(1)"The Hero's Journey is sometimes critiqued as a masculine theory, cooked up by men to enforce their dominance, and with little relevance to the unique and quite different journey of womanhood...I freely admit it: I'm a man and can't help seeing the world through the filter of my gender...I believe that much of the journey is the same for all humans, since we share many realities of birth, growth, and decay, but clearly being a woman imposes distinct cycles, rhythms, pressures, and needs. . .Men's journeys may be in some sense more linear, proceeding from one outward goal to the next, while women's journeys may spin or spiral inward and outward. The spiral may be a more accurate analogue for the woman's journey than a straight line or a simple circle. Another possible model might be a series of concentric rings, with the woman making a journey inward towards the center and then expanding out again."
"Good work has been done by women to articulate these differences, and I recommend books such as Merlin Stone's When God Was a Woman, Clarissa Pinkola Estes' Women Who Run with the Wolves, Jean Shinoda Bolen's Goddesses in Everywoman, Maureen Murdock's The Heroine's Journey, and The Woman's Dictionary of Myth and Symbols as starting points for a more balanced understanding of the male and female aspects of the Hero's Journey. (Note to men: If in doubt on this point, consult the nearest woman.)"
"The masculine need to go out and overcome obstacles, to achieve, conquer, and possess, may be replaced in the woman's journey by the drives to preserve the family and the species, make a home, grapple with emotions, come to accord, or cultivate beauty." (Vogler, p. xviii-xix)
Explanation: An experiment to study how gender influences thought, found that when men were left to their own devices to plan a city, they were built in a linear fashion. When women planned the project, the cities were built in circular or spiral fashions.
Discussion: When a writer who is either male or female, but has a heroine in the Hero's Journey, how do the perceptions change when plotting the story?
Examples
Circular or Closed-ended Stories
(a) In Outlander by Diana Gabaldon-- Claire begins her journey at the stone circle where she is sent through time from 1945 Scotland (Ordinary World) to 1745 Scotland (Special World). In the end of the book, Jamie sends her back to 1945 as chaos breaks out during the Battle of Culloden. The opening and closing scenes are like bookends, taking place in the same setting -- the ring of stones. Claire's inward journey is to find love; not only does she find that love in Jamie Fraser, but her Elixir is their child she is carrying (whereas her first estranged husband from 1945 was sterile.)
(b) In The Accidental Tourist by Anne Tyler -- Robert Ray in The Weekend Novelist uses this story as his main model to explain the "bookend" technique. Macon and his wife Sara are no longer effectively communicating with each other after the death of their son. Macon goes on to have an affair with Muriel, who teaches him how to live again. He then goes back to Sara and the last scene is the two of them talking about the same topic they argued about in the car in the beginning.
Linear or Open-ended Stories
(a) In The Searchers (movie starring John Wayne; directed by John Ford) -- In this Western Ethan is on a quest to recover his abducted niece. In the end, after a five-year search, he finds her and realizes she is not what he thought she would be. He rides off into he sunset, leaving his family behind.
(2) "At heart, despite its infinite variety, the hero's story is always a journey. A hero leaves her comfortable, ordinary surroundings to venture into a challenging, unfamiliar world. It may be an outward journey to an actual place: a labyrinth, forest or cave, a strange city or country, a new locale that becomes the arena for her conflict with antagonistic, challenging forces.
"But there are many stories that take the hero on an inward journey, one of the mind, the heart, the spirit. In any good story the hero grows and changes, making a journey from one way of being to the next: from despair to hope, weakness to strength, folly to wisdom, love to hate, and back again. It's these emotional journeys that hook an audience and make a story worth watching." (Vogler, p. 13)
Explanation: Heroes and heroines are not one-dimensional characters. They are also children, siblings, parents and grandparents. It is the force of these relationships which makes the journey and important one, for it is this world to which the hero returns at the end of his/her quest. It is for the betterment of their world -- however tragically misunderstood that may be -- that they venture on the journey and bring knowledge back with them. These same dimensions of character also influence how the hero and the reader interpret the world. If a hero sees the journey in a linear fashion, s/he will see their series of losses and triumphs in a straight line. If a hero sees the journey in a circular pattern, they may find themselves back where they started -- and in the case of spiral pattern, back in the same place, but not the same "space." They are different, they have changed since the beginning of the story.
Discussion:
How does a hero's other dimensions of character influence whether they see their journey as linear vs. circular?
As a writer, do you see your plot as having a linear or circular pattern?
As a writer and a reader, do you have a pattern preference? Why?
