So writes Joseph Campbell on the opening page of his world girdling book, The Hero with a Thousand Faces. When Campbell wrote his book the male pronoun was blandly considered to be generic. In this paper I shall attempt to show that when Campbell used the word "he" that is exactly what he meant. I shall also attempt to show that Campbell’s blind preference for males over females has contributed to the maintenance of gender inequity in subtle but very fundamental ways. I will also indicate how an un-examined area of literature, particularly literature written for children, may show us a way in which such an iniquitous imbalance may be corrected.

Campbell’s interpetation of mythic imagery, particularly his conception of the Hero’s journey has had more influence on the general readership than any other theorist writing in this area. His work is known through television, movies, his books and via the internet. His work is rountinely taught in high schools, colleges and universities.

Campbell’s conception of a Hero is derived from his extensive reading of traditional literature from around the world. A heavily modified summary derived from Campbell follows:

A young man, often a prince is set a quest, often to obtain a sacred object necessary to the well-being of the kingdom. He passes across a threshold from the familiar world to a strange world set about with dangers, trials and helpers. He undergoes a series of tasks which may include the rescue of a highborn maiden with whom he may have a sexual relationship. He may return with her to his home with her as his queen or he may abandon her and choose another further along his hero’s way.

Some scholars, notably Carol Pearson (1998), hold that the term "Hero" is as generic as "he"; that, according to Pearson, we are all heroes and must all, both men and women, take our heroic journey. As valuble as Pearson’s therapeutic approach to mythic imagery may be she has most certainly ambigufied the term "Hero" in a way that Campbell did not. Campbell’s Hero is a young man waving his sword.

Campbell refers to the Hero’s journey as a "universal monomyth".

An examination of the examples Campbell uses to argue his case are exclusively male. Since Campbell demonstrates that the Hero’s journey arises in cultures around the world we may grant him his claim to universality. But how can his pattern be justified as both universal and mono when it excludes one of the two genders?

Elsewhere Campbell writes:

Such a claim hardly speaks of a gender equity that would justify the pronoun "he" be applied equally to either of the sexes. Moreover to equate sexual congress with "knowing" harks back to the biblical notion of "carnal knowledge", a position that few reflective people would respect in this day and age. The notion of sexual union as "mastery" of the male over his female "partner’ is a far cry from the idea of sexual expression of love as a mutal giving and receiving of love between equals.

In a section he calls Apotheosis Campbell offers an argument for the oneness of male and female. To support his argument he cites the creation of man in the book of Genesis in the Bible. But in that story Eve is created from Adam’s rib. He also cites an Australian Aboriginal ceremony for initiation into male adulthood which involves slitting the underside of the penis to form a "penis womb". Thus says Campbell. "The hero has become, by virtue of the ceremony, more than man." i.e. woman as well. But in both these examples feminity is derived from masculinity. The selection of such examples arise from the same mentality that would regard "he" as generic. Thus is is possible to sift through Campbell’s writing finding example after example in which females take a secondary and subsiduary role.

Campbell, as are we all, was a child of his times. His contribution to our understanding of mythic literature is tremendous. But his work carries with it values and assumptions that today we must question, re-evaluate and, perhaps, revise or reject.

I wish to argue that Campbell got the male half of the story right but, blinkered by the values of his times, failed to take into account or even notice the female half of the story. Campbell’s "monomyth" is not a monomyth but a male demi-myth. In the remainder of this paper I shall attempt to explicate what I believe to be a complementary female demi-myth.

The Female Way Station

Where do females appear in the Hero’s journey? The anwer is that they to stand or rather, lie, in wait alongside the Hero’s way. They do little more than await his passing; to participate in an encounter that Campbell calls the Sacred Marriage.

One of the examples Campbell uses is the traditional Irish story, Prince of the Lonesome Isle. After much journeying and adventure he happens across the Lady of Tubber Tin Tye lying (waiting?) on a spinning couch. The Prince declares that here he will rest and does so, for six days and nights. How the Lady feels about all this is not worthy of mention. The Prince then moves on, leaving the Lady behind, to complete his quest.

So much for the ambitions of the Hero. But what of the aspirations and desires of the Lady? What of her life before the arrival of the Prince? What brought her to that place at that time? How is her life to continue after the passing of the Hero? We are not told because it is not important to know because this is the Hero’s story. But if we do indeed take Campbell at his word and accept this story as an example of a "universal monomyth" then the male’s story tells us all that there is; all that is important to know. The omission of approximately half the world’s population is not even recognised as a problem or raised as an issue.

If the Hero’s story offers a message to the young that Life demands a journey out into a hazardous world to face, fight and outwit titanic forces of destruction in the personage of a young man with a sword where then is the comparable message for young women. Like "he" must one male myth serve for both men and women? Is the Warrior Princess to serve as a role model for all young women?

A truly universal monomyth must be one that includes both sexes, which values both male and female for their differences and which treats both with equal respect.

The Search for a Complementary Demi-myth

Using much the same method as Campbell himself, namely reading many stories, my students and I at the University of Victoria searched juvenile literature for tales that showed a pattern that focussed on females. We were aided in our search by Jung’s notion of archetypes. If archetypal images do indeed arise unbidden in the minds of all people in all places at all times then just possibly female archetypes will arise more readily when females make up stories about young females for young females. We thought that such a probability would be even more likely when the stories dealt in fantasy. The writers were "making things up things from their imaginations". Under such conditions archetypal images pertaining to girls and women would be likely to arise. We were rewarded with almost immediate success.

The Magical Earth Maiden

The pattern, which for reasons which will become obvious, we called the Magical Earth Maiden.

What follows is an example based on a traditional story marvellously adapted by Jane Yolen:

1. A young orphaned girl, on the brink of womanhood.
Dove Isabeau

2 lives in a remote place of power.
A castle in Craig’s Cove

3. The maiden does not usually travel; she may be carried off by an evil female.
Dove is banished to the rocks around the base of the castle.

4. The Maiden is possessed of a power but may not realise it.
She unknowingly has access to her last drop of innocent blood.

5. The power may be symbolised by a token, ring, necklace, jewel.
Not present.

6. The Maiden’s power is transformative, healing, or creative connected to the earth.
She turns Kemp Owain back from stone to life.

7. She may be threatened by powerful rival female who turns out to be a witch.(See #3)
Her stepmother is a witch.

8. She may have a wise mentor who teaches the arts of the earth and to use her attractive power prudently. The mentor is often her deceased mother.
The spirit of Dove’s dead mother guides through her cat.

9. The Maiden attracts a young male, often a prince or a person of power and prestige.
The king’s son , Kemp Owain, retuns from afar.

10. The Prince may already be on a quest, which may be the rescue of the Maiden; or he is set a quest by the Maiden.
He comes to rid the castle of the monster and save Dove.

11. The Prince needs help from the Maiden and she gives it.
The spirit of Dove’s dead mother gives Kemp Owain advice.

12. The quest is completed successfully and the pair are united in a bond of freindship, famial love or marriage.
Dove and Kemp Owain are married.

We have found this pattern, in part or whole, in the following stories:

Traditional Stories

Picture Books

Novels

If the theory underlying this paper is anyway near being right then there must be many thousands of texts that carry the Earth Maiden’s message. If you know of any stories that seem to include an appreciable number of the features of the Magical Earth Maiden pattern you are invited to write to my email address which appears at the end of paper. It would be of great help if you would provide the bibliographical details and a list of the features briefly stated as they are shown in the Dove Isabeau example.

Why are Heroes so prominent and Earth Maidens so hard to find? In a culture that has given preference to males for well over a thousand years it should not be surprising that stories that inculcate and reinforce a preference for males are more prevalent than stories promoting the value of females. All cultures make up stories that reflect and advance the values of that culture.

When folk stories began to be collected by scholars in the nineteenth century they were assembled by males who accepted the idea of male predominance as unreflectively as they accepted the law of gravity. We should not be surprised that their work reflects their value system, most specifically their pro-male bias. The Grimm brothers, among the first European collectors of folk tales, called their collection "Household Tales". Household they may have been but they were selected and doctored by two affluent, educated, adult, nationalistic, chauvanistic males(Zipes, 1978)

Take for example the Frog Prince. The title would suggest that it is about a frog prince. But the story clearly centres on a young girl-woman’s struggle towards womanhood as she learns to become aware of her attractive female power and how to use it honourably. The story would seem to cover the years from childhood to womanhood. In the beginning of the story she amuses herself with a ball and cries helplessly when it is lost. Her behaviour at supper seems evocative of a teenage pout. Before the story is over she has entertained a young man in her bed and, later, married him. Tempus fugit.

Her father(?) needs must teach her that the honour due to a princess obliges her to reciprocate it in order to remain worthy of the honour accorded her; a Princess keeps her promises. The transformation of the kissed frog into a marriageble Prince demonstrates to her that honourable action leads more readily to desirable ends than whining helplessness, manipulative selfishness and pouting.

But why is it her father who must guide her? Why not her marginalized mother? Would it not be more likely that the proper upbringing of a young princess would be the responsibility of her mother? In the Frog Prince the mother is not even dead, merely unmentioned.

There is good reason to believe that the imbalance of the perceived worth between men and women has led to a literature in which the Magical Earthmaiden’s story has gone undtold, unertold. and unremarked.

If we are to become a culture that truly values males and females equally then we must do what all cultures do--tell ourselves stories that reflect the true values of the culture, values that are so important that they must be passed on to and imposed upon the young while they are yet too young to question them. Such stories can not be the awkard didacticisms of the early "women’s lib" movement but well-told tales that come from the heart, the soul and thus, perhaps, from the deep well of mythic imagery. We must tell our children and ourselves stories that inculcate and reinforce the idea that men and women are joyously different; that we value and celebrate such differences; that we recognize and rejoice in their complementarities; and that we embrace one another in mutual respect.

The issue of gender equity in our society remains hugely unresolved. Despite significant advances there remain segments of society who continue to behave as if the question had never been raised. Philosophically we have tried equality, equity and supermom. None can be said to have come even close to universal success. Great swaths of society, children in school, for example, continue to behave as though the issue has not even been broached.

Biologically we are clearly designed for complementarity. Surely such reciprocation extends to our minds and spirits? The stories we present to our children and ourselves tell us how to be. The recurring tales of Heroes and Maidens tell us we are but two genders of a single species. We are built biologically, mentally and spiritually to support one another. In an uncertain world of titanic terrors we need one another; to act one with the other so that we may one day indeed all live happily ever after.

Bibliography

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Dean, Pamela(1991) Tam Lin. Doherty Associates.

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Weisner, David(1987) The loathsome dragon. Putnam.

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