Thinking about Maureen Murdock's version of the Heroine's journey
Maureen Murdock's heroines journey seemed to receive a very negative reaction from our class. Some people complained that the heroines journey focused too much on the protagonist's gender compared to the hero's journey; a journey actually focused on the hero being heroic. Others criticized it by saying that the focus on gender actually contributes to the sexism within storytelling. Men are allowed to go off on heroic journeys but women are required to constantly consider their gender and how it effects him. Many more of the steps of the heroine's journey are explicitly gendered while the hero's journey allows for more creativity and freedom for it's protagonist. But while I do agree with some of these criticisms, I think that Maureen Murdock's version of the Heroine's journey is more tailored to the generation before us. In Maureen Murdock's book The Heroine's Journey: Woman's Quest for Wholeness, she lists examples of how woman growing up...