From: http://www.frankelassociates.com/calithwain/Heroine.htm
By: Valerie Frankel, author of Buffy and the Heroine’s Journey: Vampire Slayer as Feminine Chosen One and Girl to Goddess: The Heroine’s Journey through Myth and Legend, 2012
What’s the Heroine’s Journey?
“Though scholars often place heroine tales on Campbell’s hero’s journey point by point, the girl has always had a notably different journey than the boy. She quests to rescue her loved ones, not destroy the tyrant as Harry Potter or Luke Skywalker does. The heroine’s friends augment her natural feminine insight with masculine rationality and order, while her lover is a shapeshifting monster of the magical world—a frog prince or beast-husband (or two-faced vampire!). The epic heroine wields a magic charm or prophetic mirror, not a sword. And she destroys murderers and their undead servants as the champion of life. As she struggles against the Patriarchy—the distant or unloving father—she grows into someone who creates her own destiny.
Eventually, she too descends into the underworld in a maiden’s white gown, there to die and be reborn greater than before. Awaiting her is the wicked stepmother or Terrible Mother (as Jung calls her): the White Witch of Narnia or Wicked Witch of the West: slayer of children and figure of sterility and unlife. This brutal matriarch is often her only mentor. The heroine not only defeats her, she grows from the lesson and rejoins the world as young mother, queen, and eternal goddess.”
Quoted from Frankel’s Buffy and the Heroine’s Journey.
Check out other powerful hero resources at TheHeroPlace, including Hero Tools (such as StoryCraft Hero-Story Writing Software) and Hero Organizations (such as the Gallery of Heroes) as well as other Hero Wisdom (such as that of script-writing coach Skip Press). Also, search or submit to hero databases (such as hero-story databases) from around the Internet in the Your Heroes section of TheHeroPlace.
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