Mar 14·edited Apr 2Liked by L. Jagi Lamplighter Wright
Thinking back to some of those 90s/early 2000s era shows where women undertook what would have been more traditional heroic roles - Alias with Jennifer Garner, La Femme Nikita with Peta Wilson, Witchblade and even Buffy - it strikes me how very unhappy all the MCs are.
Being a secret agent/having superpowers wasn't so much a power fantasy as a prison for them: with Alias and Nikita and the MC from Witchblade they can never form genuine friendships and relationships, they have to constantly lie to everyone they know in order to keep from endangering them, and the people around them are often used against them or killed. Happy ever after for them is ending the mission and going to a normal life.
Perhaps this is the origin of the cold, sour-faced, bitter heroines of today: they've carried on the misery but they don't know why - or can't admit to themselves why - but they're doing what the culture tells them they should, so shouldn't they be happy?
Must be the fault of that dang patriarchy.
I think the last honest ones were Black Widow and Wanda: they admitted the reason they were unhappy was because they desperately wanted children (in an early version of Endgame, Black Widow was to have devoted her time to caring for children made orphans by the Snap, but of course they didn't leave that in). But now that they've been killed off, they can be replaced by new heroines who are utterly sufficient in and of themselves and never stray from the approved message.
There's also all the fairy tales about the young woman who faces adversity, and finds true love (and her fortune, which is a good husband and family) by bravely holding onto her virtues (her power) such as honesty, faithfulness, or courtesy in the face of temptation. Sometimes she is aided by wit, but more often by kindness to those who are even weaker or more vulnerable than she. And her kindness comes back to her a thousand fold (a bit like being a good mother).
Think of the mute princess who endures suffering and slander to rescue her little brothers in the tale of the Wild Swans. Or the Goose Girl, who endures poverty and disgrace.
And here's a funny thing. The part about winning in the end because of kindness, generosity of spirit and humility - that's part of the young hero's fairy story (at least in Christendom) too! The youngest son is not the fastest or the smartest or the strongest, but he is the most virtuous... And so he wins the kingdom.
So his bride, in her journey, must be a princess fit for him, don't you think? And vice versa.
All the best romances were like that. And both sexes liked to read them (both Mary Stewart and Georgette Heyer were read by everyone, not just women). So I think it's not about despising femininity, but despising fairy tales, and, I think certain types of women. But that's a post itself.
Which brings us back to the point of this Substack...Defending the Wood Perlious! ;-)
And yes! Agreed!
(With the caviat that sometimes, the virtue of the youngest son is wit or imagination. Cinder Ella got her nickname because she was covered with soot after working hard. Youngest son, Cinder Peter, gets his by sitting by the hearth, drawing in the ashes while daydreaming.)
One thing to add: sometimes, it’s not even so much that the beast actually needs to be tamed as just that he is superficially very scary. The hero shows he’s not scared by fighting the beast. The heroine shows she’s not scared by befriending the beast (sometimes romantically, but not always).
A favorite example is Shadow Castle, by Marian Cockrell, in which the heroine befriends a dragon and has to convince everyone else he is safe.
This is finally a description of the feminine in fiction that I can really identify with, personally. Not the "tame the beast" aspect, which I understand, but which always seemed kind of "meh" to me. Travel to regain the lost husband (or maybe father? any family member? or should it be a male?), and succeed through perseverance, hard work, and kindness? Yes, I can identify with that. Part of the "hard work" could be fighting, but need not be. (As long as "kindness" isn't the same as "nice.")
It also seems to mesh well with women "travelling" to another clan or town or even country to marry a husband. The "tame the beast" aspect could come from the results of true bride theft, or just getting used to another clan, with different customs, and a husband who might well have been close to being a stranger. The man's job was to protect and provide for his wife. The woman's job was to find a way to fit in, through perseverance, and kindness.
Another aspect of the feminine journey is ABANDONING SAFETY to make the journey. And in "Til We Have Faces," the elder sister gets Psyche to disobey, not out of jealousy, but because she wants to "save her" from "the beast." Seems pretty relevant to our safety-obsessed society. Which, of course, actually ends up making everyone less safe.
It seems the masculine journey is more about accepting risk and facing danger. The feminine journey is about not REQUIRING safety. Maybe?
I've gotten really tired of the "strong woman" = "fight like a man" too. It actually wasn't as bad in the 80's and 90's when the women actually WERE strong. But then we got into 90 lb women beating 250 lb men, without any compensating ability and I just stopped caring.
But an actual heroine's journey I can relate to? That's cool. Now I have an idea what to look for.
Me too. And if people do show a woman fighting, I'm really, really picky these days. I have almost no ability to give the writer suspension of disbelief. You have to make me believe she really could hold her own.
But yeah. I'd like to see the heroine's journey too.
The writer has to give me an excuse to believe the 90# pixie can beat a man my size. Trained by psychic ninjas, cyborg, alien, mutant, anything that is beyond the capabilities of normal people. I know too much to read about a woman with a year or two of aikido effortlessly taking down linebackers.
Give me at least a reason for it. And if if you have a medieval type world with half of your top ten fighters as women, I'm out. I can suspend my disbelief only so far.
Very nearly forgot to mention the women I know who were obsessed with Winter Soldier fan fiction with the female love interest being the love interest who restores this brainwashed killing machine's humanity and frees him from Hydra's conditioning.
Strangely, even the most progressive of these women who were all for gender swapping or turning every male friendship into them being lovers flew into a rage at the suggestion of Cap and Bucky being made into an item.
Mar 13·edited Mar 13Liked by L. Jagi Lamplighter Wright
Hear hear!
Older versions still exist--the most archaic I know of is the quest of Isis to find and resurrect Horus, mirrored in the various versions of the Ishtar/Astarte/etc. quest to save Tammuz from the underworld. Demeter's quest also springs to mind, as do the quests of both Ruth and Esther in their respective books of the Bible.
Gail Carriger has a good breakdown for authors (and generally layperson-accessible) in her book The Heroine's Journey. I tackle it in The Secrets of the Heinlein Juvenile, as one of the great tricks that Heinlein and many other great YA and Children's authors employ is to blend the Hero's and Heroine's journeys in various ways, which helps universalize the appeal of their stories and also capture the "not quite man, not quite woman" world that all children are caught in before their final initiation.
It's as basic to humanity as breathing, methinks. Even the tale of the Virgin Mary carries the fingerprints of the form. Ejected from comfort by great events (tne annunciation), re-making her identity and repairing her relationships (her connection with John's mother, the divinely-aided saving of her engagement), and facing the ultimate challenge with her allies at her side (the nativity with Joseph at her side), emerging from the challenge with the world and relationships restored (life beyond the nativity).
My family was smashed by traumatic experiences so my journey has been to rescue and rebuild, and chiefly by adding a needy orphan who just happens to have magical gifts in her pockets that can solve some of our problems as we come to them. It's slowly, slowly working. Definitely: hard work, kindness, and perseverance. We'll see if at the end, the heroine (me) wins back her true love.
Mar 12·edited Mar 12Liked by L. Jagi Lamplighter Wright
Another classic heroine is in the Arabian Nights. She has two brothers; they are hidden children of the Sultan. But the brothers go out first on a quest to find the Talking Bird, the Singing Tree, and the Golden Fountain, and they never come back. When the girl sets out, she meets the same dangers, but as a key difference, she gets advice from a dirty old dervish whose hair has overgrown his face. She cuts his hair and shares her food, and thus gets the secret to how to survive. Women heroes always share food and show kindness to the unfortunate. They take time out of the quest to do these things, and thus survive the quest. They usually have things with them like a little sewing kit and a comb.
You broke the spell and i must go away. But if you want to meet me again, you'll have to walk mountains and plains, until you filled seven flasks of tears and consumed seven pairs of iron shoes.
Re: taming the beast - I've written fan fiction and I still read it, and there used to be quite the selection of that around Star Wars' Grand Admiral Thrawn. Not the pudgy Elon Musk-like version today or the version in the animated series that simplified the character.
It took off after Zahn's Hand of Thrawn duology. That was a follow up to the first three books, where the heroes and the reader learn a little more about who he was, and it's interesting - Thrawn becomes a tragic character, someone who could have been a hero if not for some fatal flaws - his pride and his ruthlessness. Simply put: Thrawn (rightly) believed there were terrible threats out there, ready to fill the void left over by the Empire's fall, and he also believed (rightly or wrongly) that the Republic government the heroes were establishing couldn't protect them.
The heroes also meet Thrawn's loyal vassals from among his own people and others, and learned a different side of him: if you were under his protection, he'd go to the mat for you. If you opposed him, he'd pull out all the stops to crush you. Ruthlessness such as being complicit in enslaving the Noghri and agreeing to rip Leia's newborn children away from her and use them as weapons, pride to think he was the only one who could save the universe, and that he could control a dangerously insane dark Force adept.
But like I said, there's fan fiction where the female character 'tames' Thrawn, softens his ruthlessness and pride and get's under his skin so he loses his Vulcan-like control, protects her and even defies the Emperor for her.
Han turned around at the end of the first (fourth?) Star Wars movie to help save the day. By the end he had gone from selfish smuggler to a hero and a leader, and in the old EU he was a responsible man, loving husband and father - but he still had that dangerous edge.
No wonder Disney took such great pains to undo it, and then made sure nothing like that would be allowed to happen again.
I always thought Jim Henson's Labyrinth was a great heroine's journey. The MC has to go on a quest to save her little brother from the Goblin King. She makes progress by forming friendships along the way. She rejects the advances of the dangerous 'bad boy' Goblin King and learns maturity and responsibility.
Maybe it's just me being male, but I also find it weird that so many women are obsessed with the Goblin King. I mean...you know he's the bad guy, right? You're supposed to reject him. I don't see him being 'tamed' anytime soon.
Thank you for this description. Now I finally understand the claim I’ve seen, that Harry Potter is an example of the Heroine’s Journey—it’s definitely a “defeat the beast” quest, but it’s equally definitely Harry’s kindness and perseverance that get him to the finish line.
Thinking back to some of those 90s/early 2000s era shows where women undertook what would have been more traditional heroic roles - Alias with Jennifer Garner, La Femme Nikita with Peta Wilson, Witchblade and even Buffy - it strikes me how very unhappy all the MCs are.
Being a secret agent/having superpowers wasn't so much a power fantasy as a prison for them: with Alias and Nikita and the MC from Witchblade they can never form genuine friendships and relationships, they have to constantly lie to everyone they know in order to keep from endangering them, and the people around them are often used against them or killed. Happy ever after for them is ending the mission and going to a normal life.
Perhaps this is the origin of the cold, sour-faced, bitter heroines of today: they've carried on the misery but they don't know why - or can't admit to themselves why - but they're doing what the culture tells them they should, so shouldn't they be happy?
Must be the fault of that dang patriarchy.
I think the last honest ones were Black Widow and Wanda: they admitted the reason they were unhappy was because they desperately wanted children (in an early version of Endgame, Black Widow was to have devoted her time to caring for children made orphans by the Snap, but of course they didn't leave that in). But now that they've been killed off, they can be replaced by new heroines who are utterly sufficient in and of themselves and never stray from the approved message.
shudder
Yeah.
Funny how the truth slips in even when they are trying to pretend otherwise.
Cupid & Psyche was also retold in Lewis "Till We Have Faces."
And if you're going to bring up adventure girls, how can you forget Dorothy of the Wizard of Oz?
There's also all the fairy tales about the young woman who faces adversity, and finds true love (and her fortune, which is a good husband and family) by bravely holding onto her virtues (her power) such as honesty, faithfulness, or courtesy in the face of temptation. Sometimes she is aided by wit, but more often by kindness to those who are even weaker or more vulnerable than she. And her kindness comes back to her a thousand fold (a bit like being a good mother).
Think of the mute princess who endures suffering and slander to rescue her little brothers in the tale of the Wild Swans. Or the Goose Girl, who endures poverty and disgrace.
And here's a funny thing. The part about winning in the end because of kindness, generosity of spirit and humility - that's part of the young hero's fairy story (at least in Christendom) too! The youngest son is not the fastest or the smartest or the strongest, but he is the most virtuous... And so he wins the kingdom.
So his bride, in her journey, must be a princess fit for him, don't you think? And vice versa.
All the best romances were like that. And both sexes liked to read them (both Mary Stewart and Georgette Heyer were read by everyone, not just women). So I think it's not about despising femininity, but despising fairy tales, and, I think certain types of women. But that's a post itself.
Good one, Jagi!
You are quite right about Georgette Heyer!
Which brings us back to the point of this Substack...Defending the Wood Perlious! ;-)
And yes! Agreed!
(With the caviat that sometimes, the virtue of the youngest son is wit or imagination. Cinder Ella got her nickname because she was covered with soot after working hard. Youngest son, Cinder Peter, gets his by sitting by the hearth, drawing in the ashes while daydreaming.)
A fair cop.
I love this.
One thing to add: sometimes, it’s not even so much that the beast actually needs to be tamed as just that he is superficially very scary. The hero shows he’s not scared by fighting the beast. The heroine shows she’s not scared by befriending the beast (sometimes romantically, but not always).
A favorite example is Shadow Castle, by Marian Cockrell, in which the heroine befriends a dragon and has to convince everyone else he is safe.
A good point!
This is finally a description of the feminine in fiction that I can really identify with, personally. Not the "tame the beast" aspect, which I understand, but which always seemed kind of "meh" to me. Travel to regain the lost husband (or maybe father? any family member? or should it be a male?), and succeed through perseverance, hard work, and kindness? Yes, I can identify with that. Part of the "hard work" could be fighting, but need not be. (As long as "kindness" isn't the same as "nice.")
It also seems to mesh well with women "travelling" to another clan or town or even country to marry a husband. The "tame the beast" aspect could come from the results of true bride theft, or just getting used to another clan, with different customs, and a husband who might well have been close to being a stranger. The man's job was to protect and provide for his wife. The woman's job was to find a way to fit in, through perseverance, and kindness.
Another aspect of the feminine journey is ABANDONING SAFETY to make the journey. And in "Til We Have Faces," the elder sister gets Psyche to disobey, not out of jealousy, but because she wants to "save her" from "the beast." Seems pretty relevant to our safety-obsessed society. Which, of course, actually ends up making everyone less safe.
It seems the masculine journey is more about accepting risk and facing danger. The feminine journey is about not REQUIRING safety. Maybe?
I like that.
And yes...real kindness, not "nice."
I've gotten really tired of the "strong woman" = "fight like a man" too. It actually wasn't as bad in the 80's and 90's when the women actually WERE strong. But then we got into 90 lb women beating 250 lb men, without any compensating ability and I just stopped caring.
But an actual heroine's journey I can relate to? That's cool. Now I have an idea what to look for.
Me, too. When it was just Buffy and Wonder Woman, it was kind of cool.
But I would rather see a man fight, frankly. This kind of story...I'd like to see more of!
Me too. And if people do show a woman fighting, I'm really, really picky these days. I have almost no ability to give the writer suspension of disbelief. You have to make me believe she really could hold her own.
But yeah. I'd like to see the heroine's journey too.
The writer has to give me an excuse to believe the 90# pixie can beat a man my size. Trained by psychic ninjas, cyborg, alien, mutant, anything that is beyond the capabilities of normal people. I know too much to read about a woman with a year or two of aikido effortlessly taking down linebackers.
Give me at least a reason for it. And if if you have a medieval type world with half of your top ten fighters as women, I'm out. I can suspend my disbelief only so far.
I agree. I don't mind Buffy--she has a reason, or Wonder Woman or Supergirl.
But I am tired of seeing female cops or military officers out wrestle trained thugs.
There is C.S. Lewis's "Till We Have Faces", which a retelling of the Psyche/Cupid story from the older sister's perspective.
This is what I thought of as well! One of my favorite books ever!
Very nearly forgot to mention the women I know who were obsessed with Winter Soldier fan fiction with the female love interest being the love interest who restores this brainwashed killing machine's humanity and frees him from Hydra's conditioning.
Strangely, even the most progressive of these women who were all for gender swapping or turning every male friendship into them being lovers flew into a rage at the suggestion of Cap and Bucky being made into an item.
One wonders why.
Interesting. Maybe a respect for true masculine friendship is making a comeback. ;-)
Or maybe they know they can't compete with Cap.
lol
Hear hear!
Older versions still exist--the most archaic I know of is the quest of Isis to find and resurrect Horus, mirrored in the various versions of the Ishtar/Astarte/etc. quest to save Tammuz from the underworld. Demeter's quest also springs to mind, as do the quests of both Ruth and Esther in their respective books of the Bible.
Gail Carriger has a good breakdown for authors (and generally layperson-accessible) in her book The Heroine's Journey. I tackle it in The Secrets of the Heinlein Juvenile, as one of the great tricks that Heinlein and many other great YA and Children's authors employ is to blend the Hero's and Heroine's journeys in various ways, which helps universalize the appeal of their stories and also capture the "not quite man, not quite woman" world that all children are caught in before their final initiation.
It nice to know that even in Ancient Rome, this was an old story!
It's as basic to humanity as breathing, methinks. Even the tale of the Virgin Mary carries the fingerprints of the form. Ejected from comfort by great events (tne annunciation), re-making her identity and repairing her relationships (her connection with John's mother, the divinely-aided saving of her engagement), and facing the ultimate challenge with her allies at her side (the nativity with Joseph at her side), emerging from the challenge with the world and relationships restored (life beyond the nativity).
I like that idea.
My family was smashed by traumatic experiences so my journey has been to rescue and rebuild, and chiefly by adding a needy orphan who just happens to have magical gifts in her pockets that can solve some of our problems as we come to them. It's slowly, slowly working. Definitely: hard work, kindness, and perseverance. We'll see if at the end, the heroine (me) wins back her true love.
You are a true heroine. :-)
Another classic heroine is in the Arabian Nights. She has two brothers; they are hidden children of the Sultan. But the brothers go out first on a quest to find the Talking Bird, the Singing Tree, and the Golden Fountain, and they never come back. When the girl sets out, she meets the same dangers, but as a key difference, she gets advice from a dirty old dervish whose hair has overgrown his face. She cuts his hair and shares her food, and thus gets the secret to how to survive. Women heroes always share food and show kindness to the unfortunate. They take time out of the quest to do these things, and thus survive the quest. They usually have things with them like a little sewing kit and a comb.
Right! That is a perfect example of what I mean by kindness.
Shaherazade also tames a beast, so to speak.
Great points and thanks for the reminder. I need to re-read Jon Del Arroz's novels.
The Princess and the Goblins by George MacDonald! Or how about a daughter trying to save her father from hell? ;-)
:-)
You broke the spell and i must go away. But if you want to meet me again, you'll have to walk mountains and plains, until you filled seven flasks of tears and consumed seven pairs of iron shoes.
Yes.
Thank you! This is a genius-level insight about character archetypes, and it is going to help me immensely with the story I am working on.
So glad!
Re: taming the beast - I've written fan fiction and I still read it, and there used to be quite the selection of that around Star Wars' Grand Admiral Thrawn. Not the pudgy Elon Musk-like version today or the version in the animated series that simplified the character.
It took off after Zahn's Hand of Thrawn duology. That was a follow up to the first three books, where the heroes and the reader learn a little more about who he was, and it's interesting - Thrawn becomes a tragic character, someone who could have been a hero if not for some fatal flaws - his pride and his ruthlessness. Simply put: Thrawn (rightly) believed there were terrible threats out there, ready to fill the void left over by the Empire's fall, and he also believed (rightly or wrongly) that the Republic government the heroes were establishing couldn't protect them.
The heroes also meet Thrawn's loyal vassals from among his own people and others, and learned a different side of him: if you were under his protection, he'd go to the mat for you. If you opposed him, he'd pull out all the stops to crush you. Ruthlessness such as being complicit in enslaving the Noghri and agreeing to rip Leia's newborn children away from her and use them as weapons, pride to think he was the only one who could save the universe, and that he could control a dangerously insane dark Force adept.
But like I said, there's fan fiction where the female character 'tames' Thrawn, softens his ruthlessness and pride and get's under his skin so he loses his Vulcan-like control, protects her and even defies the Emperor for her.
That is the ultimate feminine fantasy. We want to do that.
People mock women for "wanting to change him" because it often goes awry...but the truth is, it often happens, too.
I don't think "she" can change him. But many a man changes out of love for his lady. She is worth the effort he himself must make.
That is what we women want in our hearts. ;-)
Han turned around at the end of the first (fourth?) Star Wars movie to help save the day. By the end he had gone from selfish smuggler to a hero and a leader, and in the old EU he was a responsible man, loving husband and father - but he still had that dangerous edge.
No wonder Disney took such great pains to undo it, and then made sure nothing like that would be allowed to happen again.
Agreed.
I always thought Jim Henson's Labyrinth was a great heroine's journey. The MC has to go on a quest to save her little brother from the Goblin King. She makes progress by forming friendships along the way. She rejects the advances of the dangerous 'bad boy' Goblin King and learns maturity and responsibility.
Maybe it's just me being male, but I also find it weird that so many women are obsessed with the Goblin King. I mean...you know he's the bad guy, right? You're supposed to reject him. I don't see him being 'tamed' anytime soon.
1) He's handsome.
2) The worse the guy, the greater the desire to tame him.
(When worse is "rebel who plays by his own rules")
Lol almost word for word the Simpsons line:
Bart: WHAT DO YOU LIKE ABOUT HIM? HE'S JUST A GOOD-LOOKING REBEL WHO PLAYS BY HIS OWN RULES.
The girls: (wistful sighing)
Yes. That's where I got it. :-)
Thank you for this description. Now I finally understand the claim I’ve seen, that Harry Potter is an example of the Heroine’s Journey—it’s definitely a “defeat the beast” quest, but it’s equally definitely Harry’s kindness and perseverance that get him to the finish line.
Interesting! I hadn't heard that.