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Representation of Hero’s Journey in James Reeves’s “English Fairy Tales”: Female Heroes
Behzad Pourqarib
Department of English Language and Literature, Golestan University, Golestan, Iran. E-mail: [email protected]
Seyyede Sara Moosavipoor
M.A. Student in English Department, Faculty of Literature and Foreign Languages, Islamic Azad University, Karaj Branch, Iran. E-mail:
I. Introduction
In Pathways to Bliss: Mythology and Personal Transformation, Joseph Campbell said that “all of great mythologies and much of the mythic story-telling of the world are from the male point of view, when I was writing The Hero with a Thousand Faces and wanted to bring female heroes in, I had to go to the fairy tales” (Campbell 243). This confirms that fairy tale genre is full of stories with feminine view that have assigned the stories to female heroes and their heroic actions.
Joseph Campbell offers theory of Hero’s Journey or monomyth in his most famous book Hero with a Thousand Faces (1966) in which he claimed that all stories are fundamentally the same story in that all have similar kind of basic phases in the journey of their main heroes. Campbell divides his theory into three sections or phases. The first major phase is Departure where the hero begins his journey from the “world of common day into a region of supernatural wonder” (Campbell 30). The following phase is Initiation in which the hero has to go through many trials in order to get what he has come to claim. The phase ends with the hero’s success. The last phase is called Return and in this phase, the hero starts his journey home bringing with him whatever boon he has secured on his journey to bestow it “on his fellow man” (30). Each phase is divided into several different stages.
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Fairy tales are one of the famous narrations which are recently taken into consideration in literature and literary criticism. There are many similarities among them worldwide but they also have different aspects that partly separate one nation from the others. One of the famous approaches in studying folktales and fairy tales is done by a Russian formalist, Vladimir Propp (1895-1970). Propp has identified 31 functions for Russian folktales. Campbell’s function is nearly similar to Propp’s functions as well. Actually Campbell's theory is partially a combination of Vladimir Propp's function as well as Jungian archetypal approach. In fact Joseph Campbell “activated Jung and Frazer’s ideas in a didactical way of structuralists which was more or less static. He divided Hero’s journey into 3 parts; Departure or Separation, Initiation and Return” (Taslimi 143).
The first major phase of Hero’s Journey, Departure is divided into five different stages; 1: the call to adventure, 2: refusal of the call, 3: supernatural aid, 4: crossing of the first threshold, 5: belly of the whale.
According to Christopher Vogler, in the ordinary world of heroes, the seeds of change and growth are planted, and it needs a little new energy to germinate them, which symbolized in countless ways in myths and fairy tales. This is what Joseph Campbell termed the call to adventure (Vogler 2007). In some stories, the hero initially refuses the call to adventure. After the hero has accepted the call, he encounters a protective figure often elderly (Campbell termed this archetype the wise old man or woman) who provides special tools and advice for journey ahead, such as an amulet or weapon. Such figure represents the “benign, protecting power of destiny” (Campbell 71). Stuart Voytilla notes about this stage of journey that crossing the threshold signifies that the Hero has finally committed to the Journey. He is prepared to cross the gateway that separates the Ordinary World from the Special World. The crossing may require more than accepting one’s fears, a map, or a swift kick in the rear from a Mentor. "Internal forces may also push the Hero to accept his special world” (Voytilla 12). The first phase ends with the hero emerging from the belly of the whale, which symbolizes rebirth. By entering this stage, the person shows willingness to undergo a metamorphosis (Smith 1997).
Second or Initiation phase in which the hero has to go through many trials divided into six stages includes: first the road of trials, second, the meeting with the goddess, third, woman as temptress, fourth, atonement with the father, fifth, apotheosis, sixth, the ultimate boon.
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The road of trials is a series of tests, tasks, or ordeals that the person must undergo to begin the transformation. Often the person fails one or more of these tests, which often occur in threes (Rochelle 2001). Meeting with the goddess is often represented as a marriage between the hero and a queen like, or mother-like figure. This represents the hero’s mastery of life (represented by feminine) as well as the totality of what can be known. When the hero is female, this becomes a male figure. In the stage of woman as temptress, the hero is tempted to step away from his path, which would mean the abandonment of the quest. Atonement means the “coming together of forces and events anticipated throughout the journey of the quest” (Petty 55). In this stage the hero either defeats his “father” (i.e. a father figure) and takes his position or in some way earns the trust of his father. The hero reconciles the tyrant and merciful aspects of the father-like authority figure to understand him as well as this figure. Apotheosis stage means becoming divine. One part of this is connected to becoming androgynous; the male hero finds his female side or the female hero her masculine side and thus making the hero more than a man or a woman. Segal explains, in this stage, the hero learns that he already is what he started to look for in the first place (Segal 1987). This can sometimes be represented as something as concrete as the boy who goes to find a king, is revealed to be the king’s heir himself.
The Ultimate Boon is when the hero is now ready to obtain that which he has set out, an item or new awareness that, once he returns, will benefit the society that he has left. All the previous steps serve to prepare and purify the person for this step, since in many myths the boon is something transcendent like the elixir of life itself, or a plant that supplies immortality (Indick 2004).
The last and return phase has six stages as well; 1: refusal of the return, 2: magic flight, 3: rescue from without, 4: crossing of the return threshold, 5: master of the two worlds, 6: freedom to live. In the first stage, the hero who has now received his boon must return with it to bring it to his people, nation or world. However, having found bliss and enlightenment in the other world, the heroes may decline to accept their responsibility at first. Sometimes the hero must escape with the boon, if it is something that the gods have been jealously guarding. It can be just as adventurous and dangerous returning from the journey as it was to go on it (Okum 2009) and it is the stage of magic flight. Rescue from without is when the hero may need guides and assistants to set out on the quest and he or she must have powerful guides and rescuers to bring them back to everyday life, especially if the person has been wounded or
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weakened by the experience (Bartle 2004). In The Crossing of the Return Threshold, the hero returns to the world of common day and must accept it as real. Master of the Two Worlds means that the hero is able to freely cross the border between the two worlds: the “real” one and the mystical one. He belongs to them both. For a human hero, it may mean achieving a balance between the material and spiritual. The person has become comfortable and competent in both the inner and outer worlds (Ellwood 1999). The Hero’s Journey ends in freedom to live which signifies the peace and prosperity and salvation that the hero brings with him from his quest. It is the ‘happy ending’ of the story (Campbell 1966).
Five fairy tales in which the heroines do heroic actions and attempt to handle difficulties and overcome obstacles and the researcher attempts to analyze them in the light of Joseph Campbell’s Hero’s Journey are: Molly Whipple, Tattercoats, The Fish and the Ring, The Well of the World’s End, and Tom Tit Tot.
II. Main Discussion
II.1. Molly Whipple
The first fairy tale is story of Molly Whipple, it is a story of a girl who defeats the giants, and includes three journeys; leaving Molly and her sisters in the wood and going to the giant’s home, rescuing Molly and her two sisters and escaping from the giant’s home, and then going to the king’s palace respectively.
In this story journey was not a choice the heroine made in response to call, Molly and her sisters were left to the wood by their poor parents. Parents were herald archetype and Molly and her sisters had no other options. Therefore, they could not refuse the call and entered to a new world. So the crossing of the first threshold was passive not by choice. They went to the giant’s home hungry and tired. At first the giant’s wife acted as a threshold guardian, and blocked the way of them but Molly begged hard and broke down the defenses of threshold guardian. Vogler believes that “sometimes, when the passport of experience no longer works to get you past a gate, an emotional appeal can break down the defenses of Threshold Guardians, establishing a bond of human feeling may be the key” (147).
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But then the giant’s wife changed her role of threshold guardian to the shadow archetype and as the giant came, she delivered them to her husband.
Molly was smarter than her sisters although she was younger than them. She stayed awake all the night and rescued herself and her sisters. In the Iranian myths, sleep reminds brotherhood of sleep and death. Similar tales also happened in different cultures. For instance, in Beyghami’s Darabname, Behzad, the hero, did not sleep for forty days and night in order to prevent Dave’s dominance (Beyghami, 2002). In Greek, India and Gnostic “wisdom action of awakening means redemption and salvation” (Elliade 134).
In this story also, the female hero stayed awake and rescued them. Then, they went to a king’s palace and told the story of the giants. When the king saw Molly so clever, asked her to go to the giant’s home and take the giant’s sword. Here, the king is the herald archetype, and the heroine accepted the call and went alone. According to Campbell, this is the stage of the atonement with the father, when the heroine has become herself a father, she is “competent now to enact herself the role of the initiator, the guide, the sun door” (Campbell, 1966. 126). She was ripe to be a guide herself. She went and overcame the shadow.
Stage of road of trials was when she went three times to the giant’s home alone. Firstly, she took the giant’s sword and the reward was the marriage of the older sister with king’s older son. Secondly, she took bag of gold and the reward was the marriage of the second sister with the second sons of the king. But, thirdly, when she went to take the giant’s ring, he caught her and put her in to a sack which can be equivalent for the stage of the belly of the whale. Symbolically she faced death but survived and reborn. Now, she must complete her task in order to recover the ultimate boon. The heroine tried to cheat the giants there, like the story of the Johnny Gloke, one of the famous English Fairy tales whom he cheated two giants and killed them (Reeves, 1995). According to Vogler, “we must get into the minds of those who see to stand in our way, if we understand or empathize with them, the job of getting pass them or absorbing their energy is much easier” (Reeves 152). The heroine with the power of thought spoke with the giant’s wife and put her into sack, and then the giant thought that Molly is in the sack, batter her wife instead of Molly, and so the heroine escaped with the giant’s ring that was the ultimate boon.
In fact, the heroine didn’t receive the supernatural aid through the story, all of the supernatural aids and guiding that Molly received were from the power
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of her will and thought. The heroine as a female trickster, fooled the wicked and stupid giant, she outsmarted her enemy and the shadow. Molly and her sisters were abandoned by her parents and Molly as the third and younger sister took the responsibility and completed the three quests set by the king. In fact, she seized on the opportunity to gain better place for herself and her sisters.
The stage of magic flight is when the giant ran after her three times and in every following he couldn’t get her because there was a bridge of one hair as the rescue from without. There is “bridge of one hair” in the Scottish variant of the story Maol a chilobain in which the heroine plucks a hair out of her own head and it turns into a bridge. In Arabic storytelling, the bridge over which Muslims pass on their way into Heaven is as fine as a single strand of hair (Tatar 2002).
She returned to the king’s palace when it was time of the stage of meeting with the goddess (god). Now she was worthy wife for the king’s last son, and then the sacred marriage took place. The heroine here became divine (apotheosis); Molly was a real heroine she did what no one else could have done. And as Campbell means by apotheosis, now she learned that she was what she was looking for in the first place. Once, she has learned that she has control over the events in her life; Molly reached her apotheosis and was ready to defeat the giants. She freed herself which proved that only her willpower could set her free from the confines of the shadows.
Therefore, she became master of two worlds, she not only overcame shadow, but she was well respected in the country and also in the king’s palace; she made happy the king and all of the people who were worry about the giants in their country. She had saved all of them, and they were thankful because now all of them have the freedom to live. According to the story, there was a splendid celebration about one month, there was merrymaking, music and dancing and everyone lived happily ever after.
II.2. Tattercoats
In this story heroine was hated by his grandfather, she was in trouble through her life. From the beginning she was in a road of trials, no one cared for her or cloths her, little to eat, little to wear, only the old nurse helped her and only a goose herd was her friend who played to her on his little pipe and she forgot all her troubles and fell to dancing, they were the heroine’s helpers and mentor archetypes who were on the story from the beginning to end, the herd boy who
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took her to the king’s castle can be a supernatural aid , he was fairy because at the ball by playing on his pipe, changed heroine’s rags to shining robes, sewn with glittering jewels and golden crown upon her golden hair and at the end he disappeared and never has seen him again.
The grandfather’s royal invitation that brought to the palace was the call to the adventure for the heroine, she liked to go to that ball but when her grandfather refused to take her, she disappointed, the herd boy took the role of herald archetype and proposed that they should go together into the ball to see the king.
The grandfather who refused and the servants who laughed at her that she was not fit for such a royal ball were threshold guardians. And then crossing of the first threshold was with companion of geese, herd boy playing on his pipe and the girl dancing down the road towards the town.
On the way king’s son saw them, it was the stage of meeting with the goddess (god) and the heroine met her animus, her male counterpart. The animus, the male counterpart of the female psyche, is “essential in the process of woman’s self-realization and self-awakening” (Birkauser-oeri 35).They fell in love with each other. When the prince begged her to come that night to the ball, the girl and the herd boy followed by geese came in front of the throne, the heroine became divine (apotheosis) she discovered her true identity and knew she is what she was looking for in the first place.
In fact, when she learned that her grandfather has invited to a great ball that king’s only son was to choose wife, she decided to go to that ball. In fact she was seeking her animus. King’s son has become an animus for the hero, a focus for her projections about mature male energy. Her grandfather was absent in her life, she was seeking an image of what a father can be. Grandfather had a shadow character, although he didn’t think of himself a villain. So atonement with the father in the story was when, although he was in high authority and even refused to see her granddaughter’s face and also refused to take her to that royal ball, the heroine left that home and seeks her fortune, and at last she came to that ball and married the prince.
When she arrived at the ball, the young king introduced her as a girl whom she wanted to marry and parents agreed. She has reached at the end of her journey, her divinization and apotheosis. She transformed into princess, a divining being. Then goose herd played a few low notes. As he played, her rags were
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changed to shining robes sewn and the geese behind her became boys bearing her long train.
Tattercoat’s shining robes sewn is a metaphor of her apotheosis, which is noted by Campbell as the “quintessential station on the path to fulfillment, where the seeker realizes that she is what she is seeking” (Campbell, 2008. 118). Then, she became master of two worlds. She was well respected in both the worlds of fairies and world of king.
Their dancing was also a reward and ultimate boon. According to Vogler, “the romantic waltz in the Beauty and the Beast rewards for having survived ordeal with the towns people and Belle’s reward for having seen past the beast’s monstrous appearance” (Vogler 177). There was a grand celebration, people of the country were also happy because of this sacred marriage and the country announced the public Holiday that shows the blessing for not only the hero but all of the people. The heroine lived with the king happy ever after and this is the stage of freedom to live.
II.3. The Fish and the Ring
Story of the fish and the ring has a direct look to the destiny and fate. It reminds man’s weakness to change destiny, the flawed nature of humanity and his role in the course of destiny in the universe. Like the Sophocles’s tragedy of Oedipus king who tried but could not change his fate; a tragic hero in Greek mythology, Oedipus accidently fulfilled the prophecy, despite his efforts not to, he would end up killing his father and marring his mother, thereby bringing disaster to his city and family (Sophocles 2007). This great magician who knew everything that would come to pass, one day, he looked into the Book of Fate and discovered that his son would grow up and marry the daughter of a very poor man but he failed to change his son’s fate with prediction and witchery. The story consists of three journeys. In the first time, journey was not a choice the heroine made in response to call but also She was thrown into the water when she was just a baby girl, like the story of the Well of the world’s end, “the hero carried or sent abroad by some benign or malignant agent” (Campbell, 2008. 55). This agent was magician who had a mask of shadow. He found the baby girl and dropped her in the river like the story of Moses, and also in the story of the Simurgh and the Fate. In order to contrast with the astrology and prediction, the Simurgh hid the baby girl in a cave (Taslimi 2002). Here road of trials began and the water was the first trial for the heroine. Passing the water is symbol of death and reborn and it was the stage of the belly of the whale. The baby girl faced death but she magically
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survived this death and was literally or symbolically reborn. She has passed the test of being heroine.
Second journey happened when a fisher man found the heroine and brought up her in his house and named her Margaret. After 15 years the magician or the shadow saw her by chance, now the shadow who failed his wish, called the heroine to a new challenge once more. The magician character had the role of the shadow, herald and mentor simultaneously but in fact he was the shadow who wanted to destroy her. In the role of mentor archetype he pretended to be kind and charitable and sent the girl to his brother in order to have a better life. The heroine did not refuse the call and went for good future. In fact the shadow sent her to death because of that letter but he failed again because when the heroine slept for the night at a little inn, some robbers who were the shadow, with reading the girl’s letter turned into the mentors to help her and changed the content of the letter.
Throughout the story the heroine received several help, in the first journey when the baby girl didn’t sink and her clothes kept her up for a time, it was somehow supernatural aid, and then a fisher man as a helper took and raised her. In the second journey, the robbers changed their role as mentors and helped the hero although it was not exactly a supernatural help. So the heroine went to magician’s brother and so the meeting with the goddess (god) was when Margaret saw the Barron’s son and got engaged with his son. But the shadow arrived there and as he found what was happening, went to kill the girl, but the girl begged her and promised to leave all of them. Third journey began by the heroine’s choice for leaving. Now, it was time of her choice. She went forth of her own volition to accomplish the adventure. The heroine became a great cook in the castle, and there the last sign of the changeless fate took place. Atonement with the father also was here, when she begged the baron for her life and he didn’t push her, she went off alone and wandered, she has become herself a father, she was ripe to be a guide herself like the action of Molly Whipple.
In fact she escaped from the baron’s hand and this can be somehow stage of the magic flight. The girl’s ring which the Barron threw it into the sea, and had said never let me see your face till you can show me that ring, was inside the fish which she was cleaning it for dinner, dinner that the Barron and his son were the guests. It can be stage o rescue from without. In the Greek tale of Polycrats also a fisher man brought a great fish a tribute, when the fish was cut open, Polycrats was surprised and delighted to see his emerald ring that he
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had thrown away by taking Amasis’s advice. In this story a large fish swallows a ring that reunites the nobleman’s son and his much abused wife, in fact fishes play limited but pivotal role in many fairy tales (Helfman and Collete 2011). When the Barron saw that cook was the girl with the ring in her finger, found that no one could fight against fate. At last he was regretful and announced to all that the girl is his son’s true wife. The sacred marriage happened that is the ultimate boon for the heroine. She became divine, (apotheosis) and the heroine learned that she was what she was looking for in the first place and it was better life. She was also master of two worlds because, on the one hand she became a successful cook in the castle after hardships in her life, on the other hand was well respected in the Baron’ view, he and all of the people found that she was the best wife for a noble man’s son. They all lived happy that is the stage of the freedom to live, we can say that although the shadow is negative but it can be the energy of the hero’s mentor. (Moreno, 1996). Shadow also is not absolutely negative or evil. It is also the “negative of the image which we make of ourselves” (Jacoby 153-154).
II.4. The Well of the World’s End
This story is similar to the German Frog King in that a spoiled princess reluctantly befriends the Frog Prince, who magically transforms into a handsome prince. But there are several notable differences. First of all, the girl is not a cherished princes playing with a golden ball (Hasse 2008) but a common girl sent to fill a sieve with water at the well of the world’s end by a cruel stepmother. It’s at that well that the frog helped her in exchange for a promise to do whatever he asked for one night. Second, instead of throwing the frog into the wall in frustration the frog ordered the girl to chop off his head which is what ultimately breaks the spell. Third in the Russian folk version, The Frog Princess, male and female roles reversed: the male prince Ivan Tsarevich discovers the enchanted female frog who becomes Vasilisa the Wise, a female sorceress (Afanasyev 1912).
The story has two journeys, like the story of the Molly, in this story the heroine was sent to the journey, according to Campbell the heroine may be carried or sent abroad by some benign or malignant agent. The herald was heroine’s cruel step mother. In order to get rid of her, her step mother asked her to go to the well of the world’s end and fill the sieve. Sometimes the herald archetype is a negative figure. Or “the villain or her emissary, perhaps issuing a direct challenge to the hero, or trying to dupe the hero into getting
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involved” (Vogler 57). Here the heroine had not any other option so she could not refuse the call. She didn’t even ask her step mother about that.
Although road of trials for the heroine was from the beginning of the story because the girl's mother died, and her father remarried and her stepmother abused her, made her do all the house work; going and finding the well of the world’s end was an ordeal for the heroine. The girl crossed the first threshold, and went to where she didn’t know where it was and even what it was.
Threshold guardians were people who laughed at her. The heroine went till she saw an old woman, she was the Campbell’s the wise old man archetype. And the heroine earned the aid of her by being kind to her, because she helped her to find her coins. The old woman told her where the well was, in fact, the help might not be supernatural aid. Campbell says “the helper often offers not only supernatural aid but also guidance and advice” (Campbell, 2008. 72). Von Franz remarks that: “The wise old man appears as the spiritual help from the unconscious. When the consciousness makes its utmost effort but cannot produce the solution itself” (Franz 27)
She found the well of the world’s end, but she couldn’t fill the sieve so she began to cry. Likewise most of the fairy tales, crying in desperation, has positive result, a frog as the mentor archetype came and helped her. This story has more than one mentors, the frog helped the girl to fill the sieve, like many of the Russian fairy tale in which the animals help the girls. The frog tested her and she promised to do what the frog would ask her one night.
Campbell notes that the frog is “the nursery counterpart of the underworld serpent whose head supports the earth and who represents the life-progenitive, demiurgic powers of the abyss” (Campbell 43-44).
The heroine returned home, she overcame the shadow and this was atonement with the father, she went off alone to where she didn’t know and did what the step mother who had power and was in high authority and to some extent succeeded to gain her approval, because at first the step mother decided to get rid of her but when she returned, she didn’t say anything.
The second journey that was without return happened when the frog came and said the heroine should do what she had promised, when the step mother found what was the story, she was glad that a nasty frog can order her, and the heroine should obey, so she expressed her negative aspect of the shadow and asked her to keep her promises. The heroine did what the frog asked her,
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suddenly the frog changed into the handsome prince. It was the stage of meeting with the goddess (god).
This was also the stage of apotheosis, she became divine. In fact the girl was genuinely grateful to the frog. While she was less than thrilled to put him on her knee and take him to bed, she balked at the order to chop off his head specifically because of how he helped her when she was in need. The prince asked to marry her and then took the girl to his palace and sacred marriage happened. The heroine achieved the ultimate boon and lived happy and free ever after. This was the resurrection in the heroine’s life and never returned to the first place.
II.5. Tom Tit Tot
The heroine was sent to the adventure by a blunder, according to Campbell “a blunder apparently the merest chance reveals an unsuspected world, and the individual is drawn into a relationship with forces that are not rightly understood” (Campbell 46); he refers to Jung that blunders are results of suppressed conflicts and desires, which may be as deep the soul itself. They may lead the path to discovering one’s destiny. Heroine’s mother who baked five pies which were over baked and suddenly her daughter had eaten all of them, was done and took her spinning to the door to spin, and as she span she sang; “my daughter have ate five pies today” (Reeves 64), but as soon as the young king had stopped to hear mother’s song, she changed her song and sang: “My daughter had spun five skeins today” (p. 64) although her daughter have never spun. So the king asked mother to marry her daughter who could spun five skeins in one day.
But the king said that “eleven months out of the year she shall have all she likes to eat, and all the gowns she likes to get, and all the company she likes to keep; but the last month of the year she’ll have to spin five skeins every day, and if she don’t I shall kill her” (65) and the mother accepted. Sometime in the stories we have some signs of something coming for the hero, like the eating of all pies or the unconsidered promise of mother and girl for what the king asked, (spinning five skeins every day in month) so the heroine didn’t refuse the call.
In Von Franz’s words, “the heroine’s quest is motivated by a Felix culpa, a general archetypal motif of myth and fairy tale, a kind of mistake which, at the moment, releases a catastrophe, but, in retrospect, turns out to have been fortunate” (Franz 179). Therefore, the heroine met with the goddess (god) at
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the very beginning of the story and then a sacred marriage happened after accepting the king’s bet.
After happiness and felicity about twelve month the road of trials began for the heroine, she was now alone and should spin five skeins every day or she will be killed. But she didn’t know what should to do, she had no other option except crying. Like the story of the Well of the World’s End and many other fairy tales, followed crying there should be a helper, it can shows that in such situations that the heroine is between the life and the death, when she cries in fact she asks the help of God who is the real wise old man, or the great mentor and he would save the hero by sending a helper or supernatural aid, in fact When the girl comes to the end of the first eleven months of her marriage to the king, she must keep the bargain made by her mother, knowing that she can’t spin at all, she fears for her life.
At that point, little imp arrived and offered a possible solution to her dilemma. Realizing now that nothing is without cost, he asked what he wanted in exchange, knowing that she had little choice but to agree to his demand, that shows it has double aspects, it was both helper and the shadow, if she does not have guess its name before month’s up, she shall be for that little thing, this important decision of the heroine shows the stage of atonement with the father. Now she was ripe to be a guide herself and has become herself a father. In fact in this stage the heroine also becomes divine (apotheosis) and according to what Segal explains the hero “discovers his true identity. Hero discovers who he really is” (Segal 5).
The little imp was a kind of dwarfs, and according to Von Franz, dwarfs symbolize:
The creative impulses of the unconscious, so one really comes across destructive dwarfs in mythology…dwarfs have a lot to do with the feminine world and occur more frequently in women’s than in men’s dreams. They often represent the first creative impulses in the unconscious and some kind of creative activity still hidden in the womb of nature (64).
In the last night the king took the role of helper because what he remembered about his hunting saved the heroine, and she found the name of that little thing is Tom tit tot, then by telling its name she overcame the shadow, it gave an awful shriek and flew into the dark and this was an ultimate boon for her. So the heroine became the master of two worlds, although in a small sense, she
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destroyed that little imp and now was well respected in the king’s castle she will be the king’s wife forever. And she lived happily ever after with the king and attained freedom to live.
III. Conclusion
By analyzing the selected English fairy tales with female heroes in the light of Joseph Campbell’s Hero’s journey, it can be concluded that their Hero’s Journey follows the stages that Campbell has organized in The Hero with a Thousand Faces. But the researcher has seen that sometimes the order advised by Campbell have been changed and some stages omitted. The most important point of their journey is that none of them have returned to their original place, and if they returned, it was a temporary one. As mentioned in earlier, the theory has three phases Departure, Initiation and Return. Therefore, it can be concluded that the success or achievements female heroes is not necessarily dependents of passing different phases or various stages.
It shows that although the hero’s journey follows the universal framework, it can be in unlimited varied form. In every fairy tale Hero’s Journey archetype repeats itself in a new form and if there are displacements in the structure of journey, they didn’t damage journey’s originality.
These heroines show great courage, through ability to survive great hardship, make great sacrifice or face death unflinching as any male heroes. Strong girls whose lives or whose fairy tales, have impressed others with their incomparable beauty, wisdom, wit, virtue, talent and kindness. Although most of them begin their journey with domestic imprisonment or being abused released from it and succeeded in their quests. Unlike many stories that usually women were properly of their fathers and husbands, prizes to be won, or spoils of war to be seized and raped, female heroes in English fairy tales play important roles. In addition, the result indicates that the female heroes were a source of help and inspiration for themselves as well as their family members and the rest of society.
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References and notes:
Afanasyev, Alexander. The Frog Princess: A Russian Fairy Tale. Trans. Post Wheeler, Planet Publications, 1912.
Bartle, Richard. Designing Virtual Worlds. Indianapolis, Ind.: New Riders Pub, 2004.
Beyghami, Molana Mohammad. Darab Name. Vol.2, Tehran: Scientific and Cultural Publications, 2002.
Birkhäuser-Oeri, Sibylle. The Mother: Archetypal Image in Fairy Tales. Toronto: Inner City Books, 1988.
Campbell, Joseph. The Hero with a Thousand Faces. Novato: New World Library, 2008.
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Summary
Representation of Hero’s Journey in James Reeves’s “English Fairy Tales”: Female Heroes
Behzad Pourqarib
Department of English Language and Literature, Golestan University, Golestan, Iran. E-mail: [email protected]
Seyyede Sara Moosavipoor
M.A. Student in English Department, Faculty of Literature and Foreign Languages, Islamic Azad University, Karaj Branch, Iran. E-mail:
This study is an attempt to analyze five English fairy tales in the light of Joseph Campbell’s theory of Hero’s Journey or the monomyth that he took from Jung’s archetypal ideas. Unlike most of the old stories were predominantly filled with journeys of male heroes and if some of them are survived about heroine’s adventures, they play a passive role, female heroes in these fairy tales play important roles. This paper is addressed to the female heroes in the English fairy tales with the centrality of female heroes selected from Reeves' English Fables and Fairy Stories. Based on the aforementioned assumption, this study investigates the journeys of female heroes that enable the researcher to analyze these fairy tales based on Campbell’s hero’s journey archetype and show how heroines embodied most of the necessary elements to make the monomyth their own and take an active part in their adventures.
Key Words: Archetypes, Fairy Tales, Hero’s Journey, Joseph Campbell, Monomyth
