the Goddess Inanna, who ruled both Earth and the Heavens, as a second female example to describe the Road of Trials. Inanna descends into the world of no return to meet her sister, Ershkigal, the goddess of the

Underworld (Campbell, Hero 105–109; Frankel, Goddess 117–124). At each of the seven gates that Inanna must descend through, she is to remove a portion of her clothing. As Gould describes in “Cinderella,” clothes represent what is going on internally for the heroine (45). In this case, Inanna must be stripped of her jewelry, her breastplate, and her gown before she is allowed to enter the underworld.

Metaphorically, she is psychologically naked; she is no longer a great goddess but a sister.

Campbell’s interpretation of the myth has Inanna, as the light, facing her sister, who is the dark. He writes that regardless of male or female, darkness represents the shadow side of the individual. This is the point in the hero’s adventure at which his masculine ego must be put to death. However, there is no shadow side of the female that must be put to death. This story is about Inanna’s integration of the part of every woman that has been suppressed or banished to the underground in order to live in a patriarchal society. As Frankel describes it, “The dark sister, buried in so many women, must be faced and confronted in the underworld to which she’s been banished”

(Goddess 120). Campbell’s telling of only a small portion of this tale, along with his masculine interpretation of it, demonstrates his use of myths to support the outcome he desires.

The next two steps of Campbell’s monomyth, Meeting with the Goddess and

Woman as Temptress, solidify the idea that although Campbell uses female examples

Ross 35 in his book and writes that the hero can be either male or female, he too often looks on his hero with both a male and a patriarchal bias. Campbell writes that the female “is the bliss-bestowing goal of every hero’s earthly and unearthly quest” (Hero 110–111; emphasis mine). He goes on to say that woman “represents the totality of what can be known. The Hero is the one who comes to know” (Campbell, Hero 116). This cannot possibly be the same for the female. He further writes, “The mystical marriage with the queen Goddess of the world represents the hero’s total mastery of life; for the woman is life, the hero its knower and master” (Campbell, Hero 120). If the woman is life, then it stands to reason that, in Campbell’s patriarchal view, the hero is the master of the woman. It is the masculine role in patriarchal societies to master, control, and conquer the female. In the eyes of the action-oriented hero, the female is a possession.

Campbell continues his argument by writing that the journey to marry the mythical goddess is the same for a maiden (Hero 118–120). Examples given are the princess in the Frog Prince story who is driven in a beautiful coach to the young prince’s castle to be wed, Psyche being bestowed with immortality, and the Virgin Mary being taken to the bridal chamber in Heaven. All of these examples have the heroine waiting for the man to rescue her from the bleak, powerless life she currently has. This response is typical when female tales are analyzed through the male bias. According to

Downing, a passive heroine “plays into male fantasies about femininity” (41). As has been shown in previously discussed tales, the heroine is not powerless; this is her life, and she takes charge. The frog does not turn into a prince until the princess throws him against the wall, demonstrating her own individual power (Campbell, Hero 120).

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Frankel’s analysis of the “Psyche and Eros” tale is that Psyche is not bestowed with immortality but earns her admittance into the world of gods and goddesses (126).

For the heroine, the marriage initiation is much different from Campbell’s description of the masculine hero marrying the goddess and thus winning his ultimate prize. The most common tales that describe the marriage initiation for women are the folktales of type 425 C, Beauty and the Beast (Ashliman, “Beauty”). The young maiden finds herself with a beast or animal of some sort who wants her for his wife. The most commonly known of these stories is “Beauty and the Beast,” written by Madame

Gabrielle de Villeneuve from France in 1740. There are also many Bluebeard tales in which the maiden realizes her prince has become a monster, and she needs to escape

(Ashliman, “Bluebeard”). The oldest of these tales however, is the story of “Eros and

Psyche.” This tale was written by second-century Latin poet Apuleius as a portion of a larger tale called Metamorphoses or The Golden Ass. Although Campbell uses portions of “Eros and Psyche” in Hero as an example of the Road of Trials, he does not tell the beginning of the tale. The feminine marriage initiation will be described using this tale because it has already been discussed in part, it is one of the oldest tales with this motif, and many other tales come from it. The synopsis below comes from Johnson’s book SHE: Understanding Feminine Psychology (1–45).

In the tale of “Eros and Psyche,” a king has three daughters. The father is the key player in most of these tales because, symbolically, the heroine is giving up one man for another. Psyche is the youngest and fairest of the three daughters. The oldest two daughters marry, but intimidated by Psyche’s beauty, men will not come near her.

The father consults the Oracle, who says that Psyche will marry something so terrible

Ross 37 as to be death itself. Psyche is to be taken to a mountaintop and chained to a rock, where she awaits her beast. The procession that takes Psyche to the mountaintop is filled with tears and sadness. This act is rich in female symbolism, with many

Eurocentric wedding customs coming from this part of the tale. Marriage is a metaphor for the death of the maiden’s life with her family of birth. For the maiden, the procession to the altar is similar to the death procession. The groom awaits to abduct her, take her to a new life, and create a new family. Tears flow as the maiden bride buries her old life for the new one that lies ahead. According to Johnson, “Marriage is death and resurrection both for a woman” (17). This is not the case for Campbell’s hero. For him, the bride is a possession or prize.

Aphrodite, the goddess of love, beauty, pleasure, and procreation, is jealous and annoyed at the beauty and perfection of Psyche, much like the wicked queen in “Snow

White.” Aphrodite sends her young son Eros, the god of love, to shoot his arrow of love into Psyche to make sure she will fall in love with the beast, who is to find her. Once

Eros sees Psyche, he, too, is captivated by her beauty, and accidentally pricking himself on his own arrow, falls in love with her. He brings her to his beautiful castle, where she awakens in what she feels is paradise. Eros visits her only at night, when it is dark, and

Psyche is forbidden to look at him. During the day, she has the rule of the castle, where all her needs are met. This scenario is also played out in the tales of “Beauty and the

Beast,” “East of the Sun and West of the Moon,” “The Green Serpent,” and many others.

Psyche is happy in her new relationship but misses her family. She pleads with

Eros to let her sisters come to the castle. He says they will cause trouble for their

Ross 38 relationship. She continues to plead and finally wins Eros over, and the sisters are allowed to visit her. They tell her that for all she knows, her husband may be a monster, and she had better find out who this monster is before it is too late. They devise a plan to have Psyche light a lamp and look at Eros as he sleeps, even though Psyche has been told not to look upon him. She does as she is told by her sisters and sees that she is married not to a monster but to the god of love himself. She realizes her blunder, but just at that moment, a drop of wax falls on Eros, waking him. He tells Psyche that they can no longer be together and that the child she bears will be a girl instead of a god, then takes flight back to his mother, Aphrodite. Psyche’s paradise has been destroyed by listening to her sisters.

The importance of the heroine’s sisters is often overlooked by male analysts.

Men are terrified of the aspect of feminine energy that sisters represent (Downing 44).

Psyche’s sisters encourage her to question paradise, whereas Eros wants to keep her in the dark. If she just does as she is told, Eros will stay, her child will be born an immortal god, and she will continue to live in paradise. However, Psyche (the Greek word for soul) needs to grow and transform from a naïve maiden to a wise, nurturing mother. The symbolism of the lamp is Psyche seeing her husband for who he really is and removing the deception. This also applies to Eros seeing that Psyche is no longer the naïve maiden whom he had hoped she would continue to be.

After Eros leaves Psyche, she is devastated. She goes to every god to seek help in finding Eros, yet none will help. Her last hope is Aphrodite herself. After giving

Psyche a good talking-to, Aphrodite sets in motion the tasks that Psyche must accomplish if she is to ever be with Eros again. These tasks have nothing to do with

Ross 39

Eros but everything to do with Psyche’s transformation into a wise woman and mother.

Aphrodite is the symbolic wicked mother giving Psyche the push she needs to grow up.

The specific tasks and their symbolism were discussed previously.

The Atonement step is the symbolic conquering of the father or authority figure.

According to Campbell, the father is the one who intrudes into the child’s paradise and the original protection of the mother. The father becomes the competition and the archetypal enemy (Campbell, Hero 155). For the hero, the ego is the metaphorical father that must be released. Campbell writes that to accomplish this, the hero needs the aid of the “helpful female figure” (Hero 131). This is another example that the journey Campbell describes is for the male hero.

According to Campbell, the son must master or conquer his father; however,

Campbell also writes that the daughter must master or conquer the mother (Hero 136).

He makes this analysis from the perspective of male psychology. According to Elina M.

Reenkola, a Finnish psychoanalysis, scholar, and author of the book The Veiled Female

Core, the daughter’s journey is not to master or conquer the mother, because the mother has “all the good the girl wishes for herself, . . . [and] the longing for an omnipotent mother remains with us even throughout adulthood” (84–85). The heroine cannot master or conquer the mother because her own psyche will not allow it; one does not “conquer” good. According to Reenkola, there are no tales that represent this for the female. The daughter needs to separate and individuate from the mother, yet it is extremely difficult because of the female’s complete identification with her. Reenkola goes on to write that Freud’s research on this subject gives attention only to patricide, or the boy’s separation from his father, and then assumes is the same for the female (91).

Ross 40

The act of matricide is extremely rare in fairy tales and myths, as well as in reality.

According to Reenkola’s research, there is not a single tale or myth where the heroine herself kills her mother, even when the mother is being represented in the form of the mean stepmother or wicked witch (92).

Freud’s attention to only masculine psychology and his assumption that it is the same for the feminine is also seen in his Oedipus complex. The myth of Oedipus tells the story of a boy who unknowingly kills his father and then marries his mother.

Campbell is correct when he writes that this myth is universal for the masculine hero; however, it does not apply to the heroine. A myth or fairy tale in which the female murders her mother and marries her father does not exist (Reenkola 95). Both boys and girls have their oedipal rivals, but according to Reenkola, the boy’s rival—the father— has not been his caretaker. The girl’s rival, the mother, is also her caretaker, the one who feeds her and has given her life. As noted earlier, the mother has “all the good the girl wishes for herself” (Reenkola 84). This setting forms the predicament the female finds herself in as she grows into adulthood. The numerous fears and guilt the girl has to work through concerning her mother are far beyond the scope of this paper and not relevant to it. The important point is that Campbell’s research does not include the idea that on “the road to adulthood, womanhood for a girl is much more complex than mere object change,” as it is for the boy (Reenkola 97). The lack of female myths and the incorrect interpretations of female psychology once again emphasize that Campbell’s hero is masculine.

The Apotheosis step in Campbell’s journey must occur for the hero to become a king, a god, or to achieve a divine state. Campbell begins his argument with Buddhist

Ross 41 theory, writing that enlightenment, or a divine state, can be attained by anyone “through herohood” (Hero 151). The mythical gods representing this state can be male, female, or androgynous because duality is left behind. Campbell gives examples of Kwan Yin and her masculine side, called Avalokiteśvara; Awonawilona, who is spoken of as god of the Zuni but is a he/she; and T’ai Yuan, of China, who embodies both yang and yin

(Hero 152).

Campbell’s attempt at an androgynous theory in Western society comes from the

Bible, in Genesis 1:27. Campbell now writes of God as an image instead of a god-state, as he did with Eastern mythology. God made Man in His likeness—which was androgynous, both male and female. The creation of duality occurred when the female,

Eve, was separated from the male, Adam (Campbell, Hero 153). This myth also gives duality to Campbell’s monomyth. The hero or heroine is trying to attain this apotheosis but is left in duality until the state is reached. In addition, in the examples Campbell gives, this god is either androgynous or masculine but never exclusively female.

According to Downing, the legends in Genesis are almost always male experiences.

Sisterhood is ignored, and the matrifocal world is practically nonexistent (101–102).

For the hero, this stage is about his hierarchal climb to godhood. The heroine’s quest is much different. She does not take a journey to ultimately attain a patriarchal divine state but to reintegrate the parts of herself that the patriarchal way of life has shattered or suppressed. The heroine’s personal journey is inward, to find and regain her lost personal power over life and death. The heroine is trying to reintegrate the sense of the true feminine state, but the patriarchal society does not recognize or approve of this state. However, there was a time historically when this feminine state

Ross 42 was a normal part of society. To fully understand the heroine’s journey concerning the metaphorical goddess way of life, the work of archeologist and anthropologist Marija

Gimbutas (1921–1994) must be introduced.

In The Civilization of the Goddess: The World of Old Europe, Gimbutas examines the life, social structures, and religions of Old Europe, dating from seven thousand to three thousand years ago. She writes that during this time, various civilizations were rich in wall paintings, they had many storied temples and many-roomed houses, weavers, ceramicists, metallurgists, and a sacred script. The art found from this era was devoid of any type of weaponry symbolism. Regarding the famous dig at Catal Huyuk

(Çatalhöyük), a city that was founded 8,500 years ago, Gimbutas writes that “from some hundred and fifty paintings that survived . . . there is not one depicting a scene of conflict or fighting, or of war or torture” (preface, x). The people in Old Europe transitioned from being small clans to towns of ten thousand people, with smaller communities surrounding the larger towns, between 4000 and 3500 BC. There are no archaeological signs of any fortresses or protective walls of any type. These communities were neither located nor built for defense. (Gimbutas, vii–xi).

Gimbutas writes that religion played an important role in these societies, in which social structure and worship were intertwined (preface, x). The female-oriented society of Old Europe was organized around a theocratic communal temple, with a governing council of women. Burial evidence does not show any imbalance between the sexes

(Gimbutas 324). Gimbutas claims that the deity for Paleolithic as well as Neolithic life was female, creating a matrilineal and matrifocal society, not a matriarchal society, as

Ross 43 once was assumed (324, 349). There has not been any archaeological evidence of a father god (Gimbutas 222; preface x).

Merlin Stone, American author, sculptor, and professor of art and art history, adds further evidence to Gimbutas’s scientific theory, writing that because there are no written records of this period, the use of analogies must be employed. Anthropological studies of primitive peoples have acknowledged that in these specific cultures, people did not understand the connection between sex and conception. Since only women could give life to keep their society growing, the premise Stone makes is that names, possessions, and various societal rights were naturally passed through the female line, creating a matrilineal society. Regarding rituals and burial rites, Stone observes that these cultures thought human origin was through the female, so it would make sense that ancestor worship was geared toward the female and that the cultures believed that the ultimate creator was female. Lastly, the archaeological artifacts of small female figurines dating back 25,000 years, along with the feminine wall art, led Stone to conclude that there was indeed a time when the female was the deity religiously worshipped (10–13).

An important point about Gimbutas’s findings is that earlier scholars did not think that religion of that specific time was relevant and that when investigating the artifacts, they looked through the biased eyes of patriarchy. Many archeological sites had to be reevaluated because of this bias (Eisler 4). Riane Eisler, author of The Chalice and the

Blade, writes that many of the late nineteenth-century and early twentieth-century monks were making the archaeological interpretations of these findings. This bias led to stick-and-line forms being interpreted as weapons, such as spears, arrows, and

Ross 44 harpoons. It was later discovered by secular scientists and women scholars that the barbs on what was classified as a harpoon were going the wrong way to be weapons, and the depictions were actually trees, branches, and plants (Eisler 4–5).

The demise of this peaceful way of life began with the invasion of nomadic bands seeking grass for their herds. These people were male-dominant, with male gods, and had a hierarchic social structure. Gradually, the landscape changed, and fortifications were built where there were once peaceful settlements. Material wealth was acquired through technologies of destruction rather than technologies of production. The foundation for Western civilization was being laid. The beginning of slavery came from this period and these people. Graves began to change; the people started including bows, arrows, knives, and spears in them. Physical devastation and cultural impoverishment came with each wave of invasions. The powerful and violent invaders imposed their patriarchal culture and religion on these people. Slowly, the attributes of the one great goddess was broken into pieces and transitioned into lesser and separate goddesses. Each goddess received a unique attribute that had once belonged to the one goddess completely. The people were ruled under one god, and his name was

Zeus. For the first time, rape became a norm in mythology. The last society to hold on to the peaceful matrifocal way of life lived on the island of Crete, which finally fell 3,200 years ago (Eisler 42–55; Shinoda Bolen 20–24).

According to Shinoda Bolen, Greek goddesses are fragments of a one-time, all- encompassing goddess (21). Once the patriarchal way of life was solidified in society, the masculine feared the wisdom of the crone and banished her to the metaphorical underworld. The maiden and mother archetypes were easily oppressed without the

Ross 45 wisdom of the crone. This has created a psychological split for women, with society vilifying the most powerful part of the female’s own divinity. Part of the heroine’s journey is to take back this feminine wisdom and make herself psychologically whole once again

(Frankel, Goddess 173–177).

The Ultimate Boon stage of Campbell’s journey describes what the hero gains on his journey into the unknown and what he brings back to his community. The heroine does not bring anything back to the community; in most tales, the heroine does not have to leave to complete her journey. “Boon” is not the appropriate word for the accomplishment of the heroine’s journey. For the heroine, the reuniting of family or the full integration of self is what is ultimately accomplished. According to Frankel, “The male hero quests to conquer the tyrant, the heroine quests to create a family” (Goddess

145). One may argue that this is demeaning for the heroine, but Frankel goes on to explain that the patriarchy has devalued motherhood and what it takes, physically and psychologically, to transform from maiden to mother. The societal assumption is that woman’s ability to nurture is a natural drive, that there is no need for reciprocity. The woman is placed in a self-sacrificing position because of this, and she then does not realize how much of herself she is giving up by denying the needs she may have

(Frankel, Goddess 146).

Return (Refusal of the Return, The Magic Flight, Rescue from Without, The Crossing of the Return Threshold, Master of the Two Worlds, and Freedom to Live)

We may find ourselves wondering to what degree the suppression of women’s rites has actually been the suppression of women’s rights. —Merlin Stone, When God was a Woman

The hero returns from whence he came a different person or with some exalted knowledge to share among those left behind. The return also includes the need to

Ross 46 integrate the two worlds. The hero is battling his own ego and is the champion of things becoming. Campbell writes that “the battlefield is symbolic of the field of life” (Hero 238).

The heroine does not go into battle but instead uses fortitude, patience, perseverance, imagination, craftiness, and stamina on her journey. There are no weapons of destruction for the true heroine’s journey; none are needed. She looks within herself and decides what is needed in each moment. The female’s journey is about integration of the self, which had long been ignored.

The story of Medusa is an example of a female knowing what she needs, finding the means to achieve the goal, and at the last, integrating it. Frankel’s synopsis of the tale is given in the following passage. (Goddess 136–141).

The beautiful, young maiden Athena was born from the head of Zeus. Raised by her father, she was forever the virgin and was closely tied to him. She had her spear, shield, and breastplate, which she used to fight in battles. One day, Athena went home to her temple and found Poseidon raping the beautiful young maiden Medusa.

Traumatized, Athena turned in horror at the sight and the knowledge of what was happening to young Medusa. She thought that Medusa had no protection from this type of treatment, so she waved her spear to make Medusa so ugly that anyone who dared look at her would turn to stone and her head was covered with snakes so she could see in all directions at all times. Athena then banished Medusa to the underworld, where she would be safe. She did this to protect Medusa from future rapes, but unknowingly,

Athena also cut off Medusa and herself from the divine sexual mysteries of the priestess

(Frankel 136). Athena then dismissed the incident and continued to be daddy’s little girl

Ross 47 and a sexless champion of the patriarchy. Medusa lived in the underworld, “a source of feminine power raped by male authority” (Frankel, Goddess 135).

At this point in the tale, Athena’s younger brother, Perseus, is trying to save his mother from the patriarchal dominance of King Polydectes. To keep Perseus occupied and out of the picture, the king orders him to obtain the head of Medusa if he wants to save his mother. Perseus prays to Athena, and hearing her brother’s cry for help,

Athena decides to help Perseus while also helping herself.

Perseus needs the patriarchal rage of Medusa, and Athena now knows she needs to bring back this feminine side of herself to become a whole goddess. Athena equips Perseus with all the feminine regalia that he will need to enter into the underground of the feminine realm: winged sandals, a mirrored shield with which to gaze at Medusa, an invisibility helmet, and a magic pouch. The only thing that Perseus has that is not symbolically feminine is his sword, which he uses to obtain the head of

Medusa. Although Perseus is on his own hero’s journey, Athena is using him as a pawn to achieve her own psychological needs.

Medusa allows Perseus into the underworld, knowing he, too, is a victim of the patriarchy. Perseus slices off the head of Medusa, which sets her free, as she is no longer frozen in the memory of the past and is able to return to the living. Medusa’s children, Pegasus and Chrysaor, are released to the living, as well. Perseus brings the head of Medusa to Athena. She incorporates it into her breastplate and takes back the invisibility helmet. These symbols, along with the freeing of Medusa, allow Athena to regain all the feminine wisdom and knowledge of the underground, which she had

Ross 48 pushed deep within herself long ago. She has become a whole goddess at last. Her heroine’s journey is complete.

This section has given details on Campbell’s journey of the hero while exploring the many areas in which the heroine’s journey is different. In my analysis, the most important of these differences is the reason each takes his or her journey. Family, transition, or integration create the necessity for the female’s journey, whereas the hero is called out into the world by destiny. Violence is seldom needed or used by the heroine. Mentors for the heroine are typically female whereas the hero needs help from both male and female. The psychology behind the marriage initiation is completely different for the heroine compared to the hero’s conquest of the goddess. The heroine’s sisters, which Campbell does not include, is of utmost importance to her. The specifics of gender will be looked at in more detail in the following section.

3. The Gender of Campbell’s Hero

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? —Joseph Campbell, The Hero’s Journey

One of the questions this thesis aims to answer is whether Campbell’s mythical journey is a journey strictly about the masculine hero or if the female takes the same journey through life with the same intentions as her male counterpart. At various times throughout Hero, Campbell infers that the hero can be male or female (Hero 19,

41,121). He does use female myths and fairy tales to make various points, but they are few, and when he does use them, he does not tell the complete tale. The latter point may lead his readers to conclude that the specific feminine tale Campbell describes takes on the rest of his monomyth traits.

Ross 49

There are many instances in Hero in which the female’s role in the journey is to help the masculine hero (Campbell, Hero 23, 38, 69–77). At one point, the female is the

“prize” for the hero’s job well done (Campbell, Hero 111–112, 116–118, 121,123). In

Stephen and Robin Larsen’s book Fire in the Mind, a biography of Joseph Campbell,

Robin Larsen describes riding in a car with Campbell. She writes, “Joe said women shouldn’t try to be the heroes, since they were already ‘the symbol of the whole adventure.’ Couldn’t they leave the heroics to men?” (Larsen 511). This quotation gives undeniable proof that Campbell himself felt the hero’s journey was for and about the masculine hero.

There are others who question the gender of Campbell’s hero. In her book From

Girl to Goddess, Valerie Estelle Frankel outlines the heroine’s journey, which she argues is separate and distinct from Campbell’s monomyth. Mary R. Lefkowitz writes that the universal hero pattern Campbell derives from myths seems to exclude women.

He writes nothing about menstruation in the journey, for example, giving another sign that he uses an exclusively patriarchal perspective (Lefkowitz, American Journal 432–

433). Through her research, Joan Gould shows that the hero has one transformation to make: from boy to man. After this, he wants nothing more than to remain himself, growing more and more powerful in his journey. The female’s journey includes transformations from girl to woman to mother to crone (Gould, preface xvi–xviii).

Maureen Murdock, educator, Jungian-oriented psychotherapist, and author of The

Heroine’s Journey, writes that she talked to Campbell in 1981 about women and the hero’s mythological journey. He surprised Murdock when he said that women didn’t need to take the journey. “In the whole mythological tradition the woman is there. All she

Ross 50 has to do is to realize that she’s the place that people are trying to get to” (Murdock, 2).

Murdock believes women “need a new model that understands who and what a woman is” (2).

In summary, I believe the research obtained from numerous scholars discussed in the previous pages gives sufficient evidence that Campbell’s mythical journey is exclusively for a male hero. I have shown, through the use of quotes from Campbell himself and statements directly from his book The Hero with a Thousand Faces, that he, too, considered the journey is for an adult male.

Patriarchal Bias

[Women] do not want to be handmaidens of the dominant male culture, giving service to the gods. —Maureen Murdock, The Heroine’s Journey

Although there are many female myths to help guide women through life transformations, fairy tales dominate for the heroine’s journey. These tales are concerned with the individual and the transformation that is undertaken at the moment.

Fairy tales do not reflect large cultural events the way myths do. Women’s journeys are transformative in nature, and fairy tales help guide these transformations (von Franz,

Interpretation 24–26). All of these tales began as the oral telling of stories that were handed down from female to female as teaching tools (Zipes 22). They were always told from the female point of view and included language and symbolism that only women related to. Everything in fairy tales is symbolic; nothing is trivial (Gould, xxiv). They are about supporting the heroine’s need for growth and transformation—unlike the hero’s journey, which is all about conquest.

Most of today’s common literary fairy tales are Eurocentric in nature and were rewritten by men in the late 1600s (Zipes 11). This has caused the tales to be more

Ross 51 about a man’s idea of what a woman should be rather than showing the true feminine nature of a female. We are also led to believe that the fairy tale is pure, but as Zipes says, it has been contaminated by social class, Christianity, and patriarchy (7). Gould tells us that the more patriarchal the teller or society, the more the heroine becomes victimized and in need of being saved (xx). The female’s perspective, which was in place for generations when orally shared tales were passed from mother to daughter, was tarnished once these tales were rewritten by men. The largest collection comes from the Brothers Grimm of Germany; Charles Perrault, from France; and Andrew Lang, from England, over a two-hundred-year period. The perspectives of many of the oral tales began to change. What were once tales about and for women began to take on the air of the patriarchy (Zipes 22).

One of the most poignant examples of the patriarchal influence in changing a story is the tale of “Rumpelstiltskin.” In the most common version of this tale, written by the Brothers Grimm in 1857, a father bargains away his daughter by telling the king that his daughter can spin straw into gold. The king brings the maiden to his castle, locks her in a room filled with straw, and tells her she must spin all the straw into gold by morning or she will be killed. When the maiden is not able to achieve this feat, a small, peculiar man magically enters the locked room and tells her he will do the spinning—for a price.

She gives him her necklace as payment. In the morning, the king sees all the gold thread. Excited, he places the heroine into a larger room filled with even more straw, expecting more gold thread by morning. That night, the small man returns, and the maiden gives him her ring in payment for more spinning. The next day, the scenario is repeated. But that night, when the small man appears, the maiden has nothing more to

Ross 52 give to him, so she promises him her firstborn, and the peculiar man spins the straw into gold once again.

The king then marries the maiden. The new queen gives birth to a son a year later. Rumpelstiltskin, the small, peculiar man, shows up to collect his payment and take her son from her. She pleads with him, and he finally strikes a new bargain. If she can guess his name within three days, she can keep her son. On the first two nights, she cannot guess his name. On the third day, the queen sends a male messenger into the forest to spy on the little man. The spy overhears Rumpelstiltskin saying his own name.

That night, when Rumpelstiltskin comes to the queen, she knows his name, and she is able to keep her son (Gould xx–xxii).

The original tale of Rumpelstiltskin was orally told to Jacob Grimm in 1808 and recorded in 1810. That oral version was quite different from what was finally published in 1857. The original female tale is much shorter and comes from the heroine’s point of view. A synopsis is given here (Zipes 53–54).

There once was a maiden that could spin gold thread but could not produce yarn.

She was sad and sat on the roof and began to cry. A tiny man appeared and said he would tell her future to help her out of her troubles, but she must promise to give him her firstborn child. The young maiden promised him, and he told her that a young prince would come along and take her to his castle, where they would be married. He left, and sure enough, what he said would happen happened, and after one year, she gave birth to a baby boy.

The tiny man reappeared, ready to take the child. She begged and pleaded and said he could have anything he wanted other than the child, but he would accept

Ross 53 nothing else. Finally, the tiny man reconsidered, and he gave her three days to guess his name. If she could not, the child would be his.

The princess thought about it for two days but could not come up with his name.

On the third day, she sent one of her faithful maids into the forest the tiny man had come from. While the maid was hiding, she saw the tiny man riding around a fire on a cooking ladle, singing, “If only the princess knew my name was Rumpelstiltskin.” The maid rushed back to the princess and told her everything.

The tiny man appeared at midnight, ready to take the child. The princess guessed many names, then she finally said, “Is your name ‘Rumpelstiltskin’?” When the tiny man heard this, he was furious. He said, “The devil must have told you,” and he flew out the window on his cooking ladle.

The differences between these two stories are patriarchal and not subtle. In the oral story from 1810, there is no father bargaining his daughter away nor king threatening her with death. The young maiden’s problem is her own. She cannot spin thread or yarn, only gold. Yarn and thread are needed for her to earn a living making clothing and other items. When Rumpelstiltskin appears, there is no spinning done by the little man, only negotiation with the young maiden. Once the maiden becomes a princess and has a child, Rumpelstiltskin comes to collect on the deal, and they renegotiate the terms together. The princess requests the aid of another female to help her, and when the princess tells the little man his name, he flies away on the feminine symbol of a cooking ladle. The entire tale is filled with feminine symbolism and is supportive of the heroine—the power she holds and the decisions she makes for herself. The original oral tale describes a young maiden transforming into a powerful

Ross 54 woman and shrewd mother who under no circumstances will be forced to give up her child. She is not a victim of her father, a king, or Rumpelstiltskin.

Many of the tales common to Eurocentric literature have the patriarchal bias found in the Grimms’ latter version of this tale. According to von Franz, the problem with the fairy tale is that the male authors project what Jung calls the “anima”. As described previously, the anima is the portion of a man’s psyche that has feminine characteristics.

Female figures in the tales can be either the male’s anima projection, the true feminine nature, or a combination of both. The specific characteristics that are emphasized are influenced by the sex of the person who last wrote the tale (von Franz, Feminine in

Fairy Tales 1-4).

Western women seem to struggle to find a true feminine figure to identify with, and von Franz says that Jung believed this is because women have no representation in the Christian religion. There is Eve, and there is Mother Mary, but they each project only one side of the feminine. In societies that are matrifocal, “women have natural confidence in their own womanhood. They know their importance and that they are different from men in a special way, and that this does not imply any inferiority.

Therefore they can assert their human existence and being in a natural way” (von

Franz, Feminine 4). As Downing writes, if one hunts long and deep enough, tales can be found that retain signs of female tales told long before the masculine biased written versions (22).

Stories that include sisters helping the heroine are signs of the age-old wisdom that Downing refers to. The importance of sisters in female stories is one sign of older oral tales. In the “Sleeping Beauty” tale, the transition of the tale from the maiden

Ross 55 waking on her own, when her inner transformation is complete, to the tale written one hundred years later, in which the prince rescues the maiden with his kiss, shows patriarchal bias. The tale of “Beauty and the Beast” has definitive signs of a patriarchal influence, although the literary tale was written by a woman in 1756. This story of initiation reflected what women went through during that time period—exchanging one dominant man for another—so there was enormous value in having a story that helped guide them through the process. (Zipes 24; Glomb).

When using fairy tales and female myths for story creation or filmmaking, one must be aware of the male’s inappropriate anima projection and patriarchal influences so as not to perpetuate the patriarchy. Knowing female psychology and what true feminine symbolism is and what it means can be helpful in creating films about women that are authentic. As Downing reminds women, “We don’t need the deus ex machina resolution, don’t need a happy ending, anywhere near as much as we need a true story”

(43).

Equity Bias

We live in a world where it is hard to imagine a society without patriarchy, but the study of Indigenous cultures in the past can offer glimpses of this kind of world. —Kim Anderson, Life Stages and Native American Women

Indigenous stories bring a different perspective to the heroine’s journey. Paula

Gunn Allen, professor, activist, and novelist, writes in her book The Sacred Hoop that in most Native American stories, the female is the primary potency of the universe. Gunn

Allen notes that the female-centered perspectives of these stories are similar to those of the goddess society that was lost to the Eurocentric women thousands of years ago

(26).

Ross 56

Before the colonization of the United States, most of the numerous tribes throughout the land were structured as matrilineal. “There was a uniform theme of reciprocity. The worlds of men and women were different, but not perceived as hierarchical” (Klein and Ackerman 14). Although tribes had different creation stories and various forms of societal structures, there were not any that were patriarchal, according to Gunn Allen (2). With these types of matrifocal societal structures, one could easily assume that the stories mothers and grandmothers told to young girls were based on different values that those stories created in a patriarchal society. The genocide and forced assimilation of Native Americans by the European colonizers caused many of these stories to be lost, along with languages and cultural intricacies (Bastian and

Mitchell 29). However, Gunn Allen notes, “Tribal systems have been operating for several millennial. A few hundred years of colonization won’t see its undoing” (2).

Dr. Cutcha Risling Baldy, a professor of Native American Studies at Humboldt

State University, says that many of the stories about the life transformations women go through still remain with the tribes. The ceremonies practiced long before colonization took place are beginning to become part of their lives once again. Risling Baldy says that one of the large differences that still exist between Native and Eurocentric cultures is their perception of menstruation. Before colonization, all Native cultures celebrated the beginning of menstruation—and not just the women celebrated, but the entire community. These ceremonies are finding their way back into the Native communities, creating a sense of empowerment and acceptance of womanhood for the young girls who participate. The current Eurocentric culture still has taboos about menstruation, and

Ross 57 there are not many written tales that reflect the beauty of this time in young girls’ lives

(Risling Baldy, Interview).

Can the stories coming from equity-based societies, such as those of the many

Native American cultures, help eliminate the existing patriarchal society? A glimpse of equity-based cultures can be seen in the surge of Native American films. Atanarjuat:

The Fast Runner tells an old tale in which harmony is of the utmost importance. Before

Tomorrow depicts a heroine who is strong but not violent, who makes important decisions for her own life as well as her grandson. Drunktown’s Finest gives a glimpse into the Diné culture through the coming-of-age ceremony of a young girl. Can the creation of films such as these, which demonstrate what equity-based societies are like, help shift male dominance?

This concludes the analysis of literature for the thesis. In the following sections, this information is used to analyze films and demonstrate whether there is indeed a difference between the heroic journey of the masculine and that of the feminine.

4. Aims and Objectives: The Research

A hypothesis is treated as virtual fact and a remote possibility becomes a distinct actuality. —Mary Lefkowitz, “The Myth of a ‘Stolen Legacy’”

This inquiry concerns not only the gender of Campbell’s mythical journey but also how it applies to film. The method of research used was qualitative in nature and included analysis of six films using a feminist psychoanalytic methodology. The films were chosen based on the findings from the literature presented. Analysis of each film was done through the lens of Campbell’s monomyth as well as the findings of the differences between the feminine and masculine in that monomyth. The visual symbolism of the films was not used exclusively but in tandem with the analysis of the

Ross 58 film’s storyline. I looked for feminine fairy tale and mythological motifs in the films that were presented in the literature.

The first objective was to determine if films with female protagonists portray any of the characteristics concerning the heroine’s journey found in the literature review.

The second objective was to see if the chosen films feature the traits of the heroine’s journey exclusively or if attributes of Campbell’s mythical hero are also present.

The first criteria I used to select the films was that the protagonist must be female. The second criteria was that the storyline had to include one or more of the reasons why a female would take a heroic journey: saving family, going through a transformative time in her life, or integrating the repressed portions of herself. I wanted one film that specifically represented a heroine taking her adventure because of family in one way or another, one film that represented each of the transformative times in a woman’s life (for a total of three), one film that depicted a woman in the process of integration, and a film that represents a female taking Campbell’s classic hero’s journey.

The general population’s familiarity with the chosen films was important but not crucial.

I started the film selection process by watching numerous films that had a female protagonist. I viewed films from the AFI’s “Top One Hundred Movies of All Time”; films recommended by friends, colleagues, and professors; films that were currently released; and those I had seen over my lifetime that I thought could apply to the criteria chosen. The scholarly knowledge gained from the inquiry and my personal decision that the selected film was the best representation under the guidelines of the above criteria informed my final decision for each chosen film. The reasons each specific film was chosen is given in the Film Selection section.

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To analyze each of the chosen films, I began by viewing each one in its entirety to make sure it met my criteria. Each film was then viewed scene by scene. I wrote down and described in my own words each scene or group of scenes that represented a specific moment in the film. Each scene was analyzed to see which, if any, of the attributes found in the tales from the literature it correlated with. I looked for the following: symbolism of the heroine’s metaphorical deep sleep; mentors who were available to the heroine, and if so, whether they fit the categories presented in the literature; representation of the marriage initiation; patriarchal and masculine bias as described in the thesis; representation of the stillness necessary for the heroine to transform; the Oedipus story or Freud’s Oedipus complex, and if present, whether it played a part in the storyline; the use of any violence by the heroine to accomplish her goals; and whether there is more than one reason for the heroine to be taking the journey. To analyze each film, I used all of the female attributes discovered in the literary research that make a heroine’s journey different from that of a hero.

Film Selection

Anyone in the media has a very large megaphone that can reach a lot of different people, and so . . . whatever they produce has an influence and is teaching somebody something. —George Lucas, The Mythology of Star Wars

The corpus of films selected are diverse in terms of style, genre, and age, yet they are connected by the themes of the female agency each one depicts. The films I chose fit the criteria outlined in the previous section. The films include Beauty and the

Beast, A Price Above Rubies, Before Tomorrow, The Wizard of Oz, Moana, and Star

Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens. Brief justifications for why each specific film was chosen is given in the following paragraphs. These are in addition to the criteria I set for film selection.

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Beauty and the Beast was selected to represent the maiden’s journey to find the mythological “other,” her transformation from maiden to woman. The original literary tale, written by Madame de Villeneuve of France, is based on the tale of “Eros and

Psyche,” which was discussed extensively in the literature review. The analysis includes comparison of the film to the original literary tale to demonstrate how Hollywood can adapt a tale using patriarchal and masculine bias. The version analyzed is the live- action film created by Disney Studios and released in 2017.

A Price Above Rubies was chosen to convey the heroic and transformative journey of the mother/matron. Additionally, this film is based on a folktale and beautifully represents the heroine, who is in the process of integrating and learning to live an authentic life.

Before Tomorrow was chosen because it is the story of a grandmother, who represents the wise woman or crone segment of the heroine’s journey. This story comes from the Inuit culture and tells the story of a woman pre-contact, so the patriarchal lens was not in place. This film was very difficult to analyze using the information gained from the literature. Because I am analyzing this film with a white,

Eurocentric bias, my analysis may not give a true picture of what the filmmakers wanted to convey.

The Wizard of Oz was selected to show what a heroine will do to help family and because it demonstrates the importance of home and family to the heroine. It also conveys important lessons that the heroine needs on her journey through life.

Additionally, it is on the AFI’s “Top 100 Movies of All Time” and is familiar to many people.

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The film Moana was chosen because, while the heroine is young, the integration portion of her journey is well depicted. The film is based on numerous Polynesian cultures, which are historically matrilineal (Marck 2). The demigod Maui, an actual mythological figure, is a main focal point in the film. The film has received criticism because Maui’s companion, Goddess Hina, is not included (Herman, “Story of

‘Moana’”). The film also refers to the goddess mythology and equity-based cultures that this thesis refers to.

The final film analyzed is Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens. This film was chosen because its female protagonist is taking Campbell’s mythical journey of the hero. The six Star Wars episodes made before this one were created by George Lucas, who has acknowledged that Campbell’s work greatly influenced his creation of the films.

This film was created by Disney Studios and is a typical representation of the hero’s journey.

Film Analysis

As a female spectator we must always put ourselves in our masculine side to be able to relate— easy enough, it’s how we live day to day. —Laura Mulvey, “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema”

In this section the storyline of each film is given, with analysis included throughout the text and at the end of each story.

1. Beauty and the Beast

Can anybody truly be happy if they’re not free? —Belle, Beauty and the Beast

Beauty and the Beast begins with the introduction of the prince and his struggles, and Walt Disney did the same in his version of Snow White. Both of these original literary tales have always been about the female and are rich in female symbolism,

Ross 62 whereas the film adaptations are not. No one man has destroyed beautiful female teaching tales more than Walt Disney with his adaptation of Snow White in 1937 and

Sleeping Beauty in 1959. When young adolescent girls think of fairy tales in America, sadly, they think of the versions created by Walt Disney and his studio. When these stories change and the films are created with a patriarchal bias, as Disney does, the female symbolism gets lost. At times, the entire psychological perspective of the tale is changed. According to Gould, “Disney changed what used to be the heroine’s story of growth and transformation . . . into the hero’s story of conflict” (410). These tales are the ones most women reject because the tales objectify and minimize women. In the 2017 version of Beauty and the Beast, Disney Studios leave out the role of Beauty’s sisters, who represent Beauty’s intuitive knowledge. The story is about the Beast’s need to break the spell put on him rather than Beauty’s transformation from maiden to woman.

The beginning scenes describe the tale of how the prince was turned into a beast by an enchantress because he did not have love in his heart and how the entire castle was put under a spell until he could find someone to love him. The film then shifts to scenes filled with a lot of singing. The people in the small French village where Belle

(which means “beauty”) lives think she is abnormal because she keeps her nose in a book and tries to invent things. Gaston, the village’s most eligible bachelor, wants to make Belle his wife. She wants nothing to do with him.

Belle’s father, Maurice, looks to be a tinkerer, maybe an inventor. (Not much detail is given about him in the beginning. In most beast-marriage tales, as in this one, the mother is missing.) Belle asks her father about her absent mother. He says Belle’s mother was fearless. (The father is a key figure, because the heroine gives up one

Ross 63 dominant man for another, and this part of the film is true to the literary tale.) Maurice has to go on a trip to sell some of his inventions. He asks Belle what she wants him to bring her, and she says a rose. He says she always asks for that, and she says that he always brings one back to her.

Next scene. As Maurice is coming back from his trip, he gets caught in a snowstorm. A wagon wheel comes off, and Philippe, his horse, breaks away from the wagon. Hungry wolves go after Philippe, and the wagon flips over with Maurice in it.

Maurice gets out and climbs up on a rock, where wolves come after him. Philippe comes back for Maurice and he jumps on his back and they gallop off leaving the wolves behind. They enter the grounds of a large, dark castle. Maurice does not know where he is, but he finds hay and water for Phillipe and decides to go into the castle and thank the owner.

He walks into the castle, continually calling out, “Hello, anyone home?” to no avail; however, a fire in the grate is waiting for him. He thinks he hears a clock and a candelabra talking to each other. After looking around for a few minutes to see if anyone is home, Maurice decides to warm himself by the fire. He hears clattering in another room and goes to investigate, finding a table with warm food set for him and another fire burning nearby. A small teacup slides toward him and talks, saying that his (the teacup’s) mum told him not to move because it might be scary. Maurice runs out of the castle, saying thanks for the hospitality on the way out. He gets back onto Philippe and begins to ride away. He cries “Wait!” and remembers that he promised Belle her rose.

He dismounts and walks around until he finds a beautiful white rose. He snaps it off,

Ross 64 and at that instant, the Beast appears, looming over Maurice. Philippe breaks free and runs away.

Next scene. Philippe is running back into the village. Belle sees the horse and asks what happened. “Where is Papa?” She jumps onto Philippe and rides back in the direction he came from. (A heroine will always do what is necessary to save a family member.) Belle sees her father’s broken wagon, then enters the snowy grounds of the castle. She enters the castle armed with a stick. The clock, Cogsworth, and the candelabra, Lumiere, talk to each other. They wonder if Belle could be the one (the chosen one) to break the spell. (This dialogue continues to make the story about the

Beast, not the maiden.) Belle hears something and asks who is there. She hears her father cough, grabs Lumiere, and runs up the steps. She continues to climb, getting closer to the sound of her father’s cough.

Finally, she finds him in a cell. Maurice tells Belle that she must leave at once because the castle is alive, to leave before “he finds you.” Belle asks who he means.

They hear a growl, and Belle picks up her stick. She asks, “Who is there? Who are you?” The Beast answers by asking, “Who are you?” Belle says that she has come for her father. The Beast says that her father is a thief because he stole a rose. Belle tells the Beast (who is still hidden from view) that the rose was for her. She asks the Beast to let her father go and punish her instead. (another example of the heroine doing what is needed to save family) Belle asks the voice to come into the light. She grabs Lumiere and sees the Beast. He asks if she is still willing to take her father’s place. Maurice tells

Belle to say no, to leave. Belle says okay, she will leave, but she wants a moment alone with her father. The Beast agrees and opens the cell door, but he says that when it

Ross 65 shuts, it will never open again. Belle goes over to her father and hugs him, then pushes him outside the cell and closes the door. The Beast is surprised. “You would take his place?” “He is my father, I love him.” The Beast calls her a fool, and the father, too. The

Beast takes Maurice away. Maurice says he will come back, “I promise.”

Next scene. Belle is in the cell. The door opens, and Lumiere says he is there to escort Belle to her room. When Belle realizes it is a candelabra speaking, she throws a chair on him. Cogsworth, the clock, shows up, and he and Lumiere bicker between themselves. Lumiere tells Belle she must forgive first impressions and that she is free to go anywhere in the castle she would like—except the west wing, adds Cogsworth. (This is representational of all the beast tales. There is a place, a room, or someone,as in the tale of “Eros and Psyche”, that is forbidden and must not be looked at by the maiden. As the maiden grows up, the area becomes intriguing and must be looked into. This is usually the part in which the sisters play an important role. The sisters typically push the maiden to look in, or at, the forbidden item, room or person. Disney does not include sisters in this tale, so symbolically, Beauty has no intuition, no one who has female knowledge to share with her as she transitions into being a woman.) Belle is taken to her room, which is beautiful, and asks if everything there is alive. The feather duster talks, her wardrobe has a name and talks, and a footstool is reminiscent of a dog.

Next scene. In a tavern back at the village, Gaston is by the fire, complaining that

Belle won’t marry him, as his sidekick, LeFou, tells him how wonderful he is. A song- and-dance scene follows. Maurice bursts into the tavern, saying that Belle is being held in a cell by a beast. They laugh, but Gaston steps up, saying he will help—just lead him

Ross 66 to the Beast. LeFou understands that this is a way for Gaston to rescue Belle and for her to be so grateful that she will marry him.

Next scene. At the castle, the little teacup, Chip, and his teapot mother, Mrs.

Potts, are excited to see that there is a girl in the castle. The Beast is then seen going to sit at his table for dinner. He sees another place setting and yells at Lumiere and

Cogsworth. He finds out they have given Belle a bedroom and a new gown. They tell the Beast she may be the one to break the spell if he is kind to her. They stress that they are becoming less and less human every day.

The Beast asks Belle to kindly come down and join him for dinner. She refuses.

She is trying to use the gown as a rope to escape out the window. The Beast storms off in anger. He goes to a room that holds a rose in a glass. Once all the petals fall from the rose, he can never again be a prince. He asks the magic mirror (a feminine symbol) to show him the girl. He sees Belle. The Beast watches as another petal falls from the rose in the jar. (At this point, the story continues to be more and more about the Beast and what he needs from Belle; Belle is just a means to an ends. The film is depicting the

Beast desiring his own transformation, which is not what the original tale is about. The original tale is about Belle’s transformation from young maiden to woman, while she transforms the Beast into the prince of her desires.)

Next scene. Mrs. Potts comes to give Belle a cup of tea. She sees that Belle is trying to escape. Mrs. Potts tells her to come and eat first. Belle goes to the dining hall where all of the household items are hoping that Belle is the one the Beast will fall in love with so the curse will be broken and they will become people once again. A song- and-dance sceneis included.

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Next scene. After dinner, Belle gets curious and goes to the forbidden west wing.

She enters the Beast’s lair and finds the room with the rose in it. She reaches to touch the glass, and the Beast appears, telling her she could have damned them all. He screams at her to go. Belle runs away, terrified. She runs straight out the front door, jumps on Philippe (even though Maurice rode him home) and gallops away.

Next scene. The wolves chase Belle and Philippe onto a frozen lake. Philippe slides and bucks Belle off. The wolves knock her down, and she grabs a stick to protect herself. Just before they begin to attack, the Beast comes and knocks them away from her. They begin to attack the Beast, but he throws them off, one by one. When the wolves leave, the Beast collapses. Belle goes to get on Philippe to go home, but she knows the Beast is hurt. She stops. She goes to him and tells him to stand, and then the

Beast rides Philippe as Belle guides the horse back to the castle.

Next scene. Gaston, LeFou, and Maurice are in a wagon. Gaston wants to turn back, but Maurice sees the tree that fell and hears the wolves. He knows they are getting close. Gaston does not believe Maurice, so he punches him, ties him up, and leaves him, figuring that the wolves will eat him.

Next scene. Beauty is taking care of the Beast’s wounds. A song about growing up takes place. Belle starts questioning her choices; she is growing up. She is wiser now. (This is part of the heroine’s journey; the young maiden is growing up. She will either go back home to Daddy and the life of a girl or stay and become the mistress of her own castle. Most Beast tales have the heroine going back to her family for a visit or her family coming to her—usually her sisters. In Disney’s rendition, Belle only sings about her family.)

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Next scene. Maurice is found by an old woman, Agathe, who takes care of him.

Maurice says he must know her from somewhere.

Next scene. Belle is sitting by the Beast and quoting Shakespeare. The Beast awakens and finishes the sentence. He, too, knows Shakespeare. He takes her into his library and gives her the library. She is ecstatic.

Next scene. Belle and the Beast dine together for the first time. She has a book.

Various scenes follow depicting them together, getting to know each other and sharing commonalities. Belle is not afraid. The scene ends with a song.

Next scene. The Beast shows Belle a book that the enchantress gave him: a map of the world. “Just place your hand on it, think in your heart, and you will go there,” he says. They are transported to a tiny house in Paris, where Belle was born. The Beast finds a doctor’s mask and tells Belle that the plague probably killed her mother and that her father had taken her away to save her. Belle looks at the Beast with tears in her eyes and says, “Let’s go home now.” The Beast realizes that she now thinks of the castle as her home.

Next scene. Gaston and LeFue are walking down a rainy street. They go into a pub and find Maurice there. The bartender asks Gaston if he tried to kill Maurice.

Gaston says of course not, he has just been out looking for him. Maurice must be delusional. Three men take Maurice away.

Next scene. The Beast is taking a bath. He had asked Belle for a dance, and she had said yes. He gets all dressed up, hoping that Belle will be the one to break the spell.

They dance. (All the dancing and reading and spending time with each other is symbolic of the heroine metaphorically taming the Beast.)

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Belle and the Beast go outside, and the Beast asks if she could be happy here.

Belle responds, “Can anybody truly be happy if they’re not free?” He says that she must miss her father and asks if she would like to see him, to which she says yes. The Beast allows her to look into the magic mirror (a feminine symbol). Belle sees her father being taken away, and she knows he is in trouble. The Beast says she must go to him. He gives her the mirror so she always has a way to look back at him. (The story is still focused on the Beast and his needs, and it continues to be his story.) She leaves, dressed in a ball gown, and all the objects are sad because they think the spell will never be broken. The Beast goes to the rose and sings a song all about himself.

Next scene. Gaston is putting Maurice in a black carriage to be hauled to the asylum. Belle shows up in front of the horses and tells them to stop. She tells the men to let her father free, that he is not crazy. Gaston says Maurice has been telling stories about some beast. Belle brings out the mirror and shows everyone the Beast. Gaston riles the crowd, saying the Beast must be stopped. They throw Belle into the barred carriage with her father. LeFue is not happy but fetches Gaston’s horse. A song follows,

Kill the Beast! The village people head to the castle.

Next scene. Back at the castle, all the castle objects are happy that the Beast has learned to love. However, they see all the angry village people coming and prepare the castle for war. The village people break into the castle, and fighting begins.

Next scene. Belle tells Maurice what a good man the Beast is. They break out of the paddy wagon. Belle removes her gown, jumps on Philippe, and rides off.

Next scene. At the castle, the house-hold objects run the villagers off. Gaston finds the Beast and tells him that Belle sent him. He shoots the Beast, who falls but is

Ross 70 not dead. Belle arrives and tells Gaston to stop. Gaston tells her that she will marry him and that the Beast’s head will hang on their wall. She says, “Never!” Gaston falls down.

A chase-and-fight scene follows, in which Belle is involved. Gaston shoots the Beast twice more. The archway that Gaston is on gives way, and he falls to his death. The

Beast falls to the ground from his wounds, and as he does, the last petal of the rose falls. The objects all lose their humanness. The old hag, Agathe, who saved Maurice has climbed up to where the rose is. She is the enchantress who had cast the original spell that changed the prince into a beast. As Belle realizes the Beast is dying, she says she loves him. The enchantress puts the petals back on the rose. The Beast is transformed into a prince, and all the objects become human. The scene closes with a big dance. THE END.

Parts of the film depict the true heroine’s journey. The Beast represents the heroine’s future. The maiden’s future husband may have seemed like a beast to her because of the history of arranged marriages. However, in all of these tales, the heroine has the choice of whether to stay with the beast and transform him or go back to family.

The heroine’s transformation of the beast into her prince is metaphorically her own transformation from an innocent maiden into a woman ready to run her own castle. The filmmakers at Disney interpret this tale using a masculine lens, and the story becomes as much—or more—about the tale of the Beast as it does Belle’s transformation.

There is no additional man in any of the literary tales about beast marriages.

There is no violence. Saving the beast is part of the heroine’s journey, though not in the format depicted in this film. The heroine will do whatever is necessary to save family.

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Once the maiden has decided that this is the man for her, she will do what it takes to make sure he is safe and spells are broken. She transforms her beast into her prince.

2. A Price Above Rubies

We have a mutual acquaintance. She’s old, as old as God Himself. She’s beautiful and very wise. But we hate and fear her, when we should be making her our trusted ally. This makes her bitter and vengeful. And she burns us in the flames of her spite. She's sensitive, not very forgiving, but if you learn to embrace her, you will have made a valuable friend. —Old Beggar Woman, A Price Above Rubies

A young sister and brother (approximately eight and ten years old, respectively) are sitting on a bed. The brother, Yossi, tells his younger sister, Sonia, a story.

“One hundred years ago, a young girl ran off into the woods. Her father wanted her to marry a Jewish scholar, but for some reason—maybe she was a little crazy—she didn’t want to, so she ran away. It was in the middle of winter. She wandered into the forest. At first, no one even knew she ran away. They thought she just got lost in the snow somewhere and died. They decided the wolves ate her up. They looked and looked for her, but they never found her body.”

Yossi, who has asthma, stops the story to cough. Sonia tells him to be quiet. She tells him how much she loves him, even more than she loves God. He calls her a sinner. “You must love God first, then your mother and father. The Torah doesn’t even talk about brothers and sisters.” Sonia says they will write their own torah, then. He returns to telling her the story.

“It was the longest, hardest winter that anyone could remember. Everyone forgot about the girl. But then one day, just as suddenly as she had disappeared, the girl came back into town. She was carrying a baby in her stomach; she was pregnant. She was saved by a demon, who made her his wife. That spring, the woman had a baby, a baby girl. They called her Yitta, Baba Yitta. (Yitta means “light” in Hebrew.) You might end up

Ross 72 just like her. When she got old and died, Baba Yitta went to Heaven, but God didn’t want her, so he sent her down to Hell, but when she got there, Satan recognized her as his niece. He couldn’t bring himself to make her suffer in Hell, so he sent her back up here, to our world, where she wanders the Earth like Kane, alone forever.”

Sonia says, “Poor Baba Yitta.” Yossi says, “Don’t cry. remember what day it is?”

He hands her a black velvet bag and says, “Happy birthday.” She looks inside and finds a ruby, but she realizes it is fake. Yossi says he is going out to the lake to swim. Sonia tells him no because of his asthma. He says he is the only boy his age who can’t swim.

He leaves. Sonia goes to the window and sees Yossi running toward the lake.

Next scene. Sonia is a young woman and is giving birth to a baby. She keeps screaming, “Yossi! Yossi!” (This is the beginning of her adventure. Her adventure is regarding family—Yossi—but it is not about saving him. Her adventure is about saving herself. This is typical with many women who lose themselves by nurturing others. This film is a journey of motherhood, when something deep inside the heroine says to go another direction.)

Next scene. Sonia is holding her baby, waiting for the Jewish men to take him from her for his circumcision. Her sister-in-law, Rachel, tells Sonia she is a chicken, as this is the moment her son becomes a Jew. Sonia’s husband, Mendel, a Jewish scholar, is also nervous. The men take the baby from Sonia and pass him through many men, finally handing him to Mendel, who hands the baby to Mendel’s big brother, Sender, a jewelry broker. Sender tells Mendel that he found them a place to live right by them and only three blocks from the rabbi, so Mendel can teach and study. Sender holds the baby while the rabbi performs the circumcision. Mendel faints.

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Next scene. Sonia and Mendel are driving to their new home. Mendel sees the rabbi, stops the car, and gets out. He is stopped by an old beggar woman, who asks for money. He doesn’t have any, but points to Sonia who has a dollar. The beggar woman goes to the car to get the money. She looks at Sonia, doesn’t take the money, and says

“Bless you.” Sonia is confused. (This woman becomes Sonia’s fairy godmother, but not in the fairy tale way. She becomes Sonia’s “Ershkigal,” the sister in the Inanna myth, or a Lilith archetype. This is Sonia’s journey to validate the voice deep inside her: her own authority.)

Next scene. Sonia is in her new house. Rachel and her children are there, along with a lady who is there to help Sonia pick out material for drapes. Sonia is upset and unhappy. She hears her baby cry. She takes him into the bedroom to nurse him, but he won’t latch onto her. She goes to the kitchen to get a bottle, but there isn’t one. Rachel, seeing how upset Sonia is, takes the baby and tells her she is just anxious and needs to relax.

Next scene. Sonia is in a spa, relaxing and getting pampered.

Next scene. Sonia is lying in bed, waiting for Mendel to finishing praying and come to bed. When he arrives, she initiates intimacy. Mendel reaches to turn the light out, but she would like to keep it on for once. He turns it out anyway and gets on top of

Sonia. She begins to kiss him intimately, and he tells her to stop, that it is indecent. He says that he is supposed to be thinking exalted and holy thoughts during the act itself.

She realizes that he loves his religion much more than he loves her. She “sees” her brother, Yossi, sitting on the floor, flipping coins. She goes to him and asks, can I play a little? (He becomes her mentor of sorts, her intuition.)

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Next scene. At a family dinner, Sender, Sonia’s brother-in-law, tells a story about lying and cheating. The story makes Sonia uneasy, and she begins to realize that he is not a very holy man. After dinner, Sonia is clearing away plates when Sender asks her about the quality of a broach. Sonia’s father was a very good gemologist, and Sonia learned much about jewelry from him. Sender asks why she didn’t go into the business.

She replies that her parents wanted her to marry a Jewish scholar. Sender asks her if it is in her heart to be a wife to a holy man. She doesn’t answer and gets nervous and anxious. (Sender represents evil in the film. He gives the final push that Sonia needs to change her life. The heroine does not try to slay evil, as a hero would. She just makes sure that evil does not harm her family or herself.)

Rachel finds Sonia splashing water on her face and realizes she is having a panic attack. She takes Sonia into the bedroom and tells her to keep breathing, to just relax, as she massages Sonia’s neck and shoulders. The feel of touch is wonderful for

Sonia, and it puts her in a different state. As Rachel continues to massage her, Sonia tries to kiss her. She then wakes from her trance-like state and goes back into a panic attack.

Next scene. Rachel is taking Sonia to the rabbi for help. As Sonia goes in to see the rabbi, another man is there as a witness. He is asked to leave, and the rabbi’s wife comes in as a witness instead. The rabbi wants Sonia to heal her soul. She tells him how she was always hot as a little girl, and now the heat just keep getting worse. She isn’t sure she has a soul. The rabbi tells her that God gave everyone a soul. Sonia says if she has one, it wasn’t God that gave it to her. She leaves. Sonia begins to question her religion and the path she has chosen in her life.

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Next scene. The rabbi is with other men in his office. He sees his wife in the other room and tells the men to leave. He goes to his wife and kisses her, telling her that he loves her—something he hasn’t done in twenty years.

Next scene. Outside, all the men are wailing because the rabbi died the night before. The women are separated from and behind the men, as usual. Sonia is with

Rachel. The rabbi’s wife passes by Sonia, recognizes her, and whispers something in her ear. Sonia is confused. She turns the other direction and sees the old beggar woman laughing at her. Sonia quickly leaves the mourning crowd.

Next scene. Sonia returns to her apartment with her baby, who is crying. She can’t console him. She runs to her bedroom and sits on the floor with a blanket pulled over her. She “sees” Yossi on the floor next to her. He asks who she is hiding from.

(Yossi represents her intuition or instinctual mind. In most fairy tales, this is represented by small animals.) The doorbell is ringing, and when Sonia opens the door, Sender is there. He offers her a job as a buyer for his jewelry business. He senses how miserable she is—and how talented. She asks what Mendel will say, and he asks her if it matters.

(Sender is giving her an opportunity, one that she wants; however, it comes at a price.

Because of the patriarchal society, women believe they have to pay a price to achieve their goals or validate their desires. There are many tales that describe the female’s sacrifice. For example, Psyche went through enormous sacrifice to reunite with Eros. I see women’s self-sacrifice as coming from masculine bias of the tales that include it.)

Sender then rapes Sonia, talking about sin as he does so. Knowing that she wants to be out working, he is now in control of her. She believes that her desires come at a price, and this is the price she must pay.

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The next few scenes are of Sonia working in the city. She is very good at what she does. Her office/store is in the basement of a building run by Sender. She meets a young Puerto Rican, Ramone, who works at a jewelry shop she does business with.

Next scene. Mendel and Sonia are eating microwave dinners. He is upset that she doesn’t have time to cook healthy meals anymore. She tells him that it is her birthday. He had forgotten. (Both Sonia and Mendel exhibit patriarchal expectations.)

Next scene. Sender is raping Sonia on a table.

Next scene. Sonia is at the shop where Ramone works. She “sees” Yossi, who tells her to look at a specific ring. (Her instincts are guiding her.) She asks the owner of the shop where the ring came from, but he doesn’t know. She leaves the shop.

Next scene. Sonia sits down on a bench to eat a pork eggroll. Yossi “appears” and tells her she is going to Hell for eating pork. She asks why she would go to Hell for pork but not for what her brother-in-law is doing to her. Once again, her instincts are nudging her. The old beggar woman shows up and sits down on the bench between

Sonia and another lady. She asks the lady for some money and says that she likes her earrings. (In doing so, the old beggar, representing the heroine’s fairy godmother, nudges Sonia to pay attention to the lady’s earrings.) The old woman leaves, and Sonia asks the other lady where she got her earrings. She tells her a guy in her neighborhood makes them. Sonia finds the house where the artist lives and is let in. She is led into the basement and learns that Ramone, from the jewelry shop, is the artist. She tells

Ramone she has never seen work so beautiful and that she wants to commission his work.

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Next scene. Sonia comes home late. Mendel is up waiting, and he is angry. He tells her she can no longer work. He also believes they need to go to a marriage counselor.

Next scene. They go to the “marriage counselor,” who is a Jewish rabbi. This makes Sonia angry. The rabbi asks if she has been neglecting her religious duties. He asks if she fears God. She says she is tired of being afraid. (The voice inside her, her own authority, is growing louder.)

Next scene. Mendel goes to see Sender. He says that Sonia has gone crazy and wonders what he has done wrong. He asks Sender for help.

Next scene. Sonia and Ramone are talking to a man about commissioning

Ramone’s work.

Next scene. Sonia is with Ramone in his studio. She is telling him he is wasting his talent. Ramone gets angry, and Sonia leaves. Ramone goes after her, and they talk on the sidewalk outside. Sender is in a car and sees this. Sonia goes back to her apartment that night and finds that the lock has been changed. She goes to Rachel’s to pick up her son. Rachel tells Sonia that Mendel is going to divorce her, that she can live in one of Sender’s apartments in the city, and that her son will stay with her, Rachel.

(Rachel represents the evil witch in this scene, pushing Sonia to listen to her own authority.)

Sonia leaves without her son and goes to the synagogue to find Mendel. She finds him in a praying trance. She then goes to her office/store and finds that they won’t let her in. She goes to the rental apartment that Sender owns and finds him there. He says he has given her just what she has always wanted: her freedom. She asks if she is

Ross 78 free of him, too. He says freedom always comes with a price. She tells him that she is not paying anymore and leaves.

She walks the streets, crying, and bumps into the old beggar woman. (As with all fairy godmothers, she is always there when she is needed.) They go to a quiet place in an old abandoned building. Sonia asks the woman why she has been following her. The woman answers, “Who’s been following who?” The beggar woman says they have a mutual acquaintance. “She’s old, as old as God himself. She’s beautiful and very wise.

But we hate and fear when we should be making her our trusted ally. This makes her bitter and vengeful, and she burns in the flames of her spite. She’s sensitive, not very forgiving, but if you learn to embrace her, you will have made a valuable friend.” (This also describes Lilith, Ershkigal, Baba Yaga, and other archetypes the patriarchy has suppressed. It is the voice deep down inside women that tells them when they are not leading authentic lives—the voice of their own authority.) Sonia says, “And what’s God got to say about all of that?” The old beggar woman answers, “Better to stay on His good side, too.” Sonia replies, “It’s a little late for tht in my case.” The old beggar woman says, “Awww, he’s an old bully. Best to keep bullies in their place, I say.” Sonia asks,

“Even the big ones?” The old woman replies, “especially the big ones.”

Next scene. Mendel is at Rachel’s, taking his son home.

Next scene. Sonia is waking up. The old beggar woman is gone, and Sonia is alone. She looks out a broken window and “sees” Yossi walking. She runs down to follow him and ends up on Ramone’s doorstep. They hold each other and end up in bed.

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Next scene. Sonia and Yossi are young again. Yossi comes in from the lake and tells Sonia that he went swimming. She says she did, too. (This scene is a metaphor for doing something that someone [parents, society, authority] tells us we shouldn’t but that we know we need to do.) They hold hands.

Next scene. Sonia is waking up. Her hand is in Ramone’s.

Next scene. Sonia is at the door of the rabbi who died, asking to see his wife.

The man doesn’t want to let her in, but she goes in anyway. She asks the rabbi’s wife why she whispered ‘thank you’ in her ear after the rabbi died. The rabbi’s wife tells

Sonia that whatever Sonia said that day to the rabbi made him think about how he loved his wife and had rekindled a fire inside him. She said that Sonia gave a man back to his wife. Sonia says she understands. She tells the rabbi’s wife that now she needs her help.

Next scene. Sonia is walking down the street toward the office with six religious men sent by the rabbi’s wife. They are there to ensure that Sonia takes only what is hers from Sender’s vault. She wants the ring that belongs to Ramone back. Sender is there, and she whispers in his ear that now she is free.

Next scene. Sonia gives the ring back to Ramone. His doorbell rings, and it is

Mendel. He came to tell Sonia that he is sorry he forgot her birthday. He gives her a ruby, her birthstone. He says for her to come by and visit their son any time, because she is his mother. THE END.

This film is a beautiful representation of the journey to find the broken portions of the feminine and validate them, regardless of the cost. Does one really have to sacrifice to obtain one’s desires, one’s own voice? The voice inside Sonia (represented by Yossi

Ross 80 and the old beggar women) continues to tell her she is living a lie. In Jewish tales, Lilith is the first wife of Adam. They were equal partners before Adam demanded that Lilith be subservient to him. She refused and flew off. Her voice is heard in women when they become too subservient and forget to live the lives of their own choosing. The first representation of this is at the beginning of the film, when Sonia is with Yossi and tells him she loves him more than she loves God.

This story also represents motherhood in the heroine’s journey. I loved this film because it demonstrates that not all women are ready for motherhood or meant to be mothers, even when they have a child. When Sonia abandons her child to live a different life, the taboos surrounding motherhood are addressed. The tale of “Sealskin,

Soulskin” is much like this film, with the mother returning to the sea where she belongs while her child remains on land.

The first time Sonia “sees” Yossi, when her husband won’t allow intimacy during intercourse, is the beginning of her metaphorical descent into the underground, with

Yossi representing death, which she does not fear. Being the mistress of both worlds, or bringing the darkness deep inside up into the light, is an example of the integration journey the heroine takes.

The ending of this film is somewhat patriarchal. Sonia has finally realized where she doesn’t belong, though she may not completely know in which direction she wants to go. Mendel telling her it is okay for her to come and see her baby is condescending.

He is doing this because it is Yom Kippur, and he is doing right for God, which is typical for him. But Sonia’s own integration is achieved when she accepts this and brings family together in the way that it can be for the time being. Sonia has learned the lessons of

Ross 81 living a life that isn’t authentic. She comes to terms with the darkness, in the form of

Sender, and rises above it to begin a new life for herself. Her moment occurs when she does not accept the apartment from Sender because of his sexual demands. She will not pay his price for her freedom. Sonia’s time with the old beggar woman represents the wisdom of listening to her own authority, given to her by her fairy godmother.

3. Before Tomorrow

The darkness is friends with the light. —Grandmother, Before Tomorrow

The entire film of Before Tomorrow is spoken in Inuit with English subtitles. The film opens with a grandmother, Ningiuq, telling her grandson, Maniq, a story while they walk in the snow across the frozen sea. The story continues when they are in their cave.

“Once there was a raven. Suddenly a bowhead whale surfaced and swallowed it whole. It was very dark, like a cave. In the distance the raven saw the flickering light of an oil lamp. A girl was trying desperately to keep the light from dying. The raven heard the girl’s voice: You must be faithful to me. Promise never to touch this light. The raven promised. I’ll never touch it! But when the girl returned to her work the raven forgot his promise and touched the lamp and when the light went out the girl fell over dead. The raven realized his terrible mistake. The girl had taken over possession of raven’s heart and when the light went out so did the ravens heart. That’s the end of my story.”

Next scene. We see the bottoms of boats and canoes in the water. Ningiuq is talking. It is a beautiful summer day, and she is happy to see new faces and meet with old friends.

Next scene. The boats are filled with people crossing the water toward a shore, where people are waiting to greet them. Maniq finds an object and brings it to his father,

Ross 82 who does not know what it is. He goes to find his grandmother. Maniq’s father tells his mother that the boy is always happy when he is with his grandmother. The people in the camp see the boats coming. They welcome everyone.

Next scene. People are sitting in a circle, eating. An old man shows everyone his knife and how sharp it is and how well it can cut. An old woman says she would take him as a husband with that knife. Everyone laughs. The old man tells the group a story about a strange boat with strange people aboard that once came and how everyone hid to watch them. The strange people unloaded things the local people had never seen before: knives, sewing needles made from the same material as the knives, bottles that would shatter. The substance in the bottles made the men from the boats silly, and they would fall down. “And they wanted our women.” (This scene could be interpreted as destiny, not just for the heroine but for the entire group, and metaphorically, for the culture itself.)

Next scene. The men are fishing, and the women are cleaning the fish. Everyone is having a good time.

Next scene. Ningiuq is talking to her old friend in her tent. They laugh about the story that the old man told. The friend tells Ningiuq she is “drying out”; dying. She wants to come with her when she goes on the trip to dry fish, even though she knows she can’t help much.

Next scene. Ningiuq’s son asks why she is going on this trip again; it is time to let the younger women take this role. Maniq asks his father if he can go on the trip to help his grandmother, because she is old and he could be of help to her.

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Next scene. Ningiuq and Maniq go to the boats, and Ningiuq’s old friend comes, too. The canoes are loaded, and they push off to sea while the remaining people walk back to their tents.

Ningiuq, her friend, and Maniq go to the island. The men leave them, saying they will be back to get them before the freeze. Maniq’s father gives him his harpoon.

Next are numerous scenes of the area: the old woman in her tent tending the oil lamp, Ningiuq and Maniq gathering berries. Maniq brings berries back to the old woman, and she tells Maniq she doesn’t have long to live. She tells him to be good to his grandmother and to help her. Ningiuq and the old lady talk inside her tent. The old lady tells Ningiuq that she had a dream of little children: She was pregnant with twins and gave birth to a bear cub and a human. She took the harpoon and pierced the bear cub. It died, and the human child shrank back into her womb. She said she understood the dream to mean that she really wanted to bear a child, but instead, she adopted, and she loved her child very much. She told Ningiuq to tell this story to her beloved son.

Ningiuq says she will tell him everything. The old lady then dies. Ningiuq bundles the body in skins. The body is buried under rocks.

Next scene. Maniq tries to kill seagulls while his grandmother is processing skins to dry the fish on. They lay out the fish to be dried, and Ningiuq tells the young boy that it won’t be long before the men come back, and it is almost time for caribou hunting.

She tells Maniq that it is normal to feel homesick but that his parents will be proud of him.

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Next scene. Birds are migrating. Maniq makes a bow and arrow. Ningiuq is getting anxious that the men aren’t back yet. She continually looks at the sea, which is changing. Winter is coming. Maniq harpoons his first seal.

Next scene. Ningiuq and Maniq are in their tent at night with the oil lamp burning.

Ningiuq tells her grandson that his catch is delicious and to tell her the whole story of how he got the seal, so she can tell his father. He describes the event for her. Ningiuq praises him and tells him how much she loves him.

That night, Ningiuq dreams: “Husband, how much longer do we wait?” (This is the beginning of her heroine’s journey).

Next scene. Ningiuq and Maniq paddle in the boat, looking for the men. They find the men’s tents. Ningiuq looks around and finds the dead bodies of all the men, which have bumps and welts all over them. She sees needles and blames the deaths on the strange men whom the old man had described. She tells Maniq not to look. (Life now changes for the heroine and she must do what is needed to protect her grandson).

Next scene. Grandmother and grandson grieve together. They take one surviving dog and one small boat and go back to their own camp. Snow has started to fall. Their tent has blown down, and a storm is coming. Ningiuq cries, “I want this nightmare to end! Where are all the people?” The two run to the cave where they had been storing the meat, bringing the oil lamp and all the skins. This will be their new home. (Ningiuq is making decisions for herself and her grandson. As a true heroine she will do what is necessary to protect her grandson, her family). Ningiuq talks to her husband through prayers or dreams. “Husband, I am tired. I need help with our grandson. How can he live without friends and family?”

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Numerous scenes depicting winter are shown. Everything is white and frozen, and the snow is blowing. The scene from the beginning of the film, in which Ningiuq and

Maniq are walking across the snow and frozen sea, is shown once more. Ningiuq laughs and says to Maniq, “Are you going to keep asking me to tell you stories?”

Next scene. Inside the cave, Maniq wants another story. Ningiuq says she doesn’t have any, then tells one about tickles, and tickles the boy. Then she tells another story:

“There was an old woman and her grandson who were all alone, maybe like us?

When the grandson went to bed, he asked his grandmother to tell a story.

‘Grandmother, please tell me a story.’ ‘I don’t have any stories! Get comfortable and go to sleep!’ But the child insisted and started to cry, ‘Grandmother tell me a story.’ Finally, the grandmother started to tell.

‘Story . . . story . . . Baby lemmings . . . having no fur . . . arms folded in . . . start falling . . . feels ticklish.’ The grandson was so startled, he shouted ‘TEEOOK!’ and flew off. He turned into a snow bunting and flew away, right out the air hole. The grandmother looked all around and said, ‘Grandson, where did you go?’ Again and again, ‘Where are you?’ Then she cried so much and wiped her eyes so much that her eyes turned red, but she couldn’t find him. Finally, she put her needles into her boots.

Then she took her oil lamp wick and hung it around her neck. That’s the collar filled with seeds around the ptarmigan’s neck. And then she went ap-ap-ap-ap-ap! and flew off to join her grandson. He was so startled he turned into a snow bunting! She went flying right out after him!’ Too bad, but it must have been all right, as long as they were together again. That’s the end of that story.”

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Next scene. The Grandmother puts out a few of the flames of the oil lamp. Maniq has a wooden ship he carved and is playing with it. He asks his grandmother, “Why did those strangers hurt our family?” Ningiuq says, “I don’t know. I never knew any of them.

Maybe you’ll find out when you grow up.” Maniq says, “Can you sing your favorite song to help me sleep?” Ningiuq sings to him: “Let me sing slowly, let me sing slowly . . . let me find a song to sing. Let me go traveling . . . let me go traveling to that island far away. I will be so happy . . . I will be so happy . . . when I see you coming. When will you come home? Will you come home . . . when you hear me sing this song?”

Ningiuq dampens the oil lamp, leaving two flames burning to keep them warm thoughout the night. She prays, “Husband, I feel your love strongly.”

Next scene. Ningiuq and her grandson come out of the cave and into the snow.

Ningiuq is cleaning one of the skins. Maniq brings oars to her, and they cross the oars in front of the cave so that if someone comes by, they will see the oars. She tells Maniq to slide down the snow on the sealskin so the yellow comes off. In the cave that night, they are eating, and Maniq is making something. Ningiuq is sewing with the needles she found at the camp where everyone died.

Next scene: Outside in the daytime, Maniq says, “Grandmother, now that I know more about hunting and kayaking, why can’t we move somewhere else?” Ningiuq replies, “I know of a beautiful place where there is always good hunting and plenty of meat for all, but it’s far away. It’s far, but everyone there is very well off. All the women are good at sewing; they have different styles, and their clothes are beautiful. The children are very able, even though they are just children.” Maniq asks, “Do they play, too?” Ningiuq answers, “Yes, of course they must play like children. But it’s very far; it’s

Ross 87 long and difficult to go there. We’ll wait until spring, when your puppies are all trained.

Over there, you’ll be better than all of them.”

Next scene: Outside during the day. Camera shows the frozen sea and Maniq.

We hear grandmother’s voice, “Maniq was always hopeful and tried hard to help. But what would become of him if something happened to me? No child can live alone.”

Next scene. Ningiuq and Maniq are in the cave, eating. Ningiuq tells Maniq to use the dry part of a skin to wipe up. Maniq has a puppy, and Ningiuq tells him that it shall be his lead dog.

Next scene. In the cave, Maniq is playing. He asks his grandmother if she will make him a whip for his dogs before they leave. He says he will learn to use it this winter. She says of course; (she is supporting him as best she can.) Long scenes of them in the cave.

Next scene. Outside, the sun is low on the horizon. Ningiuq and Maniq are walking along the frozen sea, hunting for seals. Ningiuq says, “Here’s a breathing hole.

Watch where you step. The wind is really calm.” Maniq replies, “I’ll walk around to make noise.” Ningiuq says, “The seal will come to you.” Maniq is standing over a hole. “I’m cold,” he says. Ningiuq says, “It won’t be so cold when we go south to that beautiful place.”

Two wolves are running towards them. Ningiuq says, “Look out!! Wolves are coming! Quick, run, hide under the boat.” Wolves attack Ningiuq. Maniq is hiding under the boat and stabs one with his knife and they run away. He runs over to find his grandmother lying on the ice. Her shoulder has been bitten. He consoles his grandmother as both of them cry. They walk back to the cave.

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Next scene. Inside the cave, Ningiuq is lying down by the oil lamp, in pain. Maniq gives her water and asks if she wants some food. Ningiuq tells him to put seal fat on her shoulder where she was bitten. It burns and it hurts, and she moans. (Long scene.)

Maniq tends the oil lamp fire. Ningiuq says, “You are so able now, even looking after me.”

Next scene. Outside, the sun is very red and low on the horizon. There is not much light.

Next scene. Maniq lies down and says, “It was so cold and windy, I was scared we wouldn’t get back.” Ningiuq replies, “Dear little one, don’t be scared. The darkness is friends with the light. I love you, you don’t have to be afraid of the dark.” Maniq observes, “We are going through hard times right now, but we will survive. When we go to that beautiful place, we’ll have lots of stories to tell.” Ningiuq says, “Yes, of course.

Maybe we’ll have to talk all the time with so many stories to tell. Even though we were alone, we did a lot this summer. Our tent was swept away by the wind. All our relatives passed away. You caught your first seal. Even with no tent, we found this cave to make a safe home indoors. We could have been stranded outdoors with no shelter to protect us. We told each other so many stories and planned a happier future. Dear little one, I love you so much, you are so able now. You learned so much. You are able now, and I love you, my little one. Dear one . . . little grandson . . . sweet, able young man . . .” She tucks him in. It is cold; they can see their breath. Maniq falls asleep.

Ningiuq is still in pain. She looks around, trying to decide what to do. She prays,

“Husband! Help me!” She has a vision of a little boy walking along and digging in the snow. Ningiuq’s voice is heard: “No child can live alone.” Ningiuq then cleans around

Ross 89 the fire, putting things in order. She combs and braids her hair, although she is still in pain. (Long scenes.) Ningiuq then opens the door to the cave to let the cold air in. She sings to the sleeping child. “Let me sing slowly . . . Let me find a song to sing. . . . When will you come home . . . when will you come home? When you hear me sing this song? I will be so happy . . . I will be so happy . . . when I see you coming . . .” She begins to put the flames of the oil lamp out. She lies down and then puts out the final two flames of the oil lamp. Fade to black.

Next scenes are various flashbacks with all the relatives when they were together having fun. Music comes on. THE END.

This film was analyzed because it shows a heroine who is in her crone years.

Ningiuq has a job that she has always done for her community and does not feel ready to give it up yet. She takes her journey once she finds all the men dead. She then has to figure out how to keep herself and her grandson alive. She speaks/prays/dreams about her husband and asks him for advice. She knows their days are limited, and she makes the decision to protect her grandson from being alone by letting the oil lamp go out as they go to sleep. As noted earlier, this film was difficult to analyze because of the white

Eurocentric bias that I have. The story comes from the Inuit tribe, and surely there is symbolism shown that I do not understand and cannot possibly analyze. However, it is a beautiful story of a strong woman making difficult choices for her family and herself, which is a true heroine’s journey.

4. The Wizard of Oz

You don’t need to be helped any longer. You’ve always had the power. . . —Glinda, the Good Witch of the North, The Wizard of Oz

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The Wizard of Oz opens with Dorothy being frustrated with her Auntie Em and

Uncle Henry because they won’t listen to her about the neighbor lady, Miss Almira

Gulch, who is mean to her dog, Toto. (As is typical in most fairy tales, her parental figures are not her mother and father. Toto represents Dorothy’s child/family that she will do anything to protect.) Auntie Em and Uncle Henry are dealing with baby chicks and can’t be bothered. Dorothy goes to the three farm hands to see if they will listen to her. One tells her to be brave and to just spit in Miss Gulch’s eye. Another tells her to be smart and to find another route home so she doesn’t have to go by the lady’s house.

(These characters are being set up as the heroine’s symbolic intuition to help her with her journey. What is unusual is that they are men.)

Dorothy falls into the pen with the hogs, and Auntie Em tells her to go somewhere where she won’t get into trouble. Dorothy wonders if there is such a place.

She sings “Somewhere Over the Rainbow.” (This song sets up her journey to the “other world,” the land of the female’s unconscious. There is no “belly of the whale” as there is in the hero’s journey.)

Next scene. The wicked witch is introduced in the form of Miss Almira Gulch, the mean old lady who wants to take Toto (family) away from Dorothy. Miss Gulch has orders from the sheriff, and Aunt Em and Uncle Henry can’t help Dorothy. Miss Gulch takes the dog away, and Dorothy runs into her bedroom, crying. However, little Toto escapes and runs back to Dorothy. She believes that her only option to save Toto is to run away, so she packs her bag, and off she goes down the road. (To Dorothy, Toto is family, and she is willing to take any type of adventure to save her little dog.)

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Next scene. She meets Professor Marvel, who shows her a crystal ball (the magic that Dorothy thinks she needs; she is looking outside herself for answers) and tells her that there is an older woman looking for her. The woman is crying and distraught. This makes Dorothy think of Auntie Em, so she changes her mind about running away and hurries back home. (This plants the seed that she must go home later in the story. Home and family are important to the heroine.)

Next scene. A terrible storm is coming, and everyone on the farm goes into the shelter. Dorothy makes it back home, but she can’t find anyone. She is in her bedroom when the window is knocked off by the wind and hits her on the head. She falls back onto the bed, unconscious. (The metaphorical deep sleep chrysalis is represented beautifully in the form of the knock on the head. Dorothy’s dream while she is knocked out signifies her journey through the unconscious. This allows her the time to grow, mature, and finally realize what is important to her.)

Next scene. Dorothy wakes up while the house is turning and spinning. It hits the ground with a jolt. When she steps outside, the colors in this new land make her realize she is no longer in Kansas. A bubble comes down from the sky, growing larger and larger. A beautiful lady appears and asks Dorothy if she is a good witch or a bad witch.

(This is Dorothy’s fairy godmother, or the “good mother,” who lovingly shows up at the perfect time to give the heroine exactly what she needs.) Dorothy answers that she is neither, but Glinda, the Good Witch of the North, shows her how the house fell right on top of the bad Witch of the East and killed her. (Dorothy herself didn’t kill the Wicked

Witch of the East; the house, which is symbolically female, killed her. Dorothy herself used no violence and had no intention of hurting anyone. She started on this adventure

Ross 92 to take care of her little dog Toto, not to kill bad witches. That would be left up to a hero.)

All the little people from Munchkinland come out to pay tribute to the heroine

Dorothy, who killed the witch who had held them hostage. Ding dong, the witch is dead!

The Wicked Witch of the West appears, asking who killed her sister. (The Wicked Witch of the West represents the “bad mother” who forces the heroine to transform and grow up. In the literary tale, the witch makes Dorothy wash floors and take care of the castle.)

The ruby red slippers that the Wicked Witch of the East had been wearing magically transfer to Dorothy’s feet. The Wicked Witch of the West tries to take them, but she can’t. The Good Witch of the North tells Dorothy to keep them on no matter what, because their magic must be powerful. (The ruby slippers represent the role Dorothy has stepped into. They are her power—not a sword, but shoes. This is a beautiful representation of the heroine’s journey, much like Cinderella and the glass slippers.

Dorothy doesn’t yet realize the power she holds.)

Glinda tells Dorothy to leave Oz because she has made an enemy of the Wicked

Witch of the West. (She tells her to go back to where she is safe, as she is not yet ready to be out on her own.) Glinda says there are things Dorothy needs to learn. Dorothy asks Glinda how she will get home if she can’t use the house to get there. Glinda tells her to go to see the powerful Wizard of Oz, who lives in the Emerald City, and ask him how to get home. (This represents Dorothy looking outside herself for answers and guidance. The Wizard represents the strong father who will stand up for the heroine and give her what she needs, which Uncle Henry failed to do. Dorothy doesn’t yet think she is capable of knowing and doing on her own.) To get to Oz, all Dorothy has to do is

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“follow the Yellow Brick Road.” (The Yellow Brick Road represents the road between the heroine’s conscious and unconscious mind. The journey represents her bringing her unconscious to consciousness and realizing the power she holds: her own voice of authority [Glomb, Interview]).

Next scene. Dorothy sets out on the Yellow Brick Road. She comes to a crossroad and meets Scarecrow, who is in need of a brain. Dorothy asks if he would like to join her on her journey to Oz. He could then ask the Great Wizard to give him a brain.

(Scarecrow represents Dorothy’s instinctual knowledge. The two become a team; collaboration is a feminine trait. They are not going to save anyone, they are just going to ask the Wizard for help.)

Next scene. Dorothy and Scarecrow find themselves in a grove of talking apple trees. (The red apple is symbolically feminine. Eve eats the apple of knowledge and loses her innocence, Snow White eats the poisoned apple and loses consciousness.)

They find Tin Man, who is looking for a heart. They encourage him to join them on their way to the Emerald City to ask the Wizard for help. The team now heads further into the dark forest. (The symbolic dark forest is a feminine place. Tin Man represents Dorothy’s own desire to lead from her heart, as she is kind and compassionate.)

Next scene. The group meets the Cowardly Lion, who is looking for courage. He, too, joins the team going to find the Wizard of Oz. Dorothy says that the Wizard will fix everything. (The Cowardly Lion represents Dorothy’s own courage that she must learn to use. Trusting in the Wizard to get her home symbolizes Dorothy continuing to look outside of herself for her power, for the patriarchal father/God for salvation, to save the day. Dorothy wants to go home, and the Wizard will be the one to get her there. All of

Ross 94 the previous scenes, in which Dorothy meets and gathers her team, introduce the heroine’s instinctual knowledge. Snow White has her seven dwarves, Psyche has her ants and birds, and Cinderella has her many mice, which are symbolically her own intuition.)

Next scene. The Wicked Witch pours a poison potion over a crystal ball and casts a spell. “Poppies will put them to sleep.” Glinda the Good Witch makes it snow to overcome the spell. The Wicked Witch says, “Somebody is always helping that girl.”

Next scene. Dorothy and her friends arrive at the Emerald City. They are finally allowed in because Dorothy is wearing the ruby slippers. When they go to see the

Wizard, the doorman tells them that they can’t come in. Dorothy cries, and he lets them in.

Next scene. The Great Wizard tells them he will grant their requests, but first they must bring back the broomstick of the Wicked Witch of the West. (Heroines are tested in many ways but also receive help with the tests. One of the most well-known examples is the many tasks Aphrodite demands of Psyche. Heroines must resist pity and have willpower and fortitude. This is the sacrifice that many tales show heroines going through. The hero is usually tested through physical demands. Also, Dorothy is not asked to perform any acts of violence. She is instructed to just bring back the Wicked

Witch of the West’s broom, not to kill her.)

Next scene. The group goes into the haunted forest and think they see birds, but they are the flying monkeys that the Wicked Witch has sent to capture Dorothy and

Toto. Inside her castle, the Wicked Witch takes Toto and places him in a basket just like the one the mean old lady, Miss Alvira Gulch, had. The Witch says that if Dorothy wants

Ross 95 to keep her dog, she must relinquish the ruby slippers. The Witch tries to take the slippers from Dorothy’s feet but realizes that they won’t come off as long as Dorothy is alive. The Witch turns the hourglass, filled with red sand, and says that when it runs out,

Dorothy will die. Toto jumps from the basket and escapes.

Next scene. Toto runs back to the forest to find Tin Man, Scarecrow, and Lion.

They set off to rescue Dorothy.

Next scene. The group gets into the Witch’s castle and finds where Dorothy is hidden. Tin Man chops the door apart just as the hourglass expires. They all run to escape, but the Witch corners them and says she will kill the three companions and then Dorothy. She uses her broom to get fire from a torch and sets Scarecrow on fire.

Dorothy tries to save Scarecrow by throwing a bucket of water on him. Some of the water hits the Wicked Witch of the West and melts her, killing her. Everyone is joyous.

(Dorothy’s intention was not to kill the Witch but to save Scarecrow. Both the bucket and water are symbolically feminine. Water symbolically removes all evil, including a wicked witch.)

Next scene. Everyone takes the broom back to the Wizard so their wishes can be granted. The Wizard tells them to come back the next day. Toto opens up a curtain, exposing the man who is acting as the Wizard. Being caught, the man confesses, saying he is a good man, just a bad wizard. He bestows knowledge and wisdom upon

Scarecrow, courage to the Cowardly Lion, and a heart to Tin Man. He tells Dorothy that he will take her back to Kansas himself, in a hot air balloon.

Next scene. Dorothy, Toto, and the Wizard get into the balloon and are ready to take off. Toto sees a cat and jumps out. Dorothy gets out and runs after Toto, and the

Ross 96 balloon goes up without her. She is heartbroken, thinking she will never get back to

Kansas and Auntie Em and Uncle Henry. Glinda, the Good Witch of the North, arrives in her bubble. She tells Dorothy that she has had the power to get home all along, she just had to learn it for herself.

Next scene. Dorothy wakes up in her own bed back at the farm in Kansas mumbling, “There’s no place like home”. She tries to tell everyone about Oz, but no one listens. She is just glad to be home. THE END.

The final scene leaves the heroine where she started but knowing much more than when she began her journey. The young heroine starts her journey to save family and then reunites with them. All heroines feel they have accomplished their journey once family is restored.

This film is about the attributes and importance of home. It also shows the transformation a young maiden must go through to be able to take the next steps in life.

The heroine realizes she has her own power and gains the knowledge that she does not need to look outside herself, as the answers she is looking for are inside her.

5. Moana

One day who knows how far I’ll go. —Moana, Moana

The film Moana begins with the audience hearing an older woman’s voice telling the story of the demigod Maui.

“In the beginning there was only ocean until the Mother Island emerged: Te Fiti.

Her heart held the greatest power ever known. It could create life itself. And Te Fiti shared it with the world. But in time, some began to seek Te Fiti’s heart. They believed if they could possess it, the great power of creation would be theirs. And one day, the

Ross 97 most daring of them all voyaged across the vast ocean to take it. He was a demigod of the wind and sea. He was a warrior. A trickster. A shapeshifter who could change form with the power of his magical fishhook. And his name was Maui. But without her heart,

Te Fiti began to crumble, giving birth to a terrible darkness. Maui tried to escape, but was confronted by another who sought the heart: Te Kā, a demon of earth and fire.

Maui was struck from the sky, never to be seen again. And his magical fishhook and the heart of Te Fiti were lost to the sea, where even now, 1,000 years later, Te Kā and the demons of the deep still hunt for the heart, hiding in the darkness that will continue to spread, chasing away our fish, draining the life from island after island until everyone of us is devoured by the bloodthirsty jaws of inescapable death. But one day, the heart will be found by someone who would journey beyond the reef, find Maui, deliver him across the great ocean to restore Te Fiti’s heart and save us all.”

Gramma Tala is telling this story to a group of diapered little toddlers. All but one,

Moana, are scared to death. Moana’s father, the chief, enters to stop Gramma, his mother. He makes the point that no one goes outside the reef, that they are safe here.

There are no monsters outside the reef, just rough seas and storms. Gramma insists that sooner or later, someone will have to go.

Next scene. Baby Moana is toddling down to the beach and the ocean. She sees a beautiful seashell that draws her into the ocean, and then she sees a baby sea turtle that needs to be shown the way into the ocean. She uses a palm frond to shade the turtle on his journey into the ocean. The ocean then parts for her and entices her in with the seashell. As she picks up one seashell, another appears, and so on, luring her further into the ocean. The ocean continues to part, allowing her to walk safely on the

Ross 98 sand. The ocean shows her a green stone, which represents Te Fiti’s heart. She takes it. The voice of her father is heard, and the ocean sends her back to the beach safely.

She drops the “heart” as her father picks her up and tells her not to go into the ocean because it is not safe. He tells her that she will be the next great chief of the village.

Moana’s mother enters, picks up Moana, and tells her she will be wonderful. Her father tells her that first she must learn where she is meant to be. (This sets up the lesson the story tells. At this point, her journey could be that of either the heroine or hero, but it is leaning toward the hero’s journey because it is Moana’s destiny to become the chief.)

Next scene. A song about “the village is all you need and you must find happiness right where you are” is sung. Moana keeps toddling toward the ocean.

Instead of learning to make a basket, she draws pictures of boats. Her pet chicken, Hei

Hei and pet pig, Pua are introduced. Moana grows from a toddler to a young maiden who is still drawn to the ocean. She always finds her Gramma Tala down by the ocean.

Gramma encourages Moana to follow the voice inside her. (This sets up Gramma to be

Moana’s mentor or subconscious, which is in the realm of the heroine’s journey.)

Moana is torn between what her family wants her to do and what she wants to do. (This is reminiscent of Star Wars Episode IV, in which Luke wants to go and fight for the resistance instead of staying home to take care of the farm; something is calling the hero out into the world. This is the hero’s journey. Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz runs away from home only to keep Toto safe. This is the heroine’s journey. At this point in the film, the story is about destiny, which is in the realm of the hero.)

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Next scene. Moana’s father takes her to the top of a mountain and tells her that when she becomes chief, she will place a stone on top of the others, just as all chiefs before her have done. He tells her that she is the future of the people and that they are not “out there” (he points to the ocean) but “right here” (he points to the village). It is time for her to be who they need her to be. The chief believes there is only one way to be a leader. (This may represent how the dominant father suppresses his daughter, pressuring her into doing what he thinks is right for her. This is patriarchal; however, the polynesian cultures pre-contact were usually not patriarchal but matrifocal in nature.)

The next few scenes show Moana trying to become a leader. There is a song about “the island gives us what we need, and no one leaves.” The message is that you can find happiness right where you are.

The next scenes continue to show Moana trying to do what is necessary to become her people’s leader. (Her two pets Hei Hei and Pua are in most of these scenes. In traditional tales, the heroine does not have a “sidekick” until she needs the wisdom the character is there to represent. Disney has diminished this symbolism in the journey, as Moana’s animal pets do not teach or help her in any way. They are not representing her intuition.)

Trouble begins on the island when the coconuts are spoiled and fish can no longer be found in the reef. Moana suggests fishing beyond the reef, and her father very angrily restates that no one goes beyond the reef, as it is not safe out there.

Next scene. Moana’s mother tells her the story of why Moana’s father is so afraid of going beyond the reef. When he was young, he loved the ocean, just as Moana does.

He and a buddy took a boat past the reef, and his buddy was killed by the rough seas.

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She tells Moana that sometimes who we wish we were and what we want to do is just not meant to be.

Next scene. Moana sings a song about the water calling her. She tries to be a good daughter, but the water calls her. She and her little pig, Pua, take a boat out beyond the reef. “One day who knows how far I’ll go.” She can’t maneuver the waves, and they both go overboard. They make it back to the beach, but Pua is now terrified of boats. Gramma finds Moana on the beach. Moana says that her father was right, and she is not going out there anymore. (This may be the refusal of the call, but a reason to go on her journey has not yet shown up, just her yearning. This keeps the film in the realm of the hero’s journey. However,this may also be her inner authority voice.) Moana decides to go to the mountaintop and put her rock on the pile of stones. Gramma Tala goes into the ocean and plays with the manta rays, saying that when she dies, she wants to come back as one of them.

Next scene. Gramma Tala and Moana are climbing a mountain, and Tala is telling Moana that she has been told all the village stories but one. They come to a cave that has been sealed with rocks. Moana moves the rocks. Gramma gives her a torch and tells her to go inside the cave and bang the drum to find out who she is meant to be. Moana discovers old boats. One is small enough for her. It has a symbol on the sail that is the same as on Te Fiti’s heart. (A feminine symbol is used.) Moana bangs the drum. A song begins that tells Moana her ancestors were voyagers and discoverers of new islands.

She comes out of the cave and asks Gramma why her ancestors stopped voyaging. Gramma says it was because of Maui. Once Maui stole the heart from Te Fiti,

Ross 101 the seas changed, and the voyagers didn’t come back. To protect their people, the ancestors hid the boats and stayed on the island. But the darkness continued to spread.

It took away the fish, draining the life from island after island. Gramma tells Moana that one day, someone will journey beyond the reef, find Maui, and take him across the great ocean to restore the heart of Te Fiti. She gives Moana the heart that she,

Gramma, found when the ocean first gave it to Moana, back when she was a little toddler. (Moana has now become the Chosen One. This is the destiny call that is typical of the hero’s journey.)

Next scene. Moana runs to see if her father will help her use the boats to find

Maui and save their village. She interrupts a big village meeting to tell everyone about the hidden boats and how their people used to be voyagers. Her father is furious and goes to burn the boats, but just at that moment, someone tells him that his mother,

Gramma Tala, is very ill. They rush to her side.

Next scene. Gramma is weak, but she pulls Moana close to her and tells her to go—to save their people. At first she says no, she can’t leave right now. Gramma gives

Moana her necklace with the heart inside it and tells her to GO. Moana runs home to pack a sack. Her mother finds her there and helps her; she knows what her daughter must do. (This is the mother-daughter connection, the female knowingness. By leaving,

Moana is listening to her grandmother, who is her mentor and fairy godmother.

Gramma’s dying words are to tell Moana one last time to go to the ocean. There is no greater female symbol than the ocean.) Moana goes back to the cave where the boats are hidden, boards the smaller boat and sets sail that night.

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Next scene. The next morning, Moana realizes her chicken, Hei Hei, is a stowaway. (Although Hei Hei accompanies Moana, the writer’s use of Hei Hei is for jokes only; there is no symbolism given. The chicken does not help, guide, or give support to Moana in any way.)

Next scene. That night, a storm comes (the hero’s crossing of the first threshold), and by the next morning Moana is washed up on a small sand-and-rock island where

Maui lives. (This is the ocean-as-mentor putting Moana exactly where she needs to be.)

When Maui finds Moana he sings the song “You’re Welcome” for being a demigod. The song describes the story of the Polynesian demigod Maui. Maui then places Moana in a cave and gets ready to sail off with her boat. His tattoos talk to him, telling him to go back to get the girl. (Maui’s tattoos are his intuitive sense.)

Next scene. Moana escapes from the cave and dives into the ocean swimming after Maui and her boat. The Ocean helps Moana by propelling her through the water and then popping her up on the boat with Maui. Maui throws her off, but the ocean pops her back on. (This reinforces the fact that Moana is the Chosen One. It also shows that the ocean is Moana’s instinct, or guide and helper, just as Cinderella has her mice and

Snow White her birds and bunnies.)

The first trial for Maui and Moana is when a boat filled with little coconut people, the Kakamoras, come for them, knowing they have the heart. The bad guys want the heart because they believe they can create life with it. Moana asks Maui to use his magic powers, but he reminds her that he has lost his magic fishhook. No fishhook, no magic powers. (This represents Freud’s male castration, which is typical in many films of the hero. This is also the point in the film at which the focus switches to Maui. He is

Ross 103 now taking the hero’s journey and is on the Road of Trials. Moana becomes his sidekick or the ‘helpful female figure’ that every hero needs.)

They get through this trial, but Maui still says he won’t go to Te Fiti because they would have to go through an ocean of bad to get there, and there is Ta Kā, the lava monster. Moana convinces Maui to go because he would then be considered a hero to the world. His ego gets the best of him and he finally agrees, but he has to find his fishhook first. (The fishhook is symbolic of gaining his manhood, a reference to Freud again.)

Next scene. They sail to get his fishhook, and Moana asks Maui to teach her to sail and wayfind. He calls her a princess, to which she says no, she is the daughter of a chief. Maui says if you wear a dress and you have an animal sidekick, you are a princess. (This is a dig at the old Disney princesses and bears truth in the heroine’s journey. However, in this case, Moana’s animal does not help and guide her. This also supports the point that the film has shifted to Maui taking his hero’s journey. The story is no longer about Moana; she has become the helpful female figure or merely a sidekick to help Maui on his heroic journey.)

Next scene. Moana and Maui find the island where Maui thinks his fishhook is.

Tomatoa, a very large crab, has stolen the fishhook and this is where he lives. Maui tells

Moana to stay back, but she climbs the rock right alongside Maui. As they climb, Maui tries to understand why Moana’s people sent her on this adventure. She tells him that they didn’t, the Ocean did. Maui makes the comment once again about her being the

Chosen One. (This scene is in the realm of the hero’s journey. Moana did not take this adventure to save a family member but because the Ocean called her, it was her

Ross 104 destiny. However, it could also be interpreted that if Moana’s village and her people are seen as matrilineal or matrifocal, then it would plausibly be a heroine’s journey, as it could be argued that Moana is looking at her entire village as her family. In a

Eurocentric culture, family is usually considered blood relations only. From this perspective, Moana going out into the world to save the village would then be the hero’s role. If the entire village is considered family in indigenous cultures, one could argue that Moana is actually taking a heroine’s journey to save family.)

Next scene. They both get to the top of the mountain. Maui opens the entry to

Lomatai, the realm of monsters, and jumps into the abyss. Moana follows. While in

Lomatai, another trial takes place to get Maui his magic fishhook back. (This is all about the hero, Maui, getting his manhood reinstated. Moana is just the helpful female figure.

At this point in the film, the journey is not hers, it is Maui’s.)

Next scene. Maui gets his fishhook back, they return to the shore where the boat is but Maui’s shapeshifting abilities are not working properly. Maui thinks the adventure is cursed and they won’t make it to Ta Fiti. Back out on the ocean Maui keeps trying to shapeshift but gets frustrated and wants to give up. As they sail, Moana asks about the tattoo with the baby being thrown into the water. Maui reluctantly tells Moana that his parents were human and threw him into the sea because they didn’t want him. The gods found him, gave him his fishhook, and made him Maui, a demigod. But he did everything for the humans, even taking the heart from Ta Fiti. (This telling is authentic to the Maui myth. The story at this point is still about Maui and his journey.) Moana now understands why Maui took the heart and she gives him another pep talk. Maui is back on board to defeat Ta Kā. (She wants to help him so he will ultimately help her. This can

Ross 105 be interpreted as the heroine using her resourcefulness and wisdom instead of violence to get what she needs for her people.) They set sail to find Ta Kā.

Next scene. Maui continues to help Moana learn to sail and wayfind. He is now being a mentor to her, teaching her skills she wants to learn. (In the heroine’s journey, the role of mentor is usually filled by a female.)

Next scene. They get to the island of Te Fiti. Moana gives Maui the heart and tells him to go save the world. (This is typical of the hero’s journey.) Another trial for

Maui begins. He shapeshifts into a hawk and flies into the burning volcano entity, Ta Kā.

She unleashes her fury on Maui, and Maui gets back to the boat telling Moana to turn around and go back. But Moana tries to get the boat to a better position for Maui. He keeps telling her to turn back, but she won’t. Ta Kā swipes at them again and breaks

Maui’s fishhook. The waves Ta Kā creates push the boat far away and rips the sail.

Moana wants to go back and try again. Maui blames Moana for their problems because she did not turn back. He says that he is nothing without his fishhook. (Freudian) Maui shapeshifts into a bird and leaves Moana on the ocean alone.

Next scene. Alone, Moana begins to doubt herself. She tells the ocean to choose someone else, that she is not the right person. The Ocean takes the heart from Moana.

(Seldom does a heroine question herself or her actions. She instinctively knows exactly what she needs to do to save family. She does not falter. The hero, however, will falter and question, because it is destiny that calls him, not an event. Faltering is a sign of wanting to keep the ego intact.) Moana sees a fluorescent manta ray swimming towards the boat. The manta ray takes the form of Gramma, who gives Moana a pep talk about knowing who you are. Moana is the Chosen One. (Again, this is typical for the hero’s

Ross 106 journey not the heroine’s journey. However, one can also interpret this as the heroine’s mentor/fairy godmother showing up right when she is needed. Gramma Tala is telling

Moana she has had her power all along, as we see when Glinda the Good Witch tells this to Dorothy. Dorothy waits for the Wizard to help her get home, just as Moana waits for Maui to put the heart back in Te Fiti. This lesson for Moana, as with Dorothy, is about the female knowing she holds her own power in a patriarchally dominated world.)

Moana dives into the ocean and retrieves the heart of Ta Fiti. (The film now shifts and it’s Moana’s journey once again).

Next scene. Moana fixes the boat and goes on her way to restore the heart of Te

Fiti herself. She needs to get past Ta Kā, who she knows, cannot follow her into the ocean. She gets through the channel by outsmarting Ta Kā but then Ta Kā throws her fury towards Moana and just as she is about to be destroyed, Maui flies in. He tells

Moana, “I got your back, Chosen One. Go save the world.” (This is reminiscent of Han

Solo coming to Luke Skywalker’s aid when Luke is trying to destroy the Death Star in

Episode IV. Telling the hero to go out to save the world is something one would hear in a hero’s journey.)

Although Moana’s boat has been destroyed by Ta Kā, the ocean propels her to a small rock island. She climbs to the top only to find that Ta Fiti is no longer there. A view from above shows the island has sunk. Meanwhile, Maui is trying to keep Ta Kā away from Moana but Ta Kā in a fit of rage completely destroys his fishhook and he is thrown upon a rock helpless. (He is castrated one last time). Moana turns around to see that Ta

Kā is coming after her. She also sees that it is Ta Kā that is missing the heart. Ta Kā is where the heart belongs. (This is a beautiful representation of the Great Mother, who is

Ross 107 both giver and taker of life.) Moana takes the heart and holds it high. Ta Kā sees the heart and stops. Moana walks down from the rock mountain towards Ta Kā. She tells the ocean to “let her come to me,”. The water parts for Moana as it did when she was a toddler.

The ocean then parts for Ta Kā, and roaring, Ta Kā heads toward Moana, who is walking towards her. A song is sung about Ta Kā: “This is not who you are. You know who you are.” The song is also about Moana knowing who she is. (Disney Studios had a wonderful opportunity to show that a goddess [Ta Kā] is both the giver and taker of life, the light and the dark, and both are needed. But the studio chose the patriarchal viewpoint, depicting, through the song, that Ta Kā is “bad” because she has lost her heart. The song conveys that once her heart is returned, she will understand who she really is: the light. The message is that the female should only be the giver of life, the nurturer, always in the light. Bad song, bad message.)

Moana places the heart inside Ta Kā. The lava falls away from her revealing she is Te Fiti. Ta Kā and Te Fiti are one and the same. Grass begins to grow and everything is lush and green once again. Te Fiti takes both Maui and Moana in her grass hands (no more lava woman). Maui apologizes to Te Fiti for stealing the heart. She rewards him with a new fishhook. She rewards Moana with a functioning boat to sail home in. Te Fiti rests once more. Moana and Maui say goodbye. Maui shows Moana his new tattoo depicting Moana in her boat.

Next scene. Moana returns to her people as a hero. She receives big hugs from her mother and father.

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The final scenes show the father bringing out the forbidden boats. Moana places the original pink seashell that drew her to the ocean as a baby on top of the rocks of her ancestors.

Last scene. Moana and her people voyage across the ocean once again. THE

END.

This film provides a good example of the differences between two heroic journeys within one story. Moana is the story’s main protagonist, but Maui’s journey dominates midway through the film to near the end of the film, when Moana’s story returns to dominance.

Disney missed some opportunities to put Moana in a heroine’s journey, but it also got a few female symbolisms right. The ocean and all that it contains have always been symbolically female; the name “Moana” means ocean (Herman, “Story of ‘Moana’”).

Moana is called to the ocean and taken care of by the ocean, which works psychologically. Disney dresses Moana in the symbolic colors of female transformation—red, white, and black. Snow White is also dressed in these colors.

Gramma Tala is Moana’s mentor/fairy godmother, and Disney does an exceptional job with her character. She pushes when needed and gives pep talks when they are needed. What Moana’s story is missing is the push from the symbolic bad mother to grow up. The heroine cannot have the light without the dark; they are one and the same, just as with Ta Kā and Te Fiti. In addition, there are no sisters for Moana to receive advice from. With these elements missing, the character could just as easily have been a young boy who defies his father. However, like Dorothy and going home, in

The Wizard of Oz, Moana needed to learn that she had the power all along to place the

Ross 109 heart back in Ta Kā. She learns to have the courage to listen to her own voice, her own intuition, and not just for the sake of the village but for herself. Maui, just like the Great

Wizard of Oz, was truly not needed.

Disney also deserves credit for the representation of Ta Kā and Te Fiti as one and the same entity. This is representational of the divine feminine wisdom that was destroyed under patriarchal rule. There is not a “good goddess” and a “bad goddess”; the female is the ruler of both life and death. But the song that is sung during the scene, which shows Ta Kā and Te Fiti as one, negates the representation that was just created because it infers that Ta Kā was “bad” and that, by receiving her heart back, she becomes “good” and that this is truly “who she is.” That said, the heroine’s journey has allowed Moana to experience the duality of life.

6. Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens

The belonging you seek is not behind you, it is ahead. —Maz Kanata, Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens

The film Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens, begins as all Star Wars films (and fairy tales) do: “A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away . . .” The storyline for Episode VII is that everyone (good and evil) is trying to find Luke Skywalker.

First scene. The droid BB8 busts in on an older man and a younger man talking about the General (Princess Leia). The old man gives the young man something from a pouch. Stormtroopers arrive. The young man tries to get away, but his plane is hit. He places what the old man gave to him inside BB8 and tells the droid to get away. (This is reminiscent of Leia putting information inside the droid R2-D2 in Episode IV. BB8 is made of many circles, and the circle is a female talisman. BB8 has the qualities of a little kid, according to a personal interview with Valerie Frankel).

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Next scene. One Stormtrooper gets upset when a fellow Stormtrooper gets hit.

He falters and cannot not shoot the attacker. A big black TIE fighter lands and dark warrior Kylo Ren, dressed in black with a black mask and black cape (reminiscent of

Darth Vader) comes out. The Stormtroopers find the old man from the first scene and bring him to Kylo Ren who asks the old man for the map to get to Luke Skywalker. The old man does not divulge the information so Kylo Ren shoots him. The young man, a pilot named Poe, sees this and tries to kill Kylo Ren but is stopped by the force. Poe is taken captive, and his captors kill all the villagers. BB8, who was running away, turns and sees the massive fire.

Next scene. Poe is taken back to the Stormtroopers’ base. The Stormtrooper who could not kill is having an anxiety attack. He realizes he can’t be a bad guy any longer.

Next scene. On the planet Jakku, a young woman (Rey) is scavenging in the desert among all the old plane wreckages. She sells her found items in the marketplace for food. (Her attire is sandy-colored with a bit of draping, but overall, it is masculine in appearance.)

Next scene. Rey is cooking at home, which is in some abandoned wreckage.

She sits outside to eat and hears noise beyond the sand hill above her. She investigates and sees someone trying to capture a small droid (BB8). She rescues the droid, and it stays with her, becoming her temporary sidekick. (This represents the hero’s Call to Destiny in the hero’s journey, just as Luke had his destiny with R2-D2 and

C-3PO in Episode IV. The literature shows that destiny isn’t involved In the heroine’s journey; instead, the heroine needs to take care of an incident or event regarding family,

Ross 111 which propels her into the journey. When this is not the case, the heroine is in a transformative time in her life. Neither of these circumstances fits Rey’s experience.)

Next scene. Back on the Stormtrooper base, Kylo Ren uses the Force on the captive Poe to retrieve the information about the map to Luke Skywalker. He learns it is hidden inside the droid BB8. Kylo Ren sends Stormtroopers to the planet Jakku to retrieve the droid.

Next scene. On Jakku, Rey tells BB8 that she is waiting for her family to return to her. (This symbolically shows the feminine trait of patience and the importance the heroine puts on family.) Rey once again goes to the market to sell her scavenged items.

The buyer, seeing the droid, offers Rey a large sum of food rations in exchange for BB8.

At first she agrees, but then she looks down at BB8 and declines. (This scene can be interpreted in two ways. First, Rey deciding that the droid needs to stay with her may represent her female intuition, or sense of knowing. Second, the scene may represent the hero’s Call to Destiny.) Once the two leave the stand, the buyer radios someone to follow her and get the droid.

Next scene. At the Stormtrooper’s base, Finn, the anxious Stormtrooper, decides to help Poe escape. Poe tells him they have to go back to Jakku to retrieve BB8. On the way, their plane is hit, and it crashes on Jakku. When Finn comes to, there is no sign of

Poe except for his jacket. Finn takes off his Stormtrooper armor and puts on Poe’s jacket.

Next scene. Finn makes his way to the market area looking for water and sees

Rey being attacked. He goes to help and then recognizes BB8. Rey comes after him, thinking he wants to steal BB8, like the others. Finn tells her and BB8 that he helped

Ross 112 save Poe and that he is a resistance fighter. Rey confers with BB8, and they decide

Finn is okay. (This is a beautiful depiction of BB8 symbolically representing Rey’s own intuition. All heroines have helpers in their journeys who represent their intuition or instinctual nature. In most fairy tales, these helpers are represented by animals who help the heroine during her many tests and trials. This also sets the stage for Finn to become Rey’s sidekick, as Han Solo was for Luke in Episode IV. This type of relationship is typical in the hero’s journey. The twist in this film is the female-male relationship between hero and sidekick. In Episode IV, Luke did not have a relationship, but his sidekick, Han, did, with Princess Leia. In addition, there has been no mentor established for Rey as yet. This scene is the beginning of the Road of Trials in the hero’s journey. )

Stormtroopers have landed. They recognize BB8, and a chase ensues. Rey,

Finn, and BB8 run for a plane, but it gets blown up just before they get there. They have to go with an old clunker (which is immediately recognizable as the Millennium Falcon from Episode IV).

Next scene. Rey flies the plane while Finn takes the gunner position. A flying chase scene follows. Rey and Finn outmaneuver the Stormtroopers and head into space. (At this point, Rey’s role is that of a hero, not a heroine.) There is a gas leak on the plane, and Rey (miraculously) has the mechanical skills to fix it. Meanwhile, without the Finn and Rey realizing it, the Falcon gets sucked up into a large ship. As Finn, Rey, and BB8 are hiding in the bottom of the Falcon, Chewbacca and Han Solo walk in. After a skirmish, the new team is created and they are flying back into space, with Han and

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Rey at the controls. Han is asked to help them get BB8 to the resistance. He agrees.

They head for the planet Takodana, where Maz Kanata rules.

Next scene. After they land, Han Solo asks Rey if she would like to join his team.

She is flattered, but she knows she needs to get home. (This puts Rey back into a heroine role; she is concerned about family. Unlike Luke in Episode IV, in which he wanted to leave his family, Rey wants to go back to Jakku to wait for her family.)

Next scene. The crew enters the castle where there is the typical bar scene reminiscent of Episode IV (This is symbolically a masculine arena). They all sit down with Maz Kanata to ask about a clean ship to get BB8 away. Han knows the dark side has tracked them. (This is how Maz is introduced to the audience. She is the first feminine figure we see in the film. Her large spectacles symbolize feminine perception.

In a future episode, she could become Rey’s Yoda, not teaching the Force per se, but teaching feminine ways, perception, and intuition. She could be Rey’s fairy godmother or mentor figure, but not at the moment.)

Next scene. Finn keeps saying they just need to get away. There is no winning against the Dark Side. He wants to leave and go to the outer rim, and he wants Rey to go with him. (This is reminiscent of Han leaving Luke after they rescue Leia). Rey can’t believe he wants to leave. Finn leaves the table and Rey follows him. He comes clean to Rey about who he really is: a Stormtrooper on the run. He leaves, and she stays.

(Rey makes a choice to stay in the adventure. This could be interpreted as Rey seeing

BB8 as a child figure whom she needs to take care of, in the way that Dorothy sees

Toto in The Wizard of Oz. However, there is nothing in the film that gives this

Ross 114 impression. As a heroine, why would she stay? As a hero, of course she would stay; she has to save the galaxy and find Luke Skywalker.)

Next scene. Rey and BB8 go down a flight of stairs leading to the basement. Rey hears voices but does not know where they are coming from. A door automatically opens, and Rey enters a musty room filled with old relics. She is drawn toward a small chest. She opens it and finds a lightsaber. The minute she touches it, things change.

She “sees” scenes from her own past that she was involved in, Luke’s past, and her future, then she snaps out of it and comes back to the dusty room in the basement. She looks up to see Maz Kanata. Maz tells her the lightsaber in the chest was Luke’s, and his father’s before him. Now it calls to her. Rey tells her that she must go back to Jakku.

Maz tells her that whoever she is waiting for is not coming back. “The belonging you seek is not behind you but ahead. . . . Find Luke.” (This could be a hero’s Call to

Destiny or, unbeknownst to the audience, a heroine’s call to help family.) Maz tells Rey to take the lightsaber. Rey resists and runs out of the castle and into the forest. (The lightsaber is a hero’s weapon, not a heroine’s. The female’s symbolic weapons are long-distance weapons, such as Wonder Woman’s lasso or Katniss’s bow. At this point,

Rey is still following the hero’s journey, not the heroine’s. However, the darkness of the forest into which she runs is the female’s symbolic realm of the unconscious.)

Next scene. The First Order (the bad guys) has a big ceremony and announces the weapon that will destroy the Republic. They shoot the weapon. (This is reminiscent of the Death Star destroying Leia’s home planet in Episode IV.) Han and Finn see the weapon’s red streaks of fire in the sky. Finn asks where Rey is. They then see the TIE fighters in the sky, which start shooting. The destruction of Maz Kanata’s castle begins.

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Rey also sees the fighters above her and realizes they are after BB8. She runs back toward the castle. (This realization can be interpreted as Rey’s heroine instincts wanting to protect BB8.)

Next scene. Maz shows Finn and Han the lightsaber that belonged to Luke.

Next scenes. TIE fighters destroy the castle, and Stormtroopers on the ground begin shootimg at everyone. The Rebel Resistance (the good guys) fly to the rescue in their X-wing fighters. Still in the forest, Rey meets Kylo Ren, who uses the Force on her and takes her hostage. Finn and Han see Kylo Ren taking Rey into his plane with him.

The main ship from the Resistance lands, and C-3PO and General Leia emerge. There is a reunion.

Next scene. At the Resistance base, Finn and Poe reunite. BB8 finds R2-D2, who has been unresponsive since Luke left.

Next scene. Rey is on the First Order’s planet chained in a chair. Kylo Ren is in the room with her. He takes his helmet/mask off for the first time. Using the Force, he gets inside Rey’s head to try to find where the Resistance base is located. She does not crack. Then she gets inside Kylo Ren’s head, and he realizes she has the Force within her.

Next scene. Kylo Ren tells Snoke (the main bad guy) that the Force is strong in

Rey but that she has had no training. Snoke wants to see her.

Next scene. Rey is still in chains in the chair. She uses the power of the Force on the Stormtrooper who is guarding her and gets him to take the chains off of her. It takes her three attempts, but she does it. (This is reminiscent of Obi-Wan Kenobi telling the

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Stormtroopers to “move along, these aren’t the droids you’re looking for” in Episode IV.)

Kylo Ren comes back to find her gone, and he has a temper tantrum.

Next scene. At the Resistance base, the resisters make plans to blow up the new weapon. (This is reminiscent of the plans to blow up the Death Star in Episode IV.) Han,

Chewie, and Finn leave for the First Order planet.

Next scene. Kylo Ren is looking for Rey but suddenly feels Han’s presence. X- wing fighters begin their attack on the First Order planet. Rey finds Han, Chewie and

Finn before Kylo Ren finds her. They plan their escape. Realizing the rebels in the X- wings are not winning the battle, they go back to plant explosives instead of leaving.

Han sees Kylo Ren and goes to him. He wants him to come home (Kylo Ren is Leia and

Han’s son) and get away from Snoke and the dark side. Kylo Ren kills Han. Chewie detonates the reactors, and Finn and Rey run to get back to the Millennium Falcon before the planet blows up.

Next scene. Kylo Ren confronts Finn and Rey in the snowy forest as they try to escape. Kylo Ren and Finn battle with lightsabers. Finn loses, and he drops Luke’s lightsaber. Kylo Ren tries to draw it to him, but the lightsaber flies into Rey’s hands instead. She activates it and fights Kylo Ren. She wins. The Millennium Falcon shows up with Chewbacca flying it. They carry Finn onboard and head back to the Resistance base just as the planet explodes.

Next scene. Once they land, Leia and Rey hug, Chewie gets tended to, Finn is still unconscious, and R2-D2 wakes up and gives everyone the information they are looking for to find Luke. Rey and Chewbacca fly off to find Luke.

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Next scene. Rey and Chewie land on an island where the original Jedi Temple is.

Rey climbs the mountain to the top of the island and hands Luke his lightsaber. THE

END.

This story is a hero’s journey, not a heroine’s journey, although there are a few symbolic feminine moments. Rey has no heroine’s reason to take this journey, unless

BB8 is viewed as representing her child/family. But the film doesn’t set up this relationship; BB8 belongs to Poe, the pilot. A hero taking this journey would do exactly what Rey does in the film. The plot follows Episode IV, in which Luke was beginning his journey as a hero, too closely. This film is Luke Skywalker’s story retold with a female playing Luke’s part.

Rey uses no female characteristics or symbolism to accomplish her goals. In fact, she has no real reason to be doing what she does. Family is not in trouble, she is not in a transformative time in her life, nor is she integrating. Rey just goes from scene to scene, reacting to whatever is put in front of her. She does not have a mentor, ruthless or kind, unless Maz Kanata survives and becomes one in a future episode. BB8 is Rey’s sidekick for a short time, but it actually belongs to someone else and is too childlike to give mentorship or protect her. One feminine attribute is Rey’s attraction to

Finn, but she doesn’t stand by him on any occasion. Some of what she does would have been more satisfying and psychologically believable if she were trying to save him, such as Katniss doing what was needed to save Peeta when he was hurt in The Hunger

Games.

Rey is what Valerie Frankel describes in her interview as a “Mary Sue” (Frankel,

Interview). This is a character that can do no wrong. Even though Luke is the Chosen

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One just as Rey is, he has faults, and he grows and learns. Rey knows everything without instruction or mentoring. She has no faults; she is too perfect. An audience falls in love with someone who tries, fails, and keeps on trying, as these human traits are relatable. Rey never fails at anything she attempts. She can not only fly the Millennium

Falcon effortlessly, but she can fix it, too. As Frankel observes, Rey uses the Force to have the guard release her even though she has had no instruction in the Force. Also, it takes her only three tries. Just hours before this, Rey had never heard of the Force.

With a lightsaber she has never used before, she fights Kylo Ren, who has trained for many years, and defeats him without getting a scratch on her (Frankel, Interview). Using the information gained in the literature, this story is the journey of a hero, not a heroine.

Film Assessment

Film is no longer seen as reflecting meanings, but as constructing them; thus cinema as a cultural practice actively produces meaning about women and femininity. —Anneke Smelik, And the Mirror Cracked

As I analyzed the six films, I looked for commonalities and differences of attributes between the literature and each film. I looked for mentorship for each heroine, the type of journey each heroine was on and whether there was more than one journey, acts of violence as a means to achieve her goals, the presence of a metaphorical deep sleep, and any other feminine symbolism that was given in a specific film to see if it occured in the other films.

In terms of the specific journey each heroine takes, a common theme was found in the heroine setting out on her journey for one reason but having another feminine reason included in her journey, as well. In Beauty and the Beast, Belle takes a journey of transformation from maiden to woman, yet she also saves family in the form of her father and the Beast. In A Price Above Rubies, Sonia is on a journey of transformation

Ross 119 from wife to motherhood. This transformation creates her journey of integration and listening to her own voice of authority. In the film Before Tomorrow, the grandmother,

Ningiuq, goes on a journey as a wise elder but finds herself in the heroine’s position of needing to save family in the form of her young grandson. In The Wizard of Oz, Dorothy sets out to save her little dog, Toto, and finds herself on a journey of transformation from girl to woman, not in a sexual manner but one of knowledgeable empowerment. In

Moana, the young Moana sets out on her journey to help save her village/family, but she truly takes a journey that helps her validate the voice inside her that tells her to go to the ocean, to listen to her own voice. This is the journey of integration. In Star Wars

Episode VII: The Force Awakens, Rey takes an adventure because of destiny. She is the only heroine in these films who takes Campbell’s classic journey of the hero. The common theme among the first five films is that the heroine can take her journey for more than one reason.

I analyzed each film to determine what types of mentors the heroine has, if any.

Sadly, none of the films use the symbolic sisters as the heroine’s mentors. The only film that gets close is Before Tomorrow. I interpret Ningiuq’s close friend who comes along on the journey and dies as a sister symbol. The friend allows Ningiuq to experience death, to know that the dark is friends with the light and that it is okay to die. As stated in the literature, this knowledge is part of female integration, understanding that death and birth are cyclical and need to be accepted. Disney took out the symbolic sister’s role for Belle in the adaptation of Beauty and the Beast. I interpret this as masculine bias. The other films do not include sisters in the storyline.

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The heroines in The Wizard of Oz and A Price Above Rubies both have fairy godmother and dark mother mentors. Moana has the fairy godmother symbolism but not the dark mother. Dorothy has Glinda, the Good Witch of the North, to help her along the

Yellow Brick Road and the Wicked Witch of the West to push her to recognize her own power. In A Price Above Rubies, the beggar woman is Sonia’s fairy godmother symbol.

She is there every time Sonia needs to be reminded of her inner voice. I interpret

Rachel, Sonia’s sister-in-law, as her “bad mother” figure. She tells Sonia how to set up a house, that she is just having anxiety after the birth of her son, that she needs a counselor and then takes her to see a rabbi. She pushes Sonia to question herself, takes her baby from her, and makes sure Sonia’s own family abandons her, as well.

These actions push Sonia to grow up and take a stand for her own life. The heroine

Moana has her “Gramma” to give her pep talks, tell her forbidden stories, and encourage her to listen to her own calling and go to the ocean.

The use of small animals in female tales symbolizes the instinctive function or intuition for the heroine. None of the six films include small animals that specifically perform this function. However, four of the films have other characters that loosely fit this symbolism. In Moana, the heroine has her little pig and her chicken, but they do not symbolically represent Moana’s intuition. They do not help or guide her in any way during her journey. However, she does have the ocean, which helps her. After the storm, the ocean washes her up on the island where Maui lives, and when Maui wants to be rid of her, the ocean keeps bringing her back to him. The ocean also parts for

Moana so Ta Kā can come toward her. I think Disney did a good job having the ocean be Moana’s feminine mentor.

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There are no small animals in The Wizard of Oz. Instead, Scarecrow, Tin Man, and the Cowardly Lion are used. These characters function psychologically as

Dorothy’s instincts. It is unusual to use masculine mentors in a heroine’s journey, but these characters work perfectly. They want the attributes that Dorothy herself wants.

She thinks she must look outside herself for them and have them given to her when in reality she has had them all along. In A Price Above Rubies, Sonia’s brother’s voice is her mentor. He guides her to look at a specific ring and to go to Ramone’s house. At times BB8 is symbolized as Rey’s intuition in Star Wars Episode VII. She intuitively decides not to sell the droid, and she accepts its advice about Finn. The questionable film for symbolism of the heroine’s instinct is Beauty and the Beast. Belle has the talking furniture, but they are not symbolically her intuition. One might consider some of them, such as Mrs. Potts and the wardrobe, as guiding female figures, but I think this is a stretch because the audience knows from the beginning that they are human staff of the castle. Before Tomorrow is the only film that does not have feminine symbolism for intuition.

Five of the six heroines do not use any type of violence to complete their journeys. Moana does not use violence to restore the heart of Ta Kā. In A Price Above

Rubies, there is violence committed against Sonia, but she does not retaliate with violence, which is true to form in a heroine’s journey. In Beauty and the Beast, there is violence between Gaston and the Beast, and the household items proclaim war on the villagers who come looking for the Beast, but Beauty herself does not use violence at any time in the film. In the original written tale, there is no violence anywhere in the story. The violence in this film version of the tale is all Disney’s creation. In The Wizard

Ross 122 of Oz, Scarecrow is lit on fire. Dorothy does what is needed to save him by throwing water on him and inadvertently melts the Wicked Witch. She does not take possession of the Wicked Witch’s broom by violence but by saving her friend. The only film in which the heroine is violent is Star Wars: Episode VII. Rey uses a lightsaber to try to kill Kylo

Ren. This would be expected in a masculine hero’s journey, not a heroine’s journey.

Another profoundly feminine attribute found in the literature is the metaphorical deep sleep. The only film that includes this is The Wizard of Oz, when Dorothy gets knocked on the head by the window shutter during the storm. This time of unconsciousness symbolically allows for her transformation. None of the other films have this symbolism.

The feminine marriage initiation is not represented in any of the films chosen. In

A Price Above Rubies, Sonia’s marriage to a Jewish scholar is mentioned because it is what her parents wanted for her, which sets up her need to follow her voice and take the journey of integration.

The heroine Rey in Star Wars Episode VII is taking the masculine heroic journey.

However, and surprisingly, there are moments that give us hope that Disney may change the storyline in future episodes to bring in more feminine symbolism that will have Rey taking a heroine’s journey. The first sign of hope is the feminine nature of

BB8. Another is the character of Maz Kanata, who could easily become Rey’s female mentor or fairy godmother in future episodes. Rey shows the feminine trait of patience as she waits for her family to come back to Jakku. She also declines Han Solo’s job offer because she needs to go home and wait for her family. This is classic heroine’s journey.

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In summary, the analysis shows that the films chosen portray the heroine’s journey in its many creative forms. These films give representation of the three journeys the heroine can take: the journey to help and reunite family, the journey of transformation from maiden to mother to crone, and finally, the journey of psychological integration. They demonstrate that the heroine has no need for violence to achieve her heroic deeds, and she often has feminine-oriented mentors that teach, guide, and support her. Disappointingly, none of the films included in their storylines two important factors: the importance of the symbolic sisters and the marriage initiation. After viewing many hours of female-oriented films, I believe these important symbols are either being discarded by filmmakers or they do not know the importance of the symbols. Yet overall, it is refreshing to know that one can find films that focus on the heroine and include the symbolism that is exclusively hers.

5. Conclusion: Are the Questions Answered?

Turns out that the fabled Hero’s Journey is a bunch of hooey when you’re writing about Heroines. —Jill Soloway, Los Angeles Magazine

This thesis questioned the gender of Joseph Campbell’s monomyth as described in his 1949 book, The Hero with a Thousand Faces. Campbell argues that there is no difference between the mythical journey of the hero and that of the heroine. However, it has been shown through many books, interviews, films, and essays that why these two take their journeys, how they achieve their goals, and what those ultimate goals are differ greatly. They differ enough that to say the two journeys are the same greatly devalues the journey of the female.

I believe the research obtained from numerous scholars and my own research through film analysis gives sufficient evidence to show that Campbell’s mythical journey

Ross 124 is exclusively for a male hero. The following statements summarize the most important elements that distinguish a female’s heroic journey from her masculine counterpart.

• The heroine takes an adventure for the following reasons: (1) to save or help

family in one way or another; (2) to go through a transformative time in her life; or

(3) to go through the process of psychologically integrating all parts of herself.

• The heroine seldom uses violence to accomplish her goals.

• The heroine often has a period of being passive or still, which can be very

powerful for her.

• Metaphorical sisters are extremely important to the heroine and play an integral

part in her journey. Sisterhood is powerful and gives all sorts of needed insight.

• The heroine cannot “master” the mother as the hero masters the father. This

would constitute matricide and is psychologically impossible for the heroine.

There are no tales that demonstrate matricide by the heroine.

• Integration is critical for the heroine. Her journey shows her the duality within

herself and the mandatory acknowledgment and acceptance of this. She holds

the power over her own life.

My next inquiry was whether the female tales used to describe the heroine’s journey have a patriarchal bias to them. It was shown that numerous modern-day female fairy tales were written by men, which creates a masculine as well as patriarchal bias. In addition, Jungian psychologist and fairy tale scholar Marie-Louise von Franz shows that Western women themselves may not have a true sense of what the feminine actually is. The Eurocentric woman has been inundated with stories describing women

Ross 125 that come from man’s anima projection. It is imperative when creating films that a strong knowledge of female psychology and perspective is used.

The third area of interest questioned where to look for female stories that are not biased by the patriarchy. It was shown archaeologically that there were societies some

3,500 years ago, termed “Great Mother” societies, that were not patriarchal in structure but equity-based and matrifocal. However, as Riane Eisler writes, the stories from this time are long gone (19). Yet Christine Downing believes that if one looks long and deep enough, tales can be found that have a resemblance to this gynocentric time (22). It was then shown that pre-contact Native American cultures were also equity-based societies. Extensive research into the plethora of female stories from these many indigenous cultures could not be undertaken to fully determine if they have motifs that are similar to or different from Eurocentric tales. However, the research that was accomplished gives a definitive basis on which to state that female stories coming from these many cultures would likely be dissimilar because there is no patriarchal bias involved.

I used the lens of film to study Campbell’s work in Hero to question whether males and females can be put into Campbell’s heroic journey interchangeably. My research has shown that there are separate journeys for the heroine and the hero. If one is to create a film about a female heroine, the psychology, or “psychological laws,” as Tolkien refers to them, of the female must stay true to that character. It has been shown that the feminine has a great capacity to remain still and integrate her experiences, which, as Karuna Glomb observes, may not be a great action piece for films (Glomb). Heroines usually accomplish their goals in nonviolent ways, which also

Ross 126 does not lead to action-oriented films. This is one possible reason why there are not more films that represent the heroine’s own journey. However, it has also been shown that there are many tales describing heroic females that can be used as starting points to create films coming from the heroine’s perspective.

Old stories about brave, courageous heroines need to be brought to the forefront.

New films should be created showing the empowered young maiden who uses her ingenuity and resourcefulness to find her way in the world, to find the prince or princess of her choosing, to create the family that she wants as she goes from one adventure to the next, as she did, “Once upon a time. . .”

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