Heroine's Journey

    There are several issues that come up in the examination of Maureen Murdock's Heroine's Journey. The first issue is fairly fundamental, and it is whether we even need a gender-split hero and heroine's journey. Not even mentioning the fact that the steps can be reductive to female issues, the idea of a separate heroine's journey implies that women are not represented in the Hero's Journey. While this is true, to a certain extent, especially with Campbell's version, it would be better to present an altered version of the Hero’s Journey rather than splitting off entirely. Heroines can experience different stories than heroes following experience exclusive or more prevalent to women, however, framing the heroine's journey as the heroine’s edition affects how people think about stories about heroes vs heroines. If the journeys are separate it implies that while it may be possible that each experiences the other’s journey periodically, in other words,  the stories told about them are inherently different unless otherwise stated. This mindset can produce some differences, especially after examination of the steps in the hero vs heroine’s journey. This is not even to mention the complete absence of other nonbinary identities, although I doubt Campbell in 1949 or Murdock in 1990 cared much.

While Campbell’s hero’s journey covers a hero’s call into a journey of adventure and excitement, ending with a grand philosophical realization, Murdock’s heroine’s journey follows a woman who dives into the masculine and then learns to balance femininity and masculinity. The problem with this dichotomy becomes visible very easily, why are the men the ones who get a story about bravery and fun, while the women have a story about being more like a man? After all the heroine’s journey is not embracing femininity, it is about balancing the previously unbalanced masculine and feminine. By separating these two it implies that the default of the hero’s journey is by default male and vice versa which seems to work against the point of the heroine's journey, being to bring women into stories. Not only that but it makes it so that protagonists in the hero’s journey should be male, and that straying from that path is a conscious move to tell a different type of story.

Another more fundamental issue with the heroine’s journey is its cyclical nature. While the cycle in the hero’s journey somewhat works, with the hero in a generally similar starting point going on a new adventure, the heroine’s journey is not very well suited for the cycle. The heroine’s journey starts with a separation from the feminine and ends with the integration of the masculine and feminine. These starts and end points make less sense for a circle than the hero’s journey. The hero’s journey’s call is somewhat unexpected by the character, so it would make sense that they could keep happening. But the heroine’s journey’s separation doesn’t suit itself to cycles, you’d think by the second time around the character would understand that a lack of balance is a bad thing, especially since the separation is voluntary. I would argue the heroine’s journey is more of a line than a circle, going from unbalanced to balanced, and that it should be portrayed as such. 

Maureen Murdock's Heroine's Journey

There are, however, more specific examples of issues with the heroine’s journey. The main issue is what the steps lack, a refusal of the call to adventure, or in the heroine’s journey, the refusal of the “shift from feminine to masculine”. Now, a refusal is not inherently needed in a story to show the agency of a character. However, even in Star Wars, a story following the hero’s journey where the main character is fighting an objective evil, there is a moment of doubt from Luke when he says he does not want to go with Obi-wan. These scenes show that while the main character could decide not to go on their journey, their moral scene of right, or whatever other motivation, guides them to do the right thing. By lacking this step the heroine's journey gives more of an impression of the characters as puppets instead of their own people, they follow the railroad of the story without any opportunity, however minor, to get off.