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. Ross 1 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). Ross 2 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. Ross 3 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”).