I admit that my bias is for the men: I came to Joseph Campbell after reading Robert Bly‘s “Iron John” and Gillette and Moore’s “King, Warrior, Magician, Lover”. These books were written during the short-lived men’s movement of the early ’90s, and although I remember reading of such, it was many years later that I studied it more deeply, to reconnect with the true masculine myself, and to heal some inner wounds.
But as it is Mother’s Day, I wished to spend a moment and highlight how Joseph Campbell did indeed liken the Hero’s Journey to women as well, and that the Monomyth DID include feminine archetypes with tales of women’s journeys.
Image credit: Valerie Estelle Frankel (www.frankelassociates.com). The journey is similar, but usually there is a theme of freedom from domestic prison or enslavement.
Image source: Virginia Buescher- The Female Hero’s Journey (http://vabuescher.tripod.com/index.html)
More information can be found at the Heroine’s Journey page at author/professor Valerie Estell Frankle’s website as well as The Female Hero’s Journey. I should note that many of the fairy tale examples Ms. Buescher gives are some of Cimmorene’s personal favorites, and I have asked her to tell them again here, as she loves to tell them so much, in the ancient oral tradition of the storyteller.
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