The Heroine’s Journey: How To Use It in a Story

The Hero’s Journey is a well-known concept in fiction. From Star Wars’  Luke Skywalker to Katniss Everdeen from The Hunger Games, many characters have answered Joseph Campbell’s call to adventure. Yet, someone was dissatisfied with the Hero’s Journey, feeling it left out women. Mureen Murdock, hence, came up with the inner quest that women go through- The Heroine’s Journey. This catalogues the inner journey and growth that women go through, starting with their split from the feminine and the shift to the masculine, as a result of young girls realizing that they are being discriminated against, and ends with women reconciling with femininity in their own understanding of it, and finding a healthy masculine. While this journey too is heavily based on binary gender terms, it does provide women an insight into what others might be going through. But how do we use it in our storytelling?

After all, even Campbell expressed himself that women were the goal of the quest, reminding us again that feminist literature gave women a platform outside of their role in a man’s quest. The heroine’s journey into the unknown is to find herself, while the hero’s journey is an external adventure. Both lead to growth, but one finds something within, and others find meaning in the outside world.

Steps in A Heroine’s Journey- A Psychological Narrative

The heroine’s journey has several steps and of course, not each one will play a role in the narrative you are crafting, especially since the heroine’s journey was not written for storytelling alone. You can pick the most important steps and what fits your narrative, yes, but in this journey it’ll be highly dependent on your character’s personality, as it is internal reflection. It is regaining autonomy as a woman but it starts with…

Splitting with the Feminine/ Identifying with Male

This is what leads to internalized misogyny, where girls recognise that women are treated differently from, mostly lesser than, the boys and men around them. In Dorothy’s case, as shown in the Wizard of Oz, it was shown through her struggles in communicating with her aunt. In many other works, this is shown through the distance between the heroine and her mother, which some have called The Mother Complex. An example of the same- though her arc isn’t a heroine’s journey in my opinion- would be the split between Arya and Catlyn Stark in A Game of Thrones.

Essentially, this is where your heroine feels beaten down by the system, and gives into that feeling of powerless by trying to distance from what makes her weak- femininity. It can be represented as forced femininity making her hate gender roles, problems with mother figures, or just a pull towards “boyish” things, as was shown in To Kill a Mockingbird with Scout Finch or in Brave with Merida, to better belong. While Elle in Legally Blonde did not experience an alienation from the feminine, we see her embrace the next stage of the journey after being dumped for her femininity.

Trials and Success

In the rising action of the story, the heroine participates and wins her way to the top in the “masculine world.” Or more aptly, the patriarchal world. She is either a good girl or if she decided to rebel and find success in work, then she is the girlboss, who has proven her worth at the men’s table. While some might object to the idea of work being masculine, a better understanding would be, that the heroine finds success that men cannot deny, though, boy, do they try. Whether it is as the perfect wife or a renewed scientist in Lessons in Chemistry or as a Harward student and successful lawyer in Legally Blonde.

Yet, this success does not make her happy, and instead leaves her unfulfilled and lost. Now, many stories are completely set in this second stage, some even only keeping to the first part- a success story of a woman making it in a male dominated world. The Devil Wears Prada, however, does focus on this second half- where the woman feels lost in her success and chooses to find something better.

Finding The Inner Feminine and Reconnecting

Murdok calls this stage “reconciliation with the inner goddess,” describing this as a descent into the inner cave-like world and reconciliation with the feminine, whether that is by healing the split with the Mother-figure as shown in Brave, or by finding a version of femininity that feels authentic to your character. It is about accepting the joy of womanhood and sisterhood, and owning your own life as a woman. Healing the inner child, so as to speak. If one was following traditional story structures, this would be the part of middle or the climax. The heroine has come into her own. She has found a version of womanhood that isn’t forced or less than or restrictive, but beautiful.

Now for trans characters, this could also mean finally accepting that they are the gender they know themselves to be, but this journey does seem very cis-normative, at least with the language used.

Many stories are fully set in this stage, where a woman begins lost, and then finds herself, because that is a powerful, hopeful, and relatable narrative, especially for contemporary women readers. Examples would include the Bollywood movie Queen.

Yet, there does remain one more stage. Now that women have found their “inner woman,” they have to heal their relationship with the masculine. Recognising that there are bad men out there, does not mean that there is no hope, nor good men. Or that masculine things can add to a fulfilling life too, because many things are unnecessarily gendered, especially experiences.

Finding a Healthy Masculine and The Union

In this final stage, the healed woman reconciles with the inner masculine healthily and becomes a full human being. She has accepted all parts of herself, and began on working on what she feels needs to be improved upon. Many romances are set in this stage, though some may feel those stories can reinforce harmful patriarchal patterns, unless treated very carefully.

Conclusion

At the end of the day, The Heroine’s Journey, while lesser known, is just one of my tropes in writing. While women do experience this more, they also can experience the traditional Hero’s Journey, or Virgina’s Promise, or something completely different. Perhaps, this is simply a more introspective form of storytelling, focused heavily on the inner world of the character, something my novel Siya does too, even though when I wrote that, I barely knew of The Heroine’s Journey. Yet, I have a woman suffering under patriarchy, healing the Mother-Daughter Split, Accepting her Inner Feminine, and a Healthy Masculine Figure in her life. Her story starts with her crisis despite all her success, and ends with a Tryst with Hope- a poetry collection on non-liner healing.

Tell me, which stage of the Heroine’s Journey is your story set in? Or are you going through it all?

Author’s Note: Thank you for reading, hope this helped! My books are available for paywall free reading on Muses_Saga and e-books can be bought from the store.