The Heroine's Journey

 I've been reading an interesting book called The Heroine's Journey, by Gail Carriger. Her thesis is that, for as many stories that can be dissected in terms of the Campbellian "Hero's Journey," there are as many for which the themes and tropes of that journey are antithetic.

To explain; the Hero leaves his/her social circumstance to begin their adventure. The Hero's ultimate victory is in solo heroics. Their victory also leaves them outside society; they may as Campbell says "bring the boon back to the village" but they can not go back with it. Frodo must sail away to the Everlasting Isles.

Which is actually a great way to talk about the contrast. Samwise Gamgee returns to the Shire. Sam spent his adventure as one of a group of companions. Whereas Frodo followed in the footsteps of Bilbo to leave home, Sam travelled for the Shire -- he almost literally carried the Shire on his back (well, on Bill's back). Sam did go into the Underworld, but the one time he took up the Magic Artifact and set out on a Solo Adventure he was only to happy to get back to the supporting ground of being a supporting character.

Which is Gail's argument; that for some characters and some stories they stay within society and have equal companions and win not by becoming special and an outsider but by fitting in. 

And also that these aren't mutually exclusive stories -- as seen in the above example with Sam and Frodo, who both go through elements of the traditional Hero story as well as the alternate Heroine story.

Actually, Gail's thesis is perhaps more that a story shouldn't be described as "failing" if it doesn't have the proper Hero's Journey elements to it. But her book is really about understanding the various themes and tropes both as analytical tools, and as tools for the writer.

***

I'm only a few chapters into that book but it is already making me think. My novel Shirato I thought of Mie's social circumstances as something she had to overcome, even if her ultimate goal was to get back to society (to "find her proper place," as she kept saying.) But really; she is a heroine forced on a hero's journey and the worst mistakes she makes -- the times she hurts people and almost makes things worse -- are when she is isolated. Her greatest triumphs are swaying her old crew to her side, her friendship with Yuri, and making herself a temporary home in the market on Koyama.

This same intersection is happening in the Athena Fox stories. I am more conscious of the themes I am weaving, but this gives me a new analytical tool to describe them and think about them.

The climax of the London book was absolutely constructed as the Underground sequence of a classic William Campbell. So much that the bit where she has to bluff a guard to get into the excavation at the start of the journey is called, in the chapter titles omitted in the final compile for the public, "Threshold Guardian."

But even there, underground, the Graham Magic comes into play. This is the way the character Graham had attracted various skilled people into his orbit: it is also the analytical tool Penny uses now to look at the friends and supporters she has made. It is a conscious choice I had been making since the first book; that Penny meets people and makes friends and these are all people who can help her later.

(It is also that she is a Fox. Her nature is not to be a really good fighter, it is to manipulate the situation around her. A Wolf would fight their way in. A Fox sneaks...or makes a phone call to a couple of Ninja she met earlier...)

I could easily take this too far, such as by saying her stabbing of Fawkes crosses the line into isolation but the epilogue pulls her back into society (by getting her arrested but, eventually, forgiven by the society she has transgressed against).

Because helpful companions aren't the same thing as equal companions. Penny is more on a Hero's Journey than a Heroine's. And at least for one more book, at the crux she will be once again solo (at the climax, though, she has -- if not friends, at least allies. So even there I was aware that she works not by doing everything herself and fighting alone, but by making friends and allies.)

***

And, yes, I'm still struggling the transition into story proper. Roughly 20,000 words in, the reason behind some of the things that have been happening to her in Kyoto has become clear and she's been introduced to Transcendence and convinced to help investigate them.

I re-read and re-wrote dozens of times before the transition finally started making sense to me. 

And, yes. I am totally going to do a Mario Kart scene. Having just discovered they have them in Kyoto, too. Even though it does require a really big hand-wave...