The Female Hero in Young Adult Fantasy

Girls Who Save the World: The Female Hero in Young Adult Fantasy The Senior Honors Thesis of Erin F. Danehy Professor Peggy A. Knapp, Advisor Department of English College of Humanities and Social Sciences Carnegie Mellon University Spring 2007 Erin F. Danehy TABLE OF CONTENTS Note on Abbreviations .................................................................................................................... 3 Prologue: The Female Hero............................................................................................................ 4 Part I: The Adventure Of The Hero ................................................................................................ 8 Chapter I: In Defense of Fantasy: Imagination and Tradition ..................................................... 8 Chapter II: Hro Theory and the Female Hero Story: An Overview .......................................... 26 Call to Adventure.................................................................................................................. 28 Threshold Crossing ............................................................................................................... 30 Initiation................................................................................................................................ 34 First Dragon: The Self ...................................................................................................... 35 Second Dragon: Depression.............................................................................................. 36 Third Dragon: Passivity .................................................................................................... 39 Fourth Dragon: Prejudice.................................................................................................. 40 Fifth Dragon: Overextension of Self or Resources........................................................... 42 Sixth Dragon: Coping with Loss and Accepting Mortality .............................................. 44 Transformation and the Elixir............................................................................................... 45 Flight..................................................................................................................................... 48 Return.................................................................................................................................... 50 Freedom to Live.................................................................................................................... 54 Part II: A Closer Examination Of The Female Hero .................................................................... 56 The Blue Sword and The Hero and the Crown ..................................................................... 67 The Song of the Lioness Quartet ........................................................................................... 74 The Abhorsen Trilogy........................................................................................................... 79 The His Dark Materials Trilogy........................................................................................... 84 Epilogue: The Female Hero And Society ..................................................................................... 93 Appendix I: List Of Important Characters And Settings .............................................................. 95 Appendix II: A Diagram Of Joseph Campbell’s Hero Structure................................................ 100 Bibliography ............................................................................................................................... 101 2 Erin F. Danehy Note on Abbreviations The following titles are abbreviated in references in the text: The Blue Sword = Sword The Hero and the Crown = Hero Alanna: The First Adventure = Alanna In the Hand of the Goddess = Goddess The Woman Who Rides Like a Man = Woman The Golden Compass = Compass The Subtle Knife = Knife The Amber Spyglass = Spyglass All other titles are referenced in full. 3 Erin F. Danehy PROLOGUE THE FEMALE HERO “It would be a great thing for us, and for our daughters—a damalur-sol.” Damalur-sol. Lady Hero.1 Harry, the protagonist of The Blue Sword by Robin McKinley, hears her teacher Mathin’s words but the idea behind them—that she, the awkward, too-tall girl with the stiff neck, could be called a hero—it is almost too much for her to believe. Until, however, she saves her world, proving herself a hero beyond all doubt, and her friends and companions cheer her name. Heroism is a concept our world has never seemed to be without. As far back as stories stretch, we find tales of heroes performing great deeds and saving their people. Very often, however, women have been left out of that venerable heroic tradition. Often when women are included, they serve functions more often than they embody individual character. They also often face an inevitable fate of marriage in the comic or romantic tale, or death in the tragedy. The few examples of women performing heroic (not heroinic) deeds—the myth of Psyche, the true martyrdom of Joan of Arc, for example—are dwarfed by both the number and scale of male hero stories, both mythic and those based in history. There are many other stories, plays, fairy tales, and novels with female main characters, but those women are often termed as “heroines”— female protagonists who, while demonstrating strength and complexity of character, fall into the more commonly defined roles for women. Literary critic Nadya Aisenberg points out that, “Though there is no dearth, and never has been, of courageous women, active women, spiritual women, women of leadership, the Hero has nonetheless been our culture’s central symbol” (11). 1 The Blue Sword, 112. 4 Erin F. Danehy The heroic stories that form the traditional fabric of our culture are intensely male-dominated; in today’s culture of both strong men and women, as Aisenberg states, “We need a new heroine with new strengths, new virtues, and new energies to play new roles because classical heroes and the heroic code they embrace have failed us badly. The paradigm of virtue that heroes like Aeneas, like Roland, and the heroic code — maiden-rescuing, dragon-slaying — represent has been destructive both to the individual and to Western culture…. Examining the hero, we discover his essential narrowness which neglects concerns with community, negotiation, nature, human relations, and the enablement of individual destinies to flourish in their differences” (11-12). Our culture needs new heroic archetypes, new figures to inspire us with their heroic mettle and steadfast determination. We need female heroes. Why not new heroines? In the twenty-first century, women are functioning in roles that would have been socially unthinkable outside the male gender less than a century ago. More than ever our changing culture needs a changing heroic tradition, one that features heroic women along with heroic men—side by side. Young girls and women are growing up to face new roles and look to fiction as one of the sources for worthy, strong, capable role models on which to pattern their dreams. Strong female archetypes are necessary “For our daughters,” Mathin tells Harry; new female archetypes are not only important in society as a whole but for examples whom young girls and women can admire. As our society becomes more and more gender- egalitarian, gender-neutral language is more often being used for the sake of being politically correct. I therefore propose that heroic women—women whose quests and adventures, in reality or depicted in fiction, fit the criteria of being “heroic”—deserve the title of “hero,” without the diminutive. If women can prove themselves equal to the professions, tasks, and intellectual capacities of men, the heroic title should reflect that equality. 5 Erin F. Danehy In this thesis I will examine twelve fantasy novels all published in the last twenty-five years that demonstrate this archetype of the female hero.2 All of the protagonists—the heroes— are equal to the tasks and tests of the archetypical hero. The criteria for “heroism” I will draw from Joseph Campbell’s 1949 critical text The Hero With a Thousand Faces. In that book, Campbell defines the quest, the journey, of the hero by analyzing heroic myths and legends from around the world. He draws an archetypical “monomyth,” a universal heroic pattern to which all hero stories can be loosely linked.3 The six heroes of the twelve novels each challenge the role of the “traditional” hero. Their quests are challenging, the odds against them intimidating, and the characters are active, engaging, and realistically fascinating. By patterning the quests of the heroes in question onto Campbell’s monomyth, I will demonstrate that these female protagonists qualify as female heroes. A point to note is that though the heroes in the books I discuss are female does not mean any male love interest characters are diametrically relegated to the passive positions of female love interests in classic hero stories. Often, it is the opposite: the supporting male characters offer opposition, assistance, or support but remain active (and sometimes heroic) themselves. This egalitarian interpretation of the hero story better reflects a modern world in which women and men often work side by side in many different professions. I chose to draw the novels from the genre of fantasy for several reasons. The heroic quest broadly defined may be applied to nearly any

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